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The newsletter highlights relevant analysis done by the JLF
and other think tanks as well as items in the news.

1. Thursday evening: Americans for
Prosperity NC broadcasting live from UN Climate Conference — be there

On Thursday night at 7:30, Americans for
Prosperity’s North Carolina chapter will be hosting a live broadcast from the
UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico. The event will be held in the John
Locke Foundation conference room at 200 W. Morgan St. in Raleigh. The public is
invited and refreshments will be served. Featured speakers, Skyped into Raleigh
from Mexico, include outspoken critic of the global warming alarmism Senator
James Inhofe, AFP President Tim Phillips, and AFP NC state director Dallas
Woodhouse. I will be providing commentary and answering questions on site in
Raleigh. Click here for more details or to sign up.

2. Wind Turbines as Crucifixes

 

It seems that in Australia a major backlash is brewing
against industrial wind turbines, which are marring the rural landscape and
causing health problems. Many in the country are seeing them as a symbol of a
religious movement — equating them to crucifixes — and not as a meaningful
cure for real, or even faith based environmental problems. Many rural residents
(who, after all are the ones that actually have to live with these noisy,
bird-killing monstrosities) view the subsidies bringing the turbines to their
backyards as simply a way for politicians to buy votes, making urban dwellers
feel good. As one rural resident put it:

Wind towers are big, so you cannot miss
them…They are in country areas, so people who are jumping up and down saying
wind energy is wonderful don’t have to have them in their back yard and don’t
have to look at them. They look ideal to the green urban voter but they don’t
want it on Bondi Beach, they don’t want it offshore where they can see it. They
want it somewhere else.

Click here to read the entire story as reported in the
Australian National Affairs.

3. Now it’s dioxin

In our last newsletter we reported on how the EPA is poised
to put in place new, very restrictive ozone standards that could cost
trillions of dollars to comply with. Now the agency, which is controlled
exclusively by zealots from the environmental movement, wants to tighten up on
dioxin
,
a chemical that occurs naturally in most soils. There are already very strict
standards for dioxin that most people have considered to be more than adequate
to protect public health and safety. The new standards will likely impose large
costs on cities and localities to clean up "brownfields" which are considered
safe under current standards. New regulations could also dramatically limit new
development. Cities around the country are beginning to show resistance to the
new unfunded mandates coming out of put out by the EPA. Here is what the US
Conference of Mayors is saying.
Dioxin is like ozone in the sense that there will always be natural background
levels that can never be eliminated. This means that there will always be room
to tighten standards even further allowing the EPA to gain more and more
control over industry and land use.

 

4. Al Gore comes out against ethanol subsidies

 

This article from Reuters
explains Gore’s change of heart, but since Gore has been wrong on so many
issues in the past without ever acknowledging it, I wonder what’s really up.