Free Republic

Billionaire anti-fracking activist Tom Steyer has dramatically increased his political donations in four key legislative races in Colorado in an effort to push the state away from fossil fuels, according to federal and state campaign finance records. Steyer made three $200 personal contributions to Democrats in crucial state Senate races. Democratic senatorial candidates Rachel Zenzinger, Jenise May, and Daniel Kagan were the recipients of Steyer’s largesse. May and Kagan are running for open seats, while Zenzinger is trying to unseat an incumbent Republican. Big money donors like Steyer can contribute a maximum of $200 in Colorado to state House or...

President Obama scolded “those of you who are buying gas-guzzlers” during remarks about clean energy at the North American leaders’ summit in Canada on Wednesday. Obama said he viewed the clean energy sector as an “enormous opportunity.” The United States, Canada, and Mexico made a pledge to use clean energy sources to generate half of their electric power by 2025. Chuckling, Obama warned that oil was a “finite resource.” “Oil is cheap right now, but it’s not going to be cheap,” Obama said. “I’ve said this before. Those of you who are buying gas-guzzlers, I’m telling you, because it is...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged voters to look at their personal habits in order to stop climate change, calling it one of the world’s biggest problems that the next president would have to face. “On an individual level, you know there are a lot of things that if more people did it, you would see results,” she said. Clinton shared her thoughts on global warming during a town hall with YouTube creators in Los Angeles, California.

Democratic operatives responsible for creating their party’s platform this year have unanimously adopted a provision calling for the Department of Justice to investigate companies who disagree with Democrats on global warming science. A panel of Democrats voted Friday to approve a final draft of the party’s platform to promote “Progressive Democratic Values,” which apparently includes investigating energy companies who “misled” shareholders about global warming. “Another joint proposal calling on the Department of Justice to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change was also...

Environmentalists are freaking out that Britain voted in favor of leaving the European Union on Thursday– something activists claim will be “catastrophic” for the environment. British environmentalists took to Twitter to vent their fears about leaving the EU after the “Brexit” vote. Activists have been arguing for months that leaving the EU would allow “climate deniers” to gain more power and undo environmental protections. From an environmental perspective this is catastrophic. Fight now on to ensure EU standards maintained and cooperation on climate continues.

Like a crazed serial killer, the liberal green groups are celebrating their “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. Now to get their next homicidal high, the leftists have turned their ambitions on the oil and natural gas industries. Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the grand, green vision: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired...

The latest auction in California's cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gases fell sharply below expectations, as buyers purchased just 2% of the carbon credits whose sale funds a variety of state programs -- notably, the proposed high-speed rail project. The quarterly auction, conducted May 18 and announced Wednesday, will provide just $10 million for state programs, including $2.5 million for the bullet train. The rail authority had been expecting about $150 million. Whatever prompted the lack of buyers, the auction is a stark example of the uncertainty and risk of relying on actively-traded carbon credits to build the bullet train. The...

The talks in Germany to flesh out December’s historic global climate deal are probably not at the top of Donald Trump’s agenda this week. But the diplomats from 196 nations huddled in Bonn are keenly aware of the fact that the “The Donald” is now within spitting distance of the White House — and it is making a lot of them nervous. It is not hard to see why. The last Republican standing in the U.S. presidential race has described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China to gain competitive advantage in manufacturing over the US, an eccentric theory...

Energy: The EPA’s proposal to increase the amount of ethanol that must be blended into gasoline is a trifecta of regulatory abuse. It will do nothing for the environment, it will do nothing for energy security, and it could wreck millions of car engines

For the eighth time, Peruvian actor and environmental activist Ricardo Torres has symbolically married a tree as part of an ecological awareness campaign to urge others to care for the environment. The wedding took place at a landmark location, the town of Santa Maria del Tule, which is home to an ancient 2000-year-old cypress tree. The tree's estimated weight is more than 544.3 million kilograms. Torres left the house of his godmother, accompanied by a committee of village elders, friends and family, and walked down the Sabino street towards a cluster of Cypress tree leaves to start with the ritual...

“I had this epiphany as a thirty-something, that I was going to die someday,” says Seattle-based architect Katrina Spade. As she watched her children, (then 2 and 5 years old) grow up day to day, she thought about a time when they would be 40 years old. And that she would be 70. And that she would eventually die. She began to look into the options we have for our corpses when we die, and the spaces and rituals associated with them: hardwood caskets, concrete vaults in the ground, carbon-emitting cremation, formaldehyde embalming, claiming a piece of real estate in...

