Daily Caller
Amazon Rainforest Razed To Build Highway For UN Climate Summit
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
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Ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, developers are carving a four-lane highway through protected tracts of the Amazon rainforest to ease travel for attendees.
The highway, one of several infrastructure projects fast-tracked for the summit, is meant to ease congestion for the more than 50,000 attendees expected in November. The state government insists the road is a “sustainable” development with wildlife crossings, bike lanes and solar lighting, but local critics argue it contradicts the very mission of the climate conference, according to the BBC.
“Everything was destroyed,” Claudio Verequete, a local resident whose family depended on the açaí trees that once stood where the road now cuts through the forest, told the BBC. “Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family.”
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The highway, known as Avenida Liberdade, had been shelved multiple times in the past due to environmental concerns but was revived as part of a broader push to modernize Belém ahead of COP30, according to the outlet. State officials say the city’s transformation will leave a lasting legacy, including an expanded airport, new hotels and an ungraded port to accommodate cruise ships.
Adler Silveira, the Brazilian state of Pará’s infrastructure secretary, defended the highway project in a statement to the BBC, calling it an “important mobility intervention” that will benefit the local population long after the summit ends.
Satellite images of the area appear to show miles of cleared land where dense rainforest once stood. Conservationists warn that beyond immediate deforestation, the road could enable further illegal logging and land speculation, fragmenting ecosystems critical to carbon absorption, the BBC reported.
“From the moment of deforestation, there is a loss,” Silvia Sardinha, a wildlife veterinarian at a university near the site of the new highway, told the BBC. “Land animals will no longer be able to cross to the other side, reducing the areas where they can live and breed.”
The annual UN Climate Change Conference gathers world leaders, lawmakers, scientists and industry representatives to negotiate global climate policy. Discussions typically center around greenhouse gas emissions, phasing out fossil fuel, adapting industries to climate benchmarks and enforcing international agreements like the Paris Accord, as well as topics like deforestation. At previous summits, speakers have advocated for policies such as taxing meat products and naming extreme heat events to create greater awareness of temperature changes. Taliban officials from Afghanistan also attended the COP29 in 2024, as UN agencies reportedly considered unlocking funds for the nation to combat climate crises. The COP28 the year prior included a discussion on sustainable yachting.
The Amazon rainforest, previously called the “lungs of the Earth,” now reportedly emits more carbon dioxide than it absorbs due to rampant deforestation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Attendees of the 2025 climate summit are expected to include representatives from nearly every UN member state, as well as corporate leaders in the renewable energy industry such as Siemens Gamesa.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, remarked that “it’s a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon,” adding the conference will be “historic and a landmark” in a February press release. The COP30 summit is scheduled for Nov. 10 through Nov. 21.
Business
Ontario Premier Doug Ford Apologizes To Americans After Threatening Energy Price Hike For Millions
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
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Ontario Premier Doug Ford apologized to Americans Tuesday after he suspended a 25% electricity surcharge that he initially said he would be “relentless” in pursuing.
Ford implemented a 25% surcharge on electricity to New York, Michigan and Minnesota on Monday, but quickly rescinded the policy and apologized to Americans on WABC’s “Cats & Cosby” radio show the following day. The tariffs were initially a retaliatory measure against President Donald Trump’s flurry of tariffs against Canada since he assumed office.
Canada is highly dependent on U.S. exports, economists told CNN, and the planned electricity surcharge would likely hurt Canada’s energy industry much more than it would the U.S., although an estimated 1.5 million homes and businesses would have been affected.
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“I want to apologize to the American people. I spent 20 years of my life in the US, in New Jersey, in Chicago. I love the American people,” Ford said. “I absolutely love them … Secretary Lutnick and President Trump are brilliant businesspeople. They are hard negotiators. We need to put this behind us and move forward and build the two strongest countries in the world.”
Initially, Ford had a much more aggressive tone when he instituted the tariffs.
“We will not back down. We will be relentless. I apologize to the American people that President Trump decided to have an unprovoked attack on our country, on families, on jobs, and it’s unacceptable,” Ford said on MSNBC in response to Trump’s hiking of steel and aluminum tariffs.
Trump, in turn, threatened to increase the steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada to 50%, with the increase going into effect the next day.
