Left Worried Berkeley’s Overturned Gas Ban Affects Entire Country
Yesterday MDN brought you the fantastic news that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in liberal California, had overturned a ban on hooking up new homes and businesses to natural gas in Berkeley, CA (see Fed Appeals Court Overturns Berkeley, CA “First in Nation” Gas Ban). We said yesterday, “We don’t know this for sure, but we hope this case can be used as a precedent to challenge similar municipal bans in other states, including states served by M-U gas. New York City, which is a big user of M-U gas, passed a ban almost identical to Berkeley’s ban.” We weren’t the only ones thinking about the broader implications and consequences of the 9th Circuit’s ruling. The left is already fretting over it.
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Those who believe the world can force a transition to so-called renewable energy in the next 20-30 years and force the world to stop using fossil energy are delusional. Among them are the “leaders” of the G7 nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The so-called forced energy transition is, says energy expert David Blackmon, “one of the biggest policy gambles in world history.” The G7 are all betting the farm on the proposition that they can force fossil fuels out of business and replace them with “rent-seeking” solar, wind, EVs, and hydrogen.
A rare victory for the forces of good. Berkeley, California, a bastion for liberal nuts (there’s a reason the city’s nickname is Berserkely), thought it was all cutesy when, in 2019, it passed the “first-in-the-nation” municipal ban blocking new construction (homes and businesses) from hooking up to natural gas pipelines. Berkeley said it wants to do its part to combat global warming. A few months later, the California Restaurant Association (CRA) filed a federal lawsuit challenging the city’s ability to pass a law banning new natural gas hookups. After a lower court ruled in favor of the city, the CRA appealed it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Yesterday the judges of the 9th Circuit ruled in favor of the CRA, telling the city it’s trying to regulate gas stoves by denying pipeline hookups–something that only the federal government can do.
The same three radicalized environmental groups that have repeatedly attacked the $1.1 billion Renovo Energy Center (REC), a Marcellus gas-fired power plant planned for Clinton County, PA, have finally won. The Clean Air Council, PennFuture, and the Center for Biological Diversity (all completely radicalized fossil fuel bigots) have repeatedly challenged permits for REC. Last week the builder of the project, Bechtel Corp., announced it is pulling out of the project which has been in the planning stages for eight years. The reason for canceling the project is because of “the ongoing appeals from environmental groups.” What a tragedy.
Plastics come from oil and natural gas. You knew that, right? Without plastics, modern life would be 
For a moment, we thought we were reading an article in 
This one has us laughing. A group of some of the hardest of the hardcore left in the “environmental” movement–including the Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, the Sierra Club, and Urgewald–join forces to publish a report called “Banking on Climate Chaos” (full copy below). It is the 14th annual such report, detailing the amount of money invested in fossil energy companies by the world’s 60 largest banks. We thought we might flip the script and promote Big Banks doing the right thing (investing in fossil energy) by using the left’s work against them. Cool, right?
Yesterday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new proposed federal vehicle emissions standards that will force Americans to give up driving gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles and instead switch to electric vehicles, which are much more expensive to buy. The Biden EPA said the new standards will “accelerate the ongoing transition to a clean vehicles future and tackle the climate crisis.” Which is total B.S. The Bidenistas intentionally use inflammatory language, calling EVs “clean” vehicles, as opposed to fossil energy vehicles which, by inference, are “dirty.” They also claim the new standards will tackle the “climate crisis”–perpetuating an unproven theory that mankind is causing the earth to catastrophically warm.
In January, Ohio House Bill (HB) 507 became law with the signature of Gov. Mike DeWine (see 
You knew it was only a matter of time. On March 1, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) issued a 297-page biological opinion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) potential impact on threatened and endangered species if the 94% complete pipeline is allowed to finish (see 
Last week MDN told you about the long-festering issue of building a shale wastewater injection well in Clara Township in Potter County, PA (see 
In January, Ohio House Bill (HB) 507 became law with the signature of Gov. Mike DeWine (see 
Since 2015 we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA), a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Big Green group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well proposed by Pennsylvania General Energy (
As we reported back in February, the Biden EPA plans to allow private citizens to police oil wells and pipelines for methane leaks–meaning Big Green groups actually do the “policing” (see