Many will consider this announcement to be a "death knell" for the planet.

“After 16 years, EPA will formally reconsider the Endangerment Finding,” said Administrator Zeldin. “The Trump Administration will not sacrifice national prosperity, energy security, and the freedom of our people for an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas. We will follow the science, the law, and common sense wherever it leads, and we will do so while advancing our commitment towards helping to deliver cleaner, healthier, and safer air, land, and water.”  

It is actually the exact opposite for both the planet and the United States.

Nobody wants to live in a dystopian hellscape.  Nobody.

Yet a couple of billion people do -- in other countries.  We used to have significant bits and pieces of it right here in America; I grew up in a "soft" version of it, where the flowing river water had few fish in it, and those that were there you could not eat.  We fixed that and today that same body of water is clear rather than being murky all the time -- and the fish aren't full of poisons.

Ditto for the air -- when I was growing up you choked going past the chemical plants.  Today there are still chemical plants, including some in the same places, but they emit far less and you can't smell them anymore.

As I've pointed out when it comes to gasoline engines in production vehicles we solved more than 99% of the problem with evaporative fuel cannisters, port fuel injection, catalytic converters and oxygen sensors in the exhaust which, under computer control, reduce hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions to nearly zero once the catalyst and sensors have reached operating temperatures.  While you can still "smell" a gas car on a cold start because the sensors and cat require heat to operate and thus do not come online instantly within a couple of minutes both are operating and the odor -- and emissions -- are basically gone.  What's left is carbon dioxide which is the subject of this "endangerment" finding -- when in fact CO2 is plant food.

Gas engines that run at stochiometric (that is, exactly balanced between the fuel and air ratios) mixtures produce very little CO and it is unburned fuel that produces HC emissions.  Engine designers try to have the unburned fuel amount be zero (you obviously paid for it and that which is not burned doesn't produce energy thus it is wasted) but zero is unattainable.  The computer reads oxygen in the exhaust and instantaneously adjusts the mixture by controlling the amount of fuel injected, and the catalytic converter burns up the small extra amount of unburned fuel that inevitably remains, reducing it to CO2.

I'm not kidding about CO2 being plant food; it really is.  If you talk to anyone who has a greenhouse on a commercial basis you'll find many of them intentionally pump in more CO2 because up to about 1,000 ppm, or somewhat more than double the average in the air, plant growth increases.  Of course a greenhouse is expensive and you want to boost output -- and CO2 is reasonably cheap.

The average indoor CO2 concentration is around 1,000 ppm as well.  Why?  Because few people have a lot of plants (which absorb CO2 and produce O2) there are animals inside (which expire CO2) and we deliberately limit air exchange inside a building because we'd prefer that the heated and cooled air we spend money to produce stay in the building.  Some does leak out and in, obviously, and has to because otherwise you'd consume all the oxygen (and die) if there was no exchange -- but limiting it by closing doors and windows when you have the heat or A/C on is necessary so you can pay the power or gas bill.

Given the impending return of sanity to the EPA and the removal of said "CO2" finding crap, let me say this to the various entities in Government and the carmakers:

STOP the en****ification of modern engines and vehicles.  A few non-exhaustive (but some of the most-egregious) examples:

• All the modern 10-speed automatic transmissions suck.  Its not that you can't make a 10 speed automatic.  You can; look in modern Class 8 trucks.  Now look at the size of said gearbox.  What you can't do is stuff that much crap inside a case of the size required for a light truck or car and not have to size down things that take load.  When you do that they break because there just isn't enough "beef" where there needs to be.  ALL of the modern ones are **** no matter who makes them; they all fail at ridiculously-elevated rates because there is just too much crap to cram into the space available at that level of complexity.   Cut that **** out chasing the last half mile per gallon -- and yes, when the EPA gets rid of such stupidity in the next few months give me a nice six-speed ATX or MTX in a light truck that will run for 300,000 miles with reasonable maintenance.  I'll buy said vehicle, assuming the below is also done at the same time.
  
