Free Republic

Once again, a traditional symbol has become a target of those who attack private property rights and the American way of life. In this case, the symbol is the lawn – those closely-cropped grassy areas that surround most single-family homes. The basis for the attack is very typically environmentalism and racism. The messenger is an article in The New York Times. Its title is unassuming enough – “The Great American Lawn: How the Dream was Manufactured.” The vehicle is an embedded seven-minute film, produced by David Botti. The Attack The film’s first minute summarizes the environmental concerns: More water is...

Climate change could unleash a variety of diseases that the modern world is unprepared to deal with, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claimed on Tuesday. The freshman congresswoman -- and architect of the ambitious "Green New Deal" -- took to Instagram to express how worried she is about the specter of climate change. [Snip] "Scientists fear that there's a potential that a lot of diseases could escape these melted glaciers, things that were frozen for thousands of years, and that they’re going to get into our water," she said, "and that humans could contract them, and they are going to be...

U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood has handed a victory to the state of Georgia and nine other states that sued the federal government (and to the rest of the nation) by declaring that the WOTUS Rule is unlawful. Wood stated that the rule, which was intended to provide better protection of the nation’s water, violated the Clean Water Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, and she remanded it back to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers for further work. She wrote that while the agencies have authority to interpret the phrase “waters of the United...

Pope Francis' climate proposals would hurt the poor be keeping them in poverty. The Mills Brothers, among dozens of others, sang “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Somebody should tell Pope Francis this doesn’t have to be true if the world follows a sensible energy policy. On June 14, Francis met with the CEOs of British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Royal Dutch Shell at the Vatican to promote schemes to mitigate what he says are the catastrophic effects of manmade global warming. Speaking to the oil executives, the Pope said “today’s ecological crisis, especially climate change, threatens...

All this week, the mainstream media have been trying to scare you with heartrending tales of burning Amazonia — a conflagration the like of which we have never seen before. Supposedly…But almost everything you have read or heard about the Amazon fires in the mainstream media is #FakeNews....The fires are mainly on agricultural land – not virgin rain forest… There is nothing abnormal about this fire seasonEven NASA admits thisThe Amazon rainforest does NOT produce 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen

President Donald Trump promised he’d get rid of bad rules. “Remove the anchor dragging us down!” he said when campaigning for president. “We’re going to cancel every needless job-killing regulation!” Trump was a developer, so he knew that the thicket of rules government imposes often makes it impossible to get things done. But would he keep his deregulation promise? I was skeptical. Republicans often talk deregulation but then add rules. People called President George W. Bush an “anti-regulator.” But once he was president, he hired 90,000 new regulators! Trump has been different. When he took office, he hired regulation skeptics....

I don’t know who said it, but whoever came up with the idea that “whatever liberals don’t want to ban, they want to make mandatory,” is absolutely accurate. You name it, they’ve got a plan to force everyone to do it or to rid the world of it. Nothing is too small to escape their crosshairs, not even straws. Straws are a favorite target, the banning of which is all the rage in Democrat-controlled cities across the country. They pat themselves on the back so hard over this Jihad against straws that you’d think they were giving themselves the Heimlich...

Of the rock festivals of the sixties, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was by far the most famous. Held on a 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, N.Y. on August 15–17, 1969, the festival is the iconic representation of the drug-addled culture and sexual revolution that upended American life. This August marks the fiftieth anniversary of the era-defining event. Some have called for celebrating with another concert. The occasion is hardly a cause for celebration—so many of the cultural changes after Woodstock had catastrophic consequences. Most do not know that the concert was a disaster—even from an organizational point of...

The Trump administration is applying new regulations to protect endangered species, rolling back some requirements [in order] to ground the policy in scientific and economic factors, the Interior Department announced Monday. The regulations, based on the 1973 Endangered Species Act, will “increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century,” the agency said. The rules won’t extend the same protections to threatened species as are applied to those already on the endangered list. Nor will they look as far into the future to project what species face extinction. The changes likely will draw litigation...

I was brought up a military brat. My father did 22 years in the United States Air Force. In 1954 when he joined, they promised if he made a career of it, he and his wife, my mother, would be taken care of for life. He got out in 1976 after extending his service a couple of extra years so I would not have to switch high schools in Florida. We moved out west after my father retired and I finished high school. In 1978, I got a job in the wood products industry at a particleboard factory and began...

