Free Republic

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline.

Every attempt so far to get emissions under control turns out to be about money. Let's examine an important question. Are the major schemes created by global politicians to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, ostensibly to combat global warming, effective? The answer is no, because they aren't about addressing global warming. They're about making more money for governments and large corporations. Let's start with the Kyoto accord. Will it be effective in lowering global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? No. It wasn't meant to be. Kyoto, a United Nations treaty, exempts the developing world -- 143 of 180 nations which ratified it...

This is a simple cartoon that illustrates the insanity of a carbon tax.

RIVERTON — Tie dye, tee-pees, and cries for free love and world peace. If it sounds like an image of the 1960s, residents near Pinedale may believe they've traveled back in time next week when a large band of "hippies" hold their annual gathering at a national forest near Pinedale. Federal officials began arriving in Riverton earlier this month to prepare for the arrival of the group, which calls itself the Rainbow Family of Living Light. Anywhere between several hundred to a few thousand members of the group are expected, and their arrival has already drawn the ire of some...

It is becoming more evident every day that the left-wing of the Democratic Party is delighted that the price of gasoline and diesel fuel is now between $4.00 and $5.00 per gallon. According to Barack Obama, high gas prices don’t really constitute a problem for Americans. He stated recently that the reason for our anger is “the rapid increase in prices, not the prices themselves”. Obama claimed that Americans would have accepted a “gradual adjustment” to the current cost. For years now, in response to the demands of environmental extremists, liberal Democrats like Obama and some RINO’s have pursued policies...

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” —-C.S. Lewis If the government gets into the business of regulating and controlling carbon emissions it will be an unparallel concentration of power far exceeding the New Deal under Roosevelt....

The environmental fervor sweeping college campuses has reached beyond the push to recycle plastics and offer organic food and is transforming the curriculum, permeating classrooms, academic majors and expensive new research institutes. The University of Maryland teaches "green" real estate strategies for landscape architects. The University of Virginia's business graduate students recently created a way to generate power in rural Indian villages with discarded rice husks. And in a Catholic University architecture studio last week, students displayed ideas for homes made from discarded shipping containers. "It should be part of everything we do," said Ligia Johnson, a Catholic student whose...

Interfaith Power And Light "Spotlight On Global Warming" Event Media Tool Kit Main Messages & Talking PointsSuggested Answers to Myths and Possible Reporter QuestionsMedia Training ManualMedia Advisory TemplateWriting & Placing Op-EdsPlanning a Press EventPress Event ChecklistScience on Global Warming Report SummariesQuotes From Major Religious Organizations & LeadersScripture SheetMedia PitchAd Template State Media Lists

Every 26 seconds, a student drops out of high school in the United States. National test scores reveal that half of all low-income fourth graders cannot read. Given such alarming statistics, you’d think that helping at-risk kids would be the top education-related priority on Capitol Hill. Apparently not. As far as Congress is concerned, the real problem with public education in America is that it’s not environmentally friendly enough. Last Wednesday, the House passed the “21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act.” The Congressional Budget Office projects the program would cost $20.3 billion over five years. For years, the...

It hasn't quite hit the radar of the liberals in Congress, but as the price of gasoline soars above $4 a gallon (and here in California it's closing in on $5), they're going to be facing a hard choice with no good options.They will be forced to (a) throw the Greens under the bus, and embrace the idea of drilling for oil in America, in ANWR, off the coasts, wherever it may be found, or (b) throw the U.S. economy under the bus, andlose the November election to a Republican landslide, no matter who their candidate is. If, that is,John...

Little Miss Atilla says: It's hard not to see all the obstructionism regarding energy development as a sort of Marie Antoinette approach to fuel transitioning: we should force conservation, force biofuels, force diesel. And we should do it on the backs of the poor and the middle class. After all, if someone can't afford a Prius: well, f*** 'em. And, by the way: those who are suffering from the dictatorships and authoritarian governments propped up by American fuel dollars? F*** them, too. Oh, if I did not mention it, Ken Salazar is an a**hole.