  
• Cut the **** with the engines.  Same thing applies here.  Nobody has made "cylinder deactivation" work without severe impacts on service life.  ALL such implementations, irrespective of manufacturer, have outrageously-accelerated lifter and complete engine failure rates and in addition these failures are usually without warning and immediately strand you when they occur.  Lifter failures destroy engines -- if not directly then indirectly because when they fail hardened steel material goes into the oil and all through the engine and that is much harder than the bearing material either in the rods and mains or worse, parent bore material in lifter bores, rocker shafts and similar in the head which today is basically always aluminum.  Yes, the oil filter catches most of it but not all, and if you've ever taken apart an engine that has failed or is in the process of it the sparklies are all over the place and they're highly-abrasive -- effectively sandpaper on those surfaces.  The same is true for the idiocy displayed by manufacturers using variable-displacement oil pumps; the problem here is that at low RPM and load once some wear in the engine occurs over time you have insufficient oil pressure to insure lubrication throughout the engine at idle.  This in turn leads to a spun bearing and the engine chucks a rod through the side of the block.  Oil pump and drive failures nearly always destroy the engine when they occur; the oil pump in an engine is equivalent to the heart in a living being and when your heart stops pumping you die.  We've known how to make extremely reliable positive-displacement and simple oil pumps for decades and doing stupid things like driving them with a belt which is difficult to change (hello Chevy on the new "Duramax" engine line; you must drop the transmission to change it) is either stupid or intentionally done to cause engine failures that economically destroy the vehicle and any manufacturer that does either should have all of their "engineers" summarily executed.
  
  
• Both of these first two items are done to try to get another tenth or two of a mile per gallon.  The cost of that is turning what should be a 300,000 mile drivetrain with ordinary maintenance into one that is lucky to get out of the 60,000 mile warranty without blowing up.  The ecological cost of making vehicles "disposable" like this is outrageous, if it happens to you when at some distance from home (e.g. on vacation) it adds thousands to the damage you suffer and all of this **** must be stopped; it is a direct consequence of "fuel economy mandates" and similar bull**** including trying to drive people into EVs.  We have known how to for decades, and can today, build gas and diesel drive lines that easily go well beyond 200,000 miles with nothing other than ordinary maintenance.  The failure rates on these newer vehicles in extremely expensive driveline components is intentional; whether it is driven by companies trying to make vehicles disposable and destroying the used-car market so as to force you to buy another $80,000 vehicle or whether driven by government mandate -- or some of each -- it must end right now.  With the government mandates gone if it continues then as citizens we should burn the automakers to the ground along with eating all of their executives and their entire family -- they have known how to build durable drivelines for more than 20 years and proof of it is found in all the 20 year old ones that are still in perfectly good operating condition and have never had a single internal component touched.  There are FOUR such vehicles, all 2015 or older with three of them old enough to drink, two of them having more than a quarter-million miles on them and both the others well north of 100k miles on the clock in my direct family.
  
  
• Diesels are a more-complex question.  It is without debate that catalytic converters work.  But what is also without debate is that design decisions were made by automakers that wildly shorten the driveline service life of modern diesels in light and medium-duty trucks.  This has to be reversed.  One of the most-serious is placing the DPF and catalytic converter in the same housing; what prevents a manufacturer from separating them with a flanged joint between them and at the DPF rear, with both housings made of stainless steel, so the DPF can be easily removed and either cleaned or replaced?  Nothing, as far as I can tell, yet nobody does.  Having a 100,000 mile or so service interval part that costs thousands to replace due to being integrated with the (very expensive) catalytic converter is nuts.  So are other stupid things like fuel systems that, when they fail, spray shrapnel throughout and operate at extremely high pressures, so a stuck injector event is virtually guaranteed to instantly destroy the engine, and DEF systems that, if they fail, immediately disable the engine even though it is still perfectly operational, purely on emissions grounds, and again, they're very expensive to fix.  Again the 90% solution was achieved 20 years ago and there's no reason we can't return to it -- and return to 300,000-500,000 mile service life for the drivetrain by doing so.
  
