Worst Climate Stories of the Week—It's the End of the Gravy Train as We Know It, and I Feel Fine

Look, we all knew Stacey Abrams was a con artist and a fraud, but the continuing revelations coming out of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have caught her in their ever-expanding grift dragnet. Having refused to concede that she lost the Georgia gubernatorial race to Brian Kemp in 2018, Abrams evidently decided to assuage her frustration by doing what Democrats often do in that situation: Starting a PAC and taking in gargantuan government grants and donations from Hollywood to live the lavish lifestyle she feels she deserves fight for justice.

(DON'T MISS LAST WEEK'S COLUMN: A Valentine to DOGE)

This week, DOGE revealed how much wealth justice Abrams had the ability to fight for: a cool two billion in grants from . . . *checks notes* . . . the EPA. Apparently this "nonprofit" of hers hasn't really, you know, done anything. Which, if you think about it, is pretty much par for the course with the entire climate cult green energy enviro-wacko movement. Abrams and her group followed the time-honored tradition by taking bunch of donor money and taxpayer funding from folks made to feel guilty about taking their kids to soccer practice in an SUV, and spread it around to their cronies while the folks volunteering the money get to feel better about saving the planet somehow. No spotted owls get saved, no humpback whales have their habitat restored, the atmosphere doesn't notice our emotional outbursts, but everybody feels better.

We have a bunch of other stories just like that this week… and every week. The steady stream sustains this column into perpetuity.

In addition to the sordid Stacey Abrams details, we have an even bigger scandal with an EPA grant; a whole bunch of EV madness; Democrats actually may have learned their lesson about pipelines for "fossil fuels;" climate cultists want to ban anesthesia; a detailed report of the state of California "in cahoots" with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—which, let's be honest, doesn't come as a surprise to anyone; and we still wait for Trump's EPA to publicly release its report on the carbon dioxide "endangerment finding."

We have some good news this week, thanks once again to the Trump administration's efforts to clean up the mess left behind by Joe Biden. The White House has terminated the American Climate Corps; and the entire Trump administration seems hell-bent on restoring the United States as a global leader in reliable energy.

Let's get to it.

Stacey Abrams Feathers Her Nest

In late 2023, Democratic operatives formed a 501(c)(3) called Power Forward Communities. This nonprofit claimed it wanted to provide loans to homeowners to "decarbonize" their homes by replacing their appliances and weatherize their homes. Shortly after its formation, Power Forward Communities hired Stacey Abrams, the multiple-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, as its general counsel. A few months later, the Biden administration awarded it a $2 billion grant under its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, part of a $20 billion slush fund it created. Now the new head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, is trying to get that money back. Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon, "When we learned about the Biden Administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this."

One has to wonder what her job duties entailed, while it lasted.

The EPA Gave Even More to a Guy With Even Less Ethics

OK, the Stacey Abrams thing is sketch, but this next item might bring actual criminal investigations.

The corruption at the former Biden EPA was so severe that I ask @EPWGOP Chair @SenCapito to begin formal investigations with possible referral to @AGPamBondi for criminal prosecution. https://t.co/0XUC53NBjI

— Daniel Turner (@DanielTurnerPTF) February 20, 2025

Again from the Free Beacon, "Jahi Wise joined the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2022 as the founding director of the newly created Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF, according to his LinkedIn profile. In April 2024, while Wise served in that role, the EPA announced that it would award GGRF grants totaling $20 billion to just eight nonprofits, including the Coalition for Green Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based group that received $5 billion as part of the announcement and where Wise previously worked as the director of policy. There is no indication that Wise recused himself from that process."

The EV Implosions and Explosions Keep On Truckin'

The "other Tesla" went belly-up this week. Nikola, a manufacturer of electric tractor trailers, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy after garnering hype over its 2020 listing on the NASDAQ—and an "investment" from the Biden administration just south of $3 billion. Its CEO has been sentenced to four years in prison for fraud (currently on appeal); there are allegations they faked their corporate reports; and they paid a $125 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nikola blamed rising interest rates and falling demand for its current situation.

Despite all the headwinds, Western governments continue to plunge headlong into the EV madness. The headlines blared that the United Kingdom donated 15 EVs to the Albanian prison system. But the wider report was even more inexplicable. The UK has been paying for things like:

• £15.5million for "Climate Smart Jobs" in Uganda
• £499,649 for 15 electric Porsches to donate to Albanian prisons
• £22million for a "Green Growth" program in Nepal
• £7million for renewable energy in Indonesia
• £25million for "Green Urban Growth" in Somalia

Fact checkers jumped on the Albania story to say they weren't actually Porsches, but Volkswagens, and the story missed "vital context."

Finally, South Korea has had so many EV battery fires, the government has cracked down on safety regulations and inspections.

A Pipeline Drives Over a Roadblock

Newly installed Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced that the Trump administration approved a natural gas pipeline in New York. Known as the Constitutional Pipeline, it is so vital it could drop the price of natural gas by 50% on the entire East Coast, due to current limited transportation options. But Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and the Department of Environmental Conservation had opposed it, calling it "inconsistent . . .  with the statewide greenhouse gas (GHG) emission limits." Except now she's changed her tune, since ConEd requested a double-digit rate hike. All of a sudden, Hochul has angry voters to assuage, and all of a sudden, the permits got approved.

Anesthesia Causes Global Boiling?

The CO2 Coalition wrote in an email this week:

We were approached recently by a leading anesthesiologist who was concerned that some of his colleagues have encouraged limiting or banning the use of some of the major anesthetic gases because of their potential to warm the climate. 

They note that emissions from gases from anesthesia are so minute, they can barely be measured—they number in the parts per billion, or even trillion, while carbon dioxide is measured in parts per million.

California Commies

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) accused California Democrats of deliberately hurting U.S. manufacturing and helping China:

Back in 2012, Donald Trump posted on Twitter that the “concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” .  .  . We have often discussed Chinese influence in American higher education, but rarely its relation to climate change. Through partnerships between China’s Tsinghua University and the University of California, California’s Democrats are manufacturing science and policy to justify costly electric vehicle (EV) mandates that hurt America’s economy and benefit Beijing.

They go on to detail the extent to which California works directly with the Chinese government to expand their influence in higher education. The legislature's extensive green energy mandates and zero emission vehicle rules serve only to enrich Chinese companies. As NAS succinctly states, "China could hardly ask for more willing partners than California’s Democratic Party or for a better vehicle to produce politicized science and law than the University of California." 

Reversing the Finding

President Trump ordered Lee Zeldin to conduct a review of the basis for the EPA's endangerment finding over carbon dioxide that dates back to 2009. Trump gave Zeldin a deadline of Feb. 19 to report back. Apparently he has submitted his report to the president, but as yet has declined to release his findings publicly. So we continue to wait on pins and needles for a final determination.

Now for some good news.

No Longer Corps to the Mission 

This week, the Trump administration wiped out the American Climate Corps, which had hopes of hiring 20,000 young people to work on climate issues—kind of like the Peace Corps for climate. President Biden wanted this to be his climate legacy, but Congress refused to fund it, and it languished. Trump put it out of its misery upon taking office.

Bringing Real Energy Production Back

Here's a nice summary of everything the Trump administration is doing to make the United States a global energy leader once again.

— @SecretaryBurgum is reopening leasing on 625 million acres of federal waters
— @SecretaryWright is restarting liquefied natural gas exports
— @SecDuffy is turning back the Biden-era auto mandates
— @epaleezeldin is deregulating American energy production pic.twitter.com/hCXSWQbswQ

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 20, 2025

(RELATED: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Could Spell Big Trouble for Climate Grants)