Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright unveiled his first secretarial order on Wednesday in a move to overturn many of former President Joe Biden’s green energy policies and restore “energy dominance” in America.
Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright unveiled his first secretarial order on Wednesday in a move to overturn many of former President Joe Biden’s green energy policies and restore “energy dominance” in America.
Wright’s order aims to reduce energy costs in the U.S. and expand domestic energy production, according to a press release. The order outlines several of the DOE’s plans to improve the U.S. energy sector by tackling issues caused by several Biden-era energy regulations.
The DOE’s order also outlines a plan to begin a comprehensive review of the agency’s Appliance Standards Program to make home appliances and products more affordable for Americans and promote consumer choice for appliances. The Biden-Harris administration led a push toward regulating the use of certain gas appliances, including introducing several stringent efficiency rules for gas stoves and some water heaters.
The DOE also plans to “strengthen” the U.S. power grid’s “reliability and security,” according to the press release. Notably, the Biden-Harris administration introduced stringent emissions standards for U.S. power plants in April 2024, leading to some power grid operators warning that the administration’s standards were pushing the grid toward conditions that could lead to blackouts.
Wright wrote further that the DOE plans to work to “unleash” America’s nuclear energy. Notably, the sole nuclear reactor to come online in the U.S. in the past several years is Georgia’s Vogtle plant, which connected its fourth unit to the power grid in March 2024 after facing significant delays and financial hurdles.
The agency plans to refill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The Biden-Harris administration released about 180 million barrels from the SPR ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, causing the reserve to near its lowest levels in roughly 40 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The press release also references Biden’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) pause — which Trump ended on Jan. 21 — writing that the action was restoring the agency to “regular order,” after the Biden-Harris administration paused approvals for certain new LNG exports facilities in January 2024 to assess whether additional exports were in the public interest.
“President Trump has outlined a bold and ambitious agenda to unleash American energy at home and abroad to restore energy dominance,” according to the press release. “To compete globally, we must expand energy production and reduce energy costs for American families and businesses. America must lead the world in innovation and technology breakthroughs, which includes accelerating the work of the Department’s National Laboratories. We must also permit and build energy infrastructure and remove barriers to progress, including federal policies that make it too easy to stop projects and far too difficult to complete projects.” (RELATED: One Of America’s Priciest Green Boondoggles May Be Going Offline After Sucking Up Subsidies And Incinerating Birds)
Yesterday I discussed the likelihood of Orsted pulling out of Hornsea 4, as part of their retrenchment. And with Vattenfall already opposed to joining future CfD auctions, there is now an enormous gap between Miliband’s 2030 plans and reality.
Yesterday I discussed the likelihood of Orsted pulling out of Hornsea 4, as part of their retrenchment. And with Vattenfall already opposed to joining future CfD auctions, there is now an enormous gap between Miliband’s 2030 plans and reality.
As NESO’s Clean Power 2030 makes clear, we will need to increase offshore wind power from 14.7 GW to 50.6 GW by 2030:
Assuming Orsted do pull out of Hornsea 4, there is about 12 GW of new build offshore wind capacity due on stream, which already have CfDs. That takes us to about 27 GW.
East Anglia 2, which along with Hornsea 4, won contracts in last year’s AR6 CfD auction, is targeted to come on stream in 2028/29. It is therefore likely that if projects do not get CfDs this year will not be ready by 2030 anyway.
But more to the point, are we honestly going to find anyone prepared to build another 23 GW in the next five years?
Ladies and gentlemen, no matter how often the climate doomsday cult appears to have officially reached peak absurdity, along comes another “journalist” saying: Hold my beer! No longer content with blaming hurricanes, wildfires, and bad hair days on climate change, TIME magazine has now decided that football—yes, the sport where 300-pound men slam into each other at full speed—is somehow under siege from slightly warmer weather.
Ladies and gentlemen, no matter how often the climate doomsday cult appears to have officially reached peak absurdity, along comes another “journalist” saying: Hold my beer! No longer content with blaming hurricanes, wildfires, and bad hair days on climate change, TIME magazine has now decided that football—yes, the sport where 300-pound men slam into each other at full speed—is somehow under siege from slightly warmer weather.
Jeffrey Kluger’s article, How Climate Change Is Affecting the NFL, is the latest entry in the ongoing competition to see who can produce the most ridiculous climate alarmism. Let’s break this nonsense down, shall we?
OMG, It Was Hot in October!