Who are the real environmentalists — liberals or conservatives? By Christopher Cook The first news item I saw this morning was from FOX News:Feds: Caribbean Monk Seal Officially Extinct HONOLULU — Federal officials have confirmed what biologists have long thought: The Caribbean monk seal has gone the way of the dodo. Humans hunting the docile creatures for research, food and blubber left the population unsustainable, say biologists who warn that Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals could be the next to go. The last confirmed sighting of a Caribbean monk seal was in 1952 between Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The...

I am an old mystery fan. As a boy,I devoured all the old Erle Stanley Gardner and Agatha Christie mysteries and now read the newer Mary Higgins Clark novels. I guess this is the reason I still get suspicious of sudden changes in society and feel the need to investigate. For example, I recall all the interest in Communist fronts, especially in the Joseph McCarthy era, before a combination of too much liquor and the Edward R. Murrow CBS show destroyed him. Have you noticed that the word "Communist" has just about disappeared from our media and our language?I wondered...

Alaska’s Gull Island Oil Fields Could Power U.S. for 200 Yrs This is a video on how we are being lied to and manipulated. and that Oil is being used to control the people of the world. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147&hl=en Rad This is a video on how we are being lied to and manipulated. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147&hl=en

Every 26 seconds, a student drops out of high school in the United States. National test scores reveal that half of all low-income fourth graders cannot read. Given such alarming statistics, you’d think that helping at-risk kids would be the top education-related priority on Capitol Hill. Apparently not. As far as Congress is concerned, the real problem with public education in America is that it’s not environmentally friendly enough. On Wednesday, the House passed the “21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act,” a $6.4 billion school-construction program. Essentially, it’s a regulatory gift bag for environmental groups and labor unions...

Not all environmentalists are evil. Some truly believe in what they do and genuinely feel that Anthropogenic Global Warming is one of the greatest threats to human existence to ever emerge. Once I get over my misgivings that this concern is colossally overblown by some and pathetically manipulated by others, I can see why the people at Climate Progress, are seething at their “Progressive” Senators. It seems that these individuals have figured out that someone actually has to pay for reductions in CO2 emissions. Given that this activity is far less enjoyable than insulting Republicans for not caring enough about...

In all the flap about Obama's reckless comments about Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela not posing a threat to the U.S. because they're small and spend less on their military than we do, one statement he made has gone virtually unnoticed. Yes, it's important to realize that we have a presidential candidate who actually believes that the Soviet Union once told the U.S. "We're going to wipe you off the planet" (they never did). Is it as important as Gerald Ford's gaffe when he declared that Poland was a free country -- back when it was under Russian domination? Let's not...

Hollywood's gone green — or so everybody says. Whether they're driving hybrid cars, shunning bottled water or making do with just one square of toilet paper, A-listers from Natalie Portman to Brad Pitt are joining the eco-chic bandwagon. But who's really green, and who's just an imposter?Laurie David, producer of Al Gore's Oscar-winning global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and estranged wife of actor/writer Larry David, has become one of the most widely known environmental activists. But Jackie Mendez-Diez, David's neighbor in celeb-popular Martha's Vineyard, Mass., told FOXNews.com she's a hypocrite. "I normally wouldn't care, it would just be between...

Always read to the end of the report; that’s where the good stuff is. Case in point an obscure little stat was released on Friday with the not-quite-tantalizing title “Agricultural Prices”. Tables and tables of words with numbers after them – soybeans, price per bushel – wheat, percentage change year over year – imported fruits…exported nuts…you get the idea. If you do the shopping for your family as I do (don’t snicker, I also chop down trees and bench 300), you’re probably not surprised to find out that agricultural prices rose quite rapidly in May. In fact the monthly price...

May 29, 2008, 6:30 a.m. Sacrifices to the Climate GodsBeware Lieberman-Warner. By Roy Spencer It is well-established that the ancient Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and Toltec peoples offered human sacrifices, probably in the belief that such rituals would placate the gods who were in charge of nature; for instance, to help bring life-giving rains to their crops. Although we shudder at the thought of such barbaric practices, I believe that we have unwittingly reinstituted human sacrifice in modern times. But while the list of justifications has grown immensely, our new rituals are still performed in the name of avoiding the...

