Day: October 17, 2025

UEA Publishes a Green Food Communism Road Map for Britain

“… Use citizens’ assemblies … to engage and build public … consent for system-wide change, protecting it from culture war politics. …”

A propaganda-style illustration of a historical figure in military attire, raising one hand as if greeting an audience, with a vibrant red and green background featuring a group of supporters holding banners and flags.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

A group of workers in traditional clothing engaged in agricultural activity on a barren field, using hand tools and wheelbarrows.

“… Use citizens’ assemblies … to engage and build public … consent for system-wide change, protecting it from culture war politics. …”

Three ways to make the UK’s food system more resilient – according to new report by 150 experts

Published: October 15, 2025 6.17pm AEDT
Neil Ward
Professor of Rural and Regional Development at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia

In 2022, six days before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and destabilised energy and food supplies, my colleagues and I started building a network of researchers, practitioners and policymakers to identify ways to create a more sustainable future for the UK food system. Three years later and this network has more than 3,000 members. 

…

Sticking with the status quo is not an option. Large-scale change is inevitable over the next two decades, especially as the effects of climate change continue to unfold.

…

Our modelling yielded some inescapable home truths. We will need to change not just how we farm, but what farming produces and what we eat. And land use will need to change to strengthen carbon sequestration along with our ability to adapt to climate change. Three types of transformation are required.

…Read more: https://theconversation.com/three-ways-to-make-the-uks-food-system-more-resilient-according-to-new-report-by-150-experts-265603

From the roadmap report;

Roadmap for Resilience: A UK Food Plan for 2050

… A net zero UK will be achieved through a pace of land use change not seen since the Second World War – with more-active management than in the past four decades. …

… 2. Set targets for dietary change and animal numbers, so that progress in reducing consumption of the highest emitting foods can be monitored and more actively managed. Public procurement can be used to build new opportunities for suppliers, with one goal to make healthy and sustainable options more straightforward and affordable. Targets could be legislated for through a Good Food Nation Act to establish a statutory obligation on government and public bodies to give effect to food system transformation.

3. Require major food businesses to publish food system transition plans with measurable targets aligned with national climate and health objectives.  …

… Policy and market mechanisms:

• Require major food businesses to publish transition plans with measurable targets aligned with national climate and health objectives, building on measures in the NHS’s Fit for the Future.

• Transform food environments through regulation, including stronger advertising restrictions on high fat, salt and sugar foods and mandatory front-of-pack labelling.

• Reform public procurement standards to increase plant-based options and reduce processed meat, using public sector buying power to shift markets. …

Read more: https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/our-work/the-roadmap/

Britain has a terrible track record with centrally planned food initiatives. Who can forget the Tanganyika Ground Nut Scheme of 1947, when British Empire bureaucrats thought they understood food production better than African farmers, and launched a failed attempt to cultivate ground nuts in what is now modern Tanzania. Since then British agricultural policy has largely been an ongoing demonstration of why central planning leads to resource misallocation and inefficiency.

This terrible idea has all the hallmarks of another Groundnut disaster – prosperity through central planning and bureaucratic ignorance.

The reason much of Britain is devoted to livestock farming is it is too cold or the land is too low quality to do anything else with the land. Livestock are great at turning marginal land into a profit. Reducing livestock numbers on marginal farmland will not suddenly free up more land for fruit trees.

Even where I lived in the south of Britain, there were bad years when the tomato crop was reduced or didn’t ripen. And frost was always a danger – though thankfully frost risk could be mitigated by large sheets of polypropylene plastic frost blankets, a crop saving innovation which would be unlikely to survive the transition to our more sustainable future.

Britain already has large criminal networks who smuggle exotic meats into Britain for paying customers. No doubt in the coming era of Climate Prohibition many Britons would be so impoverished they would have to survive on whatever healthy enlightened mashed gruel the government decided to allot, but the survivors of the ongoing war on the British middle class would have no problem sourcing whatever food they wanted.

The Global Climate Tax is Here — The Climate Realism Show #178

On Episode #178 of The Climate Realism Show, we’ll dig into this disturbing and likely illegal UN power grab and cover the week’s Crazy Climate News. Is climate change giving dolphins Alzheimer’s? What the heck is “carbon butter,” and how does it taste? Is Bill Gates the most dangerous man on the planet? And the mother of all “children’s climate lawsuits” has just crashed and burned.

Promotional graphic for episode #178 of 'The Climate Realism Show', featuring Steve Milloy. The image includes a large globe, a microphone, and lightning in the background with a United Nations emblem. Text highlights the 'Global Climate Tax' and mentions the show is live every Friday at 1 PM ET.

Logo of The Heartland Institute, featuring a green oak leaf and the organization name in bold lettering.

The Heartland Institute

The United Nations could approve a new tax on carbon-dioxide emissions from shipping as early as today. Their goal is to raise at least $10 billion a year and put it in a new “Net Zero Fund” to “mitigate negative impacts” on nations supposedly suffering because of climate change. This may be only the beginning: an unelected United Nations ruling over the entire globe with the power to levy direct taxes as it sees fit. The United States—and every country that values representative democracy and individual liberty—must oppose this with every tool at their disposal.

On Episode #178 of The Climate Realism Show, we’ll dig into this disturbing and likely illegal UN power grab and cover the week’s Crazy Climate News. Is climate change giving dolphins Alzheimer’s? What the heck is “carbon butter,” and how does it taste? Is Bill Gates the most dangerous man on the planet? And the mother of all “children’s climate lawsuits” has just crashed and burned.

Join The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, and special guest Steve Milloy of the E&E Legal Institute LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, and X.

