Free Republic

As we hit exactly one year mark until the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, the countdown has begun—and with that, the unveiling of the medals that the best athletes in the world will take home next summer. The medals boast the classic designs that fans see every four years as stipulated by the Interantional Olympic Committee, according to Tokyo 2020: Nike, the Greek goddess of victory; the name of the host city; and the five Olympic rings. What makes these medals special to Japan, though, is the public input and assistance that went into their creation. For...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tom Harris. There has been a barrage of attacks against the Trump administration for replacing the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) with the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. Last week, for example, the American Public Health Association and the American Lung Association announced that attorneys representing them from the Clean Air Task Force are filing a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for repealing the CPP and bringing in ACE in its place. The three organizations issued a press release in which they asserted, “EPA’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan and...

Privatizing Public Lands Doesn't Mean Building Shopping Centers 07/18/2019Gor Mkrtchian Protected public lands in the United States — including national forests, national parks, and similar areas — cover nearly 500,000 square miles, or 14 percent of the land area of the United States. The existence of these government-controlled lands gives the federal government immense power over much of the United States, and in some US states, the federal government controls a majorityof the land area. Thanks to the popularity of some public lands, known for their natural beauty, federal control of so much land nonetheless remains popular, and the idea of privatizing...

In its quest to make America Venezuela, the left is coming for your toilet paper. Kimberley Strassel spotted this beaut on Twitter: And now they are coming for your toilet paper..... To be clear, folks, there is NOTHING the left would not seek to control in people's daily lives under the guise of fixing "climate change." They will even tell you with what to wipe. https://t.co/GGcXoMa0PM — Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) July 18, 2019   Apparently toilet paper is the new plastic straw of the green lobby, and they're out to put a stop to it. Kid you not, here...

When a dozen of conservatism’s best minds take on Socialism and expose it for the utopian fraud it is, attention must be paid. In a brief foreword to a special issue of National Review, Editor-in-Chief Richard Lowry admitted that many conservatives thought socialism in America had been “vanquished” after the collapse of Soviet Communism 30 years ago. But as T. S. Eliot insisted, “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The experts examine socialism in its many guises, beginning with Charles Cooke’s blunt assessment that socialism is not...

While you were enjoying your Fourth of July weekend, I was attending a national conference on socialism. Why? Because socialism is having its moment on the left. Since there’s often confusion as to what socialism really is, I decided to attend the Socialism 2019 conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend. The conference, which had the tag line “No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries,” contained a cross-section of the most pertinent hard-left thought in America. Among the sponsors were the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin, a quarterly socialist magazine. The walls of the...

While the rest of the world watches in awe at the sight of millions of Hong Kongers protesting against an extradition bill and demanding greater political freedom, a different protest erupted in Wuhan, in the heartland of mainland China.Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, is the seventh-largest city in China, with 10 million residents. Sitting on the bank of Yangtze River, it has long served as an important harbor, a commercial and industrial center in central China. Wuhan is known for its hot weather, hot food, and hot-tempered (but talented) people.It’s the hometown of tennis star Li Na,...

Toilet paper – the one product that the majority of us use just once and flush away – is becoming less sustainable, according to research. Analysis from Ethical Consumer magazine found that major brands were using less recycled paper than in 2011, while only five of the nine major supermarkets (the Co-op, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose) offered own-brand recycled toilet paper. The large-scale use of virgin paper contributes to unnecessary deforestation. The UK uses 1.3m tonnes of tissue a year, according to the Confederation of Paper Industries, with the average British consumer reportedly getting through 127 rolls every year....

A public interest advocacy group has identified the country’s “most wasteful and pointless” transportation projects, which are costing taxpayers $25 billion. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) cites among “the biggest boondoggles” a $2.2 billion widening of Interstate 81 in Virginia, a $7 billion interstate project in Houston and a $802 million “Connecting Miami” redesign of city highways. According to PIRG, widening highways to reduce gridlock fails for several reasons. Multiple studies show that more road space over time leads to further congestion because of a phenomenon called “induced demand.” “We’re stuck in a car-centric rut in the United...

It’s time to challenge the steady diet of bias, false information and alarmism on climate change that students are fed in and outside of their classrooms. Science and public policy analyst Dr. David Wojick has launched an important new project to do exactly that. From kindergarten onward, our young people are repeatedly told that they, our wildlife and our planet face unprecedented cataclysms from manmade climate change, resulting from our fossil fuel use. The science is settled, they are constantly hoodwinked, and little or no discussion is allowed in classrooms. They thus hear virtually nothing about the growing gap between computer model...

