Free Republic

“Kill your air conditioner,” wrote Joe Klein in Time Magazine. “The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease.” What? I’m tempted to laugh at the lunacy. It’s as silly as banning the light bulb in an attempt to save the planet. Who could be that stupid? Well, in a few years incandescent light bulbs will be illegal. We’ll be forced to buy compact fluorescents, which require Hazmat disposal teams when broken. In today’s green environment, nothing is too insane. Frighteningly, our industry is increasingly considered politically incorrect. A decade ago, the New York Times reported that an Italian...

Democrats to let the moratorium expire on September 30. From AP. Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in an month-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer. Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election. Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign...

The man wanted for vandalizing a HUMMER in Southlake surrendered to police Friday. Several tips and surveillance video from the vehicle pointed to the 72-year-old suspect.

All summer long, House Republicans staged weekly news conferences outside the Capitol calling for more offshore oil drilling. And they were usually met by an assortment of environmental protesters chanting in unison, trying to drown out the GOP's pro-drilling voices. Some even wore polar bear costumes to protest Arctic drilling proposals. But then Democrats approved a bill Tuesday that could lead to drilling just 50 miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, reversing the party's long-standing opposition to exploration of the outer continental shelf.

Everyone's always talking about how an aging population, with more retirees, is going to wreak havoc on Social Security and the federal budget. Here's my question: What impact will that have on the planet? After all, my grandparents don't seem to care much about global warming, their refrigerator is from the 1970s, and they use an awful lot of air conditioning at home. Give it to me straight: Are Grandma and Grandpa bad for the environment? "Do it for the kids" has always been one of the most popular arguments in favor of environmentalism: Older people need to get their...

Four tree-sitters began climbing down from an 80-foot-tall redwood tree near Memorial Stadium this afternoon after UC Berkeley officials agreed to create a committee that will oversee future campus development, a spokesman for the protesters said. UC officials declined to comment on the reported deal, saying they will speak after the nearly 2-year-long standoff ends. But protesters atop the tree pumped their fists in a show of victory. Before climbing down, one of the protesters, nicknamed Huck, shouted, "We love you" to cheering supporters below. The protesters' deal with the university does not include amnesty from criminal charges, said their...

Rick Steiner Professor, University of Alaska While I disagree with many of Senator John McCain’s policies and I was not planning to vote for him, I was willing to concede that he may at least make a wise, rational president and represent a step in the right direction for the nation – an acceptable second choice. No longer. With his pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, he has shown a spectacular, even dangerous, lack of judgment. What is not important here is the glitz and glamour, the appearance of the candidates, and the number of balloons...

Word around Detroit is GM and the EPA are apparently duking it out over the Chevy Volt. The problem is this: Is the Volt an electric car or a hybrid? How you define the Volt is important, because it dictates how the official EPA fuel-economy numbers will be calculated.

BERKELEY -- Except for a lone redwood holding four tree-sitters, UC Berkeley today finished cutting down the long-embattled Memorial Stadium trees that protesters had been fighting to preserve for 21 months. Arborists removed 42 oaks, redwoods, laurels, and other trees from the grove, leaving 28 around the perimeter. Several others, including a mature redwood, are slated to be transplanted to make way for a $124-million student athlete training center. The university has no immediate plans to forcibly extricate the tree-sitters, but hopes they'll come down voluntarily now that the grove has been removed, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. The campus...

Sarah Palin questions global warming science and favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She also opposed a state initiative that would have banned metal mines in her state from discharging pollution into salmon streams, and dropped a lawsuit intended to prevent polar bears from being listed as a threatened species. Not that any of these things are surprising considering that she’s a Republican, but the party’s questionable pick for VP is governor of Alaska, where the ANWR is located, and the state that has already seen the most dramatic effects of global warming. From the Sydney...

California, with its long coastline littered with white bags, needs a better approach, one that encourages people to make informed choices between disposable and reusable bags. Here are the options: • A piecemeal, voluntary approach by stores. • A hard-line approach, such as a ban. • A simple, market-based solution: a consumption tax. Ireland has taken this route. Since 2002, consumers who forget to bring a bag are charged a 15-cent tax at checkout. Before the tax, Ireland's 3.9 million people used 1.2 billion bags per year. Now it's 230 million. About $9.6 million was raised from the tax in...