How Global Offshore Wind Is Battling a Perfect Storm of Challenges

Over the past couple of years, the global offshore wind sector has been facing growing pains, with supply chain constraints, policy volatility, and economic headwinds threatening a power segment that has been slated to become the most dominant wind energy source in many regions. These challenges are increasingly forcing companies in the space to abandon projects and undergo strategic restructuring as the momentum for offshore wind and other nascent clean energy industries, such as hydrogen, wanes.

A series of offshore wind turbines standing on platforms in a stormy sea, with gray sky and rough waves.

From OilPrice.com

By Alex Kimani

Offshore wind turbines on floating platforms in a serene ocean setting, with birds flying in a clear blue sky.
  • The global offshore wind industry is struggling with rising costs, policy instability, and supply chain disruptions.
  • Shell and Equinor have pulled out of key offshore wind and hydrogen ventures, including projects in Vietnam and Norway.
  • U.S. offshore wind faces deeper trouble after the Trump administration canceled nearly $700 million in project funding.

Over the past couple of years, the global offshore wind sector has been facing growing pains, with supply chain constraints, policy volatility, and economic headwinds threatening a power segment that has been slated to become the most dominant wind energy source in many regions. These challenges are increasingly forcing companies in the space to abandon projects and undergo strategic restructuring as the momentum for offshore wind and other nascent clean energy industries, such as hydrogen, wanes. To wit, last year, Shell Plc (NYSE: SHEL) announced plans to cease new offshore wind investments and split its power division as CEO Wael Sawan looks to boost the company’s profitability. Shell appears to be systematically scaling back its clean energy investments: Earlier in the year, the company also ditched plans to build a low-carbon hydrogen plant on Norway’s west coast due to a lack of demand.

Earlier in the same year, Norway’s state-controlled energy giant Equinor ASA (NYSE: EQNR) abandoned plans to invest in Vietnam’s offshore wind sector, dealing a significant blow to the country’s green energy ambitions. According to the World Bank, over the past couple of years, Vietnam has attracted plenty of interest in its clean energy sector thanks to the country’s strong winds in shallow waters near coastal, densely populated areas. Unfortunately, recent political turbulence in the country has paralyzed regulatory reforms and discouraged investors. That marked the first time Equinor had abandoned offshore wind development; in contrast, the company had previously exited more than a dozen fossil fuel projects to focus on renewables and low-carbon systems. Back in 2023, Danish offshore wind giant Ørsted A/S (OTCPK: DNNGY) paused its multi-gigawatt offshore wind plans in Vietnam, citing issues with the “route to market,” business ethics, and a lack of a comprehensive legal framework for the sector.

Related: North Sea Oil: Booming in Norway and Doomed in the UK

Unfortunately, the offshore wind sector woes appear to be going nowhere. Back in July, Ørsted paid $110 million to Danish offshore wind services provider Cadeler (NYSE:CDLR) as compensation for the cancellation of the construction of a wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) for the 2.4 GW Hornsea 4 offshore wind farm in the UK. In May, Ørsted announced the cancellation of the project, citing higher rates, rising supply chain costs and increased construction risks as some of the challenges. Ørsted was among the developers who were awarded contracts in the UK’s Allocation Round 6 (AR6) in 2024 that procured 9.6 GW of clean energy capacity from offshore and onshore wind and solar energy. AR6 marked a major improvement from AR5, which failed to secure any new offshore wind projects.

On a brighter note, Cadeler’s short-term financials will receive a boost from the receipt of the termination compensation, with the company recently upgrading its full-year 2025 revenue to the range of EUR 588 million to EUR 628 million, up from EUR 485 million to EUR 525 million, while the EBITDA forecast for 2025 is expected to clock in at EUR 381–421 million, up from EUR 278–318 million.

Meanwhile, Singapore’s Seatrium Ltd (OTCPK: SMBMF) recently received a notice of the termination of a WTIV contract by Maersk Offshore Wind valued at $475 million. Seatrium had secured the contract in 2022 while still operating as Sembcorp Marine, before it merged with Keppel Offshore and Marine in 2023 in a $3.34 billion deal. Maersk says it will try and recover monies already paid to Seatrium, adding that it will not accept delivery of the unit due to delays in the construction schedule despite the project being ~ 98.9%. Seatrium shares have tanked nearly 15% after the announcement of the Maersk decision.

Maersk’s cancellation of the Seatrium deal could signal that it’s abandoning the offshore wind business, which says something considering the startling fall of its core container shipping business. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that container shipping rates for the busy Shanghai to Los Angeles route have declined by nearly 60%, meaning the company is likely receiving below $2,200 per container it requires to break even.

That said, the U.S. offshore wind sector could fare worse than its European peers thanks to policy headwinds by the Trump administration. Trump has cancelled ~$679 million in U.S. offshore wind project funding, stifling growth and development of the nascent sector. In contrast, WindEurope recently reported it built 6.8 GW of wind power across Europe in the first half of 2025, comprising 6 GW onshore and 0.7 GW offshore. Europe is, by far, the biggest offshore wind market in the world, commanding 92% of the floating offshore wind market. However, Asia-Pacific is enjoying the fastest growth, with the region projected to expand at a torrid 156% CAGR through 2030.

Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com. 

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

A large offshore wind turbine lies partially submerged on a beach, with water splashing around its base and a dramatic sky in the background.

UN doing China’s bidding: Trump officials go all out to block UN carbon tax on shipping – UN proposal ‘stands to benefit China…

The U.S. tried to strong-arm nations into rejecting the measure. Now, the administration is pushing to make adoption harder.

A large container ship loaded with colorful shipping containers, docked in the water with a clear blue sky in the background.