Kluger kicks off his fever dream with a tale of a 98°F game between the 49ers and the Cardinals on October 6, 2024. Wow, stop the presses! It was hot in California in the fall! What next? Are we going to blame climate change for earthquakes too?
For some perspective, the highest temperature ever recorded in San Francisco in October was 102°F on October 5, 1987. So, a 98°F Day in 2024 is hardly unprecedented.
The author even notes that the 49ers changed their pants color to reflect more heat. That’s it. That’s the big climate catastrophe. Pants.
Of course, Kluger doesn’t mention that the hottest recorded NFL game was a 1978 season opener in St. Louis at 105°F, long before carbon hysteria took over the media. Nor does he mention that cold-weather games still happen every season, including the “Ice Bowl” of 1967 at −13°F or the 2016 Seahawks-Vikings playoff game at −6°F. Climate change sure works in mysterious ways.
A Whole 2.8°F Warmer! Over 54 Years!
According to Kluger, a survey by Climate Central (a group that exists solely to push climate fearmongering) found that NFL cities have warmed by an average of 2.8°F since 1970.
Let’s do some actual thinking here.
No mention of Urban Heat Islands and metropolitan growth.
The 1970’s was the period of the global cooling scare.
The average daily temperature can swing 20–30°F in a single afternoon.
This is what Kluger considers an emergency? At this rate, we’ll reach Florida beach weather in Buffalo sometime around the year 2500.
And even if this warming trend were accurate, have these geniuses considered indoor stadiums, cooling technologies, or the simple fact that NFL players are, by definition, peak human athletes? I promise you; a linebacker is more worried about getting blindsided by Aaron Donald than whether the temperature is 85°F instead of 83°F.
Hot Weather Is Dangerous—Unlike Football?
Kluger gravely warns us about the risks of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Oh, you mean the risks that football players have always faced in summer training camps?
This is the same sport where:
Players suffer concussions, broken bones, torn ACLs, and spinal injuries regularly.
A quarterback played an entire game with a broken jaw.
Some guys have been knocked unconscious mid-play.
But no, the real danger is the thermometer creeping a few degrees higher. Right.
Also, he conveniently ignores the fact that cold weather is far more dangerous than heat. The most common causes of weather-related deaths in the U.S. are cold exposure and hypothermia. But since “global warming” is the villain, you won’t hear that from TIME.
More Heat Waves = More Snowstorms?
Kluger also tries to scare us with stories of a Buffalo Bills game buried under snow in December 2024.
Now, stay with me here—he claims that hotter temperatures caused more snow because the Great Lakes didn’t freeze. So let me get this straight:
Warmer weather makes things colder.
More heat leads to blizzards.
The Great Lakes didn’t freeze because of climate change… but they still managed to dump tons of snow.
By this logic, turning up your air conditioning makes your house hotter.
NFL Stadiums Need to “Go Green” (For Some Reason)
Of course, no climate propaganda is complete without plugging “green” sports stadiums. Kluger suggests that the NFL must “adjust” to climate change, as if the league isn’t already raking in billions and handling bad weather like professionals.
Here’s an idea: if the climate warriors are so concerned, why don’t they boycott the Super Bowl? After all, it’s powered by evil fossil fuels, with fans flying in on CO₂-spewing jets, eating methane-emitting hamburgers, and cheering under carbon-intensive stadium lights.
Oh, right. They won’t, because all of this is performative nonsense.
The Real Takeaway: It’s All a Grift
Let’s be honest—this article isn’t about football. It’s about shoehorning climate change hysteria into every aspect of life. The game could be played on the surface of the Sun, and these people would still find a way to blame SUVs and gas stoves.
Meanwhile, NFL teams are doing just fine:
Players train in state-of-the-art facilities with climate control.
Coaches adjust for heat like they always have.
The league makes billions, regardless of the weather.
And here’s the real kicker: the NFL is actually expanding into hotter regions. There’s a team in Las Vegas, a city that gets 120°F summers. Why? Because none of these climate scares matter in real life.
Final Score: Reality – 49, Climate Hysteria – 0
At the end of the day, the only thing heating up is the nonsense coming from mainstream media. Climate change isn’t ruining football—bad officiating and Roger Goodell are.
So, Jeffrey Kluger, thanks for the laugh. Maybe next time, try blaming climate change for Tom Brady’s retirement, the Cowboys’ annual playoff choke, or the Jets still being terrible.