WASHINGTON - Democrats running for president on promises to slow climate change are asking young people to do more than just vote for them. Many White House hopefuls are laying out plans to put teenagers and 20-somethings to work guarding the country against the worst effects of global warming. Core to a number of Democrats' climate plans is the creation of a "climate corps." Akin to the Peace Corps launched in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy as a soft-power check against Russia, a climate-focused national service program would tackle what many presidential candidates see as this generation's greatest challenge...

The energy industry is waging war against climate change - and winning. Last week, the Environmental Partnership, a group of oil and gas firms dedicated to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, released its first annual progress report. The results are impressive -- and showcase what happens when an industry unites to further the public good. The Environmental Partnership launched in late 2017 with 26 members. Within 12 months, it more than doubled in size to 58 members -- including 32 of America's top 40 oil and gas producers. Today, its members account for nearly half of America's oil and natural gas...

A new government-funded study takes an indirect jab at President Trump for pulling out of a costly and dubious global climate accord signed by Obama and chastises the U.S. military for not possessing an “environmentally conscious mindset.” It also claims the Department of Defense (DOD) is “precariously underprepared” for the national security implications of climate change. A lengthy report published by the United States Army War College essentially blasts the DOD—and the president—for ignoring the threats that climate change poses to national security. The distinguished authors, which include Army and Air Force colonels, an Ivy League professor and other highly...

The legislation could affect everything from what paper gets used in state offices to what gets served in California cafeterias. ============================================================ In an effort to cut carbon emissions and forestall the climate crisis, California legislators are pushing a new law aimed at helping limit deforestation around the globe. The proposed bill, called the California Deforestation-Free Procurement Act, or AB 572, would require companies that contract with the state to certify that their products do not cause the cutting of sensitive tropical forests or the destruction of boggy peatland soils in tropical regions — both of which contain enormous stores of...

Helen Hudson will tell you what the 15th Ward was like when she was a girl. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the Syracuse neighborhood was home to thousands of predominantly black residents who had settled in the growing upstate New York city during and after the Great Migration. Those who remember it, like Hudson, describe it as thriving, self-sufficient community they were proud to call home. “Oh my god, the things we had,” she said recently, her voice softening with the distinct twang of nostalgia. “We had two bowling alleys. We had meat markets.” Charlie Pierce-El will tell you...

Syracuse, N.Y. – The discussion and analysis about the future of Interstate 81 has gone on for a decade. When will the $2 billion project be done? Well, we may be nearly halfway there. One estimated end date is 2030. That’s from a two-sentence section within the 15,000-page draft environmental report that the state released in late April, according to a review by syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. “Year 2020 was the year of estimated time of completion when the analysis was started a few years ago. However, due to schedule changes, the estimated time of completion is projected to be...

The World Resources Institute (WRI), which is supported in part by the U.N., is encouraging humans to give up eating meat. Doing so, they believe, will not only help with food supplies but will also combat climate change. Become a vegetarian or watch the world starve to death and burn is the messaging, I guess. Writing in their report, the WRI project claims: [C]onsumption of animal-based foods to rise 68 percent between 2010 and 2050, with an 88 percent increase in consumption of ruminant meat (meat from cattle, sheep, and goats). These trends are a major driver of the food,...

Many of my friends have long referred to environmentalists as “watermelons” — green on the outside, red on the inside. The idea being, because communism and socialism (interchangeable political/economic systems in practice) have failed everywhere they’ve been imposed, doctrinaire socialist zealots have embraced environmental causes as a Trojan horse. Their goal is simple: use environmental policies as a backdoor way to implement socialist policies in the Western democracies. After all, who doesn’t care about the environment? A recent admission by Saikat Chakrabarti, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) chief of staff, about the much-hyped Green New Deal (GND) reinforces the view socialists...

It is hard to put a price on saving the planet - but Google now has an eye-watering tab to show for its attempt. The tech giant spent an estimated $20million on an extravagant climate change bash for a host of A-list celebrities this week, flying hundreds of guests across the world and treating them to three days of luxury at a Sicilian seaside resort.

A host of A-list celebrities faced an angry backlash today after they travelled to a climate change conference in Italy in a fleet of supercars, expensive yachts and more than 100 private jets. Guests at the secretive Google Camp were accused of hypocrisy after they gathered this week to discuss the environment while leaving a considerable carbon footprint of their own. Prince Harry is understood to have given a passionate barefoot speech about saving the planet, although Buckingham Palace has refused to confirm his attendance or whether he too travelled by private jet. 'This is not something we are commenting...