From The Climate Depot

https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-officials-go-all-out-to-block-carbon-tax-on-shipping

By SARA SCHONHARDT

The U.S. tried to strong-arm nations into rejecting the measure. Now, the administration is pushing to make adoption harder.

Countries are on the verge of approving global rules to curb shipping pollution — but the Trump administration hasn’t given up on throwing a wrench in the process.

The International Maritime Organization is meeting this week and expected to sign off on a proposal that nations endorsed in April. The U.N. agency sets binding regulations for the global maritime industry, and the measure would ultimately put a tax on shipping emissions.

Several Trump officials have called the proposal a “European-led neocolonial export of global climate regulations” and have sought to strong-arm nations into rejecting it by threatening tariffs and other trade barriers.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the plan is “an attempt by “climate-obsessed politicians to entrench their agenda before voters in democracies can kill it.”

But with the measure still headed for passage, the U.S. is making a last-minute push to change the rules of adoption, according to nonprofit observers. Under the U.S. proposal, which would still require a vote, even if the measure passes at this week’s meeting, it wouldn’t be finalized unless enough countries reiterated their support in the coming months.

“We are actively engaging with countries on the extremely flawed proposal, as well as exploring and preparing to act on remedies including tariffs, visa restrictions, and/or port levies,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to POLITICO’s E&E News ahead of the meeting. “We will also be engaging our like-minded partners and allies to propose they take similar measures.”

It’s the latest move by President Donald Trump to not just abandon U.S. efforts to combat rising temperatures but to try and coerce other countries to follow suit.

How we got here

The IMO regulates the shipping industry and is a rare example of a U.N. body that can issue binding regulations.

The measure up for approval is known as the IMO Net-Zero Framework. It is part of the IMO’s efforts to zero out shipping emissions by around 2050 — a commitment the organization’s 176 member countries agreed to in 2023. The U.S. was among those countries, agreeing to the goal during the Biden administration.

The framework — which 63 countries endorsed in April 2025 — would amend an international treaty known as MARPOL to enact a carbon intensity standard. That standard would get stricter over time, encouraging forcing industry to switch from polluting fossil fuels to lower-emission alternatives. Ships that don’t meet the standard would need to pay a fee, which would go to a fund aimed in part at helping industry make the transition.

Among the countries that supported the proposal were Brazil and China. Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf oil nations voted against it.

In a statement issued last week, Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the proposal would be “disastrous” for industry and raise the price of goods for consumers. They threatened nations that vote for it with possible sanctions, “commercial penalties,” port fees and visa restrictions.

This week’s vote is being closely watched as a measure of how successful the U.S. is in getting countries to bend to its will. If the U.S. fails, it may be forced to the negotiating table. If it succeeds, that could set a worrying precedent.

How much it will cost

The Trump administration’s most prominent argument is that the IMO agreement will raise shipping costs globally and make goods more expensive.

It might also be the least convincing, said James Lightbourn, founder of Cavalier Shipping, a maritime industry consultancy.

That’s because the types of retaliation the Trump administration is suggesting, such as tariffs and port fees, would likely have the same effect, he said. The threats also come as the U.S. rolls out port fees on Chinese ships in an effort to counter that country’s shipbuilding dominance.

Making the switch to low-carbon fuels will be expensive, say industry analysts. But the exact impact of the regulations — if they pass — is still uncertain.

…

The LNG angle

…

“I think it comes down to the Trump administration’s antipathy toward climate beneficial technologies,” Lewis said. “They don’t see that as something that the United States should pursue.”

The IMO agreement would also frustrate a transition within the maritime sector toward natural gas as a primary shipping fuel, he added.

The agreement wouldn’t ban liquefied natural gas or biofuels, but ships that run purely on LNG would eventually have to pay a penalty. That would likely lead to less LNG use than the Trump administration — and a cohort of prominent shipping companies — would like, said Lightbourn of Cavalier Shipping.

“This is something that is important to the U.S. given that the country has an abundance of natural gas that could be sold as a marine fuel to commercial cargo vessels and be supportive of the domestic oil and gas industry,” he said.

Another point of opposition: the measure stands to benefit China at a time when the U.S. and China — the world’s two largest economies and carbon polluters — are in an ongoing battle over trade and supply chains.

That’s because the net zero measures are expected to stimulate demand for new vessels that can comply with the new regulations, or retrofits of ships to allow for emission-reducing technologies. And China is the world’s largest shipbuilding nation.

What’s next

Climate groups observing the meetings say they expect the measure to pass regardless of U.S. tactics. And, they say, the U.S. knows it.

That has prompted the U.S. delegation to make a last-minute push to alter the rules of adoption.

Here’s how it would work. For the agreement to be adopted, two-thirds of the countries present need to vote in its favor. Over the following months, before the agreement enters into force, those countries can choose to opt out. The IMO considers countries that don’t actively opt out to remain behind the agreement.

The U.S., however, is pushing for “explicit” adoption, where countries will need to come back and voice their support for the agreement before it can take effect.

“That is the Achilles heel,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping program director for Brussels-based clean energy advocacy group Transport & Environment. The change would give the U.S. time, he said, to bully enough countries into not sending their acceptance to the IMO.

…

Still, many companies see them as necessary for an industry that accounts for around 3 percent of global emissions and growing.

Without them, “shipping would risk a growing patchwork of unilateral regulations, increasing costs without effectively contributing to decarbonization,” a coalition of shipping associations, including the World Shipping Council and the International Chamber of Shipping, said in a letter last week.

Brazil, the host country for next month’s COP30 climate talks, once opposed the IMO agreement. But now the country is hoping the measure will pass.

“We would very much like to see the agreement go forward,” Tatiana Rosito, secretary of international affairs at Brazil’s Ministry of Finance, said in an interview with E&E News. “This would be a very good signal for COP30.”

