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The Right to Agricultural Technology by Henry I. Miller - Project Syndicate

Promoting that lunacy, the United Nations Human Rights Council recently published a report by Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Hilal Elver that called for a global agroecology regime, including a new global treaty to regulate and reduce the use of pesticides and genetic engineering, which it labeled human-rights violations.

Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Party Hold Two-Day Festival Against Free Speech - Hit & Run : Reason.com

This coordinated campaign would be an assault on free speech even if it were not drenched in conspiratorial inaccuracy. Democratic lawmakers, attorneys general, and activists are systematically singling out free-market think tanks for potential criminal prosecution and one-sided disclosure requirements based on the content of the think tanks' research and commentary. They are literally trying to criminalize dissent. If successful, they will establish as "fraud" or "racketeering" any future think-tank work that runs afoul of political orthodoxy.

Landowners Win at U.S. Supreme Court in Wetlands-Development Case - Bloomberg Politics

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that landowners can go straight to court after federal regulators conclude that a piece of property is covered by the Clean Water Act. The unanimous ruling is a victory for property-rights activists, potentially streamlining the federal approval process for people and companies seeking to develop wetlands.

As Big Candy Ditches GMOs, Sugar Beet Farmers Hit A Sour Patch : The Salt : NPR

Planting genetically modified sugar beets allows them to kill their weeds with fewer chemicals. Beyer says he sprays Roundup just a few times during the growing season, plus one application of another chemical to kill off any Roundup-resistant weeds. He says that planting non-GMO beets would mean going back to what they used to do, spraying their crop every 10 days or so with a "witches brew" of five or six different weedkillers. "The chemicals we used to put on the beets in [those] days were so much harsher for the guy applying them and for the environment," he says. "To me, it's insane to think that a non-GMO beet is going to be better for the environment, the world, or the consumer."

Fossil Capital: the rise of steam power and the roots of global warming - The Ecologist

To force the transition, we must challenge the power structures preventing this shift from happening. Malm rounds off the book with a look at how a renewable economy will only occur if it is planned and implemented against private interests whose investments are sunk in fossil capital. Equally, to meet emissions reductions targets we'd need a "planned economic recession" tantamount to a "war on capital". This is not about waiting for socialism, but a pragmatic, though uncomfortable, proposal to solve our present day mess. Reworking a familiar refrain, Malm concedes "it has become easier to imagine large-scale intervention in the climate system" - by which he refers to business-as-usual attempts at geo-engineering - "than in capitalism".

GOP senators: EPA 'deliberately' inflating rule's benefits | TheHill

At the time, it said that “its valuation of the benefits is not yet complete,” since it had not accounted for other benefits to the rule such as “the value one places on knowing that an aquatic ecosystem is healthy” or “secondary and tertiary ecosystem impacts.” Those are known as “non-use” benefits.  More than a year after that initial proposal, the agency published the results of a survey to determine the cost the public was willing to pay, including non-use benefits.  That survey greatly increased the estimated benefits of the rule, from $16.3 million per year before it was conducted to $2.275 billion after, according to the preferred option in an analysis prepared for energy company associations.

The Paris agreement is another false ‘turning point’ on the climate - The Washington Post

The climate conference, like God in Genesis, looked upon its work and found it very good. It did so in spite of, or perhaps because of, this fact: Any agreement about anything involving nearly 200 nations will necessarily be primarily aspirational, exhorting voluntary compliance with inconsequential expectations — to “report” on this and “monitor” that.

Question 3 for COP 21: Compliance | Resources for the Future

Procedures under the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) make it impossible to force unwilling nations to take on strong commitments or to accept onerous compliance sanctions. Ultimate long-term progress to manage climate risks will require participation by all major emitting nations, and at this time many are unwilling to obligate themselves to ambitious commitments with strong compliance (for various reasons). Consequently, stark choices for the Paris Agreement today are between ambition and participation, and between commit and comply or pledge and report. Paris appears to be moving toward enhanced participation under a pledge and report regime. However, the Agreement may still have legally binding aspects, but they would not apply to achieving commitments for emissions or finance.

