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I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN WORD ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT (CONT’D): Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm hops into gas-guzzler in Boston. “The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment about the Suburban and how that squares with the discussions of sustainability and efficiency. It wasn’t immediately clear what year the SUV was.”

Plus: Feds fume over Herald’s Jennifer Granholm SUV gas story.

The Herald’s story about U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm riding around Boston in a gas-guzzling SUV has the federal department fuming.

Granholm made the front page in Saturday’s paper when she followed up her comments here about the need for more investment in efficient, sustainable infrastructure through President Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill by hopping right into a Chevy Suburban Premier, which doesn’t rank particularly well in terms of environmental friendliness.

But the feds felt like the Herald’s focus on the “gas-guzzler” SUV was just pumping up a non-issue.

“Would the Herald run this kind of a story if it was a minivan? Shame to see journalism like this at a time when there a real dollars coming to Massachusetts that will lower costs and create jobs for families and workers,” a Department of Energy spokeswoman said in a statement emailed over on Saturday. . . .

The webpage maintained by Granholm’s own Department of Energy that is the government “official source” for fuel economy lookups pegs the 2021 Suburban at somewhere between 16 and 23 miles per gallon overall, depending on whether it’s using diesel, premium gas or regular gas. For city driving — as the slow going in the area right around Fenway is — the SUV can get as few as 14 miles per gallon.

A couple of quick Google searches show the Suburban — whose webpage on the Chevy website reads “Welcome to the big life” — showing up on multiple top-10 “gas-guzzlers” lists. . . .

To answer Granholm’s flak’s question about minivans — the least-fuel efficient one of those still gets overall 20 miles to the gallon, rating better than her sizable ride in both gas consumed and emissions, per her federal website.

Minivans aren’t cool, though.

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN WORD ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT: Sen. John Barasso demands details of White House travel to climate summit. “The letters also demand the total cost of travel, lodging, food and drink and ‘lost work productivity’ — as well as any measures taken to offset the traveling party’s carbon footprint.”

Offset the carbon footprint by shutting off heat and AC in the departmental offices.

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ONE GODDAMNED WORD ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT (CONT’D): Barney Frank’s free jet ride. “U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, immersed in one of the toughest political fights of his career, took a free private jet to the Virgin Islands courtesy of a Maine congresswoman’s billionaire fiance — whose company received a $200 million federal bailout.”

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ONE GODDAMN WORD ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT: “Arriving in a small jet before the Obamas was the first dog, Bo, a Portuguese water dog given as a present by the late U.S. Sen Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.”

UPDATE: Note the appended “clarification” to the story, which says that Bo didn’t get his own plane to himself, but was accompanied by other staffers. But reader Ed Stephens writes: “Do you think any reporter will have the nerve to ask Obama directly about flying the dog on a private jet?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “The first reporter that *does* ask about the dog’s private jet, will get immediate street cred (and Tea Party cred) that will send shock waves through the MSM.” But the lunch invitations will dry up.

TRUTH EVENTUALLY WINS OUT: As far back as 2009, moral deity, overall supergenius and carbon footprint monster Paul Krugman told us lesser mortals that:

“In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.

Really? Says a victim of the NHS in one “scare story” from the Socialist-leaning Guardian:

“I was expecting to get the treatment, but they gave me a form requesting a British passport, so that was the end of that,” he said. Thompson has never had a British passport, and was not aware he needed one. The Jamaican passport he arrived with was lost many years ago…The lady wasn’t at all polite. She said you have to produce it or pay £54,000. I said: ‘Oh my god, I don’t have 54 pence, let alone £54,000.’”

Krugman uses the word “false.” I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

 

**Link fixed**

THOUGHTS ON the end of the Post Office. “My postman just delivered a 615-page catalog from Restoration Hardware. Why was that a feasible business to move for Restoration Hardware? I’ve never mail-ordered anything from them. Why is the government subsidizing this inefficiency? If I were interested in buying something from RH, I would go to their website. Instead, I have to lug this heavy object to the garbage can/recycle bin? Think of the carbon footprint. I do! But I don’t believe the government believes the climate change hype. Because they never act like they do.”

Actions speak louder than words.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON CARBON FOOTPRINTS: “Oh, hell! Shut up about my light bulbs. Just. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. If you people really believed in global warming in the form that you would like to foist that belief on the common folk, that quoted line above would have sounded to you as something on the moral level of first, torture a small, cute kitten.…”

Just remember, it’s not too late to stock up. Yet.

