Free Republic

On Friday, the California State Assembly outdid itself. You can always count on the leftist leaders of what is supposed to be the “people’s house” never lets a crisis go to waste. With the passage of AB 1739 (Dickinson-D), SB 1168 (Pavley-D), and SB 1319 (Pavley-D), 100 years of history was reversed. The authors painted a grim picture of California’s groundwater future. Most of what they said is true. The only problem they didn’t bother to tell you two key truths: 1.It was these same so-called leaders who give up our seat—the property owner and the farmer’s place at the...

Environmentalist groups accuse hog farms of violating civil rights. Environmental groups have filed a civil-rights complaint against hog farmers in North Carolina, claiming that by maintaining farms near neighborhoods where minorities live, the pork producers are engaged in illegal discrimination against minorities. The 48-page complaint explains that the farms create problems for surrounding neighborhoods such as foul smells and runoff in the water. The crux of the complaint, which was filed by Washington-based EarthJustice and three other environmental groups in the Tar Heel State, is not these problems themselves, however. The four environmental groups object to seeing these problems occur...

Journalist James O'Keefe recently tricked actors Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemingway into accepting fake Middle Eastern money to help fund an anti-fracking film in Hollywood. Neither Begley or Hemingway knew they were being duped and secretly filmed. Both actors agreed to hide the fact that their film would be funded by Middle Eastern interests. O'Keefe also captured Hollywood producers explaining methods of hiding the funding, referring to various “non-profit groups” that would help keep Middle Eastern funding under wraps. The full undercover video can be watched right here. The idea that Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia would invest...

This week, 68,000 revelers will descend on Nevada's remote Black Rock Desert. (That is, assuming the rain lets up.) They will travel from Los Angeles, London, Melbourne, Mexico City and places you've never heard of. They will take part in the temporary city that is Burning Man, and will light a giant wooden man aflame. Despite all of this, Burning Man has somehow gotten a reputation as a "green" event. But that is simply not the case. Make no mistake: Burning Man is bad for the environment.

Between 1989 and 2010, Congress rejected nearly 700 cap-tax-and-trade and similar bills that their proponents claimed would control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate and weather. So even as real world crises erupt, President Obama is using executive fiats and regulations to impose his anti-hydrocarbon agenda, slash America’s fossil fuel use, bankrupt coal and utility companies, make electricity prices skyrocket, and “fundamentally transform” our economic, social, legal and constitutional system. Citing climate concerns, he has refused to permit construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and blocked or delayed Alaskan, western state and offshore oil and gas leasing and drilling. He’s proud that...

Charlie Crist flew in a private jet from Tampa to Tallahassee to hold a press conference about the importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Ironically, the private jet Crist used for his climate presser is owned by James Finch, who has repeatedly been forced to pay fines to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for unlawful pollution. Finch’s company paid fines for unlawfully polluting water in the Gulf of Mexico near Apalachicola Bay and the Apalachicola National Forest. Crist has recently criticized a new initiative by Scott to spend $1 billion to improve water quality in the state, with a...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit Wednesday to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, where he met the tiny nation’s leaders and commemorated the ferocious World War II battles fought on Guadalcanal. Kerry met with Solomon’s Prime Minister Gordon Lilo and Governor General Frank Kabui to discuss sustainable development, ocean preservation and how the islands’ 600,000 residents are coping with the effects of climate change. …

The 2014 US-Africa Leaders Summit hosted by President Obama this past week brought together the largest-ever gathering of African government officials in Washington, DC. They discussed ways to bolster trade and investment by American companies on a continent where a billion people – including 200 million aged 15 to 24 – are becoming wealthier and better educated. They have steadily rising expectations and recognize the pressing need to create jobs, improve security, reduce corruption, and control diseases like Ebola, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. They also understand that better roads and air transportation, improved agriculture and nutrition, and far more energy...

When Ideology Trumps Science: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos on Global Warming Jay W. Richards August 6, 2014 1:15 PM | Permalink I finally had a chance to watch the twelfth, penultimate episode of Cosmos, "The World Set Free." I was out of the country in June when it originally aired, but since there's no doubt the series is headed into the schools and remains relevant, I'll take this opportunity to comment. The episode stands out from most previous installments. Just when we've grown accustomed to circuitous narrative threads with obscure segues from one topic to the next, we get...

