Pirate's Cove

I suggest that the White House reduce their carbon footprint to zero. Not through carbon offsets, but by giving up all use of electricity that doesn’t come from solar and wind. Stop using fossil fueled vehicles. Only eat locally grown food. Handwash clothes. And a raft of other measures. Of course, they won’t. Obama has golfing and parties to attend. And fundraisers on the other side of the country. And vacations. They aren’t worried about what all these regulations will do to your cost of living

(Washington Post) In the past several weeks alone, the Obama administration has made multiple new moves to fight climate change. The administration announced new steps to help fill U.S. roadways with electric vehicles. It ruled that greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft endanger human health and welfare. And on the international stage, it moved the world closer to a deal to phase out super-polluting HFCs, chemicals in refrigerants and other industrial substances that warm the climate.

But as Obama’s term dwindles, the act isn’t over — on Tuesday the White House released yet another policy to fight climate change, one with potentially far-reaching consequences. The White House’s chief environmental office, the Council on Environmental Quality, finalized a six-year process of shaping how the government’s agencies, across the board, will factor climate change into their decisions. (snip)

And now, the new guidance from the Council on Environmental Quality will ask agencies to not only include climate change in these considerations but actually quantify the climate impacts of their decisions, when possible, in the context of the environmental reviews that are already required by NEPA. It will also ask them to consider how to do things differently, in a way that could help prepare the U.S. better for a warming climate.

If this forced federal agencies to actually practice what they preach, it would actually be good, because it would limit their travel and reach. Instead

When it comes to quantification, the new guidance suggests trying to calculate how many carbon dioxide emissions a new project, permit, or other agency action would cause — or, alternatively, how much carbon it may sequester. Replanting trees or other land use changes affecting agriculture, for instance, could lead to more storage of carbon in the U.S.’s soils and its vegetation, rather than in the atmosphere.

So, you the taxpayer will be ponying up for the costs of these offsets, all while paying more for projects and environmental climate change impact reviews.

Will the VA have to consider ‘climate change’ in treating veterans? Will the Border Patrol have to reduce their use of helicopters, ATVs, and trucks to patrol the border? Will the military have to use carbon neutral weapons and ammunition? Will the FBI have to consider the carbon footprint of investigating kidnappings?

This is all just plain stupid, and further shows that this has nothing to do with science, but government.