#

Related:

Trump called it back in 2012!

A tweet from Donald Trump stating that the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese to harm U.S. manufacturing, dated November 6, 2012.

The UN Is About to Tax You:

‘A new global climate tax would be the ultimate in taxation without representation’ –

UN seeks a ‘net-zero framework’ for shipping –

‘Would impose charges per metric ton of CO2 that ships emit’

Screenshot of a tweet by Donald J. Trump expressing outrage over a global Carbon Tax proposed by the International Maritime Organization, highlighting the U.S. stance against the tax and urging Americans to vote no.

Increasing Power Prices Are Being Wrongly Blamed on the Trump Administration instead Biden’s Climate Cult Policies

Residential electricity prices increased 25% while Joe Biden was president, and they are continuing to increase. This continuation occurs because there is a lag for the Trump administration’s policies to take effect due to the time it takes to enact legislation, phase in changes, and finalize new or modified regulations. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Christopher Knittel, “Trump’s effects on the rate changes won’t take place until after the midterms.”

A speaker stands at a podium in front of solar panels and a wind turbine, addressing an audience with mountains in the background.

From The Institute for Energy Research

By IER

Cartoon depicting a man wearing a 'Biden Harris' shirt, holding a sign that reads 'STOP GLOBAL WARMING! BUILD MORE WINDMILLS!' in a snowy landscape with wind turbines in the background.

Residential electricity prices increased 25% while Joe Biden was president, and they are continuing to increase. This continuation occurs because there is a lag for the Trump administration’s policies to take effect due to the time it takes to enact legislation, phase in changes, and finalize new or modified regulations. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Christopher Knittel, “Trump’s effects on the rate changes won’t take place until after the midterms.”

The net-zero carbon transition forced on constituents by the Biden administration and leaders of Western countries was supposed to not only make electricity generation free from carbon but also produce the benefit of lower energy prices. Naïve politicians believed that to be the case because the marginal costs of wind and solar power are less than the marginal costs of coal and natural gas-generated power. But the measure that planners and politicians should have used is system-wide costs, which include the cost of backup power and the increased infrastructure required for intermittent technologies.

Because wind and solar power can only produce electricity when the weather is conducive, they require backup power from natural gas, coal, or nuclear generators that operate 24/7, or from very expensive storage batteries that store excess electricity when available to use when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. System costs include the cost of backup power and the cost of extra infrastructure needed to move power from sunny and windy sites that are frequently far removed from where power is needed. Natural gas and coal generators can and are located near demand centers and, thus, do not require the extra infrastructure that solar and wind units require.

In essence, due to the need for backup power, the use of wind and solar power is actually creating redundancy in the generating system, since the intermittent units have to be backed up by other reliable units. Furthermore, it increases the costs of the units used as backup because they have fewer hours of operation over which to spread their costs.

Wind and solar power are shown further favoritism by the massive subsidies they have been receiving for decades, and continue to receive, from taxpayers. Subsidies lower their levelized costs, which do not include backup power or the additional infrastructure costs required, and make it more difficult for fossil fuel and nuclear generators to compete, compounding the situation.

Electricity prices will continue to increase until the situation is corrected, which will take time, as the prediction from MIT’s Knittel indicates. The situation is further complicated by increasing electricity demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and increased electrification pushed by the Biden administration and blue states, which is continuing. Converting buildings from natural gas to electricity and cars from petroleum to electricity only complicates matters by raising demand for electricity and requiring more generators to meet that demand.

Trump Gets Blamed for Rising Electricity Prices

According to E&E News, Democratic lawmakers have used town halls, press conferences, and social media posts to blame President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) for increasing energy prices because of its phase-out of energy incentives from Biden’s climate bill, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But if the OBBBA is the cause, why did residential electricity prices increase 25% under Joe Biden? And why are those prices still increasing when the phase-out from the OBBBA has not yet begun?

Besides the OBBBA provisions, Democratic lawmakers are accusing the Trump administration of hostility toward wind and solar as the cause of the rise in consumers’ utility bills. President Trump has taken action principally against offshore wind, withdrawing permits for projects approved by the Biden administration. Offshore wind is three times more expensive than onshore wind, according to the Energy Information Administration, even with the flaws in levelized cost methodology described above.

Via the Washington Free Beacon, Democrats also accused the Trump administration of increasing consumer costs by forcing the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in western Michigan to remain online. Instead of costing consumers millions of dollars, as they had predicted, the plant has been profitable. The coal plant generated $33.7 million in revenue between late May and June 30, earning nearly $5 million in profit.

Analysis

With election season upon us, Democrats across the country are using rising electricity prices occurring alongside the OBBBA’s passage as a cudgel against Republican opponents. Reality, however, is much more complicated, as much of the increase in electricity prices results from policies enacted during the Biden administration and the increase in demand from AI, not from changes that have yet to take effect. Falsely, Democrats claim that wind and solar’s lower levelized cost of electricity means that bringing more of it onto the grid will lower electricity prices. As IER’s Tom Pyle explains in the Wall Street Journal, “Despite wind and solar growing from under 1% of generation in 2007 to roughly 17% of generation in 2024, retail rates haven’t fallen thanks to system-wide costs for backup power, balancing services and transmission lines. Meanwhile, U.S. states and European countries with aggressive renewable energy policies face significantly higher rates. California’s are among the highest in the country, and Britain’s industrial electricity prices are approximately four times as high as ours.”

For inquiries, please contact wrampe@ierdc.org.

Taking action to defend America from the UN’s first global carbon tax

Joint Statement by Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of Energy Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Duffy

A large cargo ship at a dock with a truck unloading freight, set against a backdrop of cranes and another aircraft in the sky.

