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Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.

Robust law enforcement is crucial to a fair market. Companies that lie, cheat, or steal take advantage of consumers and the honest companies that they compete against. Congress gave the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau two powerful tools to combat fraudulent, deceptive, and abusive practices by big banks and financial predators. One was the authority to bring public enforcement actions against corporate violators, and the other was to send supervisory teams into the companies themselves, to inspect and monitor how they treat consumers. This chapter tells how the bureau developed and combined these tools and then used them to put over $12 billion back in the pockets of consumers who had been wronged. It also discusses how the bureau used supervisory oversight and enforcement actions to prevent or halt systematic ongoing abuses such as deceptive marketing of credit card add-on products and discriminatory auto lending.