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[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
California’s high-speed electric train has burned through nearly $10 billion, far more than its original $9 billion bond, without building a single mile of track.
Where did that money go?
$1.3 billion was spent on environmental impact clearances.
After over a decade, Brian Kelly, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, cheerfully announced that, “we’re making true progress on nearing full environmental clearance for the entire Phase 1 high-speed rail project.” By the summer, the high-speed rail which hasn’t even begun construction might finally get its full environmental impact clearance. Perhaps.
California’s infamous high-speed train to nowhere, which began in 2009 and whose budget already tops $100 billion, financed by corrupt environmental cap-and-trade robbery that makes cryptocurrency seem legitimate by comparison, may seem like an outlier, but it’s not.
Every time presidents make a pitch for an infrastructure bill, they visit the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River for a photo op.
“Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” Obama declared with his back to the bridge. “Help us rebuild America.
After Obama, Trump came to the bridge, and more recently Biden claimed that his infrastructure bill, which spent nearly three quarters of a billion on electric cars, and little on infrastructure, would finally fix the bridge. Over $10 million has been spent on environmental impact studies going back 18 years to explain why nothing much was being done about the bridge.
But why spend money on bridges when you can instead spend it on environmental reviews of hypothetical bridges? People can cross the former, but the politically connected get rich off the latter.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $5 million was needed to fund an environmental impact study to build a new bridge, another $5 million to consider building a bridge in Mission, Texas. The current status of that bridge is unclear. After wasting millions and years on environmental impact studies, projects often never move forward due to changing finances or circumstances.
The endless environmental studies drain massive amounts of taxpayer money. For example, the
Yeager Airport in Central West Virginia needed a $5.6 million grant for its environmental impact study. And the sheer scale of taxpayer money stolen by the green industry is not being tracked.
A 2003 Government Accountability Task Force suggested that a typical environment impact statement costs between a quarter of a million to 2 million dollars. DOE energy data place it at a median cost of $1.4 million. Industry estimates place the direct cost of environmental studies at between 0.5% to 3% of a project. The smaller the project, the higher the percentage of costs eaten up by environmental reviews.
But the indirect costs are much more severe. By slowing down projects, environmental impact statements kill promising proposals, starving them of resources or wasting money, like California’s high-speed rail, on nothing without actually building anything. Speculative technologies like the Hyperloop have to spend millions on environmental impact studies further sabotaging them. Delays and dead ends end up costing up far more than the review.
The massive green regulatory theft took off with the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969. Federal spending was tethered to environmental reviews. NEPA was a bipartisan disaster, introduced by Democrats, but voted into law with massive support from the liberal Republicans who infested the House and Senate at the time, and then signed into law by Nixon. Opposition was virtually non-existent with unanimous Senate approval and only 15 dissidents in the House.
In the decades since, NEPA was weaponized to virtually shut down development in the country. When Biden implemented a NEPA rule change that baked global warming considerations into every project, Senator Manchin joined Republicans in voting it down in the Senate. But Republicans haven’t even bothered proposing the elimination of the NEPA disaster.
And yet in the 70s, even Democrats were complaining that environmental impact statements were a disaster.
“Ah, precious Environment, how the heavy wheels of government churn in thy name!” a New York Times column jeered. “When the city of New York wanted to use Federal money to build an elevator for the handicapped at City Hall, it naturally had to conduct an environmental review. The result is a dossier half an inch thick, concluding that there will be no environmental impact. None, at least, worthy of the full treatment—an environmental impact statement. This takes, by a conservative estimate, six months to a year to complete, according to a city official.”
Such complaints long ago became politically incorrect. To point out that environmental impact statements took the United States from a first world nation to a third one is heresy. And true.
Other nations, that don’t jam environmental reviews into every screw, still build big things. And American architects, engineers and companies often execute those wonders that we see rising in rich Arab states or even in Asia, but such things cannot be allowed to rise in America.
Environmentalists intended to use environmental impact statements to slow and eventually shut down construction. And they have succeeded all too well. Projects not only cost a lot more, they are poorly thought out with gimmicks meant to serve ‘green’ rather than real world needs.
The tragically misbegotten One World Trade Center project not only failed to build grander and bigger than the fallen World Trade Center, but its obsession with being the ‘greenest’ using unworkable green technology led to disaster when Hurricane Sandy flooded its lower levels.
Every now and then someone asks why we can’t seem to build infrastructure anymore. The answer is that environmental gatekeeping is built to stop the building of new bridges, dams and anything that might interfere with the pristine state of nature.