From United States Department of State

Press release page from the U.S. Department of State announcing action against the UN's first global carbon tax.

Joint Statement by Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of Energy Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Duffy

President Trump has made it clear that the United States will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or harms the interests of the American people.  Next week, members of the IMO will vote on the adoption of a so-called NZF aimed at reducing global carbon dioxide gas emissions from the international shipping sector.  This will be the first time that a UN organization levies a global carbon tax on the world.

The Administration unequivocally rejects this proposal before the IMO and will not tolerate any action that increases costs for our citizens, energy providers, shipping companies and their customers, or tourists.  The economic impacts from this measure could be disastrous, with some estimates forecasting global shipping costs increasing as much as 10% or more.  We ask you to join us in rejecting adoption of the NZF at the October meeting and to work together on our collective economic and energy security.

The NZF proposal poses significant risks to the global economy and subjects not just Americans, but all IMO member states to an unsanctioned global tax regime that levies punitive and regressive financial penalties, which could be avoided.  The United States is considering the following actions against nations that support this global carbon tax on American consumers:

  • Pursuing investigations and considering potential regulations to combat anti-competitive practices from certain flagged countries and potential blocking vessels registered in those countries from U.S. ports;
  • Imposing visa restrictions including an increase in fees and processing, mandatory re-interview requirements and/or revisions of quotas for C-1/D maritime crew member visas;
  • Imposing commercial penalties stemming from U.S. government contracts including new commercial ships, liquified natural gas terminals and infrastructure, and/or other financial penalties on ships flagged under nations in favor of the NZF;
  • Imposing additional port fees on ships owned, operated, or flagged by countries supporting the framework; and
  • Evaluating sanctions on officials sponsoring activist-driven climate policies that would burden American consumers, among other measures under consideration.

The United States will be moving to levy these remedies against nations that sponsor this European-led neocolonial export of global climate regulations.  We will fight hard to protect our economic interests by imposing costs on countries if they support the NZF.  Our fellow IMO members should be on notice.

Electricity Bills Will Carry On Rising Due to Net Zero, Warn Energy Bosses

Household energy bills are on course to rise by hundreds of pounds this decade because of ballooning green levies, the country’s biggest electricity and gas suppliers have warned.

A character resembling Iron Man stands confidently in a cityscape, wearing a metallic red and gold suit with a glowing chest emblem.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Paul Homewood

A man in a suit gestures with his finger raised, speaking passionately at a podium.

Household energy bills are on course to rise by hundreds of pounds this decade because of ballooning green levies, the country’s biggest electricity and gas suppliers have warned. According to the Telegraph:

Senior executives from Octopus Energy, British Gas owner Centrica, E.On, EDF and Ovo urged Ministers to urgently address levies that pay for Net Zero-related costs, which they said are one of the main factors driving bills higher.

Speaking to MPs on a Parliamentary committee on Wednesday, Rachel Fletcher, Director for Regulation at Octopus Energy, said current trends suggest green levies could add around £300 to a typical household’s electricity bill by 2030.

Energy bosses warned that Net Zero levies were becoming so expensive that they threatened to push household bills higher, even if gas and power prices fell dramatically.

Ms Fletcher, of Octopus, said: “If we continue on the path that we’re on right now, in all likelihood, electricity prices for a typical customer are going to be 20% higher in four- or five-years’ time than they are now.

Ed Miliband has dismissed all of this as “speculation”, but this is not true. His own National Energy System Operator, NESO, told him that bills would rise substantially when it presented him with its ‘Clean Power 2030‘ report last November.

This was the report that looked into the feasibility of Labour’s plan to fully decarbonise the electricity system by 2030. Below is the relevant table from that report:

Table displaying the costs in 2030 in the New Dispatch pathway compared to today's electricity system, highlighting various cost components and their anticipated impact on pricing.

Ignore its claim that generation costs will fall – I’ll come to that next.

But it does say that all the other non-generation costs would rise by £25 per MWh, which is equivalent to a 10% increase on bills or £7.5 billion a year.

Much of this extra cost will go to constraint payments to wind and solar farms, paying them to switch off when there is too much wind and solar power on the grid.

Currently these payments only go to remote wind farms in Scotland, because the transmission capacity is not big enough there to bring all the electricity south on windy days. However, under Labour’s plan to triple wind and solar power, there will be many days when there will be more electricity generated than the country can consume as a whole.

NESO calculates that a fifth of all electricity produced will have to be either constrained or exported to the continent at a huge loss. The latter is unlikely because the Europeans will also have the same problem of too much wind.

On top of constraint payments, tens of billions will need to be spent building storage capacity and expanding the grid to bring power from Scotland and the North Sea to the parts of the country where the demand is. Ofgem has already put a cost of £80 billion on this, all of which is needed to cope with the massive expansion in renewable energy.

Returning to NESO’s claim that generation costs will fall, this was merely deceitful smoke and mirrors. It has assumed that higher carbon taxes will push up the cost of gas power, which in turn appears to make renewable energy cheaper:

Text discussing the cost of generation for wind and solar power, comparing contract prices with those of gas-fired power stations.

Excluding carbon taxes, the current cost of gas power is around £50 per MWh, not the £123 per MWh it claims. Given its own admission that wind and solar costs between £71 and £83 per MWh, it is clear that generation costs will increase, not fall. (Its figure of £83 per MWh is already out of date, as Miliband has offered £117 per MWh for new offshore wind projects in the latest subsidy auction round.)

Miliband’s spokesman ignored these very real issues raised and instead commented:

Wholesale gas costs for households remain 75% higher than they were before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the main reason energy bills remain high.

