Free Republic

Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt. (snip) The Senate rejected the amendment by a largely party-line 61-36 margin, with Feinstein opposing the restoration of water deliveries to farmers. The California senator claimed she was blindsided by the amendment to the bill she was managing in the Senate, bizarrely comparing the move to a "Pearl Harbor." "No one from California has called, written or indicated they wanted this on the calendar," Feinstein protested.

In 1991, facing obvious limits to growth from meager water resources, Las Vegas power brokers decided to bring the drama of high stakes gambling from the casinos to the board room of the Southern Nevada Water Authority headed by the Bernie Madoff of Western water, Pat Mulroy. The strategy was even proudly Ballyhooed in public. Las Vegas would just keep building beyond the capacity of its Colorado River allocation and dare other states or the federal government to stop them. At the time, a spokesman for Nevada's Colorado River Commission even announced, "The federal government will never let Nevada go...

Delta smelts: Preferred over humans. Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt.There was a time when the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive agricultural region in the world. It was a large part of what made the Golden State golden.Now it's a place where farmers no longer farm, but instead line up at food banks to feed the families of those who once fed the rest of the country and a good chunk of the...

There is a battle for America's behinds. It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective). It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess. The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from...

<p>Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."</p> <p>The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol.</p>

The Care Bears Project by: Sarah Carlsruh, September 22, 2009 Is global warming killing the polar bears? In May 2008, the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) list listed the polar bear as a threatened species. However, “some scientists argue that polar bear populations actually have increased since hunting restrictions were initiated in the early 1970s,” reported CNSNews on September 16th. According to the World Wildlife Fund, an international organization that works to protect endangered species, the population patterns of the approximately 20 distinct polar bear populations in existence do not show a necessarily temperature-linked decline. American Enterprise Institute (AEI) hosted...

The last day of summer is bringing light snow, chilly temperatures and freeze warnings across Colorado. Light snow was reported Monday in Vail and other mountain towns. At least 3 inches of snow fell in parts of the foothills west of Denver. A freeze warning has been issued for parts of northwest and southwest Colorado and the San Luis Valley in south-central Colorado from midnight Monday until 9 a.m. Tuesday. Temperatures in Denver are expected to dip to the upper 30s overnight. The cold weather and snow have prompted the Loveland ski area to turn on its snowmaking machines earlier...

Manhattan will be a dangerous place this week for President Obama, where the terminally envious of the world are waiting at the United Nations with envy, arrogance and outstretched begging bowls. The diplomats representing the envious countries, some of them little more than tribes with flags and an embassy in a rooming house on a side street in Washington, have cooked up an interesting week to blunt the skepticism of a growing number of scientists who are finding the courage to say what they believed all along, even as Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, and others insist...

Independent News & Media is likely to close its flagship London title The Independent by Christmas, the publishing group's second biggest shareholder Denis O'Brien said on Friday. "There's no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom," O'Brien told Bloomberg TV in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Irish Economic Forum. "It's not a relevant newspaper anymore and this newspaper's going to be closed by Christmas,"said O'Brien, who has been at odds with the company's board over plans to refinance a 200-million-euro debt issue that was meant...

The cap-and-trade movement, spooked by the pounding health care reform took over the August break, is scrambling to persuade nervous Democrats they won’t suffer politically for taking another tough vote this year. “When you get your butt kicked, like we did [after the House energy vote], it focuses the mind,” said Steve Cochran, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s National Climate Campaign. “We found out that this is not something to hide from but something to lean on — even in places where coal is king and Blue Dogs were perceived to be running for cover.” Climate bill supporters say...

The Washington Post reported today that an audit turned up waste in several Green Projects that are run by the Energy Department. While this is unsurprising, this is the same agency that is being tasked with determining where billions of dollars of the Stimulus Bill are going to be spent. Even more troubling is that the initiatives that are being determined as wasteful are the exact types of projects that the funding from the stimulus bill are dedicated towards. As Robert O'Harrow Jr. wrote: "The initiatives are hallmarks of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act approved by Congress...