(Fortune) -- What do Oreo cookies made by Nabisco, Cheez-It crackers from Kellogg's or General Mills' Fiber One Chewy Bars have to do with global warming and the destruction of tropical rainforests? A lot, say environmental activists. The link between the supermarket shelf, climate change and shrinking rainforests is palm oil, a controversial ingredient that may now be the most widely-traded vegetable oil in the world. Here's the problem: Demand for palm oil, which is found in soaps and cosmetics as well as food, has more than doubled in the last decade as worldwide food consumption has soared. Farmers, in...

A Spokane woman was sentenced Tuesday to three years in federal prison in the May 2001 firebombing of the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. Lacey Phillabaum, 33, of Spokane, is one of five people -- members of a domestic terrorist group called the Earth Liberation Front -- who were accused by federal prosecutors of the arson attack that destroyed the building along with precious samples of rare and endangered plants species being cultivated for reintroduction into the Cascades. The ELF cell, dubbed "The Family," acted on the erroneous belief that a scientist at the center was doing the...

The other day, as a favor, I posted a scientific article from a friend of mine, Dr H. Harrister, PhD, who conclusively showed that fitter people have larger carbon footprints than do fatter people. You might remember Dr Harrister from his famous paper showing that zombie attacks will increase due to global warming. Unfortunately, because of sloppiness on my part, several readers came to the conclusion that Dr Harrister, PhD's paper was satire. That is to say, a joke. Far from it. That paper was just as rigorous and valid as the dozens that now appear monthly in scientific, peer-reviewed...

The answer is ... children. Well, maybe a few of them qualify as young adults. But the young 20-somethings of America are becoming extremely politically active and they have chosen their cause: the environment. P Here's an example of what I am talking about. Greenpeace has a summer campaign called "Change It", which teaches 140 young people how to move lawmakers with grassroots campaigns. For 140 slots, Greenpeace received over 1,000 applications. The Greenpeace student coordinator Amanda Starbuck says, "To me, this is the strongest student movement since the 1960s ... The current generation is very environmental-minded and [has] a...

British couples should have no more than two children to save the world from global warming, according to a green think tank. Campaigners from the Optimum Population Trust said limiting family size was the 'simplest and biggest' contribution people could make to saving the planet. While Britain need not follow the example of China and ban large families, having more than two children should be frowned upon in the same way as using a patio heater or driving a gas guzzling car. But critics said doctors and governments had no right to tell parents how many children to have -...

GPs should tell parents not to have more than two children to help in the battle against climate change, according to doctors. The world's population increases by 1.5m each week and babies born in the UK will use more greenhouse gases during their lifetime than those born in the developing world. Two doctors, writing in the British Medical Journal, suggest that doctors should talk to their patients about climate change and encourage them to think about the consequences of having a big family. Investing in contraception would help in the fight against climate change, they argue. (snip) "We must not...

If you think the vilest evil possible comes with a pitch fork, and horns, breathing fire, sneering and hurling curses, and wearing red, you are wrong. The most despicable evil in the world comes with a smile, a declaration of its concern for the future of mankind, and a promise to save the world—wearing green. The Green Lie We human beings are fallible creatures and in spite of our best efforts to learn the truth we can be mistaken. Medical science was mistaken for a long time about the nature of peptic ulcers, and even resisted the truth about their...

A prominent journalist doesn't just want our air conditioners turned down. He wants them off. This is the sort of nonsense we're getting from the anti-energy, global-warming-is-making-us-sick left. Time's Joe Klein probably thought he was being clever when he wrote his late June essay on the evils of cooling headlined "Kill Your Air Conditioner." Instead, he wrote yet another chapter in the left's book of environmental silliness. "The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease," said Klein. "Air conditioning is bad for the planet, and for national security, and for our balance-of-payments deficit."

I saw WALL-E with my five year old on Saturday night. It was like a 90-minute lecture on the dangers of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment. All this from mega-company Disney, who wants us to buy WALL-E kitsch for our kids that are manufactured in China at environment-destroying factories and packed in plastic that will take hundreds of year to biodegrade in our landfills. Much to Disney's chagrin, I will do my part to avoid future environmental armageddon by boycotting any and all WALL-E merchandise and I hope others join my crusade.

