Free Republic

You’re not supposed to burn any coal or oil. You should probably avoid natural gas too, since it’s composed of hydrocarbons. Don’t drive your car unless it’s one of those battery powered ones that hasn’t caught fire yet. Get rid of those incandescent light bulbs all over your house. Clean all the steak and ground beef out of your fridge because cows are too flatulent. Have you checked all of these off your list? Good. Then you are finally doing your part and helping to end global warming.Oh, we forgot one more thing… we’re going to need to confiscate...

The legal barrage to halt the Environmental Protection Agency’s radical Clean Power Plan has begun. A broad coalition of U.S. industry and business, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and an armada of other business and industry organizations, has asked the D.C. District of the federal Court of Appeals to prevent any further action on the Plan until the court can decide its overall legal status. The coalition filed a motion at their first opportunity on Friday to stay EPA’s long-awaited final rule governing the plan, immediately after the agency published the rule in the...

On September 24, 2015, the federal Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) published a Notice of Proposed Withdrawal (“BLM notice”), proposing to withdraw from mineral location and entry federal lands identified as “sagebrush focal areas” in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. The BLM notice commences a two-year temporary segregation period, prohibiting location and entry of new mining claims on BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands in these sagebrush focal areas. If the BLM decides to withdraw the area at the end of the segregation period, the withdrawal will last up to 20 years, but could be extended in the...

It's a regulation considered the most ambitious expansion of EPA's control over American waterways in history and a federal court has issued an injunction blocking its implementation. The Hill: “We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims,” the judges wrote in their decision, explaining that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new guidelines for determining whether water is subject to federal control — based mostly on the water’s distance and connection to larger water bodies — is “at odds” with a key Supreme Court ruling.

The Environmental Protection Agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on military-style weapons to arm its 200 “special agents” to fight environmental crime. Among the weapons purchased are guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities, according to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books. “Protecting the environment just got real. With millions of dollars spent on military style weaponry, the EPA is now literally ensconced with all institutional force,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books and the author...

OK, here’s the background. Once upon a time, the Obama administration decided to implement a ruling – without the input of Congress, mind you – that defined ““waters of the U.S.” to include virtually any wet area — even a rain-fed temporary pool — that is close to any other body of water with a physical connection to a navigable waterway.” As you can imagine, this was and is a massive attempt to extend the reach of the regulatory State into areas that they do not traditionally have the ability to go into. By making essentially all waters federal waters,...

A federal court ruled Friday that President Obama’s regulation to protect small waterways from pollution cannot be enforced nationwide. In a 2-1 ruling, the Cincinnati-based Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit delivered a stinging defeat to Obama’s most ambitious effort to keep streams and wetlands clean, saying it looks likely that the rule, dubbed Waters of the United States, is illegal. “We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims,” the judges wrote in their decision, explaining that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new guidelines for determining whether water is subject...

New rules could outlaw lawn mowing, add a parking tax and declare national parks "toxic." Image via Shutterstock Next month, the Obama administration may roll out the most expensive regulation in history, ignoring scientific data that cutting ozone rates will not improve public health. In the name of fighting asthma, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested permission to decrease the ozone standard — the amount of ozone allowed in the atmosphere — to a level some scientists say is physically impossible to achieve. One organization estimates the cost to implement these new rules will be $1.1 trillion. Even worse, data...

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials refused for weeks to share water-quality data with their state counterparts following a blowout of toxic wastewater from a Colorado mine that fouled rivers across the Southwest, New Mexico's top environmental regulator testified Thursday. The move by federal agencies aimed to downplay the severity of the spill, hobbling the state's response to the high levels of arsenic, lead and other contaminants involved in the spill, New Mexico Secretary of Environment Ryan Flynn said. His criticisms, aired before a U.S. House committee investigating the Aug. 5 accident, offered more fodder for congressional Republicans eager to find...