  
• Nobody wants the undisclosed cost of all the ******ned electronic and inextricably linked to required control system doo-dads in modern vehicles, never mind the privacy-violating and sold to insurance company data gathering garbage they typically come with not as extra-cost options but as mandatory components.  The difference in vehicle insurance between a car with all that **** on it (complex "infotainment" touch-screens you have to use to turn on the heat or A/C) never mind the dozen external sensors in the bumper and similar which are $300 each and you can't replace them without the dealer recalibrating the system can easily put 30% or more on your car insurance premium because this crap gets damaged or destroyed in even the most-minor fender-bender or even from a rock kicked up by the vehicle in front of you.  Nowhere is this more-evident than in all the crap aimed forward and through the windshield -- rocks are a thing, cracked windshields are a thing and now they're frequently $1,000+ expenses for this exact reason when the glass itself is $200 installed -- and don't tell me it isn't because a couple of years ago I had the windshield replaced in my truck in my own driveway for that money.  Never mind that a simple double-DIN stereo, if you think the factory one sucks, can trivially be ripped out by any half-competent person and replaced with something better where the modern ones are deliberately both custom-sized and integrated into things like the aforementioned A/C controls so you can't do that, they all spy on you and when the screen fails its not $300 for a Pioneer bought from Crutchfield, its $2,000 for an OE replacement and you have no choice as otherwise you have no heat, A/C or the DEFROSTER.  You can buy a nice double-DIN aftermarket stereo for $300 or so that does both Apple Carplay and Android Auto if you want it, it will work with the factory speakers, a $200 interface keeps your steering wheel controls and in many cases (Maestro) also gives you diagnostics and engine gauges, yes it will run a backup camera, you can plug a 128Gb USB Key into it with your music on it (or stream from your phone on Spotify or whatever) and if it breaks its $300 to replace it just like the original one you put in.  Cut the **** GM, Ford, Chrysler and more -- or **** off and may the children and spouses of your executives be sodomized and fed to feral hogs while you're forced to watch, never mind the forced data collection which is then sold to your insurance company out the back door and used to **** you up the ass with a cactus.  The latter must be barred at a federal level with criminal penalties including forced disgorgement of the entire original purchase price, with all paid or imputed interest, to the consumer if the data is leaked or sold no matter how it happens.  If the car companies want to sell you a convenience feature (like being able to remote-unlock your door) as an opt-in, paid feature then fine but operational data, like where you are, how fast you're going, and whether you accelerate and/or brake belongs to you because the car belongs to you.  Period.  I have no issue with using this data under subpoena if there's a criminal case but the practice of routinely violating your privacy must end.  Likewise, the routine gouging for things like electronic key replacement, which takes seconds, the key fob itself is $20 but the dealer tool that is required and thus they often charge $300 or more plus a mandatory tow must STOP.
  
  
• Stop all of the above and I can buy a $30,000 3/4 ton truck in "work truck" trim -- cloth or vinyl seats, nothing beyond power windows and locks, turn a key to start the car, airbags and ABS.  I can replace the stereo if I want (which will suck from the factory, but it's double-DIN and has a screen so the mandatory backup camera is there.)  It has a reliable driveline with a 6-speed ATX or MTX and the driveline will reliably make it to and beyond 200,000 miles without anything internal to it failing -- and the ATX will have a dip stick and drain plug so said maintenance, along with oil changes, are trivial and inexpensive.  Those who want the "tarted up" vehicles can buy them but those who don't can buy a vehicle without all that crap on it, no "subscriptions" and no data going back to the manufacturer that is then sold off to third parties or can be stolen and used to screw me.  I can choose between gas and diesel engines based on my intended use case.  Yes, they'll get a bit less fuel economy than today but not much less and in exchange I have reliability again; not being stranded 1,000 miles from home on vacation is a lot more important to me than 1mpg and this is a choice Americans have a right to make.  I will buy such a truck right now by the way, and so will, in all probability, a lot of other people -- all made right here in America.

Now let me come back and do air conditioners.....

Oh, and as for the en****ification encompassed in things like Stacey Abrams' garbage-can "non-profit" retrofitting homes with induction stoves?  Yeah, they're $3,000 which is wildly more than a standard gas or electric range but of course if you can force the taxpayer to cover and kick back 10% to Stacey's scam she loves every minute of it -- but she ought to be rotting in a prison cell for the rest of her life learning all about the joys of forced gay sex for running that crap and trying to steal YOUR money.

Why?

Because you can buy a single-burner, 120V plug-in induction plate for about $100!  Yeah, there's even cheaper around but seriously, at just over $100 you can get a high-quality one that absolutely does what an induction range does but with one burner instead of four -- and it requires no special power, plugging right into any existing outlet in your kitchen.  Go look on Amazon; they're all over the place.  I bought one quite a while ago and I use it a lot; in fact, unless I need more than one burner at a time I never use my regular stovetop anymore.  Why?  Because the induction burner is faster, uses far less electricity, has the instant heat control of gas (unlike common electric), food doesn't burn onto it since the surface doesn't heat other than by the pan or pot placed on top so clean-up is a simple wipe-down and it doesn't heat the house.  I can (and do) also unplug it and toss it in my camper when traveling since it weighs nearly nothing and I can run it on limited power off my inverter when "off grid" -- something you obviously can't do with an ordinary range.  The correct, non-scam answer to the original question is 1/30th of the price of Stacey's grift and thus nobody can steal $3,000 per person if you do it this way because there's no reason for the government to incentivize or subsidize anything -- YOU JUST ****ING BUY ONE, USE IT AND ENJOY THE ENERGY SAVINGS PLUS CONVENIENCE.