Barack Obama will renew his commitment to green America's economy and join international action on global warming in a speech to the United Nations climate change summit on Tuesday. The appearance is a chance to offer much needed assurances to nearly 100 world leaders that the president can deliver on his promise for early action on climate change – now that the issue has taken second place to health care in the Senate. The delay has added to uncertainty that the Senate will move forward on a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before the crucial climate change summit at...

Citing environmental and energy-conservation rationales, the California Energy Commission has served notice that it will ban big screen televisions beginning in the year 2011. “These large screen TVs consume an inordinate amount of energy,” said Commission Chairwoman Karen Douglas. “No one needs their own personal big screen. Generations of Americans got along fine with smaller TVs. In fact, while many alive today may find it hard to believe, there were no TVs in American homes 70 years ago. So, I think our action is far less draconian than it might have been.” Douglas pointed out that “those who still need...

Representative Rob Bishop’s (R-UT) is concerned about how the Department of the Interior is – or perhaps more appropriately isn’t - working with the Department of Homeland Security to secure our borders, and he let Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar know it at a hearing [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRT5C9_YiI0] of the Committee on Natural Resources. As evidence of the issue’s gravity, Bishop points to a 2004 Interior Department report that had never been released to the public. According to the report the vast majority of the Organ National Pipe Monument in Arizona has been so degraded that it has lost its ‘wilderness’...

Abandoned mercury mines throughout central California's rugged coastal mountains are polluting the state's major waterways, rendering fish unsafe to eat and risking the health of at least 100,000 impoverished people. But an Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has tried to clean up fewer than a dozen of the hundreds of mines — and most cleanups have failed... Although the mining ceased decades ago, records and interviews show the vast majority of sites have not even been studied to assess the pollution, let alone been touched. While millions live in the affected Delta region, the pollution disproportionately hurts...

Washington DC - Two young, would-be investigative journalists have been heating-up the internet with a series of videos they have surreptitiously recorded at ACORN offices across the country. With each new day comes a new video that add to the discomfort and embarrassment to entrenched political interests that have long utilized ACORN’s social outreach and voter registration services.

A bunch of bored celebrity idiots got together and ruined a classic song. All in the name of raising awareness to global warming.

Energy Savings: Europe's ban on the incandescent light bulb began phasing in this month, and the U.S. will soon follow. Is Thomas Edison to blame for global warming? And why are we exporting green jobs?When the warm-mongers assemble in Copenhagen this December to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, no doubt their work to save the earth from the carbon dioxide that gives it life will take place under the eerie light thrown off by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) mandated by the European Union to fight climate change. The bulbs are more expensive, costing up to...

NEAR BUCKLEY, Wash. - From the air you can see a dark cloud at the base of a diversion dam on the White River near Buckley. But look closely and you'll see that cloud is really a mass of fins, tails and humped backs - wild pink salmon, more than anyone can remember seeing here, literally climbing over each other to get upstream. But they can't get past here without some human help. The Army Corps of Engineers traps the fish here and trucks them around the even larger obstruction upstream, the Mud Mountain Dam. In normal years, when 30,...

Yesterday at monument square in Portland, liberal envirowackos from all over Maine rallied to shrill for lower standards of living for Maine residents in the name of the greenhouse myth, not to mention helping the government grow bigger and take away more of our hard earned money. The rally, which featured city council members, teamsters, America hating communists and others also circulated petitions calling for green energy in Maine, cap and trade and green jobs. The truth is that Maine is already strangled by environmental regulations against the economy. WE told you a year ago about a plan to build...