It’s undeniable that most, if not all, Americans want to preserve and protect the environment. No one truly wants to live in squalor or breathe in dirty air. No one truly intends to destroy nature or kill all wildlife. No one truly desires to harm the planet. Modern-day environmentalism is perceived as a benign, “hip” cause. All the celebrities are doing it, so it must be great—right? On the surface “going green” seems harmless. We’re told that “going green” will absolve us for our supposed transgressions against the environment. Certainly Mother Earth will forgive us for developing our beautiful planet...

A group called Fossil Free UC wants regents to divest the University of California's endowment fund of all fossil fuel holdings. "As one of the leading public institutions in the world, we have the privilege and the responsibility to take action where we can influence change," Fossil Free UC explains on its website. This is the global-warming movement at its most honest. Its goal is not change, which requires sacrifice in a plugged-in age; its goal is to "influence change" -- to wit, wag a finger at others and demand they do something symbolic and politically correct. What better...

Big Government: The EPA is now claiming the authority to bypass courts and, on its own, garnish the paychecks and attach the assets of those it accuses of violating its rules. And, as with the IRS, its hard drives also crash. The Environmental Protection Agency's insatiable lust for power has now gone beyond being the pen and the phone for President Obama's climate change, bypassing both the Constitution and the Congress in enacting rules and regulations that the American people and their representatives did not enact or even support. Through an announcement in the Federal Register, the agency is claiming...

Fossil fuel and insurance company executives “could face personal liability for funding climate denialism and opposing policies to fight climate change,” Greenpeace recently warned several corporations. In a letter co-signed by WWF International and the Center for International Environmental Law, the Rainbow Warriors ($155 million in 2013 global income) suggested that legal action might be possible. Meanwhile, the WWF ($927 million in 2013 global income) filed a formal complaint against Peabody Energy for “misleading readers” in advertisements that say coal-based electricity can improve lives in developing countries. The ads are not “decent, honest and veracious,” as required by Belgian law,...

ix members of the Climate Summer 2014 Team Western Mass. have been bicycling across the state and will be at the farmers' market here Thursday (July 3) to highlight concerns about the proposed expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline. The expansion of the pipeline in the Northeastern United States is believed to include a route through Franklin County, though a company spokesman said routes haven't been finalized and the company is committed to public safety and protection of the environment. Tennessee Gas Pipeline is part of the Kinder-Morgan company of Houston, Texas. The proposed mainline route of the company's Northeast...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) A coalition of environmental groups is going after Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R), tying her to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and Charles and David Koch in a new ad. The League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund are backing the spot, part of a planned $1 million push to help elect Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) to the Senate. The ad features footage of Palin's endorsement of Ernst during the primary, before attacking Ernst for her calls to shut down the Department of Education and abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. "That's why extremist Sarah...

The head of a leading environmental group recently defended job losses from the Obama administration's new anti-carbon regulations as "collateral damage" in the fight against global warming. Joseph Schumpeter must be turning over in his grave. Writing in the Huffington Post, William Becker of the Climate Action Project praised the new Environmental Protection Agency regulations to stop climate change, and wrote that "there is nothing explicit in the (Obama) plan to mitigate or adapt to the economic disruption the clean energy transition will cause for coal and oil-country families." These families thrown out of work, he said, are an "evolutionary...

Climate modelers and disaster proponents remind me of four guys who were marooned on an island, after their plane went down. The engineer began drawing plans for a boat; the lumberjack cut trees to build it; the pilot plotted a course to the nearest known civilization. But the economist just sat there. The exasperated workers asked him why he wasn’t helping. “I don’t see the problem,” he replied. “Why can’t we just assume we have a boat, and simply leave?” In the case of climate change, those making the assumptions demand that we act immediately to avert planetary crises based...

The sky is always falling. If the new ice age doesn’t do us in, the ozone hole will. The instant DDT is banned, aerosols must follow. Global warming is replaced by climate change is replaced by “global weirding.” And what is the solution to these often-contradictory scenarios? We anachronists who retain a bias toward the hard sciences would employ very different measures to prevent a freezing ocean and a boiling one. To an engineer, soldier or plumber, this is obvious. But how do leaders of the environmental left address these opposing doomsdays? By raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and...

Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events - or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries. Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign. Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at...

Can Opinion Turn Against Not-So-Jolly Green Giant?How much of a toll on the American economy does the green movement have to charge before Americans start to wake up to the dastardliness of radical environmentalism? Last month we saw firsthand one impact of Big Green on our economy with the White House announcement that the Keystone XL pipeline won't be built for at least six more months. Ten thousand blue collar jobs, almost all paying more than $50,000 a year, down the drain. It's a project that polls show almost all Americans want, except for the deep-pocketed green elite in Hollywood,...