All of this "green" **** from the government has this same basic problem.  Its all intentionally done at a ridiculous level of theft and scam and in virtually every case all of it is unnecessary.  For almost no money if you have an older home or one that is "leaky" (air wise) and thus very inefficient in terms of energy use you can solve 80+% of it with a couple of cans of spray foam, tubes of calk, weatherstripping for the doors and similar.  Oh yes you can do better at ten or even a hundred or more times the cost but 80% of the problem can literally be solved for under $100 and an afternoon of your time if you get off your ass.  No government anything, except perhaps a video or three explaining how (for those who can't figure it out themselves -- its pretty obvious unless you really are missing a few cans out of your mental six-pack) is required.

The EPA's impending ruling is a good start -- but only a start.

The intentional driving of cost higher, whether it be through "wind and solar" as power generation rather than coal and gas, fuel "economy" standards on vehicles, the same for water heaters, furnaces and similar along with air conditioning and similar gear must stop and be reversed right now.  MUCH of the inflation of the last 20 years has been driven through this scam and there is not only no reason for it environmentally it is screwing ordinary Americans out of trillions of dollars a year.

I'm specifically speaking of the utter scam run on people when it comes to environmental issues.

Its not really their fault, but on the other hand it is: They simply don't have the experience of what was, as they weren't born yet (or in some cases were born but not yet sentient -- the age at which that occurs does vary some but nobody can argue they were at birth, for example.)

Further, and probably more-seriously, the decline of written material means that those who seek to lie can trivially erase things they don't want to admit for the purpose of deliberately misleading you.  That's hard to do with a physical book except by burning it, which leaves plenty of evidence since the book used to exist and no longer does.  In the world of electronic media you can change "history" and unless someone made a copy beforehand nobody's the wiser.  Witness the change in the dictionary definition of the word "vaccine" (yeah, go look it up -- you'll be shocked.)

Of course the physical presence of a book cannot compel you to read it.  Witness those who have never read both The Federalist and The Anti-Federalist.  If you're among them you have no concept of what the Founders envisioned and why the Constitution was constructed as it is, nor why the 10 original Amendments were required in order to ratify it.  Those two written works are literally the debate between the Founders of this nation and present two quite-different aspects to that debate and process.  You cannot claim to understand that process and thus are not qualified to enter into a debate as to what is and isn't appropriate to change unless you've read both and thus understand how the original decisions were reached.

Politicians and others who seek to influence society often pander to the part of the population who never had the background information to make informed choices.  One of the key points in the modern era is usually "environmentalism"; the goal itself is good but the incremental improvement available in America now is tiny and the cost astronomical.  That's right -- we already did it and those who lived through that time period know it and we don't have to read about it -- we directly experienced it.

There is a basic principle that essentially-always applies: The first 80% of any problem is trivially solved at reasonable cost.  The last 20% is exponentially harder as one approaches 100%, and further the resource expenditure in doing so, whether in time, month or both, goes vertical.

People claim we must "save Gaia" (the planet), for example.

Reality: The planet, in the context of America, is in better condition today than at any time in the last 150 years.

You think not?

Let's count just a few examples out of literal thousands:

• The predominant heating fuel until fairly recently was wood or raw coal in either an open fire or crude stove.  Combustion of same was woefully incomplete emitting a huge amount of tar and similar into the air.  While wood is still used in some areas for efficiency reasons most stoves are now of either a "rocket" or catalytic design and thus emit much less.
  
  
• Even in the 1970s the water was wildly polluted as was the air in the United States.  I distinctly remember both including watering eyes whenever driving past a chemical plant (of which there was one near my home), river water you could not safely swim in nor eat the fish from and similar.  Today there are no chemical plant fumes there and the water in the same place is clean -- and you can eat the fish.  This is true literally all over America; Love Canal anyone?  Not one person younger than about 50 remembers any of this but it is fact.
  
