Free Republic

A London-based advocacy group said Monday it documented 185 killings of environmental activists around the world last year, nearly 60 percent more than in 2014 and the highest since it began collecting data dating back to 2002. In a newly released report, Global Witness said Brazil topped the 16-country list with 50 environmental defenders slain in 2015, followed by the Philippines with 33 and Colombia with 26. The group says 116 were slain worldwide in 2014. Last year “was the deadliest year on record for killings of land and environmental defenders — people struggling to protect their land, forests and...

Two of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies, labor and environmentalists, are clashing over an effort to raise tens of millions of dollars for an ambitious voter turnout operation aimed at defeating Donald J. Trump in the November election. The rift developed after some in the labor movement, whose cash flow has dwindled and whose political clout has been increasingly imperiled, announced a partnership last week with a wealthy environmentalist, Tom Steyer, to help bankroll a new fund dedicated to electing Democrats. That joint initiative enraged members of the nation’s biggest construction unions, already on edge about the rising influence...

Long before he became one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate — and the target of Congressman Pat Toomey's GOP primary challenge — Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania demonstrated a knack for notoriety. In 1964, as a member of the Warren Commission, he invented the "single-bullet theory" to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. Conspiracy junkies have obsessed over him ever since. (In Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Kevin Costner's character labels Specter "an ambitious junior counselor" behind "one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people.") Between serving on the Warren Commission and becoming a...

Never Trust The Doom-Mongers: Earth Day Predictions That Were All WrongEnvironmentalists truly believed and predicted that the planet was doomed during the first Earth Day in 1970, unless drastic actions were taken to save it. Humanity never quite got around to that drastic action, but environmentalists still recall the first Earth Day fondly and hold many of the predictions in high regard. So this Earth Day, The Daily Caller News Foundation takes a look at predictions made by environmentalists around the original Earth Day in 1970 to see how they’ve held up. 1: (1970) “Civilization Will End Within 15 or...

Energy: The benefits of “fracking” have never been greater. Prices are lower and the country is emitting less CO2. Yet most people now oppose fracking. What gives?

What is an environmentalist to do these days? You can support windmills, so long as they don’t disrupt ridgelines, where the wind happens to blow. You have to approve of solar power, except when a solar power plant might disrupt efforts to restore migration routes for 100 sheep in the Mohave Desert. And you once were supposed to support natural gas as a “bridge fuel” between coal and something else, until you weren’t. Now the requirement appears to be that you must oppose fracking at all costs, even though it will likely mean increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.

The rapture was supposed to happen on September 13, 1988. A few fringe pastors were screaming that the end was nigh, that the righteous would soon disappear into the air while the rest of humanity was doomed to suffer a quite literal hell on earth. Forget the biblical admonition that no man knows the day nor hour of Christ's return, these men had figured it out. It was time to prepare yourself. I was a sophomore at a Christian college in Nashville, and it was the talk of the campus. No one likes to make fun of crazy Christian...

Groups question keeping Four Corners Power Plant open for 25 more years. A coalition of environmental groups has filed a notice of intent to sue the Office of Surface Mining, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others over a July decision to allow the Four Corners Power Plant to operate through 2041. A coalition of environmental groups announced earlier this week its intent to take legal action against several federal agencies for extending operations at the Four Corners Power Plant and Navajo Mine just outside Farmington. On Dec. 21, San Juan Citizen Alliance, among other regional and national conservation groups,...

After Barack Obama’s totally predictable cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline project (for now, at least) there was great celebration among the environmental brigade of the Social Justice Warriors. The evil pipeline was dead, along with all the jobs it would bring and the opportunity for us to capture and process much of Canada’s wealth of energy rather than it being shipped to China. (Which it will be anyway when the Northern Gateway Pipeline is complete, whether we get some of it or not.) But as with all things in the liberal enclaves of the country, one victory is...

The Sierra Club should start printing retractions (something they’ve been getting a lot of practice doing), because researchers from Yale University have concluded that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, doesn’t contaminate drinking water! “[There is] no evidence of association with deeper brines or long-range migration of these compounds to the shallow aquifers” concludes the new study, which was published in the highly prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The study, the largest of its kind, sampled 64 private water wells near fracking sites to determine if they could be contaminated by fracking fluids. “[The chemicals] are likely not a...