TWO GRAY LADIES IN ONE:

Shot:

For many people reading this, air travel is their most serious environmental sin. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. The average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year; the average European, 10.

So if you take five long flights a year, they may well account for three-quarters of the emissions you create. “For many people in New York City, who don’t drive much and live in apartments, this is probably going to be by far the largest part of their carbon footprint,” says Anja Kollmuss, a Zurich-based environmental consultant.

It is for me. And for people like Al Gore or Richard Branson who crisscross the world, often by private jet, proclaiming their devotion to the environment.

Though air travel emissions now account for only about 5 percent of warming, that fraction is projected to rise significantly, since the volume of air travel is increasing much faster than gains in flight fuel efficiency. (Also, emissions from most other sectors are falling.)

Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel, the New York Times, January 26, 2013.

Chaser:

The New York Times, a newspaper that is nominally and editorially aggrieved about income inequality in America and human-rights violations abroad, is offering its elite, ultra-wealthy readers a chance to see some of the world’s most despotic destinations in a private jet for just $135,000 per person.

“Circle the globe on an inspiring and informative journey by private jet, created by The New York Times in collaboration with luxury travel pioneers Abercrombie & Kent,” reads the promotional material for this exclusive voyage of a lifetime. “This 26-day itinerary takes you beneath the surface of some of the world’s most compelling destinations, illuminating them through the expertise of veteran Times journalists.”

Sound like fun? The private Boeing 757, which can hold up to 50 passengers in “first-class, fully lie-flat seats,” is departing in February 2018, so be sure to reserve your seats now. Travelers can fork over $135,000 for the full trip, or a stunningly cheap $13,500 to partake in a single segment of the trip.

New York Times Offering Luxury Jet Tours for the 1% – Iran, Cuba, Morocco and More!, Heat Street, yesterday.

As Glenn would say, I’d be more inclined to believe global warming is a crisis if and when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves. In the meantime, I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about my carbon footprint.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” Obama added.

—Agence France-Presse, May 18th, 2008.

“Obama brings two fuel-guzzling planes to serve as Air Force One in Argentina.”

—The Washington Times, today.

I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about my carbon footprint, to coin an Insta-phrase.

 

SHOT: Attorney General Loretta Lynch: Sure, we’ve “discussed” taking legal action against climate deniers.

Chaser: Obama’s Carbon Admission: ‘I Have the World’s Largest Carbon Footprint’

Hangover: Obama on the campaign stump in 2008: “‘We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,’ Obama said. ‘That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,’ he added.” As Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that year, “Under my plan. . . electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.”

Which brings us to…

The DTs:

“I leave my Christmas lights on for two hours—tops,” said the waitress, flitting between regulars with a pot of off-brand coffee.

“An hour for me,” said the local cop. The farmer at the next table nodded his head, “That’s about all I can afford, too.”

In Washington and New York, people celebrate economic numbers. In Michigan, people number the minutes they can afford Christmas lights.

To coin an Insta-phrase, I don’t want to hear another goddamned word about my carbon footprint.

Related: “Loretta Lynch: Well, We Wouldn’t Have to Charge Clinton Just Because the FBI Made a Criminal Referral…”

WELL, THEY TRIED TO KEEP IT SECRET, but I found out. And I still don’t want to hear another goddamn word about my carbon footprint.

WORSE THAN THE BEDBUGS? Michael Bloomberg’s Worst Legacy: The Debt Bomb. “When the mayor took office in 2002, the total outstanding debt of the city was $55.2 billion. This year, the Citizens Budget Commission estimates the total reached $110 billion. The increase: 100%! . . . Now the bill is coming due.”

UPDATE: Reader Steve Schubart writes: “If at the beginning of his term the debt is represented by a 16oz cup of soda, the current debt would be a 32 oz cup of soda!” Overindulgence comes in many forms.

And another reader reports: “By the way, last weekend not only was there the usual armed sentry outside Mayor Bloomberg’s private home, but he was being warmed by not one but two 3 foot tall electric resistance space heaters. As you like to say, I don’t want to hear a word about my carbon footprint.”