Book Review: The environmental movement has cultivated a warm and fuzzy public image, but behind the smiley-face rhetoric of "sustainability" and "conservation" lies a dark agenda. The Greens aim to regulate your behavior, downsize your lifestyle, and invade the most intimate aspects of your personal life. In this stunning exposé, Steve Milloy unveils the authoritarian impulse underlying the Green crusade. Whether they're demanding that you turn down your thermostat, stop driving your car, or engage in some other senseless act of self-denial, the Greens are envisioning a grim future for you marked by endless privation. Steve Milloy is the founder...

On Development That Respects the Environment "We Come From God and We Are All Going Back to Him" CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 26, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's address at this Wednesday's general audience, which gathered pilgrims in the courtyard of the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo. * * * Dear Brothers and Sisters: We are coming to the end of the month of August, which for many means the end of the summer holidays. As we return to our daily activities, how can we not thank God for the precious gift of creation, which...

The incandescent light bulb has only two years to live. As part of the 2007 Energy bill, the bulbs must be phased out between 2012 and 2014. And the bill is already having a negative effect on American Industry: Last month, GE announced it will close the Winchester Bulb Plant 80 miles west of D.C. As a result, 200 men and women will lose their jobs. GE is also shuttering incandescent factories in Ohio and Kentucky, axing another 200 jobs. GE blamed environmental regulations for the closing. The first paragraph of the company’s July 23 press release explained: “A variety...

Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research appearing this week in the journal Science. The study can help scientists get an edge on eventually predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance. An international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models to tackle one of the more...

The late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) had requested that he be buried at sea. While such requests normally are honored, this one was vetoed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The key sticking point was the Senators request that his “coffin” be a “1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88.” Those familiar with the Chappaquiddick incident may recognize this as the car that the Senator drove off a bridge in 1969 on the way to an extramarital tryst with a young campaign volunteer named Mary Jo Kopechne in the car with him. Ms. Kopechne was trapped in the submerged car for several hours...

BEIJING (AFP) – A pair of lead poisoning scandals affecting at least 2,000 children in China are just the latest in a seemingly endless string of pollution scares exposing the dark side of the nation's economic boom.

Ronald Radosh explores the case of Van Jones. Jones is Obama's green jobs "czar" (his formal title is Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality). As green jobs "czar," Jones's responsibility is to coordinate the stimulus spending to assure that a hefty portion of it goes to projects that promote green energy.

Officials finding more back country pot plots Last week’s announcement that the 89,000-acre La Brea fire in northern Santa Barbara County might have been sparked by a Mexican cartel’s marijuana-growing operation was little surprise to local law enforcement agents who are finding record amounts of pot on public lands. Agents from the U.S. Forest Service and Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department suspect the fire in Los Padres National Forest, which so far has cost more than $20 million to fight, was caused by an Aug. 8 cooking fire at a large marijuana garden 21 miles east of Santa Maria. Investigators...

Purple loosestrife has raised its pretty head again this summer. But agricultural officials say the invasive and troublesome swamp plant that once threatened to choke off Garden State wetlands does not stand a chance of getting past a tiny army of weed killers New Jersey agricultural agents are releasing. While the hue of the loosestrife's magenta blooms may occasionally taint roadside ditchess and wetlands, it has faded on the landscape because of thousands of tiny beetles munching away at the weeds. "We win against the loosestrife, temporarily. Then it comes back, and we knock it down again. But the loosestrife...

“The Comprehensive Link List Disproving Man-Made Global Warming” is the web's most expansive source for proof that mankind is not causing global warming, and that global warming no longer exists. We've just added some more links to the list for your information gathering ... enjoy.

Get ready for green lease negotiations, whether you’re the commercial tenant or building owner. The goal is to encourage energy and water use reductions to create a green office environment. But there are many obstacles to achieving the elusive “green office” goal in landlord/tenant arrangements because there are so many variables to controlling overhead costs like electric and water bills. To help businesses navigate these troubled waters, the California Sustainability Alliance has just published its Green Leases Toolkit, version 2.0. The toolkit helps commercial landlords and tenants: educate their organizations about green office and green building practices develop their own...

