Free Republic

Sen. Jim Inhofe said he plans to use a legislative maneuver that would allow rejection of environmental regulations by majority vote to take whacks at President Obama's agenda, signaling a contentious two years between the White House and Congress with the Oklahoma Republican helming the Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe said he intends to use the Congressional Review Act to strike down a proposed rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants along with other regulations once they are finalized. Any attempt to do so, however, almost certainly would be vetoed by Obama, who has said he plans to protect...

The Endangered Species Act has become a gold mine for liberal activists and a barrier to our nation’s infrastructure. It is time for it to go. The Heartland Institute's Taylor Smith reports for the January issue of Townhall Magazine.

Our dishwasher broke just after Christmas. The timer stopped working, and a new one costs about $100. My wife suggested that since the dishwasher is nineteen years old, we should buy a new one. Up until now it was working very quietly and efficiently, washing and drying a full load in about an hour. We visited the appliance shop where we had recently purchased a new clothes washing machine a few months earlier. I mentioned to the salesman that our new washer was very slow, taking nearly two hours to finish a large load compared to our old one, which...

21,000 new regulations have been enacted under Obama, and 2,375 are scheduled so far for 2015. Congress does not have the power to stop this avalanche, and can do very little to slow it down. The sad and frustrating part of this “government gone wild” scenario is that it is highly doubtful any of these regulations can be rescinded or fixed before they potentially cause significant permanent damage to our individual freedoms, to say nothing of how they will negatively impact our day-to-day lives. This is how Obama’s “fundamental change” of America is accomplished.

IN 1982 a Chinese aquaculture scientist named Fusui Zhang journeyed to Martha’s Vineyard in search of scallops. The New England bay scallop had recently been domesticated, and Dr. Zhang thought the Vineyard-grown shellfish might do well in China. After a visit to Lagoon Pond in Tisbury, he boxed up 120 scallops and spirited them away to his lab in Qingdao. During the journey 94 died. But 26 thrived. Thanks to them, today China now grows millions of dollars of New England bay scallops, a significant portion of which are exported back to the United States. As go scallops, so goes...

Many people view the relationship between humans and nature as a zero-sum game: Our progress comes at the direct expense of the environment. Actually, that’s not the case. Recently, we’ve been able to dramatically improve our standard of living while simultaneously leaving behind a cleaner environment. In fact, Michigan’s environment is arguably cleaner than it has been in more than 100 years. Consider how clean our drinking water has become. In the early 20th century, waterborne infectious diseases such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid were leading causes of death, and typhoid epidemics annually sickened thousands in American cities. With technological...

(CNSNews.com) - "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." But WAIT! Stop the music -- What is the moisture content of those logs? Before burning the logs, did you knock them together to see if they sounded hollow? You really should go dashing through the snow to your local hardware store in search of a "moisture meter," the perfect gift for that environmentally paranoid person on your Christmas list. Those people are so hard to please, aren't they? And be sure to check your local air quality forecast on airnow.gov before lighting a fire. Alas, the Environmental Protection Agency recognizes that,...

A federal appeals court has ruled against environmentalists who are trying to force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate spent lead bullets and lead shot used in hunting and shooting sports. In a decision favorable to gun enthusiasts, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Tuesday that environmental groups have suggested no way in which EPA could regulate spent lead bullets and shot without also regulating cartridges and shells.

Since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued 3,120 new final regulations, equaling 27,854 pages in the Federal Register, totaling approximately 27,854,000 words.

Six years after a devastating coal ash spill in Roane County, the federal government is putting in place standards to regulate ash from coal-fired power plants as a nonhazardous material, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today. The new rules, the first-ever federal regulations for the storage and disposal of coal ash, would require industries to install liners and put in place other safeguards for new and existing storage ponds. Groundwater monitoring systems would have to be installed to detect pollutants, any existing contamination would have to be cleaned up immediately, and impoundments that are already polluting groundwater above health-safety...

(EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy) The federal SWAT team of nearly two dozen heavily armed agents from the EPA, FBI, and other agencies descended on the Canal Refining Co. in Church Point, Louisiana. Their target: Hubert P. Vidrine, Jr., the plant manager. His crime? Allegedly storing hazardous materials. His employees were herded up and treated like criminals. They were prevented from using the restrooms for several hours, as well as being denied the right to call their homes and daycare centers to make plans to have their children picked up. That was in September 1996. It took the federal government...

The nation’s state legislatures are about to become embroiled in a battle of epic proportions as they line up on either side of the debate over the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. The struggle could define the future of, and indeed the very existence of, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisc.), 49 members of the Wisconsin Legislature and the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin are part of a nationwide, state legislative backlash against the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. EPA officials proposed the plan in June 2014. It is designed to reduce carbon greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fuel fired...

Freedom is our birthright. The forthcoming climate treaty – if the failed Copenhagen draft of five years ago is any guide – may yet prove a greater threat to liberty than fascism or communism. For it is the same threat writ global, albeit with the jackboots and guns very carefully hidden – for now.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said there won't be any mistaking what Congress thinks about the Environmental Protection Agency when Republicans take control of the upper chamber in January. The Kentucky Republican, responding to comments Secretary of State John Kerry made at a United Nations climate change conference in Lima, Peru, said the EPA would be in his crosshairs early next session. "Given the change in management that’s coming to the Senate, overseas audiences may want to proceed with caution when it comes to Secretary Kerry’s recommendations and comments," McConnell warned.

"In 1993, the [Volvo Environment] Prize went to Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University and Professor John P. Holdren of the University of California in Berkeley, whose work laid the foundations of our understanding of how the dynamics of population growth, rising living standards and changing technology, as well as the relationships between them, interact in the context of environmental problems." List of past winners (and their work) from 1990 - 2014 Professor Paul R. Ehrlich, Professor John P. Holdren

“Lack of transparency was really critical to getting it passed,” former Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber explained. The Democrats cleverly exploited the American voters’ “lack of economic understanding.” Now President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is using secretive, duplicitous science, and exploiting people’s lack of scientific understanding, to impose punitive regulations cleverly labeled the “clean power plan.” The agency claims the clean power plan will prevent “dangerous manmade climate change” by reducing carbon dioxide and “encouraging” greater use of renewable energy. Its real goal is forcing coal-fired power plants to reduce operations significantly or shut down entirely. The EPA also claims that...

".....Yuma,Colorado, a farming town of 3,500 people near the Kansas border, celebrated last month as homegrown Republican Cory Gardner was elected to the U.S. Senate. Gardner, a high school football player and the son of a farm equipment dealer, defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall to help the GOP gain control of the Senate in the second-most expensive congressional race of all time.Gardner represented Colorado’s 4th Congressional District for four years, an expansive territory that covers the mostly flat and rural eastern third of the state. Farmers there mostly grow corn to feed cattle, and water comes from the quickly...

Six moderate Democratic senators are asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to give states more time to comply with its climate rule for power plants. The moderate Democrats said that states should be responsible for developing their own “glide paths” toward the 2030 goal. The senators signing the letter were Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.).

Late on Thanksgiving eve, with no one paying attention, the Obama administration released its regulatory road map of thousands of regulations for 2015. Within the bundle of more than 3,000 regulations lies a rule on ozone that President Obama himself in 2011 “put on ice” in effort to reduce “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” Regarding the 2011 decision that shocked environmental groups, the New York Times recently stated: “At the time, Mr. Obama said the regulation would impose too severe a burden on industry and local governments at a time of economic distress.”...

With the release of EPA’s 600-plus page proposal on ozone, all attention turns to the fine details of such an expansive regulation. American Action Forum (AAF) research found that 100 national and state parks might not the meet EPA’s standards of 60-70 parts per billion (ppb). Hardly transportation corridors and centers of heavy pollution, many observers would be surprised to know that Death Valley National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Cape Cod National Seashore have ozone readings of 71 to 87 ppb. The map below details the geographic distribution of state and national parks in danger of EPA’s non-attainment label...