Even the so-called green energy developments have been blocked by environmental reviews. Environmentalists claim that they need wind and solar to save the planet, but if so it’s environmentalism that is endangering the planet by blocking wind and solar projects.
Environmentalists believe that all human endeavors are bad. Green technology is not their solution, it’s just another obstacle that they have erected in the way of progress, but they have no commitment to it except as a way to stop gas, oil, coal and nuclear from giving us cheap, reliable energy. Given a choice between wind, solar and nothing, they’ll choose nothing.
And make us choose it too.
America’s productive capacity has been crippled by a disastrous regulatory framework from the sixties and seventies that has frozen the nation in time. While China moves forward, our infrastructure rots away, our buildings age and nothing gets done except through bribes.
We’ve become a third world nation because we were told it was the only way to save the world. But the world continues to build things while Americans navigate parasitic regulatory industries of which the environmentalists are only the first who have to be bribed for anything to happen.
The Empire State Building was famously built in a year. Today it would take decades and then wouldn’t be built at all. Years would be spent courting environmentalists, racial shakedown artists and every possible group with political power that could stop the project. The building would need years if not decades of environmental impact statements, and would nonetheless be sued by environmental organizations financed by government grants. Much like in California’s high-speed rail to nowhere, after years of the government financing lawfare against its own projects, there would be nothing but an empty skyline and a hole in the ground.
And that’s how environmentalists want it.
The real problem as we move into the future is how to fill 80 or 90 years with meaningful existence. In the past the purpose of life was to produce the stuff to stay alive. As this problem becomes increasingly solved – here and around the world (in 2, 5, 10 generations) the problem is how to, why to live. Even now in this country we desperately invent ways to destroy wealth so as not to give disperse it into the economy. Leading to drugs and depression for want of a meaning in life. A dilemma. A question. Print this or not.
You are correct, the environmentalists tend to be atheists who have no meaning in life, no family, no purpose, and too much time on their hands.
Environmentalism is the new religion.
Barry, I get what you are saying. When I feel those thoughts arise, I try to remember this:
We all live in a hostile universe, and to our knowledge, life in it is rare, and each one of us is the descendent of survivors who, against all odds, lived to pass on their DNA. Many had it far worse than we have it. Life, up until the last hundred years, was brutal and short for most. The Enlightenment is rather recent, antibiotics, quite so.
It has been said, by whom I can’t remember, that life arose with intelligence as a way for the universe to look back on itself. The universe itself is a miracle of balance between opposing energies and forces–any one of which, if slightly altered, would mean complete collapse of everything that could provide for the creation of life, or even solid matter.
Whether from a religious perspective, or a cosmological one, our lives are miraculous gifts. All our ancestors faced trying times. Now, in our moments in the light, it is our turn. Perhaps the purpose of life for us right now might be to correct the course of human society with whatever skills and talents we can bring to bear. Maybe, it’s just to try and make another person’s life more bearable.
There’s amother reason why bridges don’t get repaired. Repairing bridges leads to closed lames, traffic jams, motorists diverted to other bridges. It’s inconvenient.
Here in Australia the Greens and the aboriginals try – and most times succeed – in blocking mines, roads, towns etc., when plans are produced. The Aboriginals qui9ckly tell us that where the development is proposed is a ‘sacred site.’ They cannot prove it as they had no written history, but they more often or not get their way. At the same time they expect the government to give them $billions, which is ridiculous because most of Australia’s wealth comes from mining.
The Greens are absolute hypocrites who drive and fly to these places while expecting everyone else to give up flying and not have cars.
Actually my beef is with the politicians who pander to these people.
The Hawaiian people on the big island claimed that Maneu Kea was sacred too, they stopped the building of the world’s largest telescope which is now built on Gran Canaria.
You learn something new every day. I didn’t know that much of Australia’s wealth came from mining.
Yes, we have no shortage of mostly fake Indians playing this game and turning everything into a sacred site.
Some years back along the Columbia Gorge, Oregon side if memory serves, a road improvement project was underway, and a grader operator noticed what appeared to be some bones. Got a supe, they took a break, called the local tribal elders, they looked, the whole project stopped while they had dug, found some more, ceremonially relocated the “remains” no idea whose they were, the project was stopped for weeks. Once the all clear was sounded and they could resume, that same operator saw more.. he thought. He just shut up and kept going. The tribal “elders” were never brought on the second time. Bones is bones, I suppose…..
Make all the wild statements all the false claims UNESCO moves in and takes total control of the area as a Biosphere Reserve they did that here in the States as well
Wow- your article has awakened a sleeping giant in my brain.