CLAIRE MCCASKILL SPENT $76,000 OF TAXPAYER MONEY ON PRIVATE CHARTER FLIGHTS. I don’t want to hear one goddamn word about my carbon footprint from these people. Plus, there seems to have been some self-dealing involved: “As a senator, McCaskill has flown at least 89 flights chartered by Sunset Cove Associates LLC — a company incorporated in 2002 by her husband, St. Louis businessman Joe Shepard, according to records kept by the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office. All of those flights were paid for from McCaskill’s Senate office budget, raising questions about whether the first-term senator and her husband are using public dollars to partially subsidize their aircraft.”

JULIE BURCHILL: These posh eco-loons need to check their privilege.

[Cressida] Gethin is a 22-year-old music student who, among other things, clambered on to a gantry over the M25 in 2022. In doing so, she ruined the trips of 4,000 airline passengers. Whether swinging from gantries or attempting to destroy great art, these young people have the air of never having heard the word ‘No’.

Why are the climate fanatics all so posh? The Just Stop Oil activists are always called Cressida or Amy Rugg-Easey or Indigo Rumbelow. (Rumbelow has inspired an amusing Twitter game called Find Your Silly Posh Girl Name ‘by combining a colour with a defunct shop’.) In this, JSO is simply carrying on the glorious tradition of Extinction Rebellion, the leading lights of which had such names as Robin Ellis-Cockcroft and Robin Boardman-Pattinson.

Infamously, Boardman-Pattinson opined in 2019 that ‘air travel should only be used in emergencies’, despite having been on a number of skiing trips that very year, which he had foolishly posted on social media. It’s no wonder Cressida Gethin picked on desperate sun-seekers to make her point. Like the dowager countess in Downton Abbey who once asked, ‘What is a weekend?’, posh people who do nothing find it hard to understand what a holiday means to ordinary folk.

Like aristocrats down the ages, these posh clowns get together and breed new generations of clowns. Trans activist Riz Possnett, who glued her hands to the floor of the Oxford Union to protest against feminist Kathleen Stock last year, is the daughter of Extinction Rebellion activist Robert Possnett. He has been arrested several times for making a nuisance of himself. He once glued himself to a Brexit Party bus. The bananas don’t fall far from the tree in this family’s case.

And then there’s poshest eco-loon of them all: This May Be the Dumbest Thing John Kerry Has Ever Said.

“I believe that Russia has the ability to be able to make enormous changes if it really wanted to,” Kerry continued. “I mean, if Russia has the ability to wage a war illegally and invade another country, they ought to be able to find the effort to be responsible on the climate issue.” Indeed, he went on to note that Russia’s “unprovoked, illegal war” has “sadly” halted progress on climate-related issues. “I say ‘sadly’ because it’s a loss for the world not to be able to have Russia acting constructively on this issue,” Joe Biden’s SPEC concluded.

I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that precisely no one, save perhaps, John Kerry, would be willing to reevaluate Russia’s war if Moscow committed to reducing its aggregate carbon emissions over the course of a decade by a couple of percentage points. Precisely zero observers of the war in Europe would compartmentalize summary execution, rape as a weapon of war, ethnic cleansing on a mass scale, and the subsummation of a sovereign people into Russian captivity because Russia put illusory caps on carbon dioxide and methane discharges. Indeed, in even indulging this fanciful notion, Kerry has only revealed how monomaniacal climate-change alarmists have become.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor in their high carbon footprint Messerschmidts? Forget it, he’s rolling — in his Prius.

TAYLOR SWIFT’S PRIVATE JET HYPOCRISY: Taylor Swift finally faces the woke mob.

It’s been four years since pop superstar Taylor Swift went full lib. After years of speculation over her political leanings (her silence on issues led some to believe she was a secret Trump supporter), Swift urged her fellow Tennessee residents to vote against the “appalling” and “terrifying” Republican Marsha Blackburn for Senate.

“I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives. Please, please educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post.

Since then, Swift has been outspoken about her pro-choice, anti-gun, and anti-Trump views. But unlike some of her fellow left-wing celebrities, Swift has somehow avoided being accused of not being woke enough. Katy Perry, a former foe of Swift and alleged subject of the song “Bad Blood,” has taken heat for cultural appropriation in her music videos. Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel apologized for past incidents of blackface. Demi Lovato was dragged for visiting Israel.

Alas, recent reports of Swift’s private jet usage finally suggest she’s not the woke hero she makes herself out to be. The digital marketing agency Yard discovered that Swift’s planes emit more CO2 in seven months than 1,184 average people would in an entire year. She apparently has two jets (how luxurious!) that took 170 trips in just 200 days this year, and the average flight time is just 80 minutes.