Supporters of California agriculture called on the Obama administration and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday to lift water restrictions that were imposed to protect the endangered delta smelt, saying the fish is putting farmers out of business. The Pacific Legal Foundation presented a "Save Our Water" petition with 12,000 signatures at a Sacramento news conference, calling on Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, to request that the Obama administration convene the federal Endangered Species Committee, also known as the "God Squad," to remove the water curbs. "California should be known for the Rose Bowl, not a dust bowl. But there's a...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US labor unions and environmental groups on Tuesday announced plans for a nationwide campaign to boost support for legislation to promote "clean energy" and battle climate change. The 'Made In America' Jobs Tour will open Thursday in Ohio -- a critical political battleground in US presidential elections -- and visit 50 sites in 22 US states, including other major toss-ups, the coalition said in a statement. Leaders of the United Steelworkers, Service Employees International Union, Utility Workers Union of America were to join heads of major US environmental groups on a conference call Wednesday to formally launch...

Crime 1: Another multi-billion dollar subsidy for Government Motors.When Obama stole Chrysler from its stockholders and gave it to his union cronies, we knew he would take every opportunity to waste taxpayer dollars trying to keep this lead balloon afloat. The Cash for Clunkers subsidy is just particularly egregious, since it works by subsidizing the last people in the world who need a subsidy: those who are well off enough to buy new cars in the midst of a deep recession. Talk about a middle class welfare program! Crime 2: Eliminating Government Motors’ competition by gratuitously slagging an expected 750,000...

SEATTLE (AP) - Seattle voters have rejected a 20-cent fee for every paper or plastic bag they get from supermarkets, drug stores and convenience stores. The city's incumbent mayor didn't fare much better than the fee, trailing two challengers in a bid for a third term. With about half the ballots counted in the all-mail vote, the bag fee was failing 58 percent to 42 percent in Tuesday's primary. City leaders had passed an ordinance to charge the bag fee, which was to start in January. But the plastics industry bankrolled a referendum to put the question to voters in...

The sniping over a decision to restore protections in Sonoma County for the California tiger salamander is expected to heat up over the next two months after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opened the public debate Tuesday. Environmentalists, developers, farmers, homeowners and salamander aficionados have 60 days to comment on a decision by the Obama administration to restrict development on 74,223 acres of habitat deemed critical for the survival of the endangered amphibian. The proposed rule, which will take two years to become final, would reverse a Bush administration decision to drop restrictions on development in an area between...

But 'gardeners' escape; pot-grow cooking fire blamed for S. Calif. wildfire From KTVZ.COM news sources Days after tribal police and federal agents seized 1,630 marijuana plants worth an estimated $5 million from a remote area of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, authorities in California said Sunday a more than 85,000-acre wildfire in Santa Barbara County had been traced to a cooking fire at an illegal marijuana grow. Friday's Warm Springs raid marked the fourth time in just over two years that police have busted a major pot grow on the reservation, tied to Mexican drug gangs. The total seized -...

An organization with Tennessee roots has popped up on the local scene as a grassroots advocate of clean energy legislation making its way through the Senate. Repower America was spun out of the Alliance for Climate Protection, for which native son Al Gore serves as chairman of the board. The self-styled grassroots effort is aimed at recruiting residents across the state and has signed up about 24,000 supporters so far, according to Chris Song, communications director for the state group. “We have everyone from stay-at-home moms to people involved in public government,” he said. “We have small business owners, we...

WASHINGTON — For years, the Bush administration was criticized for not cleaning up enough of the nation's most contaminated waste sites. The Obama administration plans to do even less.

