I sent this email to David Church, Orange County (New York) commissioner of planning, and Thomas Madden, planner for the Town of Greenburgh. Church and Madden led an Agenda-21-inspired regional planning charade called "Engage Mid-Hudson." The plan is packed with lies and superstition. Church and Madden are front men for Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama, who are pushing for regional plans that aim to destroy Americans' living standards through ill-considered environmental regulation. Cutting carbon emissions by some predetermined amount is based on ignorant, junk science advocated in places like
The New York Times by badly educated "environmental scientists" who are ill equipped to evaluate the limits of their own training. Ms. Muller is the public relations officer for the N
ew York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which funded 10 regional organizations with $10 million each to draft half-baked regional environmental plans. The
Engage Mid-Hudson plan is
here.
Dear Messrs. Church and Madden and Ms. Muller:
I am writing an article for The Lincoln Eagle, an
18,000-circulation monthly paper in Kingston, NY, concerning Engage
Mid-Hudson’s regional green plan (executive summary attached) that was released
in May. I have a few questions for you. Please address these
concerns either in writing or by telephone:
(1)
“(The plan) was developed through a
consensus-building process. “ At the initial meeting there were a number
of protestors who voiced concerns about the plan. The plan does not address
their concerns. At one point in the initial meeting you threatened to evict
those who were disagreeing, although you rescinded that threat. You did
not appoint any who disagreed to officer positions, reserving your
organization’s formal appointments for connected retired IBM employees
like Herb Oringel and other corporate-and-government insiders. Although
you ultimately were cordial in the initial meeting, the plan is misleading
because it does not mention the sharp disagreement that was made evident to you
and that you have failed to address. This is also evident on your group’s
website, which asks for reactions to the plan but does not permit a negative
reaction.
There is no consensus, and your plan’s claim that
there is is a falsehood. In particular Lynn Teger’s group Citizens for
the Protection of Property Rights in the Mid Hudson Region was excluded from
the process. If you wish to contact Ms. Teger, she can be reached at
teger.lynn@gmail.com . If you do not
wish to contact her for her group’s input, I would appreciate an explanation as
to your selective choices as to who got to be invited to your charade.
IBMers, yes. Property rights activists, no. There is no consensus
because major opponents of your “non-binding” plan were excluded.
(2)
You claim that carbon emissions cause global
warming. Yet, here is a graph of 5 million years of climate change, and
current temperatures are well below those of five million years ago, when there
were no human carbon emissions. How is it possible that the climate is
now cooler than it was before humans existed if climate warming is
anthropogenic? If you do not know the answer, please explain why you
claim to know the sources of climate change in your report, but really you,
your consulting firm, Francis Murray, Andrew Cuomo, climate scientists,
and the environmental movement are ignorant about it.
(3)
You make the claim that you aim to “reduce the
region’s overall contribution to climate change.” Please produce empirical
evidence of any kind that specifically shows that the Catskills and Hudson
Valley region make any significant contribution to climate change. On
what factual evidence other than hearsay from your consulting firm and the
ignorant parties previously noted do you base this claim?
(4)
How much did you pay Ecology and Environment,
Inc. to frame this plan? The plan is a knock-off of other
ICLEI-and-Agenda 21-based plans; a monkey could have copied it off other plans
for free. Please explain why 300 people who supposedly participated in
this planning process came up with a model that already exists in hundreds of
plans around the world.
(5)
In the 1930s, there were the dust bowl storms,
which were worse than any storms occurring now. Please provide me with
evidence of this claim:
“Critically, climate change can impact the frequency and
severity of extreme weather events. The Mid-Hudson Region is already challenged
by extreme weather events, particularly flooding, as evidenced in the recent
hurricanes Irene and Sandy. “ Was Sandy the first hurricane or storm to
affect the region? I think not.
In
1821 a hurricane made landfall in New York, flooding Manhattan to Canal
Street.
(6)
Your report lacks evidence of an understanding
of cost-benefit tradeoffs. Even if windstorms increase by 50%, is that a
rationale to curtail living standards by 50%? Please clarify how you calculated
the tradeoffs in the report’s many far-fetched, extreme claims, such as that
there is a need to reduce automobile use or to force people in rural settings
to move to urban ones.
(7)
You write that the region needs to “become radically
less energy and fossil fuel intensive while strengthening the regional
economy.” Please provide data or empirical evidence that the region needs to
become less energy and fuel intensive. There is no evidence that
the regional economy can become stronger without fossil fuels. You implicitly
make the claim that it is possible, but there is no empirical evidence that it
is. Please provide some. You wild, unverified claims amount to
superstition, not intelligent policy making.
(8)
The reduction in available farmland was caused
by a massive building binge that was funded through sub-prime mortgage
lending. Earlier, the Federal Reserve Bank expanded the money supply over
a century, in part to fund energy-intensive centralized agriculture, suburban
development, and the automobile industry. Could you please mention that
Andrew Cuomo in 1993 had proposed expansion of home building to include
sub-prime borrowers, which led to increased use of farmland for home building
and ultimately harmed the financial industry? First, Cuomo advocated massive
expansion of private home ownership. Now he is attacking private home
ownership. Can you please reconcile these wild vacillations in the
direction of Mr. Cuomo’s maelstrom?
(9)
You write that you aim to “foster economic
development” and “make all growth smart growth.” The term “smart growth"
is vacuous and nonsensical. Historically, economic growth occurs in the
absence of government regulation. I do not believe that you or your crew
of IBM bureaucrats have the slightest idea as to how to foster
economic growth.
The best way for New York to grow is to abolish Engage Mid-Hudson and fire
three quarters of New York’s vampire government. Would you please explain
your track record in fostering economic development in a state that has lagged
the national economic performance for decades? To be precise: What do you know
about economic development? Is Orange County successful in developing
economically compared to North Dakota or other carbon energy-developing states?
(10) You make the claim that
tourism can strengthen the area’s economy. Do you have any evidence that you
know how to develop tourism? You remind me of the film Roger and Me in
which Flint, Michigan attempts to turn itself into a tourist mecca. They succeeded in
further damaging their blighted economy--which was not as blighted as New
York’s.
(11) Engage Mid-Hudson has no
authority to pass legislation or regulation, yet you write in terms of targets.
How can you implement targets if you have no authority?
