Kristi Noem stays silent as South Dakota GOP cedes property rights

Remember Summit Carbon Solutions and that Green New Deal pipeline the company wanted to lay through the Dakotas, seizing people’s land in the process? Well, the project is back, and it’s stronger than ever. Evidently, supporting property rights and opposing Agenda 2030’s “carbon neutral” dystopia is too much to ask of South Dakota Republicans.

The state Senate’s Commerce and Energy Committee last week passed SB 201, which pre-empts all local ordinances and restrictions on carbon capture pipelines. These pipelines serve no purpose other than pleasing the gods of phantom global warming and satisfying the grift of green energy companies backed by government venture socialism. They do nothing other than capture and store carbon forever with no feasible endgame.

It’s hard to imagine this bill would get so much support from Senate leadership if Kristi Noem were vociferously opposed to it.

Local South Dakota counties have thrown up zoning and ordinance barriers to the pipelines’ construction. So Summit tried to get the state Public Utilities Commission to circumvent local ordinances. When that didn’t work, Summit lobbyists set about pre-empting local control by changing the law.

The bill, which passed the committee 7-2 and now heads to the state Senate floor, got support from six Republicans, including Majority Leader Casey Crabtree. If signed into law, SB 201 would categorically strip local governments of authority to regulate routing, setbacks, construction, operation, maintenance, and zoning permits of any carbon capture pipeline.

Obviously, the state has an interest in avoiding a scenario in which counties can block vital public works projects such as electricity lines or gas and oil pipelines. But this product offers nothing of substance except to buttress the lie that somehow carbon — the basis of human life itself — is a danger.

The entire premise that carbon is bad and is somehow causing warming is a lie. There has been no warming since 2015, despite an additional 450 billion tons of carbon emissions. In the same year renewables increased by 12% and coal decreased by 8%, U.S. carbon emissions still ticked up by 1.3% in 2022.

Carbon dioxide itself only composes 0.04% of the atmosphere; it has only increased by 0.01% over the past 60 years and was much higher in the past — long before the arrival of SUVs and trucks. Besides, humans are only responsible for a small percent of the carbon in the atmosphere.

The fact is that CO2 is vital for humanity. Carbon dioxide is basic plant food, and even NASA satellites show that it is greening the Earth. Trying to capture and sequester a false enemy is absurd and unworkable. One estimate shows that the carbon capture scam will cost Great Britain £40 billion (around $50.3 billion), and it will likely cost us a lot more if red states continue to embrace Green New Deal subsidies.

It is shocking that South Dakota lacks statewide leaders who speak with conviction about the fraud of global warming, the carbon capture grift, and the need to protect local control of property rights.

Many of these same South Dakota RINOs were reluctant to pass legislation banning local government from imposing mask mandates on schoolchildren because they hid behind the principle of local control. In 2021, after cities like Sioux Falls imposed mask mandates, the South Dakota House defeated House Bill 1136 and House Bill 1093, which sought to limit a municipality’s ability to lock down businesses or impose mask mandates.

Now lawmakers are keen to infringe upon local control because the lobbyists who control the state party are bought into the global warming scam. The difference, of course, is that during COVID some local governments were violating human rights, while in this case they are protecting property rights.

Where is Kristi Noem? It’s hard to imagine this bill would get so much support from Senate leadership if she were vociferously opposed to it. She is on TV every night decrying the invasion at the border, but what about the invasion of local property rights by a foreign-backed green energy company subsidized through government green energy subsidies and mandates?

Not only should Noem oppose the bill stripping local governments of the authority to regulate carbon pipelines, but she should champion the effort to bar eminent domain for such pipelines statewide.

HB 1219 by Rep. Jon Hansen (R) would prohibit the exercise of eminent domain for the construction of pipelines carrying carbon oxide. Such a common-sense bill should sail through the legislature, yet it barely squeaked by the House Commerce and Energy Committee last week by a vote of 7-6. Republicans have a 12-1 majority on that committee, yet five Republicans sided with the green land-grabbers, and now it faces a tougher battle in the more liberal GOP Senate.

Republicans control the state House 63-7 and the state Senate 31-4, but these insurmountable majorities are meaningless unless Noem fastidiously engages the legislative session on this and other issues. If she really wants to be the vice presidential nominee, she should begin by leading her own state legislature the way we’ve seen with Ron DeSantis in Florida.