Reduced North Sea investment as a result of UK government policy could lead to millions of tonnes of additional CO2 emissions from imports, according to a report.
Reduced North Sea investment as a result of UK government policy could lead to millions of tonnes of additional CO2 emissions from imports, according to a report.
Edinburgh-based financial analyst firm Gneiss Energy modelled the potential impact of UK government policies relating to the country’s offshore oil and gas sector.
According to the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), the carbon intensity of UK gas production is almost four times lower than liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports
Germany, the United Kingdom and France account for close to half of all European Weather-Dependent “Renewables”.
The illustrations here show the hourly power production by all generation technologies. The data is as complete as possible for the UK.
The United Kingdom power generation illustrated 2024
The Gridwatch UK data had a major deficiency from 1/6/2024 to 10/7/2024, accordingly a batch of data was substituted from later in July that year. This substitution will not materially affect any cumulative results shown here.
UK Weather-Dependent “Renewables”
Productivity matters
The illustrations of UK power generation in 2024 shown above, indicate:
the imposition of an additional ~48 Gigawatt of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” has reduced the overall UK power fleet productivity, normally ~90%, down to ~39.5%.
in 2024 ~48GW of installed Weather-Dependent “Renewables” contributed the equivalent of ~9GW to the UK grid.
in 2024 UK Weather-Dependent “Renewables” achieved a combined productivity of ~18.4%, a relatively low value.
in 2024 Offshore UK wind power, which is normally quite productive, only achieved the low level of productivity of 23.5%.
the unreliability and intermittency of both Onshore and Offshore Wind power is clear from the third graphic above:
Wind power output can vary from close to full power on occasions down to virtually nil power output within a few hours.
Solar power is inevitably diurnal, very variable Summer to Winter and dependent on cloudiness. The UK is one of the cloudiest nations.
Solar power consistently has continued its low overall productivity of only ~10%.
Solar power contributed most power at periods of low demand during the summer and very little during the winter, the period of high demand.
the daily timing of the contribution from Solar power does not meet the high power demand in winter evenings.
although capital installation costs of Solar power are almost comparable to Gas-firing for nameplate capital costs, Solar power output actually costs ~10 times as much as Gas-firing to install and maintain when its low productivity is taken into account.
the UK is heavily dependent on imported power, largely Nuclear from France, the Netherlands and Norway, amounting to ~15% of power generation over the year, with the UK exporting power only on rare occasions.
UK energy security is at risk by having to rely on imported power:
Norway is already considering curtailing its exports to the UK and retaining its power output for its own domestic use.
France has threatened its supply to the UK in a dispute over the Channel Islands.
imported power was close to equivalent to the output of the whole of the UK’s current indigenous consistent Nuclear power generation.
the final closure of the last UK Coal-fired power station occurred in 2024, it contributed less than 1% of power demand before closure.
the installation of ~48GW, Weather-Dependent “Renewables” ~65% of the present UK generation fleet, also produced a similar ~30% cumulative power output as from Gas-firing but that “Renewable” power output was non-dispatchable on demand: “Renewables” achieved at a combined productivity of only ~18.5% in 2024.
imported Biomass, with CO2 emissions about 4 times that of Gas-firing, contributed a dispatchable ~7% of UK demand.
using imported Biomass negated all and any CO2 emissions savings made by other Weather-Dependent “Renewables”.
with a installation of ~10GW+ Natural gas generated about 30% of all UK power at a productivity of ~87%: this power output was flexibly dispatchable, available to meet demand.
Gas-firing, but not using indigenous UK gas resources, was largely able to compensate for the intermittency and unreliability of the large scale imposition of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” already installed in the UK.
The announcement of the inaugural African Mining Week (AMW 2025), to be celebrated in Cape Town alongside Africa Energy Week (AEW 2025) in early October, is a clear signal that Africans are exercising new muscle toward regaining control of the continent’s vast mineral resources.
The announcement of the inaugural African Mining Week (AMW 2025), to be celebrated in Cape Town alongside Africa Energy Week (AEW 2025) in early October, is a clear signal that Africans are exercising new muscle toward regaining control of the continent’s vast mineral resources.
The event, sponsored by the Africa-focused global investment platform Energy Capital & Power, will highlight initiatives aimed at enhancing Africa’s mineral value chains and promoting local processing to drive economic growth. Formerly called the Critical Minerals Africa conference, the rebranding reflects the integrated opportunities across the continent’s energy and mining sectors and aims to drive a culture of collaboration among those strategic sectors.
