Anti-Gas PennFuture VP Heading to Shapiro DEP as Policy Director
There is a revolving door in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, between PennFuture and Democrat governors. Pat McDonnell, the former Secretary of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), charged with overseeing shale drilling in the state, was a closet radical working against the shale industry in the Gov. Tom Wolf administration. How do we know? As soon as he left the DEP last year, McDonnell became president of the uber-left, anti-shale PennFuture organization (see Former PA DEP Sec. Pat McDonnell New CEO of Anti-Shale Group). McDonnell now routinely criticizes the shale industry in the state. With a new Democrat administration in Harrisburg (Josh Shapiro, Governor, and Rich Negrin, DEP Secretary), PennFuture is sending one of its own, Ezra Thrush (VP of Government Affairs and chief lobbyist), over to the DEP to become the new Policy Director at the agency. The politically incestuous door just keeps revolving…
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An environmental group purporting to be run by political conservatives, calling itself Conservatives For Responsible Stewardship (CRS), is pushing for Pennsylvania to adopt the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–an obscene carbon tax that will kill the Marcellus shale industry in the state. In what has to be the ultimate example of chutzpah, the president of CRS, Dave Jenkins, argues in a column appearing in the Erie Times-News, that RGGI is (don’t laugh) a “market-based program” and the type of thing old Ron Reagan would have liked. HOGWASH!
We live and work in Upstate New York State (sad to say). It is our birthplace, and our families live here. However, New York has fallen. We are overwhelmed with Democrat socialists who don’t care about traditional American values like freedom. The best illustration of this is our newly-elected Governor, Kathy Hochul. She not only wants to ban natural gas hookups for new homes and businesses across the entire state, she wants to force all EXISTING homes and businesses to give up using natural gas (and fuel oil, and coal, and wood) as well. It’s certifiably insane. Yet that’s how the Democrat socialist mind works. Fortunately, there are at least a few Dems left willing to push back on some of this insanity. Where do plans stand to ban natgas in the Empire State?
We continue to be majorly disappointed with the new “Acting” Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection, Rich Negrin. Last Friday, we told you that Negrin is hewing to the far-left, promoting the concept that all wells and pipelines in poor communities and communities of color are automatically racist (see 
Talk about brazen. The “reporters” of Bloomberg, who report exactly what the Democrat Party dictates they should report, are bragging about how Big Banks and Big Investment Firms are now burying information about ESG requirements in their documentation (just not talking about it) in order to “avoid losing lucrative business.” That’s right. Banks and investment firms (like SVB, now failed, and BlackRock, the largest investment firm in the world) haven’t actually changed their policies–they just change the way they talk about it. They hide it. Cover it up. Change the words.
It’s time to divest from (and cancel any policies with) one of the world’s top 10 insurers–Chubb. The company has caved to leftist radicals by announcing a new policy of refusing to insure new oil and gas projects unless those projects reduce methane emissions to pretty much zero. It is an outright assault and attack on oil and gas companies. Pay attention Texas, Florida, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and other right-minded states! Your states need to pull any insurance policies or dealings with Chubb. Add them to the “we don’t do business with” list along with BlackRock. Refuse to do business with them–cut them off.
Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and public speaker. Over the past three decades, his articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, National Review, Field & Stream, and Austin Chronicle. Last month, Bryce published an article on the Substack website that reveals the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex spends on the order of $4.5 billion each year on anti-fossil fuel activities (see 
A Boston-based fossil fuel hating group called HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team) paid big money for a “research report” written by a card-carrying “research activist” targeting Philadelphia Gas Works’ (PGW) plan to upgrade its aging and (in some cases) failing 6,000 miles of natural gas pipelines that make life possible in the City of Brotherly Love. The HEET-funded “study” says PGW should slap a 10-year Band-Aid on leaky pipes because, you know, renewables will take over the world after that. What a load…
Energy in Depth (EID) is publishing a series that exposes the activist group Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) and its extensive actions behind the scenes in New Jersey municipalities to recruit, support, and initiate climate litigation. CCI has tried, according to emails obtained by EID, to remain hidden in the background. EID is turning a bright spotlight on their unethical (and borderline illegal) activities in manipulating New Jersey officials, encouraging (goading) them to sue oil and gas companies using public funds.
The nightmare we can’t wake up from, called New York State, keeps getting darker and worse. In January, Hochul proposed banning the sale of all new natural gas appliances across the state, along with an outright ban on hooking up new homes and businesses to gas, by 2030 (see 
Is Kamala Harris the dumbest Vice President of the United States…ever? No. We think that dubious distinction goes to her boss, Joe Biden, when he was VP under Lord Obama. But she ranks right up there near Biden as the dumbest. Do you ever listen to any of her talks? Or her cackling laugh? Talk about nails on a chalkboard! One of cackling Kamala’s latest pronouncements is that there is a “mental health crisis” because of the climate. This time we tend to agree with her. There IS a mental health crisis–abject fear and panic–because of people like Harris screaming lies that the planet is about to end unless we dump fossil energy.
The United Nations’ (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published an updated climate change (global warming) report yesterday. It is the hardest of hard-core dictatorial screeds we’ve seen yet out of the UN, an agency that desires to rule the world. The out-of-control UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said in releasing the report that “Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast. Our world needs climate action on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.” Cute–invoking the name of this year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture. Guterres’ preferred solution? “Ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas,” and “stopping any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves.” You read that right. No more new drilling anywhere for fossil fuels, if the UN gets its way.
We have to wonder, are we witnessing the end of modern society and a full regression back to the Stone Age? Two lawyers, one from Public Citizen’s climate program and the other a professor at George Washington University Law School, have written a paper that will be published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review that claims if there’s a NATURAL disaster, like a flood or hurricane or big snowstorm, and if people die in that event, governments and prosecutors can sue Big Oil, holding Big Oil criminally negligent for homicide. No, this is not a joke.