First off, what strikes me as ironic is that enviromentalists, environwomentalists and mentalenvironpeople are all pro-lifers – that is, pro nonhuman life forms. Environment pro-choicers want to improve life for humans.
Secondly, why such a high falutin name for wanting clean air, land and water?
Why? Because it makes money! The scam’s got to have a name for the “experts” to sell the product.
But what’s the product? Snake oil, elixir? Actually, nothing! Global nothing.
What an idea!
They’re anti-human because they’re anti-civilization. Thus they back any culture or people that is antithetical to western civilization and then any form of life innimcal to mankind.
The inevitable conclusion when one considers the environment and mankind’s ability to damage it is that there are too many people on the planet.
About thirty years ago I was forced to pay for an environmental impact statement to open a small restaurant!
It cost around $25,000 and delayed the opening by a couple of months.
The entire statement was so stupid as the defy logic, except for a green Dem who determined that a few extra taxis each day could peril the local children playing in a school playground two blocks away! It cost another few thousand to appeal the findings.
I’m sorry. That’s the kind of madness we have to deal with, yet hardly anyone protests.
Some of the regulations strangling small business are disguised as being for the public good.
25k to find and replace one business name with another in a standard form.
Corrupt.
This is part of a tyranny of the minority we have seen in many areas in this country. It stands “majority rule” on its head. Rather than the majority ruling but having to do so without violating the rights of minorities (and I mean “minority” in terms of numbers, not necessarily racial or gender minorities) it is now the case that minority rights and interests rule all the time, everywhere.
The minority interests have the regulatory infrastructure on their side, which matters far more than elected office.
If you replace a bridge that’s already been there for decades, why would you need an environmental impact study? This is insanity.
You’re right, but then again why have people been fined and tried for dealing with standing water on their own land.
WHY you ask? Because the entrenched leeches must have blood to suck. That’s why. What is needed is a massive dose of salt for the leeches. Administered lavishly and often. Until that “breed” goes extinct.
I was going to comment earlier so I did some research. But it winded me completely. The left has so many arguments and tactics they can use that they can keep any infrastructure in California from being built. Water storage (dams and reservoirs) being my immediate concern.
“Given the choice between wind, solar, and nothing, they’ll choose nothing,” isn’t exactly true. The truth is they’ll choose nothing FOR US, but they continue to get all the heat, light, power, limos, gourmet food, and other luxuries they can stand. Meanwhile, normal people are instructed by these frauds to go without and eat bugs. In a sane and healthy country, the elitist ruling caste would be an endangered species.
They imagine that’s how it’ll be, but much as in Russia and China, many of them will discover that they’re on the endangered species list too.
Yes, and Ferraris, private jets, $500,000,000 yachts, and pretty much anything else that fuels their appetite for extravagance. I wouldn’t complain if they were fighting for MY right to have possessions such as these (were I to win the lottery), but they’re doing just the opposite.
History shows us that in communist countries many with this smug attitude didn’t remain around very long to enjoy their wealth, which tells me that in spite of their intelligence and achievements, these people are actually quite ignorant. I say this often: I’ve met people with little formal education, some with no college education, who have have far greater wisdom than these people.
Government offices are always warm and cozy in the winter, and well chilled in the summer. The Sacramento area got several of their own fossil fired power plants to keep their power from going down when the rest of the state experiences shortages.
It seems you cant build anything anymore without getting these Granola bar Munching herb Tea sipping Tree Huggers would have opposed the move west and the Pacific Coast and have Blocked the Moon Landing claiming we would harm some moon bugs
Carl Sagan, a pseudo-scientific hack, made a mess of things by insisting that there were lunar viruses resulting in astronauts spending time is unneeded quarantine.
Took his ship the Imagination(Looks like Sea Urchin)into the Romulan Nuetral Zone and Boom got all blown to bits
But he wrote like a poet. I mean a good poet here, not some bozo who likes to scribble rhyming doggerel, His writing was truly beautiful.
So, we do we just beginning building and living how we want regardless of Progressive fascists? Civil disobedience, at the least.
If millions of conservatives were to do it, I’d imagine we’d be a force to reckon with. Conservatives might have crippled the NFL if the vast majority joined together in boycott. It sometimes seems that only the left possesses the killer instinct needed to force one’s hand on such a scale.
The solution may lie in immigration. Just as soon as can be found a viable planet. This one has had its water supply contaminated with compounds that disorder mental processes and impair decision-making. The evidence surrounds us, and is the reason for leaving.