First it was a proposed ban on plastic bags. Now, a member of the influential Madison Plan Commission wants to ban the restaurant drive-through -- or at least restrict the ubiquitous symbol of America's auto-centric lifestyle. "Given the concern about all the carbon going into the atmosphere, I'm not sure we should be building more places for people to sit idling in their cars," says Eric Sundquist, who was appointed to the citizen panel by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz this spring. A former newspaper reporter in Atlanta now working as a researcher at the UW-Madison's Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Sundquist notes...

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy.

Top 10 Reasons Why Switching Can Help Changing our diet from an animal-centric diet to a plant-based diet is by far the "most green" action that an individual can take. Here are the top 10 reasons how switching can help. Reduce global warming. In its 2006 report, the United Nations said raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. Avoid excessive CO2 production. According to the UN Report, when emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9% of CO2 deriving from human-related...

Enlightened animal lovers across the United States face a quandary: how to pamper beloved pets without adding to global warming or creating an outsized carbon paw print? Answers for the ecologically-aware pet owner were on offer at the "Going Green With Pets" conference at Manhattan's tony Metropolitan Dog Club, with pointers on everything from whipping up biodegradable cat litter to choosing the best organic shampoo for one's Lhasa Apso. "This is a doggy salon," said Charlotte Reed, the store's proprietor, as well as the doting owner of a small menagerie that includes three toy spaniels, three Himalayan cats and two...

The Sierra Club, one of the nation's largest and most politically-active environmental organizations, announced this evening it would endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president. The announcement was not a surprise: the group's executive director, Carl Pope, had hammered the presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for months over his missed votes in the Senate and his support for nuclear power subsidies as a way to address global warming. This week Pope criticized McCain for announcing he supports lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling. Tomorrow, Pope will speak at an event in Cleveland, Ohio with Leo Gerard,...

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy efficient, the power use at the former vice president's house has increased more than 10 percent, a nonprofit research group reported Tuesday. "A man's commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home," said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, in a news release. "Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption." Using data obtained through a...

Bugs. They want us to eat bugs. I speak of a recent article in Time that explains why eating bugs is good for the environment. As it goes, bugs require "little room and few resources to grow." Bugs are cold-blooded invertebrates, you see. They are efficient. Much more of the grub they eat is converted into edible bug body parts than is the case with our friends the cows. Cows are warm-blooded vertebrates. They need to consume lots more food just to keep their body temperature steady. Their food is grown on farms. Fossil fuels must be burned to harvest,...

Gore endorses Obama By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago Al Gore says he is backing Barack Obama and will do whatever he can to help him get to the White House. In a letter to be e-mailed to Obama supporters, Gore says Obama has united a movement over the past year and a half.

The disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions by Clean Wisconsin in a January 2007 report.The report, "Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin," forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall, Clean Wisconsin said in a news release. Clean Wisconsin, the state's largest environmental advocacy organization, was founded as Wisconsin's Environmental Decade."In the year and a half since the release of this report, we have seen a summer of extreme drought end with intense flooding, a winter of record snowfall and now a spring...

This film is so bad that I feel compelled to make a spoiler-laden list of its most laughably terrible parts rather than review it. M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie, The Happening, is not merely bad. It is an astonishment, so idiotic in conception and inept in execution that, after seeing it, one almost wonders whether it was real or imagined. It's the kind of movie you want to laugh about with friends, swapping favorite moments of inanity: "Do you remember the part when Mark Wahlberg ... ?" "God, yes. And what about that scene where the wind ... ?" The...

Dems Kill Chances for Energy Independence? A congressional subcommittee struck down an important bill, which could have opened up reserves worth billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, on Wednesday, Cramer said. The measure would allow drilling between 50 miles and 200 miles off the U.S. coastline. Estimates for the reserves there were as high as 8.5 billion barrels of oil and 29 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, in addition to potential undiscovered resources of 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas. Needless to say, Cramer’s a bit...

