Free Republic

UN-backed event ends with unusual call from civil society groups to end capitalism A UN-backed conference in Venezuela has ended with a declaration to scrap carbon markets and reject the green economy. The Margarita Declaration was issued at the end of a four-day meeting of around 130 green activist groups, which the Venezuelan government hosted in order to raise the volume of civil society demands in UN discussions on climate change. “The structural causes of climate change are linked to the current capitalist hegemonic system,” the final declaration said. “To combat climate change it is necessary to change the system.”...

Ethanol and other biofuel mandates and subsidies got started when politicians bought into claims that we are rapidly depleting our petroleum, and fossil-fuel-driven global warming is boiling the planet. Hydraulic fracturing destroyed the depletion myth. It also reminds us that “peak oil” applies only if we wrongly assume that resource needs and technologies never change. The 18-year “hiatus” in planetary warming has forced alarmists to change their terminology to climate change, climate disruption and extreme weather mantras – which allow them to continue demanding that we stop using the hydrocarbons that provide 82% of the energy that makes our economy,...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged a company cofounded by Paul Pelosi Jr. with fraud on Wednesday after learning that two convicted criminals were running the business. Paul Pelosi Jr., the son of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), was the president and chief operating officer of Natural Blue Resources Inc., an investment company he cofounded that focuses on “environmentally-friendly” ventures. The SEC charged four individuals with fraud, including former New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya, and suspended trading in the company’s stock. Pelosi owned over 10 million shares in the company in 2009

People who say they are concerned about climate change use more electricity than those who say the issue is 'too far away to worry about', government-commissioned study finds

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Neighbors are tattling on neighbors for wasting water and some are taking their drought shaming to social media. If you’ve ever had the feeling you’re being watched while you water your lawn, there’s a good chance you are during this historic drought. In Sacramento, water wasters can face fines, and the enforcer may be someone who lives right next door. Terrance Davis with the city department of utilities says he’s seeing a trend of drought shaming. “Our water use complaint calls have gone up exponentially from the last 2 years,” he said. Karen Halbo lives in River...

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly floated a rule claiming authority to bypass the courts and unilaterally garnish paychecks of those accused of violating its rules, a power currently used by agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service..... ....Critics said the threat of garnishing wages would be a powerful incentive for people to agree to expensive settlements rather than fight EPA charges. EPA officials did not respond to repeated questions by The Washington Times about why they thought it was necessary to garnish people’s wages. The EPA announced the plan last week in a notice in the Federal Register, saying...

The trite joke used to be that right-wing zealots would look for communists under the bed. A pair of political commentators writing at Bloomberg.com apparently can find them at the Cato Institute, or perhaps at LewRockwell.com. According to venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and Eric P. Liu, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, "radical libertarians" are the "new communists." The authors acknowledge the apparent contradiction. "Most people would consider radical libertarianism and communism polar opposites: The first glorifies personal freedom. The second would obliterate it. Yet the ideologies are simply mirror images," they contend. "Both attempt to answer...

There was a time, before the baby-boom generation took over, when we took pride in the achievements of our builders, producers, and innovators. There was always great celebration when settler families got a phone, a tractor, a bitumen road, or electric power. An oil strike or a gold discovery made headlines, and people welcomed new businesses, new railways, and new inventions. Science and engineering were revered, and the wealth delivered by these human achievements enabled the builders and their children to live more rewarding lives, with more leisure, more time for culture and crusades, and greater interest in taking better...

Environmental Protection Agency workers have done some odd things recently. Contractors built secret man caves in an EPA warehouse, an employee pretended to work for the CIA to get unlimited vacations and one worker even spent most of his time on the clock looking at pornography. It appears, however, that a regional office has reached a new low: Management for Region 8 in Denver, Colo., wrote an email earlier this year to all staff in the area pleading with them to stop inappropriate bathroom behavior, including defecating in the hallway. In the email, obtained by Government Executive, Deputy Regional Administrator...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — More than 75 scientists are appealing to President Barack Obama to create a policy for preserving old-growth forest. The U.S. and Canadian scientists sent a letter to the president on Wednesday urging the U.S. Forest Service to draw up plans to conserve ecosystems distinguished by old trees, accumulations of dead woody material and diversity of plant life. Most are found in the Pacific Northwest or Southeast Alaska. The scientists urge Obama to manage old-growth forest for conservation instead of timber production.