Keystone Is a Fake Green Victory - WSJ

The carbon dioxide problem, if carbon dioxide is a problem, isn’t going to be solved by banning fossil fuels or begging them to stay in the ground. The problem will be solved by coming up with alternative energy technology that improves on fossil fuels in a sizable share of applications not only for environmental reasons, but for cost and utility reasons.

The Climate Agenda Behind the Bacon Scare - WSJ

Now climate busybodies can shout that meat causes cancer and is as bad for the person eating it as it is for the planet. In other words, meat is a double threat that governments should contain. Hang on to your T-bones and sausages, folks.

EPA, Obama administration going full speed ahead on environmental regulations - Watchdog.org

“Get with the times,” Bravo told Watchdog.org in a telephone interview. “Look forward, look to renewables, look to safeguarding our natural resources and ensuring the health and welfare of your people rather than pocketing the money in the few wealthy people in your states in the extractive industries. Be forward-looking. Use your money, rather than to file lawsuits, to transition. Have some vision.” Bravo said people need to take “responsibility” and use less energy. “We’re going to have to do things a little bit differently. We’re going to have to have more public transportation infrastructure and use more public transportation … We can’t continue in the consumer-driven world that we have been in for the past hundred years,” she said. “It may cost a little bit more money in the beginning, but in the long run it will save on clean-up and health. It’s not a question if we can do it; we have to do it.”

Governed by Zealots - John Stossel - Page 2

Propaganda is what the NRDC produces. It shouldn't be the basis for EPA policy. These days, too often, it is -- because activists and regulators collude.

REGULATION: Southern states rally for 'line in the sand' on EPA's Clean Power Plan -- Monday, July 20, 2015 -- www.eenews.net

"It's time to draw a line in the sand," Phillips said. "The EPA is pushing us around like they are a bunch of punks. I just want the states to stand together and say 'no.'"

What Was Greenpeace Thinking? « Commentary Magazine

What happened in Peru symbolizes not only the hypocrisy of some in the environmentalism industry, but also exposes international NGOs for what they are. No longer are groups like Greenpeace motivated by a desire to heal the world. Instead, they scam well-meaning donors to fund for plush executive lifestyles, overhead, international travel, and an endless quest for publicity to grease further fundraising. Not all NGOs are the same, but Greenpeace seems, increasingly, like the rule rather than the exception among some of the biggest and best-known organizations.

A Climate March against Capitalism | Minding The Campus

For the hard-core proponents the loss is irrelevant: they believe the existential peril is real and that the time to dismantle our economy has arrived.

“I don’t see a solution here,” Ryan said of the power plant regulations at Wednesday’s breakfast. “I see an excuse to grow government, raise taxes, and slow down economic growth.”

There’s a lot of mostly wishful talk about the potential impact of the E.P.A. power plant rules on international treaty talks this year and next. It’s wishful because the real-time imperative of expanding energy access in rapidly developing countries — notably China and India but also those further down the development chain — will for many years to come trump long-term concerns about limiting the greenhouse-gas buildup. And, if anything, these countries are more insistent than ever (see China’s stance discussed here) that the heavy lifting, not marginal Obama-style cuts, needs to be done (or somehow paid for) by the world’s established powers, which built their prosperity on decades of unrestrained coal and oil combustion.

Again, what precisely is the value of spending tens of billions of dollars on new long-lived natural gas infrastructure and power plants if we need to start getting off of natural gas in about a decade? Worse, the IEA doesn’t even look at the climate impact from the high levels of methane emissions we’re seeing in the natural gas production and distribution system, which renders gas-fired plants actually worse than coal-fired plants from a climate perspective over a multi-decade period.

Then again, if you believe that the risks of climate change are sufficiently plausible that we should at least be considering an insurance policy of sorts, then the IPCC's policy recommendations could hardly be worse. The best environmental policy is economic growth. The richer you are, the more insurance you have. Wealth is what pays for robust safety standards and prevents sensible environmental regulations from being ignored or corrupted.