Yet rather than say she was sorry and promise to “educate herself” and “do better,” as the PR-crafted celebrity apologies usually go, a rep for Swift tried to pass the buck.

“Taylor’s jet is loaned out regularly to other individuals,” her spokesperson said. “To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect.”

Ah, well, in that case everything is totally fine! The carbon emissions are offset, you see, by Swift’s generous lending of her private plane to her less wealthy friends. Isn’t charity great?

I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

TWO NY GOVS IN ONE!

● Shot: Governor Hochul Announces Launch of Multi-Year Study to Explore How Climate Change Affects New York State Communities, Ecosystems, and the Economy.

—The New York Governor’s office, November 4th, 2021.

● Chaser: Hochul flies on NY’s dime as everyone struggles to fill gas tanks.

While New Yorkers are reeling from sky-high gas prices that force them to choose between driving to work, a trip to the store or a family vacation, Gov. Kathy Hochul has been hitching rides on their dime and avoiding traffic altogether by flying to most places.

The governor hit the friendly skies, either on a state helicopter or airplane, a whopping 140 times in the first seven months since she took office last August — with costs to taxpayers estimated at upwards of $170,000, records reviewed by The Post show.

“The governor’s personal frequent-flyer program is immune to things like rising gas prices, cancellations, delays and lost luggage,” Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay (R-Oswego) told The Post.

—The New York Post, today.

I’d be more willing to believe global warming is a crisis, when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves. In the meantime, I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

THURSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM: Just Stop Oil protesters damaged Constable’s The Hay Wain in gluing stunt, gallery says, as eco-zealot faces accusations of hypocrisy for racking up 50,000 air miles jetting to Bali, Australia and the Canary Islands.

Yesterday security guards watched as Hunt and fellow student Lazarus, who describes himself as a ‘musician and activist’, forced the National Gallery to evacuate art lovers, tourists and a class of 11-year-old children on a school trip from Room 34 where the painting hangs.

MailOnline can reveal that Miss Hunt, 23, is the co-founder of Just Stop Oil whose social media pages are adorned with exotic holiday pictures from locations including south-east Asia, Australia and the Canary Islands. Earlier this year she glued herself to the red carpet at the Bafta awards, and she has broken into an ExxonMobil oil refinery in Hampshire.

The former XR supporter even used the long haul trips to try to bolster her environmental credentials, telling social media followers from Bali: ‘Can we look back in another 50 years and say we did everything to protect our pretty cool planet?’

If Miss Hunt flew to every destination she would have clocked up 49,404 air miles over five years and been responsible for the emissions of 13 tons of carbon dioxide.  The European average – per person – is 8.4 tons in a whole year, according to the My Climate website.

I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

(Classical reference in headline.)

CNN OFFERS CRITICISM-FREE PRAISE FOR GREEN NEW DEAL; COMPARES AOC, MARKEY TO LADA GAGA, BRADLEY COOPER:

CNN special correspondent and far-left climate activist Bill “ignorant f***sticks” Weir joined afternoon CNN Newsroom host Brooke Baldwin Thursday for a criticism-free lovefest in honor of the Green New Deal. All told, the pair determined it was akin to NASA and a necessary step to save Earth without offering any questions or answers about how this move toward communism would be paid for.

If those things didn’t convince you that this four-minute-plus segment was a trainwreck, Baldwin sat in awe as Weir quipped that the Green New Deal was a love story for Earth, like A Star Is Born where Bradley Cooper could play Senator Ed Markey (D-NY) and Lady Gaga would be Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Before her Website 404ed the specifics of her “Green New Deal” page yesterday afternoon, as Reason’s Joe Setyon wrote, “Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Aims to Eliminate Air Travel:”

Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) today introduced a House resolution outlining her long-awaited Green New Deal. The resolution, as Reason‘s Ron Bailey reported earlier today, cites climate change concerns as justification for a plan that would remake the U.S. economy over the next 10 years.

The resolution’s aims include “overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and 19 greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible.” According to an overview of the resolution, this will be accomplished, in part, by “build[ing] out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

In other words, the Green New Deal wants to make commercial air travel obsolete. Is this in any way feasible? The short answer is no. “It’s actually probably even dumber than it seems,” says Baruch Feigenbaum, assistant director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.

