Free Republic

A major push to replace America’s gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles has not borne much fruit yet. According to a new study, America’s 2.1 million electric cars and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) have saved the country some gasoline. A little. A smidge. In 2021, they saved almost two days’ worth of gasoline. It’s a hard number to trim America uses a lot of gasoline. The numbers are staggering. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans burned about 369 million gallons of gasoline per day in 2021. And that number was down a bit from historical highs. Many Americans drove fewer...

The term "pedestrian" has a derogatory meaning because peasants walked while nobles were "equestrians" and rode horses. The industrial revolution eliminated this class difference, as it did so many others, by making car ownership available to the masses until eventually Herbert Hoover was able to boast that "Republican prosperity has reduced and increased earning capacity” to "put the proverbial 'chicken in every pot' and a car in every backyard to boot." Democrats have spent two generations trying to get those cars out of every backyard. Biden is trying to bring back Obama's mileage standards that were estimated to raise car...

In a news cycle where the lack of transparency is revealed daily, it is refreshing when something previously opaque exposes its true motives. Such is the case for the Sierra Club and its desire to block oil and gas drilling. I’ve written many times on environmental groups’ influence over use of public lands and how they often use claims of some endangered flora or fauna as cover for their efforts to block any beneficial economic development, such as mineral extraction or agricultural activity. They cry about some critter when in fact it is really about control—control of public lands.

Multiple rural county sheriffs from Utah testified Thursday about the abusive use of police power by Bureau of Land Management rangers or forest protection officers with the U.S. Forest Service. They are asserting it is time to rein in the authority the agencies should have never been allowed to exercise. Sheriffs from San Juan, Kane and Garfield counties spoke in favor of HB155, sponsored by Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, which proposes to limit BLM rangers and forest protection officers from exercising police power over state and local laws unless someone's safety is at risk or federal contracts are in place...

More than 200 people crowded into the Monticello High School auditorium on February 7 for a public hearing on the proposed designation of endangered species status for the small population of Gunnision Sage Grouse in San Juan County. Representatives from the US Fish and Wildlife Service faced a mostly hostile but mostly respectful crowd. They were there to explain the rationale behind the proposed designation and how it may affect the area. Two rules are proposed: one would designate the bird as an endangered species and the other would designation large swaths of land as critical habitat. San Juan County...

You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

President Kennedy made one of his greatest speeches in Berlin. Some debate whether his German intonation was perfect -- "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- but the speech's venue certainly was perfect. Kennedy wanted a side-by-side comparison of limited government versus authoritarian government, and there was no better place to do that than in the artificially divided German city. The speech also employed powerful repetition: "Let them come to Berlin!" Today, there are those who say that America has become more like the dysfunctional, oppressed East Berlin of 1963 than its efficient, free contemporary to the West. New York Times columnist...

Richard Curtis’s eco-fascist snuff movie was a disaster for the green movement, I think we can all agree. Well, not quite all of us to judge by one or two bizarre comments and newspaper responses I’ve seen today. Let’s just dispense with a few of them. 1. It was an internet “hit.” (~~snip~~) 2. It was all part of Richard Curtis’s “cunning plan”. (~~snip~~) 3. Richard Curtis is a secret “denier” and devised the project as satire.(~~snip~~) 4. This was an unfortunate accident. It isn’t representative of the green movement.(~~snip~~) 5. It’s actually “funny” and people who don’t think so...

“10:10″ is a campaign to get people around the world to lower their carbon consumption by 10% in the year 2010. Global Warming and all that, you see. It’s quite a large, well-organized movement, funded in part by the British government.This morning, the 10:10 campaign released “No Pressure,” a much-anticipated video promoting the notion of compliance to the carbon-reduction drive, a video scripted by famed British screenwriter Richard Curtis (Notting Hill, Mr. Bean, etc.) and produced by a professional film crew with top-notch actors. However…Within minutes of its unveiling earlier today, “No Pressure” caused such an uproar that it was...

The Green Nazis: Environmentalism in the Third ReichBy Elmer June 19, 2009 2:14 PM Jurriaan Maessen, Infowars The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. It has been elaborately pointed out how the device of environmentalism is especially favoured by tyrants as a means of controlling their subjects. The current 'green' movement, as we know, is no exception. It has been nurtured from its very conception as a systematic eugenics operation by the deep pockets of the Rockefeller- and Ford Foundations. Throughout...

