The Foul Pole

Early nominees for the 2023 environMENTAL Awards

We were humbled to hit a milestone after our last post: environMENTAL now has more than 700 subscribers in 56 countries globally. You took us on that journey in 5 months, starting with no Twitter account, no email list, and no experience writing professionally.

Words cannot express our gratitude. Your “likes”, “shares” and word of mouth are building environMENTAL.

We started with a simple idea: Modern environmentalism has for too long behaved in a manner that is ignorant, wasteful, overreaching (and sometimes malevolent). And there’s a thirst out there to better understand the key facts and gain the knowledge required to confront the issues.

2022 proved that the lives of several billion people across the globe hang in the balance of western environmental and energy policies. The modern environmental movement must get back to its roots: authentically focusing on the most serious and imminent threats facing humans, ecosystems and the planet, driven by reason, logic, science, cost/benefit and balance.

Our founder and head writer took some time off to take a deserving young man on a bucket list trip. We’ll return with more original content the week of June 12th.

Until then, enjoy a brief review of seven early nominees for The 2023 environMENTAL Awards before we’ve even reached the end of June.

1. A New Scapemoose for Climate Change

Even ethical hunters who would need no additional motivation to pursue a moose call bullshit on this one.

2. Deer and Ticks and Viruses, Oh My!

Thank god we have experts at places like Georgetown paying attention to the real risks facing humanity. It’s not like we have any reason to worry about lab accidents (or malevolence) and pandemics at this point.

3. Climate change is causing more home runs in Major League Baseball!

Another example of something we repeat often: when everything is proof of your hypothesis, nothing is. Consider this: somebody actually get paid to study whether “climate change” is impacting on MLB home runs.

4. Honey, I’ve offset my cheating!

We could not have come up with a better mockery of the whole charade of carbon “credits/offsets”. Unless we stole the concept and used AI to impose a certain former Vice President from Tennessee who would go on to be an iconic figure in the global “climate change” movement and his ex-wife as the characters. You’ll get the picture.

(Hat tip Matt Henry/Twitter - click image below for the video from his Twitter post)

5. You Can Never Be Wrong Enough! (two nominees… too close to call at this point)

Paul Ehrlich, he of The Population Bomb, on CBS’ 60 minutes at the start of 2023 was given another try to explain why he was right all along 50 years later. If you’re laying bets, go with the stopped clock. It’s right twice every day, so it’s doing a helluva lot better than Paul Ehrlich. If you’re out there, Julian Simon, we hope you’re enjoying this.

Aging Better Than His Theories | Paul Ehrlich

Stacey Abrams, having twice lost the Georgia Governors race (but actually won both, just ask her), decided to try her hand at something different. After losing the Georgia Governors race last fall, her next gig was as Senior Counsel of Rewiring America.

After all, there are only ten million people in Georgia. If one’s goal is to crater living standards more broadly, one needs a national stage.

Go Big or Go Home | Stacey Abrams

6. Ignorant or Dishonest?

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm testified before Congress recently and was asked whether she supported Bidens plans to convert all military vehicle to electric by 2030. "I do, and I think we can get there, as well," she responded. Doomberg had the best take on this absurdity (partly behind paywall). The chances of such a pipe dream occurring in 7 years is slightly less than Secretary Granholm’s home state of Michigan getting 100% of its electricity production from solar panels, in January.

Don’t Call Her Surely | U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm

7. Burn The Sails, and The Oars, Too!

Germany kneecapped its own economy and citizens with its irrational “Energiewende”, a national plan to transition all of its energy to renewable sources starting around 2010. This idiocy hitched Germany’s transition to Russian natural gas and ultimately invited Putin to invade Ukraine. This led the EU to print nearly $1 trillion in a single year just to buy fuel and save its citizens, all while pricing out parts of the developing world like Pakistan from buying natural gas. Germany burned more coal, and Indonesia and other countries learned a hard lesson and will burn more coal to achieve energy security for their citizens. Take a bow, Germany.

Then, when German Charlaticians™ had one last chance to show they weren’t completely insane, and in the midst of an energy crisis keep their last 3 remaining nuclear power plants operating, they reached for the fentanyl and overdosed anyway, closing the country’s last 3 nuclear plants on April 15 this year. Germans ultimately have former Prime Minister Angela Merkel to thank for this. After the Fukushima earthquake the caused the 2011 meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power’s plant in Daichi, Japan, Merkel and the German government set out to close all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022. When no empirical condition can overcome an ideology and cause a government to change course, even in the midst of the European energy crisis of 2022, you have to give them an award for something. (We have a few months left to decide what to call it….)

Where Success Means Failure | Greenpeace in Germany

We live in strange times.

With this post, we open the floor to your nominations for the most absurd, ignorant, malevolent environmental/energy/economic stories of 2023.

As with the 2022 environMENTAL Awards, we will also highlight some of the year’s best stories, where smart environmental policies, actions, innovations give us hope for 2024 and beyond.

Thank you to our readers and especially our subscribers for a wonderful ride our first 5 months on Substack. We have greatly enjoyed reading your comments, and we’re very grateful for your response to this project. We’re glad you’re with us!

Every “like”, “share” and comment helps us spread our message and keeps this snowball rolling.