Louisiana federal judge blocks key Biden climate change initiative
A Louisiana federal district court has halted a key climate initiative from Joe Biden that he implemented shortly after becoming president last year.
In a Friday ruling, U.S. District Judge James Cain blocked Biden’s January 2021 executive order that factored in the “social cost” of carbon emissions when creating rules regulating pollution.
Cain sided with Republican attorneys general from energy-producing states who said the administration’s action to raise the cost estimate of carbon emissions threatened to drive up energy costs while decreasing state revenues from energy production.
The judge issued an injunction that bars the Biden administration from using the higher cost estimate, which puts a dollar value on damages caused by every additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.
President Joe Biden on his first day in office restored the climate cost estimate to about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions after the Trump administration had reduced the figure to about $7 or less per ton. Former President Donald Trump’s estimate included only damages felt in the U.S. versus the global damages captured in higher estimates that were previously used under the Obama administration.
“Plaintiff States have sufficiently identified the kinds of harms to support injunctive relief,” Cain’s ruling stated. “Moreover, the Court finds that the Plaintiff States have made a clear showing of an injury-in-fact, and that such injury ‘cannot be undone through monetary remedies.'”
“The Court agrees that the public interest and balance of equities weigh heavily in favor of granting a preliminary injunction,” the ruling added.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox Business.
Biden’s climate policies are very contradictory. He cancelled the pipeline that would save billions of tons of CO2 emissions over the replacement transportation methods. He eliminated fracking that produced abundant natural gas. Trump reduced CO2 emissions significantly and made the US energy independent. A big factor on CO2 reduction was increased use of natural gas for electrical energy. Importing oil increases CO2 production significantly. For those who believe CO2 is a danger to the climate, Biden has been a disaster. Climate scientists don’t believe the CO2 theory. Humans need oxygen, water, and food to live. Plants grow faster and bigger with increased CO2. Plants are the oxygen factories, so as population increases, we need more oxygen; therefore, we need bigger and faster oxygen factories, i.e., more CO2. We would need more food, I.e., more plants and bigger plants, which is the basic food supply source. It just happens tha 95% of greenhouse gas is water vapor, but it is the third essential need for life. Fortunately earth has a great feedback system that keeps things in balance.
CO2 isn’t the problem. CO2 makes up only about 0.04% of the atmosphere, and water vapor can vary from 0 to 4%. Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, but it has “windows” that allow some of the infrared energy to escape without being absorbed. There’s more water vapor because of global warming. Global warming is occurring right now because of natural Earth cycles that happen over periods of 30,000 years or so. Scientists agree on this. Humans have very little ability to influence the warming by putting restrictions on CO2 emissions. People point to the last 100 years of the industrial revolution and the increase in global temperature which looks correlated to the increased use of fossil fuels. This is circumstantial evidence. If you look over the last 10,000 years the global temperature was higher 6000-8000 years ago. This panic about climate change is part of a plan to destroy the world economy and introduce a globalist tyranny. Do some research and look at facts. Then form your own opinion. Don’t restrict yourself to the MSM, which is mostly lies echoing the leftists party line. It’s hard to come to any other conclusion.