But in the meantime, if CNN’s correspondents, like virtually all 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, are behind Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals, shouldn’t they help ratchet them forward by insisting upon the removal of CNN from all American airports? Perhaps spend a month reminding viewers throughout each day, via a combination of on-air announcements, and in the “ticker tape” graphic that runs under most CNN segments, that CNN will be departing the departure lounges shortly. It will reduce CNN’s own carbon footprint by that much, and remind travelers that they’ll soon be going “back to the future,” back to the trains. Let Fox News have the monopoly on those reactionaries who cling bitterly to their guns, their religion, and/or their Boeing 767s.

The establishment left moves “forward” through a combination of dramatic forceful moments (such as FDR’s New Deal and Great Society) and ceaseless, seemingly minor ongoing change. C’mon Time-Warner-CNN-HBO, show AOC you’re onboard with the GND.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

“Mayor de Blasio Commits to 80 Percent Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050,” said the Sunday news release, outlining what would be a truly impressive feat if he actually were able to make good on that promise. But there is not going to be any 89-year-old, 10-term mayor named de Blasio declaring a local victory in the battle to save the planet. This is a long march to a distant goal. The commitment Mr. de Blasio made over the weekend — an excellent and necessary one — was to do his part now to keep the city moving in the right direction: Promised Land, that way.

“Mayor de Blasio Takes On Climate Change,” the New York Times, September 22, 2014

The de Blasio administration is trying to limit the number of food trucks in the city by claiming that each hot-dog and kabob cart causes more pollution than a truck ride to Los Angeles.

Deputy Health Commissioner Corinne Schiff made the claim at a City Council hearing Wednesday, in an apparent effort to sink a bill that would nearly double the number of food-vendor permits in the city by 2023.

“Meat grilling is a significant source of air pollution in the city,” Schiff said. “One additional vendor grilling meat emits an amount of particle pollution in one day equivalent to what a diesel truck emits driving 3,500 miles.”

—“De Blasio administration finds a way to ruin food trucks,” the New York Post, October 27.

As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported exclusively, documents obtained by CBS2 show the mayor has dramatically increased helicopter travel around the city.

On Oct. 14 near dinnertime, an NYPD helicopter landed near the baseball field in Prospect Park. At the time, police were coy, saying they were transporting “a dignitary.”

That dignitary turned out to be Mayor de Blasio, who after hanging around his old Park Slope neighborhood, wanted to avoid traffic on a seven-mile trip to Queens.

Suddenly, there were questions. What was the man who bragged that riding helicopters was “not my thing” doing? And he had apparently suddenly decided that avoiding the city’s epic traffic jams was the way to go.

CBS2 filed a Freedom of Information of Act request, discovering that yes, Mayor de Blasio is now subscribing to the joys of flying.

“CBS2 Exclusive: Documents Show Mayor De Blasio’s Helicopter Flights Have Dramatically Increased,” Wednesday.

I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint ever again.

THIS WEEK’S NEWEST FINAL COUNTDOWN: “Robert Redford Sees ‘Last Chance’ to Fix Climate:”

Robert Redford told the United Nations on Monday that negotiations on a global deal to tackle climate change could be the world’s “last chance” to save the planet.

“This December, the world must unite behind a common goal,” said the American actor and producer.

“Because look, this is it. This is our only planet, our only life source.

“This may be our last chance.”

It’s the final countdown! Or actually, the latest final countdown, which have been arriving on a regular basis from those warning of first global cooling and then global warming since the first “Earth Day” in 1970; just add it to all of these earlier “last chances” to save the earth.

Once he made his pronouncement, Redford may have retreated back to here:

As the InstaProfessor likes to say, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves. (Oh, and I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about Glenn’s carbon footprint either.)

Though it’s interesting that Redford is playing weatherman after supporting Bill Ayers’ old Weathermen via his disastrously timed The Company You Keep movie, which inadvertently debuted in April of 2013, the same month as another real life terrorist bombed the Boston Marathon. Appearing at the start of that month on Good Morning America with Hillary Clinton flack George Stephanopoulos, who asked Redford if he was still sympathetic to the Weathermen, “Even when you read about bombings,” (i.e. the bombing of the Pentagon among others) the actor-director chillingly responded, “All of it. I knew that it was extreme and I guess movements have to be extreme to some degree.”

And finally, speaking of extreme, what’s up with Redford’s hair in the photo of him at the UN, which is beginning to take on unsustainable Trumpian proportions?