The event will center on the theme, “From Extraction to Beneficiation: Unlocking Africa’s Mineral Wealth,” will convene global investors, policymakers, and industry leaders to explore opportunities in Africa’s midstream and downstream sectors, featuring panel discussions, project showcases, and high-level deal signings.
Together with the AEW conference, whose theme is “Invest in African Energies,” AMW 2025’s dynamic platform seeks to foster cross-sector synergies and showcase the continent’s energy and mining potential while positioning Africa as a premier investment destination for capital, technology, and project developers.
Research indicates Africa could generate up to $2 billion in additional mining revenue and create up to 3.8 million jobs by 2030 through expanded manufacturing of value-added mining products. Africa’s mining industry is on track to reach a market value of $135 billion by the end of 2027, with an annual compound growth rate of 5.6%, driven by factors such as rising demand, supportive government policies, and advanced mining technologies.
The rapid pace of African nations and entrepreneurs to take back control is astonishing, given that in less than two decades after winning independence from colonial masters, short-lived African control of the mining sector had retrogressed into what amounted to neocolonialism.
Retrogression toward neocolonialism
A little over a year ago, British political economist Ben Radley, in his bookDisrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus, lamented that, since the 1990s, transnational corporations again became the dominant force as owners and managers of major African mining projects.
Within just a few years after shaking off the chains of centuries of colonialism, African governments asserted sovereignty over their metal and mineral resources long exploited by European mining corporations. The return of transnational dominance was carried out through a three-stage process beginning with a misguided reading of African economic stagnation from the mid-1970s onwards.
According to Radley, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) [then called Zaire] quickly required all foreign-based companies to establish their headquarters in the DRC and nationalized the largest Belgian-owned colonial mining subsidiary. By 1970, the Congolese public sector controlled 40% of national value added, with steady increases in copper production and state revenues topping out at US$630 million in 1970.
But the same oil crisis that hit the U.S. in 1973 hit hard, and the global copper price fell by two-thirds by 1975 at the same time government loan repayments came due and interest rates rose as the U.S sought to control inflation via monetary policy. The West, however, blamed industry declines solely on state intervention and government corruption.
The reversion to colonialism was hastened by US$1.1 billion in World Bank grants and loans to 15 of Africa’s 17 mineral-rich, low-income countries. This gave the Bank leeway to implement a Eurocentric strategic vision for organizing and managing African mining. African economies grew increasingly dependent upon foreign direct investment and control into the current decade.
The final hurdle, said Radley, for transnational mining companies was to criminalize labor-intensive indigenous miners who recover gold, diamonds, silver, copper, cobalt, tin, tantalum, iron ore, aluminum, tungsten, wolframite, phosphates, precious and semi-precious stones, and rare-earth minerals (like lithium).
To undermine the legitimacy of indigenous miners, the World Bank, dependent African governments, and scholarly literature began casting them as “primitive,” “basic,” “inefficient,” “rudimentary,” and “unproductive.” This led to actions such as the 2017 displacement of 70,000 miners by the Ugandan military and police to make way for a Canadian-listed mining corporation.
While several African governments recently adopted mining code and policy revisions that push back against foreign dominance, those small steps fell well short of a fundamental challenge to the dominant model of capital-intensive, foreign-owned mining industrialization on the continent and a far cry from the heyday of African resource sovereignty in the 1960s and 1970s.
A formula for repatriation
Meanwhile, in 2021, attorney NJ Ayuk, incensed that the European-sponsored Africa Oil Week was being relocated to Dubai, proclaimed that Africa was “ready and capable” to hold a continent-wide energy event in Africa, with a focus on finance, natural gas, electrification, hydrogen, upstream, and a just transition. The event’s success apparently sparked continent-wide confidence that Africans should indeed oversee their own mineral wealth.
In February 2023, Ayuk laid out a four-point platform by which African could become a key player in the global minerals market. Africa, he said, harbors great potential for mining and exporting minerals used in emerging technologies that rely on the continent’s abundant supplies of cobalt, copper, lithium, and other rare-earth minerals.
All that is needed, he said, is for African governments to prioritize and develop sustainable mining techniques, invest in skilled labor and training, and modernize existing infrastructure.
And one more thing.