A scheme recently proposed by British MP Tim Yeo shows what would happen to individual freedom if the environmentalist agenda on CO2 ever got enacted into law. This bill establishes a state-run British Carbon Cartel via the mechanism described below.Every adult in the UK would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance in kgs and a special carbon card. The scheme would cover road fuel, flights and energy bills. Every time someone paid for road fuel, flights or energy, their carbon account would be docked. A litre of petrol would use up 2.3kg in carbon, while every 1.3 miles of...

Gore a former US vice president who has become a leading international voice in the cause against global warming, was co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Gore's effort was highlighted by his Oscar winning documentary film An Inconvienent Truth. Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the 'climate alarmism' perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia. 'Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality,' he said. 'In the...

I wonder when people last got widely and publicly ridiculed for not believing in God: probably not for several hundred years. Nowadays, you'd get a slightly odd look for doing the opposite and expressly stating your faith. But, if you really want to know what it's like to be a 16th-century heretic, try saying you're a bit sceptical about man-made global warming. Temperatures do seem to have gone up a little, even though environmentalists acknowledge that we might be in for a cool spell now. And we've certainly had our fair share of tsunamis, hurricanes and typhoons recently. Still, no...

The Italian government said Thursday it would begin building nuclear power stations, reversing a 20-year ban in an initiative likely to spark strong resistance and take a long time to come to fruition. "During the term of this parliament, we will lay the first stone for the construction in our country of a group of new-generation nuclear power stations," Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola told the Italian employers' federation Confindustria. "We can no longer avoid an action plan for a return to nuclear power," he said, recalling a campaign pledge by Italy's newly named right-wing prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to...

Plant Rights, Screaming Vegetation, and a "Biocentric" Worldview Posted: Monday, May 05, 2008 at 3:59 am ET Several years ago now, I was appearing on a national network interview program and found myself discussing capital punishment with a woman who, during a commercial break, indicated that she had recently seen a combine going through a wheat field. She was horrified. The wheat was being cut down by thousands of stalks a second. She felt grief for the wheat, she revealed. No one person on the panel knew what to do with that off-hand statement. I think it is safe to...

Conservationists or Environmentalists? by: Melinda Zosh, May 16, 2008 Although the Endangered Species Act of 1973, signed by Republican U.S. President Richard Nixon, was intended to save thousands of plants and animal species, only a handful have been saved, but at an enormous human cost. “Five species have recovered out of 1355 species in the past 35 years,” said M. David Stirling, author of Green Gone Wild: Elevating Nature Above Human Rights. Over that same time period, 50 million people have died from malaria and 10,000 jobs have already been misplaced, as a result of the act. “I have a...

Evangelical pastors, scientists and policymakers have launched a petition drive intended to spread the truth about global warming: That Christians should be good stewards of God's creation and that government policies and regulations based on "faulty science" will hurt people who should be helped. "The 'We Get It' declaration speaks for me, and I believe it speaks for the vast majority of evangelicals, who are as tired as I am of being misrepresented by people who don't bother to get their theology, their science or their economics right," said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). "Consequently, they put millions of the world's...

"May we live long and die out" is the unofficial motto of a new movement that seeks to improve the Earth's ecosystem by ensuring that the human species does not survive. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT, consists of volunteers who have made active life decisions to remain childless for the benefit of the Earth, thereby preventing the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals. While no one person takes credit for being the founder, Les U. Knight created its name and is the spokesperson for the movement. "We've already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity for humans by...

Students at a California public school have written a series of letters to Chicago's Heartland Institute, which works to discover and develop free-market solutions to society's problems, attacking its members for "destroying our planet" by refusing to endorse the politics of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" film. According to students in the sixth-grade class of teacher Michael Steria at David A. Brown Middle School, the institute consists of "fools" and "horrible people." "I think your (sic) fools for denying G.W. you know it could kill us all & you're just adding to it. I want you to help stop G.W....

A celebrated green economy produces pollution elsewhere, ongoing power shortages, and business-crippling costs. Rancho Seco was once a nuclear plant generating over 900 megawatts of electricity; today, its solar panels produce just 4.In January 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stood before the California legislature in Sacramento and delivered his fourth State of the State address since his improbable 2003 election. It was a rhetorical tour de force that would win him widespread acclaim. “California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta,” said Schwarzenegger. “Not only can we lead California into the future; we can show the nation and...