  
• Until 1975 there were no catalytic converters on cars.  Every single vehicle stank -- badly -- from the moment it was started until it was shut off.  The early catalysts, however, were not particularly efficient and because those engines still had no closed-loop control they were hot enough to start fires if you parked over dry material -- and sometimes did.  Modern closed-loop systems showed up in the early 1990s; the reduction of pollutant emissions by modern vehicles compared with engines prior to that time exceeds 99%.  At the same time fuel economy dramatically improved because closed-loop operation allows the engine to run at almost-exactly stochiometric mixtures and therefore the engine does not deliberately waste fuel to avoid damage from lean combustion.  Indeed the CO reduction in modern automobiles is so extreme that it is actually fairly difficult to kill yourself deliberately via CO poisoning using a modern car engine where with older, pre-catalyst engines you could literally do so in minutes.  Simply put unless you're older than 40 in the US you never lived in a world where air quality was this good.  All the bellyaching about vehicle emissions and thus the claimed "need "for electric cars in the modern world, in short, is flat-out bull****.
  
  
• Older coal-fired things, whether power plants or steel mills, were hideously nasty emitters of pollutants.  Modern coal-fired power plants (which the EPA is now trying to kill with impossible to meet regulations) are 90-95% cleaner in both Sulfur Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide emissions compared with the same plant in the 1950s yet nobody ever considers that for the exact same amount of electricity produced they now emit 1/20th of the pollution they did just 50 years ago and will keep the lights on as long as they have fuel.  Nonetheless they're not as efficient as natural gas since the combustion temperature is lower and they cannot run combined-cycle, which natural gas plants can -- and thus on a per-unit-of-energy cost basis, depending on the price of both fuels, natural gas is frequently cheaper.

The Laws of Thermodynamics are not suggestions; no law passed by man can change them.  All transformations of energy involve loss; this is guaranteed by thermodynamics.  Thus the most efficient way to do a given thing is always to use whatever form of energy is available that can be used directly without transformations and is of lowest all-in cost.

In addition intermittent sources of electricity (e.g. solar and wind), for example, will never win compared with either atomic energy or combustion fuels and all of them require seriously-toxic chemical processes to construct, have limited lifetimes and present serious disposal costs and environmental mitigation on the back end that everyone always ignores.  Windmill blades are made out of fiberglass, which in turn is made from oil, and they are not recyclable.  In addition they kill birds by the millions because while it looks like the blades are turning slowly at the tip the rate of movement is in fact nearly supersonic and a bird cannot see it.  Solar cells require nasty chemicals and rare earth metals to produce which in return requires digging up huge amounts of land to acquire them and when either damaged or they wear out they too present serious environmental risk.  If destroyed by bad weather such as hailstorms the damage to the environment from the release of those materials (onto the ground under them) is severe and immediate.  In addition both are unreliable and this efficiency problem cannot be overcome because while solar and wind are great when the sun is shining or wind blowing (1) collecting that energy covers vast amounts of land compared with all the other alternatives and (2) you have to have available another form of generation all the time, and pay for it to be available, otherwise you have no electricity when they're not available.  Since covering that potential lack of capacity is equally expensive as just buying and staffing the nuclear or carbon-fueled plant in the first place you're basically choosing to double your power bill and may I remind you that every single thing we do in our economy -- and thus its price -- has energy in it.  Your grocery store, for example, needs both lights and the power to run the refrigerators or you have no meat, dairy and similar -- and that power has to work 100% of the time.

Further while heat pumps for heating use win in some circumstances against a natural gas furnace they lose a good part of the time, and not by a little either, especially when it gets materially cold outside.  The exact cross-over point is easy to compute  given the price of both power and gas along with the efficiency of the heat pump at a given temperature (its just simple math) but in every case where electricity has been moved off carbon-based fuels to renewables it is a near-certainty that natural gas will win on cost -- and not by a little and in addition the maximum demand for heating is of course in the winter at night -- when there is never any solar energy available.  I've written a column on this; heat pumps only win in moderate temperatures if electricity is cheap or if you're forced to use Propane because there is no piped gas; otherwise you are way ahead to simply burn the gas directly in your furnace.

This same cost issue applies to all commerce!  If you wish to force businesses, for example, to use heat pump or other electric heating fuels you will radically increase their costs and guess who gets to pay that in the price paid in the store?