The U.S. government funded research into methane emissions from sheep digestive systems — flatulence and burps — to see why some sheep produce more of the greenhouse gas than others. Researchers with the Energy Department’s Joint Genome Institute wanted to find out exactly why animals of the same species produce different levels of methane. The ultimate hope of the the research is to find ways to breed livestock that produce less methane when they pass gas. “The deep sequencing study contributes to this breeding program by defining the microbial contribution to the methane trait, which can be used in addition...

Trailer Talk: Eco-Terrorism 'Night Moves' Downplays Own Subject Matter by Christian Toto 31 Mar 2014 Both The Company You Keep and The East, films which portrayed eco-terrorists in a favorable light, tanked at the box office. So is it any wonder the trailer for the new film Night Moves downplays the eco-nature of its protagonists? The thriller casts Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg and Peter Scarsgaard as three environmental radicals who decide to take action against their corporate targets. Trailers are famous for giving away too much of their stories. In the case of Night Moves, the trailer only touches on...

Approximately thirty miles from my front door is a West Virginia, coal-fired power plant that was recently shut-down by the last round of Obama-imposed EPA mandates. Now the word comes down from Washington that Obama has ordered the EPA to institute another batch of non-congressionally-approved regulations, which are certain to place other West Virginia power plants in jeopardy. In another glaring lie mined by the administration, Obama says these decisions will help the environment.

A lot of attention was generated by last week's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcement of a proposed regulation to cut carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels — all by 2030. Aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the effort is being billed as flexible, far-reaching and even a money-saver for American citizens. The policy is a homerun for the Obama administration, improving everything from our skies to our pocketbooks, right? Not so fast. To truly understand the implications of the EPA's announcement, it's worth sifting through the hype and asking a few clarifying questions.

WASHINGTON - Just when our economy is shrinking, President Obama wants to impose harsh environmental rules that will kill jobs, raise energy costs and impose new burdens on business. One week after the government said the U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter, for the first time since 2011, Obama is calling for severe new coal emissions rules that many Democrats in Congress say will hurt their states and its economies. They will result in widespread job losses with estimates of up to half a million workers, and likely much more than that if the new rules are fully...

Coming on the heels of recent studies that suggest destabilization of part of the West Antarctic ice sheet has begun, a study shows that the Antarctic ice sheet began melting about 5,000 years earlier than previously thought - at the end of last ice age.

The sky is always falling. If the new ice age doesn’t do us in, the ozone hole will. The instant DDT is banned, aerosols must follow. Global warming is replaced by climate change is replaced by “global weirding.” And what is the solution to these often-contradictory scenarios? We anachronists who retain a bias toward the hard sciences would employ very different measures to prevent a freezing ocean and a boiling one. To an engineer, soldier or plumber, this is obvious. But how do leaders of the environmental left address these opposing doomsdays? By raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and...

Climate change is a "catalyst for conflict" and a "threat multiplier" posing a growing national-security threat to the U.S., a new report finds... Global warming presents the U.S. with several security threats and has led to conflicts over food and water because of droughts and extreme weather, says the report, which was written by a dozen retired American generals and published by the Center for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board on Tuesday.

Scientists in the Philippines have discovered a plant that can absorb large amounts of metal without itself being poisoned, a species called the Rinorea niccolifera, that can be used to clean up polluted soils and harvest commercially viable metals. The plant is one of only 450 species, known as hyperaccumulator plants, of 300,000 known vascular plants that can absorb significant amounts of metal though their roots. The lead researcher and author of a new study on the plant, Professor Edwino Fernando, from the University of the Philippines, said the leaves of the Rinorea niccolifera can absorb up to 18,000 parts...

We see a lot of buildings being built with LEED Green Building standards. Often these are built with public money. Even the Federal Government has realized there is a limit to much of this outcome driven politicized regulation and has limited public funded projects to Silver level if Gold or Platinum will result in added cost. The surprising thing about the Green Building craze is that they are often energy hogs and they often become so-called "sick buildings" dispite their aledged intent under the LEED standards. How is that possible? First let's discuss energy usage. While Green Standards mandate 30%...