19 State AGs Subpoenas Six Big Banks Over ESG Collusion with UN
In early August, a coalition of 19 state attorneys general fired a warning shot across the bow of BlackRock (largest investment firm with $10 trillion in assets under management), telling the company its pressure on investors to divest from fossil energy companies based on so-called ESG (environmental, social, governance) criteria may, in fact, be illegal (see 19 State AGs Turn Up the Heat on Anti-Fossil Fuel BlackRock). That same coalition of 19 AGs is now turning their attention to six Big Banks, sending what is, in essence, a subpoena to the banks demanding information about their involvement and collusion with the United Nations’ Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).
Read More “19 State AGs Subpoenas Six Big Banks Over ESG Collusion with UN”
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” New Jersey is attempting to abridge the freedom of speech for Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute (API). NJ has sued those entities claiming they knew that the products they manufacture and promote (oil and gas) have caused global warming and that these entities have lied, and continue to lie, about knowing. NJ wants to muzzle the right of the API and Exxon, et al., to freely defend themselves and stick up for fossil energy, claiming to do so endangers the public and harms the residents of NJ. It’s the most outlandish thing you’ve ever heard.
For some time, we’ve been sounding the alarm about a coming change at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that will force publicly traded companies to disclose mythical greenhouse gas emissions data (see 
Rupert Darwall, a senior fellow at RealClearFoundation, was recently interviewed by NTD News (associated with The Epoch Times newspaper). It was an outstanding interview (watch it below). Darwall said environmentalists use a version of McCarthyism to stifle opposition–a form of “moral blackmail.” If anyone deigns to disagree with the accepted catastrophic global warming party line, that person is hounded until they shut up. And if they don’t shut up, their job (and social standing) is threatened. Free speech is dead in the environmental movement. Free thought is too.
The Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee was busy yesterday. In a companion post today, we told you about opposition to a bill by Sen. Carolyn Comitta that would do nothing more than study the concept of exporting LNG from the Philadelphia region (see PA Sen. Carolyn Comitta, Anti from Philly, Confuses LNG and NGL). A second bill that Comitta and her pal on the Environmental Committee, Sen. Katie Muth (also a left-wing Democrat), opposed yesterday is a bill that withholds impact fee (tax) revenue from counties that ban fracking on or under public lands, like parks.
There are eight so-called Ivy League institutions: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. At this point, most of them have made moves to divest their massive endowments from any company that is even remotely connected to the fossil energy industry. One of them has not, yet: the University of Pennsylvania. A group of brainwashed children at UPenn are behaving like spoiled rotten brats, demanding UPenn divest from any company with a whiff of oil or natural gas about it. They even want the school to ban fossil energy companies from recruiting on campus (no free speech at UPenn).
We spotted a must-read article from Scott Tinker, the director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin. In his column, Tinker points out the failure of Europe’s energy policies for the past quarter century–policies that shut down energy options like nuclear, coal, and natural gas, believing that wind and solar would take their place. It hasn’t worked. The brilliance of Tinker’s column is in comparing what’s happening in states like California and New York to what happened in Europe. Those two states (among others) are following in the footsteps of Europe, doing the same things–eliminating energy choice before alternatives can handle the load. And we are seeing the same identical results in CA and NY that we see in Europe–energy scarcity and skyrocketing energy prices.
As happens at the beginning of most winters (at least in recent years), we are beginning to see articles with warnings from the electric grid operator in New England, ISO New England Inc., that if the region experiences “an extremely cold winter,” it’s a pretty safe bet there will be electric blackouts. The region relies almost exclusively on natural gas to generate electricity. The reason there will be blackouts is due to Maura Healey. Healey is the Attorney General of Massachusetts. During her tenure as AG, Healey has blocked two different natgas pipeline projects–because she irrationally hates (yet still uses) fossil energy. Healey is now running for governor of MA and is likely to win. You know what? Massachusetts residents will get the blackouts they deserve if they elect Healey.
Here’s the latest ingenious way radicalized anti-fossil fuelers are attempting to cut off and strangle the Marcellus and Utica shale industry: Deny drillers any kind of means to dispose of the brine (naturally occurring water from the depths) that comes out of the borehole for years after a well is drilled. One of the best, most environmentally safe ways to dispose of brine is via injection wells. Antis are trying to strip Ohio’s right to regulate injection wells in the Buckeye State, hoping if the feds take over, many of those wells would get shut down.
More states are looking to divest state pension funds from BlackRock and other woke ESG investment banks that push anti-fossil fuel agendas. BlackRock, the largest investment firm in the world with some $10 trillion under management, is hemorrhaging customers. Last week we told you that South Carolina had joined Louisiana, Texas, West Virginia, and Florida in announcing it is divesting its state pension funds from BlackRock (see 
ESG investing is a euphemism from the left that means divesting from fossil energy companies. ESG investing has become all the rage in recent years. We have shared a number of articles about large pension funds in places like New York City divesting from fossil energy companies. As is typical, California is way ahead of the rest of the country in this regard. The huge California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), with $479 billion in assets under management, has been investing using ESG guidelines for more than a decade. A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed CalPERS has lost huge amounts of money by focusing on ESG investing (see 
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
The attacks against American energy by the Biden administration come so fast and so frequently, we can’t keep up with them. Here’s one that slipped by us. On July 7, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), under the “leadership” of the very dull Jennifer Granholm, proposed rulemaking for Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Furnaces, which would amend the energy conservation standards for non-weatherized gas furnaces and mobile home gas furnaces, eliminating natgas furnaces used in millions of American homes. The American Gas Association (AGA) filed a blistering response on Oct. 6, saying the new rule would be harmful to consumers, counterproductive to energy efficiency goals, and unlawful.