The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics. Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as a corporate litigator, and as an Assistant Vice President for a national bank. She entered...

In a recent lecture at Cornell University entitled "Check Your Green Privilege: It's not environmentally friendly to allow millions to die," British Member of Parliament, the Rt. Hon. Owen Paterson exposed the deadly facts behind the "green" charades perpetrated by activist groups, exemplified by Greenpeace. Mr. Paterson scathingly castigates the rich "environmental" (green) groups that are funded by wealthy elites and foundations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Working Group (EWG), Friends of the Earth, and (especially) Greenpeace, for their baseless but well-devised campaigns to manipulate consumers' fears and spread suspicion and mistrust among the public. These well-heeled...

There's much more to California's drought than lack of rain. California is currently in the grip of one of the worst droughts in state history. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed an executive order that imposes water restrictions on residents, businesses, and farms across the state. While the state is clearly experiencing this drought, the extreme weather shortages are an ongoing and man-made human tragedy—one that has been brought on by overzealous liberal environmentalists who continue to devalue the lives and livelihoods of California residents in pursuit of their own agenda. It comes down to this: which do we think is...

This week, leading environmental groups cheered when the city of Los Angeles refused to buy electricity from a proposed new power plant. "The Sierra Club is delighted to see the city do the right thing and choose not to sign a power purchase agreement with this harmful project," Sarah Friedman, a senior campaign representative with the organization, told the Los Angeles Times. The Natural Resources Defense Council said it had "significant concerns" about the project. So what are we talking about here? A new CO2-spewing coal plant? Something that runs on "extraordinarily dirty" oil from the Canadian tar sands?

In the summer of 2002, shortly before I was elected to Congress, I sat through an eye-opening meeting with representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council and several local environmental activist groups. Hoping to convince me to support various water restrictions, they argued that San Joaquin Valley farmers should stop growing alfalfa and cotton in order to save water — though they allowed that the planting of high-value crops such as almonds could continue. Then, as our discussion turned to the groups' overall vision for the San Joaquin Valley, they told me something astonishing:

Businesses nix New Belgium in controversy over coal mineSeveral Craig-area businesses cut off New Belgium Brewery’s products after learning the craft beer maker is listed as a supporter of the environmental group that filed suit challenging a Moffat County coal mine. “We no longer carry New Belgium products because of what they stand for,” said Danny Griffith, owner of J.S. Snacks, a Craig restaurant and bar. “We’re not carrying them because of what we stand for. You take the coal out of Craig and you’ve got nothing.” Fort Collins-based New Belgium Brewing was “never aware” of the actions WildEarth Guardians...

Environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer, a vocal opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline – and any Democrats who support it – hosted a $2,700-per-person fundraiser for Hillary Clinton at his San Francisco home, riling some green activists, Politico reports. Though Clinton has avoided public comment while the Obama administration weighs the fate of the pipeline, as secretary of state, she presided over studies that said the pipeline would pose few environmental risks – and even said in 2010 the administration was "inclined" to support it. "I am not surprised that he would want to get on-board the Clinton train, but I'm...

We must journey back to March, 1987, and the United Nations document entitled Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, to discover what is probably the only universally agreed upon—if nebulous and contradictory—definition of “sustainable development,” the precursor of “sustainability,” viz. Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of...

Between the egotistical unions, misguided misinformed environmentalists and pushover government bureaucrats, free enterprise is under fire and our men and women at arms are underfed. Few things are more despicable It wasn’t enough that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union targeted Portland container-terminals run by ICTSI Oregon, effectually shutting down Terminal 6 by goading Hapag Lloyd into closing operations which supplied 20% of Portland’s container traffic. Hanjin, which began servicing the U.S. Army after World War II, had already abandoned the port taking 80% of T-6’s traffic with it, but the shortsighted union stranded inland farmers and backstabbed the military....

The proliferation of renewable energy will never please environmentalists. In fact, the more efficient and inexpensive energies like solar and wind become, the more environmentalists will fear and eventually hate them.Currently, arguments against renewable energy are based on the accurate claim they are too inefficient to become widespread. The technology behind solar and wind power are just not where they need to be to justify widespread use. In October 2014, data revealed the massive Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert fell well short of its anticipated output. During an eight-month period in 2013, the solar plant...