Bureaucrats Worry Democracy Will Get In The Way Of Their Climate Agenda

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

I have frequently written over the last several years that the agenda of the climate-alarm lobby in the western world is not consistent with the maintenance of democratic forms of government.

Governments maintained by free elections, the free flow of communications and other democratic institutions are not able to engage in the kinds of long-term central planning exercises required to force a transition from one form of energy and transportation systems to completely different ones.

Why? Because once the negative impacts of vastly higher prices for all forms of energy begin to impact the masses, the masses in such democratic societies are going to rebel, first at the ballot box and if that is not allowed by the elites to work, then by more aggressive means.

This is not a problem for authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government, like those in Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, where long-term central planning projects invoking government control of the means of production is a long-ingrained way of life. If the people revolt, then the crackdowns are bound to come.

This societal dynamic is a simple reality of life that the pushers of the climate alarm narrative and forced energy transition in western societies have been loath to admit. But, in recent days, two key figures who have pushed the climate alarm narrative in both the United States and Canada have agreed with my thesis in public remarks.

In so doing, they are uttering the quiet part about the real agenda of climate alarmism out loud.

Last week, former Obama Secretary of State and Biden climate czar John Kerry made remarks about the “problem” posed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that should make every American’s skin crawl. Speaking about the inability of the federal government to stamp out what it believes to be misinformation on big social media platforms, Kerry said: “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” adding, “I think democracies are, are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing.”

Never mind that the U.S. government has long been the most focused purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in our society, Kerry wants to stop the free flow of information on the Internet.

The most obvious targets are Elon Musk and X, which is essentially the only big social media platform that does not willingly submit to the government’s demands for censoring speech.

Kerry’s desired solution is for Democrats to “win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to, to, implement change.” The change desired by Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats is to obtain enough power in Congress and the presidency to revoke the Senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, enact the economically ruinous Green New Deal, and do it all before the public has any opportunity to rebel.

Not to be outdone by Kerry, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of Canada, who is a longtime member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum, was quoted Monday as saying: “Our shrinking glaciers, and our warming oceans, are asking us wordlessly but emphatically, if democratic societies can rise to the existential challenge of climate change.”

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the central governments of both Canada and the United States have moved in increasingly authoritarian directions under their current leadership, both of which have used the climate-alarm narrative as justification. This move was widely predicted once the utility of the COVID-19 pandemic to rationalize government censorship and restrictions of individual liberties began to fade in 2021.

Frustrated by their perceived need to move even faster to restrict freedoms and destroy democratic levers of public response to their actions, these zealots are now discarding their soft talking points in favor of more aggressive messaging.

This new willingness to say the quiet part out loud should truly alarm anyone who values their freedoms.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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US Supreme Court Has Chance To End Climate Lawfare

Published on December 10, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

All eyes will be on the Supreme Court later this week when the justices conference on Friday to decide whether to grant a petition for writ of certiorari on a high-stakes climate lawsuit out of Colorado. The case is a part of the long-running lawfare campaign seeking to extract billions of dollars in jury awards from oil companies on claims of nebulous damages caused by carbon emissions.

In Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc., et al. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, major American energy companies are asking the Supreme Court to decide whether federal law precludes state law nuisance claims targeting interstate and global emissions. This comes as the City and County of Boulder, Colo. sued a long list of energy companies under Colorado state nuisance law for alleged impacts from global climate change.

The Colorado Supreme Court allowed a lower state trial court decision to go through, improbably finding that federal law did not preempt state law claims. The central question hangs on whether the federal Clean Air Act (CAA) preempts state common law public nuisance claims related to the regulation of carbon emissions. In this case, as in at least 10 other cases that have been decided in favor of the defendant companies, the CAA clearly does preempt Colorado law. It seems inevitable that the Supreme Court, if it grants the cert petition, would make the same ruling.