By putting regulatory frameworks in place that are crystal clear and transparent to the public, African governments can satisfy prospective investors’ needs for certainty about their investments and build public confidence.
African governments, it appears, are getting the message, even the military junta that took over Mali and demanded $500 million in back taxes from Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold and $380 million from Resolute Mining. As Justice Malala wrote last December in Japan Times, companies should expect perhaps a gentler type of pressure from other African nations.
Malala said that, after decades of largely being sidelined while profits from their mineral resources accrued to foreign firms and kleptocratic local leaders, Africa’s new leaders (both democratic and autocratic) want a greater slice of the pie.
He warned that this movement, whether one calls it decoloniality or “resource nationalism,” Africans are increasingly conforming to the view, expressed by South Africa’s international relations minister Ronald Lamola at the United Nations last September, that his nation’s priorities would include dealing with “issues of predatory mining by some countries and corporations, especially in the quest for Africa’s raw material and critical minerals.”
The sponsors of Africa Mining Week (and Africa Energy Week) have a different focus. In their view, Africa’s energy and minerals industries are on the precipice of accelerated growth, yet Africa has barely scratched the surface of its energy and mining industries’ potential.
With much of the continent’s natural and mineral resources underdeveloped and underexplored, there is a critical opportunity for global and African players to collaborate and invest in Africa – with Africans as full partners in building an African century.
Africa’s private sector, and hopefully African governments, are growing up – and the world would do well to take notice.
Editor note: The wealth of free-market capitalism creates a robust civil society, where nonprofits and foundations can support the causes of their choosing, many of which might not be viable otherwise. The problem is where philanthropy goes political against the free society and human betterment. Jane Shaw Stroup takes a look at good money going in negative directions, even violating original intent.
You’ve probably heard that Henry Ford II resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation because it had veered far away from its donor’s intent. In his 1976 resignation letter, Ford (grandson of Henry Ford Sr.) wrote:
In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff people in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the foundation’s grant programs.”[1]
What had the Ford Foundation been doing? Essentially it had gone rogue.
A 1919 photograph of the senior Henry Ford. From the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division. It is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
True, the elder Ford had been eccentric and viciously antisemitic, but he changed the world with his autos, he paid workers well, and he hired disabled veterans, the elderly, and the handicapped. He revived a Detroit suburb, Inkster, during the Great Depression by hiring many of its largely black population, paying them $6 a day even if he had only routine chores for them. He started the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
By 1976, the foundation had become the largest charitable foundation in the world and was leaning toward Democratic Party politics. One of its projects supported the Democratic Party by funding a voter registration drive in Cleveland to elect a Democratic mayor, Carl Stokes. Another gave money to the staff of Robert Kennedy after his assassination—even though former staff members such as Frank Mankiewicz and Peter Edelman were lawyers earning up to $500,000 a year.
Henry Ford II asked McGeorge Bundy (Ford’s president) to support the Henry Ford Hospital. Bundy refused. Only when Henry Ford II’s wife, Cristina, interceded with Robert McNamara, a prominent trustee, did McBundy agree to a one-time $100 million donation in 1973. That appears to be the foundation’s last gift to the hospital. In 2024, the hospital started on a funding campaign and the Ford Foundation is nowhere in sight.
Henry Ford II. From a photograph by Hugo van Gelderen in the public domain under Creative Commons license CC0 1.0.
Finally, in 1974, the foundation authorized a 530-page report on energy by S. David Freeman (later the head of the government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority).[2] The report set energy conservation as “a matter of highest national priority.”[3] It elevated government planning and control over the oil and auto industries. It proposed appliance energy efficiency standards, mortgage subsidies for people who bought homes that met the standards, pushed for automobile miles-per-gallon standards, and promoted pollution taxes. (Our sluggish dishwashers are an example of what this report led to.)
The Freeman report also mused that “a political decision must be made: to restrain windfall profits by price controls; to tax some of them away and spend the proceeds in ways that will benefit the poor; or to do nothing.“[4]
By the way, you won’t read about Henry Ford II’s disaffection in the history page on the Ford Foundation’s website.[5] However, the New YorkTimes published portions of his resignation letter, including the quotes above.
Other Foundations Went Rogue, Too
The Ford Foundation was not alone. Others that turned against their creators include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Pew Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, the Buck Foundation, and the Barnes Foundation.
We have this full picture because one person brought the examples together. He was the late Martin Morse Wooster, who studied philanthropic organizations for years for the Capital Research Center. Wooster died in 2022 in a hit-and-run accident, but he left rich histories of American foundations in a book that went through four editions.