RFFM.org Commentary I have a very close friend who worked in the oil industry for many years. Let's call him Joe. Joe started working in the oil fields of foreboding places like North Dakota as a roughneck where temperatures regularly reached forty degrees below zero or more in the winter. In the summer, the weather was not forgiving either. Frequently, the thermometer topped 100 degrees in the shade, but the derricks never shut down because the oil had to keep flowing. In later years, Joe worked his way up into management where he learned the ins and outs of the...

Bolivia's President Evo Morales delivered a keynote address to the United Nations forum on Indigenous People in which he proclaimed "if we want to save our planet earth, to save life, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system and the unbridled prosperity that is killing the planet." In its place, Morales urged people to “live our lives the way nature intended—solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.” The Bolivian president dismissed objections as “excessively human-centric.” “Humans have an over-inflated sense of their own importance,” Morales said. “They don’t realize that their lives and happiness are inconsequential in...

You couldn't have missed it, if you tried. There were TV specials on National Geographic, CNN, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel, among many others. Oprah commemorated the event and every newscast seemingly reminded viewers of the day's significance. It was Earth Day, a holiday meant to celebrate the Earth, but something just didn't feel right about it. Perhaps it's because Earth Day seems to be transforming into ...

Last week, Time magazine featured on its cover the iconic photograph of U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. But with one difference: The flag has been replaced by a tree. The managing editor of Time, Rick Stengel, was very pleased with the lads in graphics for cooking up this cute image and was all over the TV sofas, talking up this ingenious visual shorthand for what he regards as the greatest challenge facing mankind: "How To Win The War On Global Warming." Where to begin? For the past 10 years, we all have, in fact, been not warming...

World might be heading towards Ice Age 23 Apr, 2008, 1327 hrs IST, ANI CANBERRA: Scientists have warned that the world might once again be heading towards an Ice Age, with global warming approaching a possible end. Evidence in support of this theory has come from pictures obtained from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which showed no spots on the sun, thus determining that sunspot activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year. A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark. Some scientists believe a...

Pelosi wants Bush to stop filling Petroleum Reserve By Mike Soraghan Posted: 04/24/08 11:54 AM [ET] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Thursday called on President Bush to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a way to reduce gas prices at the pump. Her call came after days of demands by House Republicans that she produce a plan to reduce gas prices. “I call upon the president today to work with Democrats to lower gas prices,” Pelosi said. The Speaker stated that the reserve is 97 percent full, and cited experts saying that the move could reduce gas prices by...

[An oldie-but-goodie from 4/22/2005, appropriate for Earth Day and the environmentalist cult.] April 22, 2005 -- Today is a religious holiday that should make us all into atheists. April 22, 2005, marks the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. For many people it's simply a day to think warm and fuzzy thoughts about clean air, crystal lakes, verdant forests and soaring eagles. Until the 1990s May Day marked the worship by the communists of an abstraction called the "workers" at the expense of real flesh-and-blood workers and every other human being on the planet. The result was human carnage. Now Earth...

[An oldie-but-goodie appropriate for Earth Day.] April 22, 2005 -- Today is a religious holiday that should make us all into atheists. April 22, 2005, marks the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. For many people it's simply a day to think warm and fuzzy thoughts about clean air, crystal lakes, verdant forests and soaring eagles. Until the 1990s May Day marked the worship by the communists of an abstraction called the "workers" at the expense of real flesh-and-blood workers and every other human being on the planet. The result was human carnage. Now Earth Day marks the worship by eco-extremists...

cult: n. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing. Four men who are “called to lead a special mission”. Four groups of people who insist that their leader has found the true way; either to happiness, truth, safety, or all three. Four leaders, one method: all preach destruction that will surely be the outcome if others do not heed him and his One True Way. Four leaders, four different fates: one leader is dead, one is behind bars, one man is on the run for his life and one still walks free. 25 Signs...

The Daily Mail in the U.K. is reporting that WWII veterans are furious over next week’s cover of TIME and the manipulation of the famous photo of marines raising the United States flag during the battle at Iwo Jima after TIME replaced the flag with a tree for the article, “How to Win The War on Global Warming”. One Imo Jima veteran, 81-year-old Donald Mates, felt the Times’ cover was “an absolute disgrace” and that “Whoever did this is going to hell.” He went to say it was a “mortal sin”. Why would veterans be upset about TIME magazine essentially...