Many of our elected leaders, it seems, are being "green-washed." From the Governor's Mansion to the White House, public officials are racing to become the most radical supporter of clean energy, as well as the fiercest opponent of man-made climate change. Does anyone not think that green energy and man-made global warming are urgent priorities? Evidently, just those crazy global warming "deniers" — the American people. According to a recent Gallup environmental survey, global warming is last on the list of Americans' environmental worries. In fact, four in 10 Americans worry only a little or not at all about global...

With two-thirds of Oregon county governments, including Lane County, facing financial crises, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Monday urged residents to accept modest local property tax increases and more logging on federal forests to help stave off deep cuts in county law enforcement and other critical services. Those steps are just two of 54 recommendations in a task force report delivered to the governor on Monday. Kulongoski commissioned the report last year to address the imminent loss of about $238 million in annual federal timber payments, including $47 million a year to Lane County. The top recommendation was for Oregon...

A statewide cap on driving? Here’s the thing nobody is quite willing to say out loud about implementing California’s climate change law in the land use arena: The state may have to place an overall cap on vehicle miles traveled (VMT), even as it must accommodate more growth. Last Friday at UCLA Extension’s annual Land Use Law and Planning Conference, keynote speaker Anthony Eggert, senior policy advisor at the California Air Resources Board, issued what amounted to a plea for help from the 400 land use practitioners gathered in the room. CARB is charged with implementing AB 32. Land use...

Two more eco-terrorists sentenced Last modified Friday, June 1, 2007 7:40 PM PDT By: Associated Press - EUGENE, Ore. -- A federal judge sentenced two women to prison Thursday for their roles in arson fires around the West that caused more than $40 million in damage over a five-year period. Suzanne Savoie and Kendall Tankersley were the fifth and sixth of 10 radical environmentalists to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Eugene after they pleaded guilty to arson and conspiracy. All were members of an underground cell of the Earth Liberation Front known as "The Family." U.S. District Judge...

Environmentalism: So global-warming alarmists now want to limit our use of toilet paper. What's next, one-room shacks with bamboo fences? Don't laugh. That's also on their list of recommendations. Singer Sheryl Crow says she's spent most of her save-the-planet tour of campuses "trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming." Eureka! She's found a really practical idea. "I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting," Crow said.

BANGKOK, Thailand — After two reports predicting a warmer Earth where life is fundamentally changed, a U.N.-sponsored scientific panel next month will issue a third study describing how a united world can avert the worst, by embracing technologies ranging from nuclear power to manure controls. Under a best-case scenario for heading off severe damage, the global economy might lose as little as 3 percentage points of growth by 2030 in deploying technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says the panel's draft report, obtained by The Associated Press. But it won't be easy. "Governments, businesses and individuals all need to be pulling...

Millions of acres of prime recreational opportunities in Montana are threatened with closure. Your action could mean the difference between a "closed" sign and a "trail open" sign. Please take a moment to read the information below and act on the action items. the U.S. Forest Service is planning a de-facto Wilderness management regime on all "Recommended Wilderness Areas" (RWA). Under normal circumstances, the "Recommended" Wilderness classification is just that: a recommendation. The decision of "whether Wilderness" is supposed to be left to Congress and the American People. Sadly, the Northern Region of the U.S. Forest Service seems to think...

Time has always passed this town by. Created a century ago by legendary "Sugar King" Claus Spreckels to provide homes for his factory workers, Spreckels evokes an era when neighbors gathered on the front porches of sturdy Craftsman houses, stately Victorians and storybook cottages. People here still do that. But now, ironically, the distant past is reaching out to pull the town into the present. Monterey County officials have decreed that a 1907 map permitting 73 new homes is as valid today as when it was drawn. The development would immediately increase the size of Spreckels by 40 percent. Despite...

A thin white smile curves across the blank face of the South Pacific Ocean, more than a mile below. A little lower, the whiteness re-solves into an arc of breakers, and the tiny turboprop heads straight for them. Only at the last moment does a filament of land seem to emerge from the ocean. We touch down at Funafuti International Airport, Tuvalu’s only functioning airstrip,interrupting a soccer match on the runway. The islands of Tuvalu, scattered over 500,000 square miles of equatorial ocean midway between Hawaii and Aus-tralia, appear so wispy and are so low-lying, no more than 15 feet...

In case the rest of you are living in a cave, there are fires raging out of control in the Los Angeles/San Diego Area. They are so serious that many of us here in Southern Nevada are checking bed space and hotel rooms in case of major evacuations from the Los Angeles basin. As of the time of this writing, over 50,000 homes are threatened, and the situation is changing by the minute. At least 17 people are dead and it has consumed more than 800,000 acres stretching from the Mexican border to the suburbs northeast of Los Angeles. And...