Date: August 15, 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FIRE INVESTIGATORS DETERMINE CAUSE OF LA BREA FIRE GOLETA, CA... A week-long investigation by U.S. Forest Service Special Agents, Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Narcotics Unit and Fire Investigators has revealed the cause of the La Brea Fire. Investigators revealed that the La Brea Fire was started by a cooking fire in a marijuana drug trafficking operation. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Narcotics Unit has confirmed that the camp at the origin of the fire was an illegal marijuana operation believed to be run by a Mexican National Drug Organization. The Narcotics Unit has...

Conservation: The Chevy Volt is said to be able to get 230 miles per gallon. That's if it's continually plugged into a fragile and overburdened power grid. Where will you be when the lights go out? Since most U.S. electricity generation is not carbon-free, the Congressional Research Service agrees. The "widespread adoption of plug-in hybrid vehicles through 2030 may have only a small effect on, and might actually increase, carbon emissions," it observes. "If you are using coal-fired power plants and half the country's electricity comes from coal powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?"...

<p>SORRY, the new Chevrolet Volt does not promise a "green" revolution -- indeed, the car could trigger a whole new wave of blackouts.</p> <p>Chevrolet notes that the key to high-mileage performance to the tune of 230 miles per gallon "is for a Volt driver to plug into the electric grid at least once each day" to get "40 miles of electric-only, petroleum-free driving."</p>

Iran, whose nuclear facilities are under threat of possible Israeli military strikes, proposed Wednesday that a 150-nation conference convening in September ban such attacks.

A farming town in California claims that it may disappear due to the United States federal government shutting off water pumps, though the government states the actions are necessary to save several marine species. In July 2009, action by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation to protect threatened fish stopped irrigation pumping to parts of the California Central Valley causing canals leading into Huron, California and the surrounding areas and the farms that rely on them to lose their primary irrigation source. Unemployment has reached 40% in some areas as the farms have dried up.

One democrat is so desperate to prove global warming isn't a farce, she's thrown so-called scientific data out of the window and moved on to first-hand 'knowledge' to try and gain ground in the climate debate...

Regarding safety versus fuel economy, I have from day one wondered why anyone in his or her right mind would drive one of the tiny sub-compacts. While I’m sure environuts like President Obama love these things, they’re little more than a go-karts with air conditioning. Consider the so-called “Smart” car: I’ve passed them with my truck running down the interstate and watched them in the right mirror when they bobble to the right from the wind of my passing. And mind you, that’s with me driving the speed limit. I rarely get over 65 or 70 mph. The little car...

Conclusion The Waxman-Markey bill proposes a new national tax of historic proportions. Though levied directly on carbon-based energy, the tax's impact spreads through the economy, increasing prices, reducing income, destroying jobs, and significantly expanding the national debt. As with many policies coming from Washington these days, the Waxman-Markey bill seeks to "level the playing field" by making a more competitive player weaker, in this case hamstringing carbon-based energy sources, rather than ensuring an environment where less competitive players can become stronger. This policy hurts everyone, including alternative-energy investors, because it uses resources less efficiently, which creates deadweight losses. This means...

One of the persistent, shallow global food myths is that the world could feed more people if we gave up eating meat. Ezra Klein wrote another misguided column about this--"The Meat of the Problem"--in the Washington Post of July 29. Klein cites as his authority a naive "study" by the kids at Carnegie-Mellon University. Klein asserts, "It is more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people." No, Mr. Klein,...

For years, the Bush administration was criticized for not cleaning up enough of the nation's most contaminated waste sites. The Obama administration plans to do even less.

(H/T: Instapundit) I am honestly surprised to find that there are people surprised by this. Among those clamoring for attention and payouts from Motors Liquidation Co., the company that assumed General Motors’ unwanted assets after its Chapter 11 filing, are the environmental and economic redevelopment departments of state governments. According to reports, when GM exited bankruptcy, its polluted factory and land sites were consumed by the Motor Liquidation, allowing the automaker to avoid the responsibility of cleaning up its mess, and state leaders fear there won’t be any money to clean the locations. After all, this was the original point...