The only way to bring down energy bills for good is by making Britain a clean energy superpower, which will get the UK off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel prices and onto clean, homegrown power that we control.

Gas prices are certainly 75% higher than a decade ago, but general inflation has also risen by a similar amount. In real terms, gas costs no more now than it used to. Green levies are the reason why electricity prices are so high, not the price of gas.

Graph showing the annual costs related to renewable energy subsidies and all other costs in GBP billions from 2002 to 2023.
Source: Renewable Energy Foundation

As Claire Coutinho neatly described in her conference speech last week, Ed Miliband wants to take out a fixed-rate mortgage at 11% interest, because he does not want a variable one at 4%!

Except that we will pay the bill, not him.

Coral Recoveries and Growth Show The Hill Is Misleading About Global Warming Killing Reefs

A recent article in The Hill, “Climate change is not a ‘con job’,” claims that catastrophic, human-caused climate change is killing reefs via ocean heatwaves. This claim is false. In reality, corals have existed for millions of years, through warmer and colder periods, and in the recent past, coral reefs have recovered from bleaching events and even die-offs, proving to species to be adaptive and resilient in the face of climate change.

A vibrant underwater scene featuring a variety of colorful corals and schools of fish swimming in clear blue water.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

Close-up view of colorful coral polyp formations with green and orange hues, set against a blurred underwater background.

A recent article in The Hill, “Climate change is not a ‘con job’,” claims that catastrophic, human-caused climate change is killing reefs via ocean heatwaves. This claim is false. In reality, corals have existed for millions of years, through warmer and colder periods, and in the recent past, coral reefs have recovered from bleaching events and even die-offs, proving to species to be adaptive and resilient in the face of climate change.

The Hill article, from Rebecca Vega Thurber, the director of the UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Institute, is framed by Thurber’s annoyance that President Donald Trump says climate change is a “con job.” She claims her personal research experience refutes his comment.

Thurber explains that pollution from fertilizer runoff can kill corals, which is true, but goes on to assert that “every result we have collected, in every one of these well intentioned and carefully designed experiments, was waylaid by the increasingly frequent and severe heat waves that have arisen in the last decades.” She says their efforts to mitigate pollution were “overwhelmed by high water temperatures driven by climate change or worse, climate change killed our whole experiment.”

Thurber claims marine heatwaves in the French South Pacific hampered her work by “transform[ing] these normally bountiful reefs from habitats where there was once 60 percent of the seafloor covered with healthy corals to barren plains with less than 1 percent live coral.”

In point of fact, one long-term study from 2019 showed that rather than a “barren plain” French Polynesian reefs have an “outstanding rate of coral recovery, with a systematic return to pre-disturbance state within only 5 to 10 years.”

A second study from 2024, published in Nature, sought to understand why reefs bounced back so readily after major heat waves, concluding that:

Over the past three decades, there have been five main warming events that have caused mass bleaching around Moorea and Tahiti, in 1994, 2002, 2007, 2016, and 2019. Despite bleaching levels up to 100% for some coral species, reefs experienced as high as ~76% recovery following each event.

…

It is currently unknown what controls the ability of coral coverage to recover quickly at these locations. It has been suggested that reefs may develop an increased tolerance to higher SSTs following each bleaching event, and that the increased resilience would allow for a shorter recovery period with less die-off under subsequent SST extremes.

In short, the scientific literature does not support Thurber’s contention in The Hill that coral reefs are dying off in vast numbers. Interestingly, just a few years ago The Hill published an article with a different tone, discussing the fact that coral reefs were thriving “despite warming seas,” but the outlet seems to have forgotten this.

What Thurber and The Hill also neglected to mention was that recent mass die offs did not just coincide with heatwaves alone. Rather a spate of tropical cyclones and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks occurred over the same period resulting in multiple coral colony declines. Multiple stressors are harder on a species than any of those dangers would be alone.

Thurber mentions that Australian reefs are another part of her area of research, but she does not mention that 2024 was the third year in a row where the Great Barrier Reef had record breaking coral coverage.

Unfortunately, close study of reef die backs barely existed in the early parts of the 20th century and before, so short term records like single-event tied die-offs do not stretch into the pre-industrial period for comparison. As a result it is all too easy for alarmists to assert, for example, that marine heatwaves are unprecedented when there are only a few decades of satellite data to work from. Longer term studies, and a knowledge of how coral reefs around the world are built over time, show, in fact, that coral death is part of the reef construction process.

Coral reefs have survived much hotter periods than today, like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum which was 5-8°C hotter, as well as much colder glacial periods. One reason for this is that coral organisms are not immobile. Even if particular regions became too hot, which is highly unlikely in our lifetimes, corals could just migrate poleward, as research suggests they did in the past. Change like that might be uncomfortable for narrowly focused researchers, but it is part of the Earth’s history.

The Hill did a disservice to its readers by publishing this article which served no other purpose than was to frighten readers into ignoring Trump’s important point, that bad actors (particularly at the United Nations, where he made the comments) are using climate alarm to promote harmful leftist-favoring policies and enrich themselves. I am sure that Thurber is a “true believer” in the catastrophic warming narrative, but it does not help her case when essential facts are left out of the argument and when the multiple sources of data that do exist contradict her claims.

Linnea Lueken

https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/linnea-lueken

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”

Critics Fear Financial Titans Have Found Trojan Horse For ‘Climate Mandates’

Major global asset managers including BlackRock and Blackstone have been looking to buy power utilities across America in a move that some industry insiders warn could harm consumers, raise electricity costs and advance a climate-driven energy agenda.

A large wooden sculpture of a Trojan horse against a sunset backdrop.

