Free Republic

Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed the Sierra Club’s Executive Director, Michael Brune, on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Feb 2, 2017. Carlson, a former Sierra Club member himself, dove right into asking Brune the tough questions. Puzzled by some of the Sierra Club’s recent position statements on such varied topics as President Trump’s border wall, the women’s march, abortion, and transgender bathrooms, Carlson asked Mr. Brune why the Sierra Club was veering away from protecting the environment to taking positions on the unrelated issues. For those who still naively believe that the Sierra Club is focused on protecting the environment, Brune’s...

Environmentalists facing a hostile Trump administration and a Republican-dominated Congress say the courts may offer their best chance to block changes they oppose. Advocacy groups nationwide are hiring more staff lawyers and coordinating with private attorneys and firms volunteering their services. They are seeking donations, setting priorities and reviewing laws that could be the basis of lawsuits against Trump policies concerning climate change, endangered wildlife, pollution and other issues. …

The former head of President Donald Trump’s transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday he expects the new administration to seek significant budget and staff cuts. Myron Ebell said in an interview with The Associated Press that Trump is likely to seek significant reductions to the agency’s workforce — currently about 15,000 employees nationwide. Ebell, who left the transition team last week, declined to discuss specific numbers of EPA staff that could be targeted for pink slips. Asked what he would personally like to see, however, Ebell said slashing the agency’s size by about half would be a...

Reports say seven Greenpeace protesters are facing misdemeanor charges after climbing a 270-foot tall construction crane just blocks from the White House at midweek and unfurling a huge banner with the word “RESIST.” Wednesday’s climb came a day after the Trump administration moved to delay implementation of several environmental rules. …

President Trump told leaders of the country’s largest automakers Tuesday that he will curtail “unnecessary” environmental regulations and make it easier to build plants in the United States, changes that he expects will shore up the manufacturing jobs he repeatedly promised to voters on the campaign trail. After weeks of taunting the automotive industry over Twitter, Trump made a point to meet with the chief executives of General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler just days into his term. He has pressured the companies to build more vehicles in the United States and hire more Americans into manufacturing jobs. …

January 24, 2017 It is just day two of his presidency, and already Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the Obama legacy: in his latest move reported moments ago by Bloomberg, president Trump intends to sign two executive actions today "that would advance construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines", putting a spoke, so to say, in the train wheels of Warren Buffett's train-based oil transportation quasi-monopoly. Keystone was rejected under former President Barack Obama. Trump’s move on Energy Transfer Partners LP’s 1,172-mile Dakota Access project aims to end a standoff that has stalled the $3.8 billion project...

Beginning on Tuesday, diesel vehicles will be banned from driving on Oslo streets because of acute levels of dangerous air pollution. On both Monday and Tuesday, weather forecasts call for cold weather and very little wind, conditions likely to cause high levels of exhaust pollution over large areas of the city. Therefore the City of Oslo will for the first time ever implement a ban on diesel vehicles on municipal roads. On Tuesday, the ban will be in effect from 6am to 10pm. It will remain in effect during those same hours for as long as air pollution levels are...

Republicans’ grip on all levers of power stands as a mandate to the GOP-led Congress, which will move swiftly to try to undo eight years of outgoing President Barack Obama’s agenda. With Republican President-elect Donald Trump weeks away from assuming office, GOP lawmakers plan to open the 115th Congress on Tuesday and immediately take steps to repeal Obama’s health care law. Beyond that, they’ll look at a tax overhaul, reversing Obama-era environmental regulations and other conservative priorities. Republicans will face some obstacles. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Democrats “stand ready to fight vigorously” to protect health care and other...

Environmental and public policy groups in New York are calling for a state constitutional amendment that would guarantee residents a right to clean air and water. Environmental Advocates of New York and EffectiveNY are promoting the proposed amendment with online video ads Thursday featuring children from Hoosick Falls, where water wells have been contaminated by an industrial chemical. “You shouldn’t have to fight for clean water,” says 15-year-old Mikayla Baker, a Hoosick Falls ninth-grader featured in one of the two videos. The groups say a constitutional amendment would give residents more power to hold state lawmakers and regulators accountable for...