Summary: If the limits to growth analysis of our predicament is correct we have no choice but to undertake radical changes in lifestyles, values, the geography of our settlements and especially change to a different economy. We must move to The Simpler Way. The required alternative society must involve far lower rates of per capita resource consumption and environmental damage. This must mean materially simpler lifestyles, in highly self-sufficient and cooperative communities, within an economy that is not driven by market forces and profit and that does not grow over time. The Simpler Way would not involve hardship or giving...

When it comes to all things "green", common sense seems to have been abandoned. Consider the recent "lights out" campaign that was supposed to energise the world about the problems of climate change by urging citizens in 27 big cities to turn out their lights for an hour. With scores of companies and municipalities signing up, the WWF quickly called it an amazing success. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to spoil the party by pointing out that the event was immensely futile, that it highlighted a horrible metaphor, or that it caused much higher overall pollution. Danish newspapers happily quoted the...

Our obsession with global warming causes us to confront a perceived crisis that could explode in 50 years. Meanwhile, we ignore real crises that could explode next week. While reading Don Quixote recently, I realized why this 400-year-old novel remains a classic of Western literature. At the heart of the story line lies an unchanging and always-identifiable quality of human nature: our tendency to be blinded by obsession. Don Quixote is the story of Alonso Quixano, who, enchanted with chivalrous ideals and suffering hallucinations of grandeur, dubs himself Don Quixote de la Mancha before taking up the lance and sword...

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - A commission created after a Lake Tahoe blaze destroyed more than 250 homes voted unanimously Friday to seek state and federal emergency declarations to combat what it says is an imminent threat of catastrophic wildfire. A commission report said thinning overgrown forests around communities should be completed within five years and within a decade throughout the entire Tahoe basin, which straddles the two states.

03/17/2008: "Eco-Terrorism On Orcas" ”I did it to punish the rich white people of Orcas Island and make them pay for the death of the whales and the depletion of the rain forests” -Mondragon Gabriel Thomas Mondragon, 29 years old, who recently arrived from New Mexico, explained to Sheriff’s Deputies that in an attempt to make the people on Orcas “suffer just like the whales and trees”, he attempted to use a tree limbing saw -on a metal pole- to cut through a 69,000 volt power line.

Leaders in the new Southern Baptist environmental movement were careful Monday to avoid criticizing fellow Southern Baptists still skeptical of climate change, while at the same time pushing them to have greater concern for the environment. Tue, Mar. 11, 2008 Posted: 14:07:05 PM EST Leaders in the new Southern Baptist environmental movement were careful Monday to avoid criticizing fellow Southern Baptists still skeptical of climate change, while at the same time pushing them to have greater concern for the environment. “This is a journey for each of us and Southern Baptists are at different points in this journey,” said Jonathan...

JIM LEHRER: Now, carbon credits as a way to clean up the air. NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels has our report. SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour Correspondent: In the San Francisco offices of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, traders buy and sell stocks and bonds in one room, while just behind them a smaller group trades a new, controversial green commodity, carbon offsets. BROKER: What we are is we deal with environmental brokerage, and so we do environmental commodities. And so we're both putting up -- you know, we're matching investors with capital. SPENCER MICHELS: The idea behind carbon offsets is to...

"I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own) and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries." "I am also afraid that the same people, imprisoned in the Malthusian tenets and in their own megalomaniacal ambitions, want to regulate and constrain demographic development, which is something only the totalitarian regimes have until now dared to experiment with."

This Property is Condemned by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 11, 2008 ... “As a matter of first principle, I take the decidedly unpopular view that the takings clause (and other constitutional provisions) commits this nation to a system of strong property rights and limited government,” Epstein writes in Supreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property. “This view is at war with the major economic and social reforms of the New Deal and beyond.” Not to mention the treatment of such topics in the academic world in which he moves. “I am, of course, well aware that the...

Researcher: Basic Greenhouse Equations "Totally Wrong" Michael Asher (Blog) - March 6, 2008 11:02 AM New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was. That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30...