WASHINGTON — With oil and gas prices reaching record highs and little relief in sight, Republican members of Congress are looking at a long-sought, but so far unsuccessful plan to open American shores up to more petroleum exploration. Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa. is leading the charge Wednesday, when he'll push for an amendment to a spending bill that would open up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles off shore for drilling. The first 50 miles off shore would be left alone. "For 27 years, Congress has deliberately locked up vast offshore oil and natural gas reserves," Peterson said, according...

Republicans finally have a winning argument on a big issue, and they'd better make the most of it. It starts with high gasoline prices--the single most infuriating issue to voters these days--but doesn't end there. Democrats are not being blamed for causing the price of gasoline to reach $4 a gallon, at least by the public and at least for now. Where Democrats have stumbled embarrassingly is in their campaign to persuade the public that the American oil industry is the chief culprit. A Gallup national poll in May found only 20 percent blame the oil companies for gouging, down...

The activist pleads guilty in two arsons and will serve at the Sheridan federal prisonTre Arrow, a radical environmentalist who was once one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives, pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of arson. Appearing before U.S. District Judge James Redden, Arrow agreed to serve to 78 months in federal prison, with credit for time served since March 2004 in jails in Canada and the United States. Arrow, who will be formally sentenced Aug. 12, will serve about two years and four months at the Sheridan Federal Correctional Institution. His sentence could be further reduced by 54 days...

LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Generation Investment Management, the private equity fund chaired by former U.S. vice president Al Gore, has acquired a 9.5 percent stake in Camco International Ltd, a carbon asset developer. Generation, set up in 2004 by Gore and David Blood, former chief of Goldman Sachs's asset management arm, now holds 16 million Camco shares, Camco said in a statement. Camco, which has one of the world's largest carbon credit portfolios, works with companies to identify and develop projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and then arranges the sale and delivery of carbon credits.

PORTLAND, Ore. - An environmental activist and former fugitive who once won thousands of votes in a congressional election pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges under a deal that would send him to prison for two years. Tre Arrow, 34, pleaded guilty to the destruction of concrete-mixing trucks in Portland in April 2001 and to firebombing logging trucks at a contested logging sale near Mount Hood in June 2001. He had faced up to 40 years in prison if convicted of two counts of arson. In a separate case, a radical environmentalist who helped federal officials round up a militant...

A bill going to the U.S. Senate next week seeking deep cuts in U.S. greenhouse gases by 2050 is a "first step" but not enough to avert damaging climate change, the head of the U.N. Climate Panel said on Friday. Rajendra Pachauri also said that even tougher plans by some other developed nations to rein in emissions were insufficient to head off some projected impacts of global warming, ranging from more heatwaves and droughts to rising seas. The U.S. bill, sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent and Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, seeks to cut U.S. emissions...

AN ABC website has been accused of portraying farmers and forestry workers as evil, and telling kids how much carbon they can produce before they die. The Planet Slayer website, which can be accessed via the science section on the ABC home page, also demonises people who eat meat and those involved in the nuclear industry, a Senate estimates committee heard. The site has several features including a cartoon series, Adventures of Greena, and a tool called Prof Schpinkee's Greenhouse Calculator to help kids work out their carbon footprint. The calculator lets users compare their own carbon output to the...

DALLAS -- Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest oil-and-gas company, came out swinging Wednesday against the environmental movement, arguing the science of climate change is far from settled and that his company views it as its "corporate social responsibility" to continue to supply the world with fossil fuels. Speaking to reporters after the annual meeting of shareholders, at which much-publicized proposals by the Rockefeller family calling for new investment in renewable energy received little support, Mr. Tillerson also said he expects little delay in the $8-billion Kearl oilsands project in Alberta, after a...

PORTLAND, Ore. – Tre Arrow, a radical environmentalist who was once one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives, has announced on his Web site he has accepted a plea deal on federal arson and conspiracy charges. Arrow had entered a not guilty plea. His attorney, Paul T. Loney, confirmed on Wednesday Arrow “is changing his plea” and a hearing date has been set for next Tuesday. The U.S. Attorney's office in Portland did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Arrow, 34, who has legally changed his name from Michael Scarpitti, is charged in a 14-count federal indictment with helping to...