From The Daily Caller

Logo of the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb DCNF Energy Reporter

Major global asset managers including BlackRock and Blackstone have been looking to buy power utilities across America in a move that some industry insiders warn could harm consumers, raise electricity costs and advance a climate-driven energy agenda.

In recent months, Blackstone reportedly sought regulatory approval to buy utilities in New Mexico and Texas all while a BlackRock-led group won approval Friday to purchase a major utility in Minnesota. While BlackRock and other huge asset managers have distanced themselves from environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment practices in recent years, some energy experts and consumer advocates that spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation are concerned that buying up utilities may represent a new frontier of financial giants orchestrating “climate mandates.”

“BlackRock isn’t just influencing utilities anymore, they’re buying them. After years of ESG-driven coercion that pushed utilities to abandon reliable energy in favor of China-dependent renewables, BlackRock is now taking direct control. The result will be more of the same: higher costs, weaker grids, and millions in unpaid bills, all driven by the very climate mandates they lobbied for,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “Minnesotans should brace for more unreliable power, rising rates, and a media narrative that blames Trump for ending taxpayer-funded handouts instead of holding the woke politicians and Wall Street elites responsible for the crisis.” 

(RELATED: A Major Backer Of Green Energy Admits Again That Solar And Wind Power Alone ‘Can’t Reliably Keep The Lights On’)

Electricity demand is on the rise after years of stagnancy as the artificial intelligence (AI) race ushers in the build out of power-hungry data centers. Utility costs are also spiking as demand takes off in a trend that dates back to the Biden administration.

Against this backdrop, private investment titans like BlackRock and Blackstone are reportedly moving to buy power utility companies and invest in data center expansions and startups.

Minnesota recently granted the BlackRock-led group known as Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) approval to buy one of the state’s major power utilities, Allete. GIP is also reportedly on the cusp of acquiring the major energy company, AES, according to sources familiar with the matter that spoke with Reuters. The Financial Times reported that the deal may be for $38 billion.

BlackRock referred the DCNF to Allete’s statement on regulators approving its partnership with GIP and declined to comment further for this story.

Allete’s statement notes that the impending partnership with the BlackRock-led group includes “guaranteed access to capital to fund ALLETE’s five-year plan for advancing transmission and renewable energy goals [and a] $50 million Clean Firm Technology Fund to support regional clean-energy projects and partnerships.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) renewed BlackRock’s ability to own up to 20% of utility voting shares in April, with former FERC Commissioner Mark Christie stating that BlackRock “pledged not to use its holdings to influence utility management” and that utilities need the access to capital.

Christie also warned in September 2024 that “this is an issue that deserves much greater scrutiny” and that “the influence that large shareholders, BlackRock or otherwise, can potentially exert across the consumer-serving utility industry should not be underestimated.”

Blackstone has reportedly sought regulatory approval to buy out the Public Service Company of New Mexico and Texas New Mexico Power Co. recently, according to The Associated Press. The asset management giant also secured a 19.9% stake in a Northern Indiana public utility for over $2 billion in January 2024.

“Blackstone’s sustainability strategy prioritizes accelerating decarbonization by investing in the energy transition and driving value accretive emissions reduction in our portfolio,” Blackstone’s 2024 sustainability report states. “We believe the transition to cleaner energy creates meaningful investment opportunities for private capital. For over a decade, we have pursued attractive investments in companies and assets that are part of the global energy transition as part of our broader energy investing strategy.”

Blackstone also announced on Sept. 15 that private equity funds affiliated with Blackstone Energy Transition Partners will acquire the Pennsylvania-based Hill Top Energy Center natural gas plant for almost $1 billion. The company also announced in July that funds managed by Blackstone Infrastructure and Blackstone Real Estate would invest over $25 billion to help build out Pennsylvania’s energy infrastructure to support the AI “revolution.”

“Renewable” energy goals and ESG investment tend to align with emissions-reduction targets, with some power companies, utilities and states that set goals to cut emissions striving to retire conventional energy sources like coal plants. Isaac added that companies like American Electric Power, in which BlackRock owns a significant stake, have been decommissioning coal plants and replacing them with intermittent sources like solar.

“What happens is when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, then you have to ramp those generational assets back up, and that’s when price spikes happen,” Isaac said. 

(RELATED: ‘A Huge Win’: Woke ‘Cartel’ Of Financial Giants Dealt Death Blow 11 Days Before Trump Takes Office)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor of finance Greg Brown told the AP that the reason behind these buyouts are “very simple. Because there’s a lot of money to be made.”

Other experts devoted to consumer protection like Executive Director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild told the DCNF that investment companies like BlackRock stand to gain more than just a profit from these purchases.

“There is no world in which BlackRock’s ownership of American energy benefits ordinary American consumers,” Hild told the DCNF. “This is the same firm that proudly brought us the radical ESG rules and Net-Zero nonsense that forced all our energy bills to skyrocket. We wouldn’t have the scourge of woke capitalism without Larry Fink, who already controls nearly $13 trillion in assets and has been sued for violating anti-trust laws.”

ESG investors weigh a company by its social and environmental choices as well as its finances in a move that critics say bogs down businesses with new costs while doing little to combat climate change. One August 2023 InfluenceMap report showed that as Republicans at the state level and in Congress ramped up their opposition to ESG-focused practices, BlackRock and other major U.S. asset managers decreased their support for climate-related resolutions.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also said in June 2023 that he no will no longer use the term ESG because it has been “politicized,” less than a year after he noted that climbing energy prices are “accelerating” the green energy transition.

“BlackRock has backpedaled on its ESG messaging and its aggressive, unapologetic imposition of ESG on everything they touch. But the leopard hasn’t changed its spots,” President of the Heartland Institute James Taylor told the DCNF. “It still has the same management group with the same values, and it’s still doing whatever it can to impose ESG on everything it touches, in actuality, if not in name.”