Ford then talked with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, with the premier describing the call as “productive.” Once Ford backed down on his plan to implement the export fees, Trump reversed his planned hike to 50% on steel and aluminum tariffs. Ford is expected to meet with Lutnick Thursday in Washington, D.C.
If a deal is not reached by the April 2 deadline, the tariffs will resume.
Ontario sold around 12 terawatt hours of electricity to America in 2023, with the U.S. being Ontario’s largest energy customer outside Canada. The tariff would have likely added “100$ a month” to the bill of Americans in the affected states, Ford claimed according to CNN.
The U.S. and Canada have entered into a contested debate over trade policies, with Canada announcing an additional $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on American goods in response to Trump’s initial 25% steel and aluminum tariffs.
Trump initially gained concessions from Canada in February, forcing them to aid in curtailing the illegal fentanyl trade in exchange for a pause on a 25% general goods tariff enacted Feb. 1. However, Trump eventually let the pause expire, with the tariff resuming in March.
“Canada is a tariff abuser, and always has been, but the United States is not going to be subsidizing Canada any longer,” Trump said on Truth Social Mar. 10.
The Ontario Premier’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By David Blackmon
Speaking at the opening day of the annual CERAWeek global energy industry gathering in Houston, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser declared plans for a government subsidized energy transition a failure, saying, “there is more chance of Elvis speaking next than the current plan working!”
He isn’t wrong, and Elvis was nowhere in sight.
Nasser began his speech by telling the audience made up largely of executives in the oil and gas industry and its contractors that, “We can all feel the winds of history in our industry’s sails again.”
Again, he isn’t wrong.
The winds of change have been blowing for well over a year now in favor of placing national energy security concerns over the rank climate alarmism that dominates the narratives surrounding this mythical transition. In fact, that shift began to become apparent at the 2023 CERAWeek gathering, as speaker after speaker emphasized the need to refocus on enhancing energy security after three years and trillions of dollars in debt-funded spending on renewables.
Now, with last November’s re-election of Donald Trump to a second presidency and the Energy Dominance agenda he brings with him, the momentum at the industry’s back is starkly obvious.
But that doesn’t mean that the world will or should abandon the expansion of other forms of energy, including intermittent sources like solar power and stationary batteries.
In this area, Nasser echoed the “all-of-the-above philosophy touted earlier in the Monday agenda by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, emphasizing a new model that “reflects the reality of growing demand and energy addition,” while bringing an end to the current practice by many activists and politicians of demonizing oil, gas, and coal.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the world was promised many things in the current transition plan,” Nasser said. “It was like promising an energy El Dorado. And this quest was equally doomed to fail.”
Noting that the chosen alternatives to fossil fuels currently being heavily subsidized — wind, solar, green hydrogen, and electric vehicles — are unable to even account for incremental energy demands, much less replace fossil fuels, Nasser advocated for a revised effort in which alternatives play a growing role of complementing reliable, conventional energy sources. “I take no pleasure in this. But it is time to stop reinforcing failure. Indeed, as the fictions of the promised transition finally wash away, there is an historic opportunity to change course.”
Nasser’s remarks were largely echoed by Secretary Wright, who promised, “The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.” Wright also dismissed the previous administration’s focus on climate alarmism over energy security as myopic.
“The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is — a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world,” Wright said. The energy secretary called Biden’s policies “economically destructive to our businesses and politically polarizing. The cure was far more destructive than the disease.”
Wright also bluntly explained why the Trump administration singled out offshore wind as an especially destructive element of the Biden myopia, while at the same time extolling solar and battery storage as zero-emission ideas that make sense.
Offshore wind’s “incredibly high prices, incredibly huge investment and a large footprint on the local communities, so it’s been very unpopular for people that live near offshore wind turbines,” Wright said. Touting his “all-of-the-above” approach, Wright said the administration supports anything that adds to “affordable, reliable, secure energy,” adding, “Wind has been singled out because it’s had a singularly poor record of driving up prices.”
Emphasizing the inadequacies of the subsidized alternatives to fossil fuels, Wright pointed out that there “is simply no physical way that wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas.” He also pointed out that gas currently supplies 43% of power generated on the U.S. grid, a share that is unlikely to be reduced anytime soon.
It all boils down to the simple reality that globalist plans for this government-forced transition have failed. As Nasser said, the time to “stop reinforcing failure” has arrived.
Elvis has left the building.
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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