The final edition (published in 2017) is called How Great Philanthropists Failed and You Can Succeed in Protecting Your Legacy. [6] As the title indicates, Wooster not only identified the ways in which the founders of these organizations lost control but advised wealthy readers who might be contemplating a foundation how to avoid their predecessors’ mistakes. And he showed all potential donors, small or large, the pitfalls that almost inevitably occur over time.
Let’s look at a few other examples of foundations that went astray:
The MacArthur Foundation is famed for its mostly left-wing “genius awards” (ten on the left for every one on the right, wrote Wooster). Who would have thought that it was built on the money of a capitalist who turned around a bankrupt insurance company in the Depression, making it a great success, partly by hiring handicapped workers and discounting rates? John MacArthur then grew his fortune by developing land in New York and Florida. He was a giant proponent of private enterprise and, as Wooster says, “pugnacious.” MacArthur opposed the planners who wanted to block his land developments in Florida (“they think alligators are more important than people’”), and he refused to give money to politicians.[7]
Who would have thought that the Pew Charitable Trust, created by the money from Howard Pew, an entrepreneur in the oil industry (founder of Sun Oil or Sunoco), would abandon its origins? The Pew Trust has supported a plethora of social causes, among them “environmentalists who favored restrictions on oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness,” Wooster observed. [8] Surely, Howard Pew would have been stunned.
These are just a couple of examples. But Wooster’s book is not only about foundations that ended up disparaging the capitalistic sources of their money. It’s about donor intent.
Barnes Foundation: A Sad Tale
One of the most disturbing illustrations of foiling the intent of the donor is the Barnes Foundation. Albert C. Barnes was a leftist liberal who supported the New Republic and the earlier Masses magazine. An entrepreneurial genius in the medical field, over the years he built one of the world’s most outstanding collections of modern art. But he wanted students of art, not the public, to see it—and especially not members of the art establishment. When he exhibited his early collection in 1923, art critics called the works “trash” and the “creations of a disintegrating mind” (not Barnes’s mind; rather, the works of artists like Chaim Soutine). Today the Barnes collection is worth about $25 billion.
To make a long story short, the Philadelphia art establishment had its revenge after Barnes died in 1951. Using court cases and public pressure, the establishment eventually forced the foundation to leave its home location, a small suburb of Philadelphia, and house the artwork in a public Philadelphia Museum. The story is complicated, but you can get an idea of the course of things by the name of a documentary about Barnes’s experience, “The Art of the Steal”. The movie, on Youtube, is unforgettable.
Not every foundation has turned on its creator, and Wooster praises those that didn’t. He goes on to argue that there are two ways a wealthy philanthropist can prevent such takeovers:
Spend your money as effectively as possible while you are alive.
Set a sunset date for your foundation.
There’s much more to this book, of course, and much more to the entire issue of donor intent. But this is my start.
[2] Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation, A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future (Cambridge, MA : Ballinger Publishing. 1976). S. David Freeman was the lead author.
On Wednesday, Ørsted, the leading offshore wind developer in the UK, announced it is cutting its investment plans out to 2030 by 25%. It said:
We’ll reduce our investment programme towards 2030 through a stricter, more value-focused approach to capital allocation. We do this to ensure a stronger balance sheet, supporting a solid investment grade rating, and to ensure that we only invest our capital in the most financially attractive opportunities.
Our number one priority throughout the next three years will be to deliver on our committed 8.4 GW offshore wind construction programme, which will almost double our installed offshore wind capacity. The market remains challenging, but delivering on this programme will solidify our position as the undisputed global leader in offshore wind. …
These adjustments will not affect the execution of the 9 GW of renewable projects that Ørsted is currently constructing. The construction portfolio brings line of sight to an expansion of renewable capacity from 18 GW to more than 27 GW. …
The previous ambition for installed renewable capacity of 35-38 GW by 2030 and the targeted EBITDA (excluding new partnerships) of approx. DKK 39-43 billion in 2030 have been discontinued.
The announcement from the Danish firm, which claims to be the leading offshore wind developer in the world, comes hot on the heels of the company’s CEO being replaced last month and the Chairman, finance chief and operating officer being fired last year. Yesterday’s news was not specific about which projects will continue and which will be cancelled. It looks like Hornsea Project 3, already under construction, will continue.