Taylor argued that whether BlackRock buys or acquires a large stake of a utility, it “can now assert itself over legislatures in dictating energy policy.”

Notably, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) threw their weight behind an antitrust lawsuit against major asset managers that alleges the firms colluded to tank coal production with their embrace of zero-emissions goals in May.

The lawsuit, backed by 11 state attorneys general, alleges that BlackRock and multiple other asset managers used their market power to suppress coal production, thereby hurting consumers by causing the price of coal to climb.

The DOJ and FTC’s “support for this baseless case undermines the Trump Administration’s goal of American energy independence,” a BlackRock spokesperson previously told the DCNF. “As we made clear in our earlier motion to dismiss, this case is trying to re-write antitrust law and is based on an absurd theory that coal companies conspired with their shareholders to reduce coal production.”

Blackstone did not respond to the DCNF’s multiple requests for comment.

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100,000 Amazon Trees Chopped Down to Build Road for COP30 Climate Conference

Spare a thought for the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt as he considers his upcoming trip to the Brazilian city of Belém to report on COP30. Saving the world and its environment is his gig so how will he face the prospect of travelling down a new four-lane highway cut through the dense Amazon rainforest to help speed him and his 70,000 other political activists to their luxury hotels? Based on trees per acre, an estimated 100,000 mature specimens have been chopped down and logged to build the eight-mile Avenida Liberdade causing untold disruption to local wildlife.

Aerial view of a logging site in a dense rainforest, showing a dirt road with cut timber stacked on the sides, surrounded by lush greenery.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Aerial view of a cleared path in the Amazon rainforest with exposed soil and construction activity, showing the impact of road development.

Spare a thought for the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt as he considers his upcoming trip to the Brazilian city of Belém to report on COP30. Saving the world and its environment is his gig so how will he face the prospect of travelling down a new four-lane highway cut through the dense Amazon rainforest to help speed him and his 70,000 other political activists to their luxury hotels? Based on trees per acre, an estimated 100,000 mature specimens have been chopped down and logged to build the eight-mile Avenida Liberdade causing untold disruption to local wildlife. Happily, all is not lost in despair. If he wishes, the BBC’s activist-in-chief can consider recent findings published in Nature Plants that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have led to substantial growth in the remaining Amazon forest, with mature trees growing by over 6% a decade. Perhaps he could start promoting on the BBC the enormous benefits of CO2, rightly known as the gas of life. He could front a campaign to assuage his dented COP conscience along the lines: ‘Forward with Carbon Dioxide, not Chainsaws.’

Needless to say, the fatter trees of the Amazon have received little publicity in narrative-driven mainstream media. Extensive Green Blob-funded grooming is deployed to keep this type of inconvenient global ‘greening’ material out of the papers. Little mention is made of the astonishing CO2-fuelled growth in global vegetation seen across the planet in the last 40 years. Increases of around 15% are common, some deserts have started to shrink, and world famine has been alleviated by higher crop yields. SciLine is connected with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of Science, and it recently suggested that writers head off the ‘greening’ story by noting that “in many cases, CO2 disproportionately favours weeds over crops, causing more problems for agriculture”.

In 2022 Rowlatt authored an alarmist series on BBC Radio 4 and World Service called The Climate Tipping Points in which he highlighted the potential “collapse of the Amazon rainforest” as one of the major irreversible changes tiggered by global warming. Not yet, it seems, for while Rowlatt was spouting this computer model agitprop, the scientists out in the field preparing their recently published paper found “aggressive changes” in mature tropical forest biomass. Yet again, it might be noted, climate model predictions fail the test when confronted with actual scientific data. As MIT Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen has said about the evidence-lite climate dogma: “The narrative is a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd scientific narrative.”

The team of researchers found that over 30 years of Amazonian plant data records across 188 mature forest plots, the trees had become considerably larger over time. The basal area, the size of the tree trunk near ground level, increased by 3.3% a decade. Trees fight for light and space in close proximity and height, and size are an obvious advantage. While the larger trees were found to increase by over 6% a decade, the smaller plants also thrived, suggesting, the scientists note, that any recent negative climatic influences have been “more than alleviated” by the positive effects of increased resources such as CO2 fertilisation. In effect the smaller trees operating in more difficult low light conditions can use the extra CO2 to photosynthesise more easily and survive for longer.

In an article published in Watts Up With That?, Anthony Watts was clear on the important findings of the paper. It’s “plain old plant biology” he said, adding: “CO2 fertilisation is no longer a theory tested only in labs. This study confirms it at continental scale: Amazon forest are thriving, not suffering, in a world with more CO2.”

It’s likely that the Guardian will be assembling a team to travel the Avenida Liberdade Highway of Shame to attend the increasingly irrelevant COP Net Zero boondoggle. The newspaper recently reported that the big Amazon trees were more climate resistant “than previously believed”, proving that the ‘reverse ferret’ is alive and well in media land. “Previously believed”, of course, only applies to those who are unaware of the paleo record stretching back hundreds of millions of years. Perhaps it was a first for Popular Mechanics, which gave us its ‘Amazon’s Trees Are Weirdly Getting Bigger Every Decade, Which Defies Logic‘. Might be best not to give up the day writing job here. Finally, and perhaps scraping the barrel for any coverage of this important paper, NBC News noted the view of one scientist that fattening trees is “in some ways” a positive news story. “But it also means that the forest is now more vulnerable to losing those trees.” The obvious statement was then made that any benefit in larger trees sizes “can be quite easily negated by deforestation and logging”.

Something all those virtuous delegates to COP30 might just know something about.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.