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Such a finding by the Supreme Court would reinforce a 2021 ruling by the Second Circuit Appeals Court that also upheld this longstanding principle of federal law. In City of New York v. Chevron Corp. (2021), the Second Circuit ruled that municipalities may not use state tort law to hold multinational companies liable for climate damages, since global warming is a uniquely international concern that touches upon issues of federalism and foreign policy. Consequently, the court called for the explicit application of federal common law, with the CAA granting the Environmental Protection Agency – not federal courts – the authority to regulate domestic greenhouse gas emissions. This Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, should weigh in here and find in the same way.

Boulder-associated attorneys have become increasingly open to acknowledging the judicial lawfare inherent in their case, as they try to supplant federal regulatory jurisdiction with litigation meant to force higher energy prices rise for consumers. David Bookbinder, an environmental lawyer associated with the Boulder legal team, said the quiet part out loud in a recent Federalist Society webinar titled “Can State Courts Set Global Climate Policy. “Tort liability is an indirect carbon tax,” Bookbinder stated plainly. “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable. The oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products … The people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products.”

Oh.

While Bookbinder recently distanced himself from the case, no notice of withdrawal had appeared in the court’s records as of this writing. Bookbinder also writes that “Gas prices and climate change policy have become political footballs because neither party in Congress has had the courage to stand up to the oil and gas lobby. Both sides fear the spin machine, so consumers get stuck paying the bill.”

Let’s be honest: The “spin machine” works in all directions. Make no mistake about it, consumers are already getting stuck paying the bill related to this long running lawfare campaign even though the defendants have repeatedly been found not to be liable in case after case. The many millions of dollars in needless legal costs sustained by the dozens of defendants named in these cases ultimately get passed to consumers via higher energy costs. This isn’t some evil conspiracy by the oil companies: It is Business Management 101.

Because the climate alarm lobby hasn’t been able to force its long-sought national carbon tax through the legislative process, sympathetic activists and plaintiff firms now pursue this backdoor effort in the nation’s courts. But their problem is that the law on this is crystal clear, and it is long past time for the Supreme Court to step in and put a stop to this serial abuse of the system.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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Trump Orders Review Of Why U.S. Childhood Vaccination Schedule Has More Shots Than Peer Countries

Published on December 6, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

President Donald Trump will direct his top health officials to conduct a systematic review of the childhood vaccinations schedule by reviewing those of other high-income countries and update domestic recommendations if the schedules abroad appear superior, according to a memorandum obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“In January 2025, the United States recommended vaccinating all children for 18 diseases, including COVID-19, making our country a high outlier in the number of vaccinations recommended for all children,” the memo will state. “Study is warranted to ensure that Americans are receiving the best, scientifically-supported medical advice in the world.”

Trump directs the secretary of the Health and Human Services (HHS) and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to adopt best practices from other countries if deemed more medically sound. The memo cites the contrast between the U.S., which recommends vaccination for 18 diseases, and Denmark, which recommends vaccinations for 10 diseases; Japan, which recommends vaccinations for 14 diseases; and Germany, which recommends vaccinations for 15 diseases.

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule.

The Trump Administration ended the blanket recommendation for all children to get annual COVID-19 vaccine boosters in perpetuity. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary and Chief Medical Officer Vinay Prasad announced in May that the agency would not approve new COVID booster shots for children and healthy non-elderly adults without clinical trials demonstrating the benefit. On Friday, Prasad told his staff at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research that a review by career staff traced the deaths of 10 children to the COVID vaccine, announced new changes to vaccine regulation, and asked for “introspection.”

Trump’s memo follows a two-day meeting of vaccine advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in which the committee adopted changes to U.S. policy on Hepatitis B vaccination that bring the country’s policy in alignment with 24 peer nations.

Total vaccines in January 2025 before the change in COVID policy. Credit: ACIP

The meeting included a presentation by FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Tracy Beth Høeg showing the discordance between the childhood vaccination schedule in the U.S. and those of other developed nations.

“Why are we so different from other developed nations, and is it ethically and scientifically justified?” Høeg asked. “We owe our children science-based recommendations here in the United States.”