Alaska Suing U.S. Gov't over extra Polar-Bear Safeguards Written by Reuters Thursday, 22 May 2008 The state of Alaska is suing the U.S. government to stop it listing the polar bear as a threatened species. Gov. Sarah Palin says an endangered-species designation will slow development in her state. The Republican governor has argued that the ice-dependent bear, the first mammal granted Endangered Species Act listing because of global warming, does not need additional protections, as mandated by U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. " We believe that the listing was unwarranted and that it's unprecedented to list a currently healthy...

Blame Democrats for high price of energyLee S. Gliddon Jr., North Las Vegas Mon, May 12, 2008 (2:02 a.m.) The Democrats continue their efforts to blame the rising prices of gasoline and fuel oil on the Republicans and, in particular, the Bush administration. There is no bigger lie to be foisted upon the American public. Since 1980, almost 29 years ago, the Democrats began their refusal to allow offshore drilling, Alaskan oil drilling, the construction of nuclear power plants and wind farms off the coast of New England. Their claims, however foolish, were designed to protect the interests of their...

On the evening of Monday, May 19th, the newly formed River City Animal Defense League (ADL) and friends made our public debut. We took to the neighborhoods, and more specifically the houses of executives and contractors of Gohmann Asphalt and Construction, Inc. Gohmann Asphalt and Construction, Inc. is a disgusting company that has decided to proceed with business in the construction of Interstate-69 (I-69) which is the North American Free Trade Agreement's (NAFTA) superhighway. NAFTA’s superhighway has already been built from Ontario to Indianapolis. It is planned to extend into Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Once in Texas...

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...

Fried foods are forbidden at the committee's 22 or so events, as is liquid served in individual plastic containers. Plates must be reusable, like china, recyclable or compostable. The food should be local, organic or both.

Campaign '08: Barack Obama plans to lower our standard of living to fight climate change and make the world love us. The last time you may be able to drive your SUV may be to an Obama rally.Campaigning in environmentally conscious Oregon over the weekend, Obama lit into Republican John McCain's environmental and energy policies. "For him to come to Oregon as an environmental president, but his big strategy is to do more drilling and to have a gas-tax holiday for three months, that's a phony solution," Obama said. Well, increasing domestic drilling and lowering taxes, even temporarily, doesn't sound...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Barack Obama set his sights on November's general election Saturday as he campaigned in Oregon, where he hopes to declare victory in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama has said Tuesday's primaries in Oregon and Kentucky could mark the end of his drawn-out battle with rival Hillary Clinton, and his campaign pressed home that message by announcing a symbolic return to Iowa that day. Iowa was the scene of the Illinois senator's first victory in the 2008 presidential nominating race, and his campaign noted Saturday it is "a critical general election state that Democrats must...

MECHANICSBURG, Pa. -- It's a message being drummed into the heads of homeowners everywhere: Swap out those incandescent lights with longer-lasting compact fluorescent bulbs and cut your electric use. Governments, utilities, environmentalists and, of course, retailers everywhere are spreading the word. Few, however, are volunteering to collect the mercury-laced bulbs for recycling -- despite what public officials and others say is a potential health hazard if the hundreds of millions of them being sold are tossed in the trash and end up in landfills and incinerators. For now, much of the nation has no real recycling network for CFLs, despite...

Fat people blamed for global warming By Patrick Sawer Last Updated: 8:52AM BST 17/05/2008As if they didn’t already have enough problems on their hands fat people are now being blamed for global warming. British scientists say they use up more fuel to transport them around and the amount of food they eat requires more energy to produce than that consumed by those on smaller diets. According to a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine this adds to food shortages and higher energy prices. Researchers Phil Edwards said: “We are all becoming heavier and it is a...

It’s not quite Birkenstocks and tie-dyed T-shirts, but presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) has shown he’s willing to go the extra mile to embrace the global warming movement. The latest sign of that is the recently introduced “eco-friendly” campaign merchandise the McCain campaign has showcased on its Web site. Included are his and hers “Go Green” McCain embroidered polo shirts, T-shirts, hats and visors with or without the recycle logo. Organic cotton onesies for the babies. You can also find “Go Green” McCain tote bags, notebooks and travel mugs (with up to 100 percent recycled material and...