Free Republic

As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmentalists. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement with the environmental groups to add thousands of acres near their projects for wildlife protection. As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmental groups. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement on Tuesday with the Sierra Club and others to add thousands of acres near their proposed projects for wildlife protection. The agreement...

(CNN) – Hoping to help close the gap between workers' skills and the needs of businesses, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will announce he's putting hundreds of millions toward job training programs that produce highly skilled workers. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will head to a community college in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to make the announcement. The funding will come in two parts: $500 million toward a new job training competition that pairs community colleges with businesses, and $100 million for new apprenticeship programs to train workers. The White House says the new initiatives are meant to combat a...

It's one of the most famous monster stories of all time. And now Godzilla has had a reboot - complete with incredible special effects and an amazing cast - for a new blockbuster due for release this summer. A new extended trailer for the movie, which stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, shows the back story of Bryan's nuclear physicist character Joe Brody, as well as the first proper look at the terrifying monster.

Saving The Planet: It used to be said that socialism was the opium of the liberal intelligentsia. But now the drug of choice for the elite is environmentalism. The dirty little secret of the modern green movement is that it's become a luxury good for the uber-rich who espouse policies — from carbon taxes to renewable energy standards to closing down coal plants — that impose high costs on poor people who can least afford to pay the green tab. A Pew Research Center poll released last week offers further confirmation of this truism. It found that only two major...

One of the greatest promises of the high-tech future, whether made explicitly or implicitly through shiny clean concept sketches, is that we will have efficient energy that doesn’t churn pollutants into the air and onto the streets. But here in the present, politicians and even many clean energy advocates maintain that a world run on hydrogen and wind, water and solar power is not yet possible due to technical challenges like energy storage and cost. Yet Stanford University researchers led by civil engineer Mark Jacobson have developed detailed plans for each state in the union that to move to 100...

Lots of people have installed solar panels into their homes and businesses in an effort to help the environment and save some money, but the 22News I-Team has discovered solar panels could be dangerous in an emergency. More and more families and businesses in western Mass. are using the sun to go green, installing solar panels to generate power, but as these become more common in western Mass., fire departments are faced with new challenges. “There certainly have been examples with power being backfed into the site that have killed firefighters in adjacent states,” said Northampton Fire Chief Brian Duggan....

It has taken six long weeks to uncover the real hidden reasons why, from the West Country to the Thames Valley, the flooding caused by the wettest January on record has led to such an immense national disaster. Only now have the two ‘smoking guns’ finally come to light which show just how and why all this chaos and misery has resulted directly from a massive system failure in the curious way our country is governed. Because I live in Somerset, I first became aware that something very disturbing was going on back around the new year. As it became...

Colorado may be known for its abundant sunshine, but employment in the solar energy sector is looking cloudy — solar industry jobs have declined by 32 percent since 2010, according to a newly released survey by the Solar Foundation. Colorado saw a zero percent increase in solar sector jobs from 2012-2013, while such jobs increased by nearly 20 percent nationwide. The high-profile bankruptcy of Abound Solar in 2012, which cost 400 jobs, could have something to do with those numbers, but solar advocacy organization Environment Colorado lays the blame on what could have potential longer-term effects on the market —...

Regulations for new coal plants would increase electricity prices by as much as 80 percent, an Obama administration official told lawmakers on Tuesday. Julio Friedmann, deputy assistant secretary for clean coal at the DEPArtment of Energy, told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight board that carbon capture and storage technology was still not ready for prime time. “The precise number will vary, but for first generation we project $70 to $90 per ton [on the wholesale price of electricity],” Friedmann said. “For second generation, it will be more like a $40 to $50 per ton price. Second...

California is in the third year of a drought, but the problem isn’t a lack of water. The snowfall in the Sierra provides enough to help us ride out the years of drought. All we need to do is store it. But California hasn’t built a new dam in 35 years. Worse than that, every year we dump 1.6 million acre-feet of water––about enough to serve 3.2 million families for a year––into the Pacific Ocean in order to protect an allegedly “endangered” 3-inch bait-fish called the Delta smelt. California’s $45 billion agricultural industry, a global breadbasket that produces nearly half...

One state lawmaker is now hoping more people will make the switch to cloth bags, and is calling for a tax on plastic bags. Imagine not having a ball of plastic bags in a drawer somewhere in your house. Soon, in our state, asking for a plastic bag may cost you more money. That's what environmentalists are hoping for - a ban on plastic bags in Connecticut. Close to 100 cities and counties across the country have already done it, the biggest city being Los Angeles. People in those cities told various news outlets that the ban is working fine....

The Obama administration will announce the establishment of regional hubs focused on mitigating climate change on Wednesday. The hubs are the first-ever regional centers that will focus solely on risk adaptation and climate change solutions at seven locations across the country. "On the heels of passage of the farm bill, the administration will take executive action to help farmers, ranchers and rural communities combat climate change and adapt to extreme weather and other damage it causes," a White House official said in an email ahead of Wednesday's announcement. Dubbed "climate hubs," the new centers will address issues like increasing risks...

When I was in elementary school, scientists were telling us that we were headed for another ice age. A little over forty years later, they were telling us that we were facing global warming. This week it was reported that we just experienced the coldest January we’ve seen in over a century. Perhaps that is the reason the scientific community is longer calling it global warming.

Well… On the bright side: The UN Climate Chief has finally decided to adopt a certain modicum of honesty in her crusade to rid the world of pollution. As suspected by capitalists, free market advocates, and anyone who read into the redistributive agenda of the UN Climate Scientists, Christiana Figueres has suggested that only communism is capable of successfully fighting global warming and “climate change”. Of course it’s a strange statement, given the Soviet Union’s abysmal record on environmental issues, and red China’s horrific display of environmental abuse. Figueres even went so far as to suggest that communist China is...

Deep Green Resistance is an analysis, a strategy, and the only organization of its kind.

 As an analysis, it reveals civilization as the institution that is destroying life on Earth. As a strategy, it offers a concrete plan for how to stop that destruction. As an organization, Deep Green Resistance is implementing that strategy. The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. This is a vast undertaking but it needs to be said: it can be done. Industrial civilization can be...

The fact that a state legislature would decree population density mandates to cities in the state is an intolerable tyranny. Naturally, the California legislature is doing it. But it has officially decided to worry about the environment of a fantasy world, not the real one.

O ver two dozen houses which were built by Hollywood star Brad Pitt's charity for the victims of 2005 Hurricane Katrina have started to rot from the inside out. While the blame-game is on between the Pitt's charity 'Make It Right New Orleans' and the house building company, the owners of the houses, which are situated at the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, are worried about the deteriorating condition of their homes, reported Radar Online. "The wood turned gray and it was also black," a homeowner, who has been living in the house for four years, said. "Also some parts...

Say goodbye to the regular light bulb this New Year. For more than a century, the traditional incandescent bulb was the symbol of American innovation. Starting Jan. 1, the famous bulb is illegal to manufacture in the U.S., and it has become a fitting symbol for the collusion of big business and big government. The 2007 Energy Bill, a stew of regulations and subsidies, set mandatory efficiency standards for most light bulbs. Any bulbs that couldn't produce a given brightness at the specified energy input would be illegal. That meant the 25-cent bulbs most Americans used in nearly every socket...

Privately operated airboats, icons of the Gladesmen culture of the Everglades, will be dwindling in number because the Park Service isn’t granting any new licenses.