Third rebuke of administration’s transparency this yearThe White House showed “bad faith” in how it handled an open-records request for global warming data, a federal court ruled Monday, issuing yet another stinging rebuke to the administration for showing a lack of transparency. For President Obama, who vowed to run the most transparent government in U.S. history, Judge Amit P. Mehta’s ruling granting legal “discovery” in an open-records case — the third time this year a judge has ordered discovery — is an embarrassing black eye. In this most recent case, the Competitive Enterprise Institute was trying to force the White...

The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is targeting dozens of conservative and libertarian organizations in a racketeering lawsuit against climate change skeptics that has been widely described as an effort to silence political opponents. In a subpoena issued in March, the office of USVI attorney general Claude Walker demanded from Exxon Mobil copies of communications between the oil company and 90 different political and policy organizations “and any other organizations engaged in research or advocacy concerning Climate Change or policies.” The subpoena was part of a national, coordinated legal campaign by state attorneys general and left-wing advocacy groups...

Leonardo DiCaprio devotes his acceptance speech for the Oscar he finally won after all these years to global warming, and people flip out. How courageous. How thoughtful. What a smart and conscientious guy. “You have to listen when Leonardo DiCaprio speaks out,” said one breathless Facebook post. No, you do not. You don’t have to listen to him blather on about global warming any more than you have to taker Hugo Chavez’ side because Sean Penn thinks he’s helping the little guy and not, as every sensible person on Earth seemed to recognize, looting the country. If you think his...

It’s been nearly one decade since former Vice President Al Gore released his film “An Inconvenient Truth.” It sent shockwaves through American politics and emboldened environmental activists to push for more regulations on American businesses. Gore warned increasing carbon dioxide emissions would spur catastrophic global warming that would cause more extreme weather, wipe out cities and cause ecological collapse. To stop global warming, humans needed to ditch fossil fuels and basically change every aspect of their lives. Watching “An Inconvenient Truth” is sort of like going back in time. Back to a world where flip phones were cool and “Futurama”...

Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race on Tuesday, making it almost certain that Donald Trump will win the GOP nomination and face Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in November. For those who've been in denial that this day could ever come, we figured a refresher course on the real estate developer's musings about climate and energy might be in order. On the basic science: "I am not a great believer in man-made climate change," Trump told the Washington Post editorial board in March. "If you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have...

"Think about the impact of the coming U.S. presidential elections. If a climate change denier was to be elected, it would threaten dramatically global action against climate disruption. We must not think that everything is settled." That's what former French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, creator of the landmark Paris climate change agreement, said indirectly about a potential President Donald Trump. Now that Trump, who has expressed doubt about manmade climate change, is the presumptive Republican nominee, world leaders are surely thinking even more critically about what a Trump administration would entail. RP

Bernie Sanders (champion of the "downtrodden", the climate, wannabe punisher of the successful and "free stuff" Santa Claus) charted a Boeing 767 jet for his overnight trip to Rome to see fellow socialist Pope Francis. According to the Daily Mail... that requires approx 33,192 gallons of fuel for the round trip. 50 or so passengers made the trip with Bern (767 capacity is 250 or so). Comparison to me: calculations of driving patterns based on my two vehicles (one a dreaded eeeveel SUV!), my wife and I "Bern" about 25 gallons of fuel a week. Based on our total fuel...

U.S. solar energy company SunEdison Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, becoming one of the largest non-financial companies to do so in the past 10 years. Once the fastest-growing U.S. renewable energy developer, SunEdison embarked on an aggressive acquisition strategy that left it struggling with $12 billion in debt. In its bankruptcy filing, the company said it had assets of $20.7 billion and liabilities of $16.1 billion as of Sept. 30. Although solar project developers such as SunEdison continue to benefit from robust demand, their shares have been hit by investor concerns that demand could fall in...

Bill Nye "the science guy" says in a video interview released Thursday that he is open to the idea of jailing those who deviate from the climate change consensus. Asked about the heated rhetoric surrounding the climate change debate, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s previous comments that some climate skeptics should be prosecuted as war criminals, Mr. Nye replied, "We'll see what happens."