Further natural gas is a nearly-pollutant-free energy resource.  Yes, it produces CO2 when burned (and water vapor); neither is a pollutant.  CO2 is plant food.  Since you either eat the plants yourself or you eat what eats the plants increasing the growth rate of plants is a public good rather than a menace.  You would like lower cost food rather than higher -- or worse, not enough food at all -- yes?  And may I remind you that one of the key components of fertilizer for crops is in fact made from..... natural gas!

It is true that the climate changes.  It always has and always will.  What is not true is that we are evil SOBs who are out to destroy the climate or the Earth generally by polluting it; on the contrary; the data is that has been no change at all in, for example, the total energy in tropical cyclones since we began to be able to accurately compute that (e.g. since the satellite era began and thus we can "see" all the hurricanes where before satellites many were undetected since unless the storm hit land  -- and many do not -- only the poor SOB who ran into it at sea by accident knew about it.)

Indeed some of the things we've done to clean up the planet have actually allowed more solar energy to reach the surface.  Specifically we have insisted on far lower-sulfur fuels for ocean-going ships which reduces sulfur dioxide emissions and that makes the air more-clear thus more solar energy reaches the surface.  The same thing is true for coal-fired power plants over the last 50 years; that is, we have in fact increased the amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet  by a small amount because we made the air cleaner.  This of course is the exact opposite of what you're told and sold by those screaming about "climate change."

There are lots of people who wish to lie to you about both history and where we are now for the purpose of making money.  Never forget that in any regulated line of business -- that is, where there's a monopoly of any sort whether "natural" or otherwise, since profit margins are capped the only way to make more money is to force the total amount of spending to go up.

Power companies are natural monopolies; there is only one set of power lines to your house or business.  You have a personal incentive to, for example, improve the seal around your windows because it reduces your heating and air conditioning costs.  The power company cannot cause you to consume more power by breaking your windows or removing your weather stripping and their profit margin is capped by the rate-setting process so the only way for them to make more money is to "agree" that if you are forced to use electricity instead of gas the climate will be irrevocably ruined and thus you will be compelled to spend more money to heat your house or buy and operate a vehicle even though that claim of "permanent ruination" is a lie.

Likewise the car companies are all in on the government mandating all these new "nannies" (e.g. lane-keeping, blind spot monitoring and similar.)  Why is it that the crash rate has not gone down if these things actually work?  Obviously they do not work otherwise the crash rate would drop like a stone and it hasn't.  But what has happened is that the cost of cars and insurance has risen dramatically with a large part of the cost increase being in the mandated "nannies" and the expense when one of them gets broken; instead of a $200 windshield now its $1,000 because the camera and other sensors has to be realigned at the dealer.  The insurance company has its profit margin capped so the only way for them to make more money is to force up the cost of vehicles and collision repairs so they therefore can charge more for the insurance!  You are told this improves safety but the data says it has not; all it has done is drive up the price which you are forced to pay even if you don't buy a new car because you might be at fault in an accident and the other guy did buy the new car with all the fancy mandated gadgets on it.

If you're young you might fall for the "imminent ruination" of the environment and planet generally because you've never seen it so much worse than it is now.  You see, in 1970 you weren't alive -- but I was, and I remember it.  You've never seen America look like this because you were never alive when it did.

I was.

It no longer is.

The air is no longer poisoned.  The factories and chemical plants no longer belch eye-watering fumes and poison the water to the point you cannot swim in it or eat the fish.  The tailpipe of your car no longer belches fumes that can kill you in minutes and being caught in traffic does not cause you to choke on the unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide.  Earth has quite-literally never been healthier; no longer do you get polio from your drinking water as that disease is fecal/oral in transmission.  No, it was not the vaccine that stopped it; it was in fact the improvement in public sanitation as the case rate was dropping like a stone before the vaccine was introduced.

So-called "Green Energy" is a scam; it is neither green nor are we destroying the planet by exploiting carbon.  On the contrary; we have wildly cleaned up the planet from our previous actions, it is in better condition today than any time in the last 150 years and all of that has happened while we have built more vehicles and consumed more carbon-based energy than ever.  Indeed the cleaning of the air has led to more solar radiation reaching the surface of the Earth because we cleaned up the air, not the other way around, and this is a good thing since I presume you'd prefer not to choke on dirty air.

Don't fall for the scam: It is nothing more than yet another grift designed to make your poor for the benefit of a few monopolists and their cronies in government.  Tell them to cut that crap out and if they don't you will cut them out rather than be impoverished by their deliberate, malicious lies.