"Those of us who make a living from the land are the best environmental stewards there are" The hundreds of loggers, farmers and ranchers who came off their farms and out of the forests and fields to circle Oregon’s capitol in protest of their government’s force-fed climate bill yesterday, didn’t just take a classic stand for the Beaver State, but for all other states in the union. Their major protest proved for once and for all that you don’t learn anything useful about The Environment sitting behind a desk in an air-conditioned government office, you can only learn it by...

A dedicated route for wildlife migration has been built in the newly constructed national road between Fuyun county and Wucaiwan in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Crossing the Junggar Basin, the 216 national highway is expected to be put into operation on August 1. The project was launched in 2017, with environmental protection made the top priority. The bridge is 100 meters long, 50 meters wide and 6 meters high. There are several culverts along the highway designed for wild animal migration. In order to fit in with the surrounding environment, the passage is covered by a layer of...

The Ohio state legislature is considering HB 6, the Ohio Clean Air Program–a poorly named bill that will cost Ohio families money and harm clean energy job growth, all the while failing to improve air quality. Most families worry about paying their bills, finding good jobs, and protecting the health of loved ones. HB 6 makes it harder for Ohio families to succeed on all these fronts— it raises electricity bills for Ohio families and businesses, does nothing to abate respiratory illness causing air pollution, and makes it virtually impossible to build new, job-creating clean energy projects in the state.In reality, HB 6...

The U.S. Interstate Highway System is the backbone of American commerce and personal travel. Funded on a pay-as-you-go basis largely through federal excise taxes on motor fuel, today it accounts for 25% of total vehicle-miles traveled despite accounting for just 2.5% of total road network lane-miles. Yet, much of the Interstate system, construction of which began in the 1950s, is nearing the end of its functional life, along with the infrastructure of other surface transportation modes. Over the next two decades, trillions of dollars of investment will be needed to rehabilitate and in some cases rebuild this infrastructure, according to...

Despite pleas from two former state governors and at least 90 environmental and community groups and businesses, Gov. Ron DeDantis on Friday signed a multibillion-dollar plan to build long stretches of toll roads across undeveloped sections of the state. The legislation has been labeled “the worst environmental bill in twenty years.” And the Florida Sierra Club has warned of pristine areas becoming urban sprawl, where “subdivisions and strip malls will proliferate and the natural resources that bring visitors to the state will be overused and overrun.” DeSantis approved the bill anyway. The announcement came not from the governor’s press office...

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ranks near bottom of the field of 2020 hopefuls on environmental issues, according to the left-leaning environmental group Greenpeace USA. In a newly released climate scorecard, Greenpeace USA gave Biden a "D-", the second-worst among Democrats. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee received the highest score, an "A-", followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who both were awarded "B+". "Even though Biden introduced the first-ever climate bill in Congress back in 1987, he has yet to release a plan that tackles the climate crisis if elected in 2020," Greenpeace said. "Biden...

Sometimes if you fight hard enough and refuse to back down, no matter the odds, your truth is vindicated and prevails! For twenty years I have been labeled a conspiracy theorist, scaremonger, extremist, dangerous, nut case. I’ve been denied access to stages, major news programs, and awarded tin foil hats. All because I have worked to expose Agenda 21 and its policy of sustainable development as a danger to our property rights, economic system, and culture of freedom. From its inception in 1992 at the United Nation’s Earth Summit, 50,000 delegates, heads of state, diplomats and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) hailed...

The Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing new rules for regulatory cost-benefit analysis that critics fear could undermine the agency's regulation of climate pollution by saying it costs too much. ... "This action supports the Trump Administration’s efforts to identify regulations that impose costs that exceed benefits, providing clarity, transparency and consistency in how regulations are written," EPA said in releasing the memo. ... Environmentalists decried the memo as a threat to efforts to curb climate change on the grounds that it would undermine the need for new regulations.

Former Bill Maher writer, Evan Sayet, creates a children's book -- illustrated by AF Branco -- that eviscerates in rhyme an color all of the Leftist doomsday scenarios of the past fifty years.

Department of Energy's scientists announced this week that they have designed a plastic that can be recycled over and over again. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wrote in Nature Chemistry that they had designed new plastic, called polydiketoenamine or PDK, that could be disassembled down to the molecular level and reassembled into different shapes, textures or colors multiple times. Modern-day plastics are reinforced with chemicals to make them more resilient and often end up making the material more difficult to fully recycle. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... Even the most recyclable plastic is only being...