Madrid mayor, Manuela Carmena, signed a commitment to rid the pollution-stricken city of diesel-powered cars and trucks by the middle of the next decade. She joined the mayors of Paris, Athens and Mexico City in signing the deal to improve air quality at the biennial meeting of city leaders in Mexico on Thursday. She also vowed to continue in a drive for alternative vehicle use and improve conditions for cyclists and pedestrians in the city. …

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump will not derail progress made in fighting climate change and creating clean-energy jobs, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency insisted on Monday in arguing "the inevitability of our clean energy future is bigger than any one person or nation." EPA chief Gina McCarthy said the world is "in a spectacularly different place today than we were when President (Barack) Obama took office," citing new environmental rules and actions to help create thousands of jobs in renewable energy such as wind and solar power.

On Nov. 8, Donald Trump managed to pull the biggest upset in U.S. politics by tapping successfully into the anger of white voters and appealing to the lowest inclinations of people in a manner that would have probably impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself. But what exactly does Trump's victory mean and what can one expect from this megalomaniac when he takes over the reins of power on Jan. 20, 2017? What is Trump's political ideology, if any and is "Trumpism" a movement? Will U.S. foreign policy be any different under a Trump administration? Some years ago, public intellectual Noam...

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is calling on President Obama to permanently ban offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic using his executive authority. From Politico: NextGen and White House officials have discussed the possibility of Obama using his executive powers under a section of the law governing offshore drilling that allows him to “withdraw from disposition” any section of the Outer Continental Shelf that has not already been leased for oil or gas drilling… Steyer’s group says more permanent protections are available using section 12(a) of the OCS Lands Act. Similar to the Antiquities Act, which presidents can use to...

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Paramount and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions are in talks to make a live action film adaptation of the early 1990s environmental cartoon “Captain Planet.” […] According to reporters Rebecca Ford and Borys Kit, “Sources say the story takes place years after the adventures of the show, with the Captain now a washed-up has-been who needs the kids more than they need him.” …

The animal kingdom will have lost one of its staunchest defenders when the Oval Office is abandoned by Barack Obama, who through a series of critical, administrative rulemaking has done more to protect animals than any other president in recent memory. This will be especially devastating if Donald Trump replaces him – not only because of his sons’ lust for hunting exotic game but also because his recently announced agriculture advisory committee includes several active opponents of animal protection policies.

Communities in nine U.S. states that have been hard-hit by coal layoffs are being promised more than 3,000 jobs in several industries through a multimillion-dollar federal grant. Officials for the Appalachian Regional Commission and other agencies announced the 29 projects totaling nearly $39 million Wednesday at a news conference in Huntington, West Virginia. The investments are expected to create or retain more than 3,400 jobs in agriculture, health care, manufacturing, technology and other industries. The projects are intended to help communities in Texas and in eight Appalachian states: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. …

The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration jointly issued a new regulation last week that is meant to help protect the world from “climate change” by limiting “greenhouse gas emissions” and improving fuel efficiency in medium- and heavy-duty vehicles operated in the United States. The 1,690-page regulation is approximately 700,000 words long. A “regulatory impact analysis” published by EPA and NHTSA estimates the regulation will add an average of as much as $13,749 to the cost of a tractor truck and $1,370 to a trailer, making some tractor-trailer combinations $15,119 more expensive in 2027 than they...

California’s last nuclear power plant will close by 2025 under an accord announced Tuesday, ending three decades of safety debates that helped fuel the national anti-nuclear power movement. The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and environmental groups announced the agreement on the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which sits along a Pacific Ocean bluff on California’s central coast. Environmentalists had pressed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for years to close Diablo, given its proximity to seismic faults in the earthquake-prone state. …

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...

Canada once again backed Israel at the UN this week when it voted against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) resolution singling out only Israel for “mental, physical and environmental health” rights abuse. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government joined the Israel, the United States, Australia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Micronesia and Papua New Guinea as the only countries to vote against the resolution, which was co-sponsored by the Arab Group of States and the Palestinian delegation. …