Business
Biden-Harris Admin Reportedly Backs Off On Major Emissions Initiative At UN Climate Summit
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Nick Pope
The Biden-Harris administration is quietly backing away from a plan to use the ongoing U.N. climate conference to announce an international call for emissions reductions, according to Politico.
It is not clear whether it is because President-elect Donald Trump decisively won last week’s presidential election, but Biden-Harris officials reportedly intended to partner with several other countries in announcing “ambitious” carbon emissions reduction goals for 2035 before the announcement fell through, according to Politico, which cited a draft press release it obtained and several unnamed officials. Had it not fallen through, the announcement could have gone live as early as Monday, the first day of the conference — commonly referred to as COP29 — in Azerbaijan, a Caucasian petrostate with a questionable human rights record.
The aborted call to action would not have been legally binding, though it would have served as a signal to corporations to invest in emissions reduction initiatives and pave the way for other nations to get on board, according to Politico. The countries that would have been named in the announcement would have committed to slashing emissions across nearly every sector of their respective economies, and they would have taken aim at specific chemicals like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
The press release announcing the commitments “clearly won’t be published” at this point, one senior foreign diplomat told Politico, which granted the source anonymity to speak freely on the matter. Beyond Trump’s victory, other potential factors that may have interfered with the plan to roll out the 2035 targets include ambivalence from potential partners or bureaucratic logjam in the European Union, an American ally that typically collaborates on similar climate targets.
The U.S. circulated the idea of putting out a statement ahead of COP29 with “a lot of parties but never pushed for it to become something more,” a European official involved in climate negotiations told Politico.
Trump’s pending return to the White House is looming large at COP29, given the president-elect’s pledges to roll back green spending, regulations and initiatives and jack up fossil fuel production, according to CBS News. Moreover, Trump has also promised to withdraw again from the U.N.’s Paris Climate Accords, which he did in his first term before the Biden-Harris administration rejoined the deal.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Ryan Thorpe
“It would have been cheaper for each member of the prime minister’s delegation to go to the Keg, order a prime rib steak, a Caesar salad, baked garlic shrimp and a bottle of pinot noir for every meal.”
Break out the DVD player and aerate a few bottles of the 2015 Riesling, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has an important work trip.
The food bill for Trudeau’s four-day trip to Italy and Switzerland this June cost more than $71,000, including at least $43,000 spent on airplane food alone, according to the records.
That works out to an average meal cost of $145. Add it up and the total food bill averaged more than $1,700 per member of the Canadian delegation.
To put that in context: the average Canadian family of four spends about $1,400 on food per month, according to Canada’s Food Price Report.
“The per person food bill for Trudeau and his entourage on this trip was more than the average Canadian family spends on groceries in a month,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “It would have been cheaper for each member of the prime minister’s delegation to go to the Keg, order a prime rib steak, a Caesar salad, baked garlic shrimp and a bottle of pinot noir for every meal.”
The total taxpayer tab for the four-day trip came to nearly $1 million, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation from the Department of National Defence and the Privy Council Office.
The cost of the trip could be even higher, as “some accommodations were covered by Global Affairs Canada,” according to the records.
Trudeau travelled to Apulia, Italy, and Lucerne, Switzerland, between June 13 and 16, 2024, to attend a G7 Summit and a Summit on Peace in Ukraine.
All told, the trip cost Canadian taxpayers at least $918,000, according to the records.
Prior to take-off, government bureaucrats purchased $812 worth of junk food from a grocery store – including Red Bull, pop (Pepsi, Coke, Sprite), chocolate bars (Kit Kats, Twix’s, Reece’s Pieces) and candy (Swedish Berries, Fuzzy Peaches).
Government bureaucrats also swung by a record store and purchased $102 worth of DVDs for the flight, according to the records.
The purchases included the first season of Wednesday, a supernatural coming-of-age TV show based on the Addams Family, Madame Web, a superhero film, the sci-fi thriller Chronicle, and Witness, a 1995 crime movie starring Harrison Ford.
During the flights, the passengers were served meals that would be at home on the menu of a fine dining restaurant, alongside four types of wine – a 2021 Chardonnay, a 2015 Riesling, a 2018 Baco Noir and a 2021 Merlot.
Meals included veal piccata Milanese with potato, buttered green peas and broccoli, and lamb ribs with whole grain mustard sauce, rice pilaf and sauteed spinach.
Other dinner options included cheese ravioli with rose sauce, roasted red peppers and parmesan cheese, grilled chicken with lemon caper sauce, mashed potatoes and glazed carrots, and beef stroganoff with buttered noodles and snow peas.
For dessert, passengers chose between raspberry cheesecake coulis, chocolate and pistachio cake and Swiss chocolate cake.
“I like Sydney Sweeney as much as the next guy, but maybe Trudeau could do some actual work or download a movie on Netflix the next time he flies, instead of billing taxpayers for a DVD copy of Madame Web,” Terrazzano said. “While he’s at it, maybe Trudeau could forgo the Swiss chocolate cake while Canadians back home are lining up at food banks in record numbers.”
Trudeau travelled with an entourage ranging from 36 to 41 people during the four-day trip, including two coordinators of digital and creative content, a videographer, and a photographer, according to the records.
This is far from the first time a short trip for Trudeau meant a big bill for taxpayers.
Trudeau’s six-day trip to the Indo-Pacific region in September 2023 included more than $223,000 spent on airplane food, according to records obtained by the CTF.
That entire trip came with a taxpayer tab of nearly $2 million.
In 2022, Stewart Wheeler, who was Canada’s chief of protocol at the time, told a Parliamentary committee the government would bring down the cost of international travel.
“We recognize that the system that we had in place was not delivering the kind of oversight and control that Canadian taxpayers deserve,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler’s comments came after Governor General Mary Simon spent $100,000 on inflight catering during a nine-day trip to the Middle East in March 2022.
“The government promised to bring the cost of international travel down, but taxpayers are still getting stuck with outrageous bills,” Terrazzano said. “The government needs to figure out how to fly overseas without spending more on food in a few days than four families spend on groceries in an entire year.”
From StosselTV
The government promised to expand broadband, build hundreds of thousands of EV chargers, and to bring back semiconductor jobs. They delivered delays, waste, and failure. Why? Because they spend your money, not their own.
After three years and $65 billion spent to expand broadband, not a single person has yet been connected.
Also, two years into Biden’s $7.5 billion EV charging stations initiative, which was supposed to build 500,000 stations, only seven have been built.
The CHIPS Act promised to bring semiconductor jobs back to America. But the money got tied up in DEI quotas, climate pledges, and union mandates.
When bureaucrats spend other people’s money, they have little incentive to spend it carefully. Our new video explains why government should leave building things to the private sector.
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Prior to Stossel TV he hosted a show on Fox Business and co-anchored ABC’s primetime newsmagazine show, 20/20.
Stossel’s economic programs have been adapted into teaching kits by a non-profit organization, “Stossel in the Classroom.” High school teachers in American public schools now use the videos to help educate their students on economics and economic freedom. They are seen by more than 12 million students every year.
Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. Other honors include the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the George Foster Peabody Award.
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