However, the same cannot be said for the 2.4 GW Hornsea Project Four (H4) that won a Contract for Difference (CfD) at a 2024 price of £82/MWh in Allocation Round 6 (AR6) when the results were announced last September. According to H4’s latest newsletter, the project has been granted planning permission and won a CfD but it had not yet passed the Final Investment Decision. Sure enough, in Ørsted’s latest investor presentation Hornsea 4 has been axed from the investment plan.
It is all but certain that Ørsted will not be participating in the forthcoming Allocation Round 7 (AR7) to win new subsidy contracts. Of course, this torpedoes Ed Miliband’s plan to almost quadruple offshore wind capacity by 2030. The loss of Hornsea Project Four and the lack of participation of Ørsted in new auctions will leave a massive gap to be filled. If the world’s leading offshore wind developer is feeling the pinch, then we can be fairly sure that other developers will be facing significant challenges too.
This sudden announcement may explain why AR7 announcements appear to be behind schedule. The Administrative Strike Prices for AR6 were announced in November 2023, more than four months before the auction process began in March 2024 and some 10 months before the results were announced. Yet, we do not yet know the strike prices for AR7, nor the date for the start of applications. We might expect Miliband to offer even more of our money to try and keep his plans on track and for strike prices to rise again.
It’s certainly looking like Miliband’s insane plans for offshore wind to provide the bulk of our electricity generation by 2030 are holed below the waterline. Instead of the answer blowing in the wind, it’s an entirely different fluid emanating from a different orifice.
It’s only two weeks into the new Trump administration, and we’re seeing an incredible sea change start in the federal government. In his first campaign, Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” and then when he took office, he barely got started on the project during a full four-year term. Maybe he was too distracted by constant investigations, lawfare, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and the like. But this time it’s much different.
It’s only two weeks into the new Trump administration, and we’re seeing an incredible sea change start in the federal government. In his first campaign, Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” and then when he took office, he barely got started on the project during a full four-year term. Maybe he was too distracted by constant investigations, lawfare, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and the like. But this time it’s much different.
The big news of the past day or two is the beginning of purges at DOJ, the FBI, and USAID. Those thoroughly corrupt institutions are very good places to start in these early weeks. But they are barely the tip of the iceberg of corrupt institutions ripe for upending.
One place that is about to get hit by the whirlwind is academia. It is possible that the entire industry of academia will be revolutionized and transformed over the course of the next couple of years. It should be. And, if Trump follows through, as I think he will, he completely has the tools at his disposal to do the job.
With academia, multiple issues come together to put the industry in a position of high vulnerability. First, of course, is that academia is almost universally associated with the farthest of the far political left, the wokest of the woke. Academics, almost to a person, have opposed Trump in everything he has proposed and stood for and have viciously attacked him at every opportunity.
The second is that nearly all academic institutions get vast sums of money every year from the federal government. Much of that is for bona fide research, like the search for new medical cures, but large amounts of the aid (nobody knows exactly how much) go to fund every sort of left-wing course and program.
And the third issue that makes academic institutions particularly vulnerable is that almost without exception they have been systematically and pervasively engaging in illegal racial and sex discrimination for decades. Some of that discrimination has been in the area of admissions, as was exposed in the famous case of SFFA v. Harvard decided by the Supreme Court in 2023. But that was only one piece of the illegal conduct. There has been vast other illegal conduct, going under the general heading of “diversity, equity and inclusion” or DEI, at nearly every academic institution and in virtually every aspect of their operations: in addition to admissions, also in faculty and administrative hiring; in creating DEI bureaucracies and enforcement procedures; in setting up various academic programs, majors, and departments (for example, the so-called “studies” departments and majors); in funding “cultural centers”; and on and on.
And now comes President Trump with his anti-DEI Executive Orders. There were two on this subject, one on January 20, and a second on January 21. The first, which ordered an end to all DEI programs within the federal government itself, has gotten the more publicity. But the second is the one that is the more significant for academia. This is the one that deals with DEI practices in the private sector. The early sections of this EO sound relatively bland. For example, here is the text of Section 2, titled “Policy”:
It is the policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work. I therefore order all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements. I further order all agencies to enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.
But then as we proceed through the details, we come to some seriously explosive items. For example, here is the text of Section 3(a)(iv):
(iv) The head of each agency shall include in every contract or grant award: (A) A term requiring the contractual counterparty or grant recipient to agree that its compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government’s payment decisions for purposes of section 3729(b)(4) of title 31, United States Code; and (B) A term requiring such counterparty or recipient to certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.
Probably, most for-profit private businesses will have little trouble dealing with these provisions. They will end whatever DEI schemes they may still have and move on. But what about academic institutions. They get vast government grants and thus are “contractors” subject to the Order. How exactly are they going to comply? They have DEI corruption infesting every nook and cranny of their very being.
And universities are hugely, and foolishly, dependent on federal funding. I just thought I would look up the funding status of a couple of institutions with which I am most familiar. At Yale, I find a Yale Daily News piece from January 29 headlined “Federal aid freeze threatens almost $1 billion of Yale funding.” The piece reports that Yale got $899 million in grants and contracts from the federal government in its most recent fiscal year. (Yale’s total annual budget is about $6 billion.). Over at Harvard, it’s roughly the same story: $676 million of reported federal grants in 2023 on a budget of about $6.4 billion. I suspect that the dependency on federal funding at other elite schools is comparable.
Now, to keep the money flowing, they will have to “certify” that they do not “operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”The people receiving these certifications will not be the sort to just accept obvious lies from crooks. It will be fun to watch that play out.
And then we have Trump’s nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon. Dhillon, besides having served as chair of California’s Republican Party, is known in private practice for taking on civil rights cases on behalf of conservatives. For example, according to a Wikipedia bio here, she has represented the UC Berkeley College Republicans (in a case accusing UCB of preventing conservatives from speaking on campus), Google programmer James Damore (in a case claiming Damore was wrongly discharged for expressing his opinions on the capabilities of women as programmers), conservative journalist Andy Ngo (in a case arising out of Ngo’s assault on the streets of Portland, Oregon by Antifa thugs), and so forth.
You get the idea — Dhillon’s idea of civil rights law is roughly the opposite of that of the current denizens of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which she will shortly be heading. She will be coming into a Civil Rights Division that has just wrapped up its activities before the curtain fell on the Biden term by trying to ram through consent decrees tying up the hands of the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville. (It looks like they have failed in those efforts, and I suspect that the cases against these police departments will shortly be withdrawn.)
I checked the status of Dhillon’s nomination, and as far as I can tell no committee hearing has yet been scheduled. Perhaps the Senate Democrats will pull out every stop to try to stall her confirmation. On the other hand, they have so far been notably less successful in stalling Trump’s nominees than they were the last time around in 2017.
I would highly expect Dhillon as a top item on her agenda to begin some high profile investigations of universities for violations of the civil rights laws, particularly in their DEI policies. In any such investigation, it will not just be ending the DEI programs that will be at issue; the defendant will also need to fight for its life to keep its federal funding flowing.
The depth of the corruption in academia today is truly profound. Perhaps, some amount of it can be reversed. Maybe even a lot of it.
Norwegian energy giant Equinor is halving investment in renewable energy over the next two years while increasing oil and gas production.
Chief executive Anders Opedal said that the transition to lower carbon energy was moving slower than expected, costs had increased, and customers were reluctant to commit to long term contracts.
Mr Opedal told the BBC he was confident that Rosebank – a giant new oil field in the North Sea – would go ahead, despite a recent court ruling that consent had been awarded unlawfully.
He also warned that gas prices could rise next winter as European gas storage levels were lower now than this time last year.
“We are scaling down our investments in renewables and low carbon solutions because we don’t see the necessary profitability in the future,” Mr Opedal said.
It will cut investments in renewables to $5bn over the next two years, down from about $10bn.
It will also drop a target to spend half of its fixed assets budget on renewables and low carbon products by 2030.
By contrast, Equinor will be increasing oil and gas production by 10% over the next two years.
This is of course part of a much wider trend, as we saw today with Orsted’s decision to call a halt to offshore wind development. Renewable energy is wholly dependent on govt subsidy, which as President has shown is illusionary.
Incredibly the far-left BBC still believe that “Rosebank is not straightforward”
What could not be more straightforward than a British oil field which could supply ultra cheap oil and gas to the country, sustain thousands of well paid jobs, send millions in tax revenues to the govt, provide an element of energy security and actually reduce emissions in comparison with importing the stuff.
Only the British hating BBC could object to that!
BTW
I cannot help but be reminded what the Xi’s useful idiot, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard said last week, when he said that the world’s investors were chasing green energy because that was where the money was!
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