The recent Gold King Mine wastewater spill could breathe new life into a conversation about state control over federal lands. A meeting of the Water Resources Review Committee on Tuesday offered a glimpse into the issue, as state lawmakers had their first opportunity since the Aug. 5 spill to ask questions as an official panel. An Environmental Protection Agency-contracted team was performing reclamation work on the Gold King Mine near Silverton when an error during excavation caused an estimated 3 million gallons of orange sludge to pour into the Animas River. The water initially tested for spikes in heavy metals....

The Environmental Protection Agency was accused Wednesday of doctoring footage from the Gold King Mine spill, removing the audio of a worker saying, “What do we do now?” During a House committee hearing on the accident, Rep. Bill Johnson, Ohio Republican, showed what he said was an original on-site video taken the day of the Aug. 5 spill, which includes the audio, and then the same video posted on the EPA’s website that beeps out the audio. “The last few seconds of the audio has been removed to prevent the viewers from hearing the team on the ground saying, ‘What...

A Colorado coal mine slated for closure due to a technicality has gotten a reprieve from the federal government in a move that could save hundreds of jobs. The Colowyo coal mine, which has provided hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars to the economy of the city of Craig and the northwestern region of the state since 1977 was in danger of being closed because a renewal permit drafted eight years ago did not take into account the mine's impact on climate change. An environmental group sued in a bid to invalidate the permit. A court-ordered review by the...

Sunday the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President released a statement to the public in regards to FEMA and the EPA's refusal for assistance in cleaning up the toxic water in the San Jaun River. "We are extremely frustrated with the news that both FEMA and the U.S. EPA have declined our urgent requests to continue assistance to the Navajo Nation. U.S. EPA caused this entire disaster, they have harmed the people, the water and the land. I appreciated the fact U.S. EPA took responsibility and I was hoping for the U.S. EPA to prove to the...

A federal judge on Friday declined to halt the Obama administration's controversial water rule nationwide, rebuffing the request of 13 states that are battling with the Environmental Protection Agency.Judge Ralph Erickson of the North Dakota U.S. District Court ruled that there are “significant prudential reasons to limit the scope” of the injunction he already gave the 13 states last week. Other courts have denied injunctions, he said, and some states want to implement the “Waters of the United States” rule. “On the one hand, there is a desirability for uniformity regarding a national rule with national application,” Erickson wrote. “On...

Because you are buying now two appliances, a water heater and air conditioner, “heat pump heaters are twice as expensive” as the old electric water heater If you ask an engineer, he will tell you that CO2 is not a pollutant, and burning fossil fuels has made the Earth greener because their emissions are rapidly assimilated by sunlight. As Dr. Klaus Kaiser had explained, “incomplete combustion can cause air quality problems, not because of CO2 but due to soot particles and nitrogen oxides,” particularly in high density urban areas where the air tends to be stagnant. There is a reason...

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) reacted to a recent injunction that blocked a new regulation that would have granted the federal government jurisdiction over some waterways across the United States. “I wasn’t surprised by the injunction even though other courts were sort of failing to see the logic of states’ cases in other filings,” Cramer exclusively told Breitbart News. On Friday, North Dakota’s U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson ordered a temporary injunction against the Obama administration’s rule, which would grant the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), along with the Army Corps of Engineers, authority over...

The very same crew which recently dumped three million gallons of toxic sludge out of an abandoned mine and turned the Animas River in Colorado the color of a yellow banded poison dart frog for roughly a week has just issued a whole new set of rules to “protect” small pools of water. They would also like you to know that these rules are going into effect even though a federal judge put them on hold in 13 states, too. This new batch of regulations is going to “protect” bodies of water which may include the ditch in front...

A federal judge in North Dakota on Thursday blocked a new Obama administration rule that would give the federal government jurisdiction over some smaller waterways just hours before it was set to go into effect. U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson in Fargo issued a temporary injunction requested by North Dakota and 12 other states halting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers from regulating some small streams, tributaries and wetlands under the Clean Water Act. The rule, which has prompted fierce criticism from farmers among others, was scheduled to take effect Friday. North Dakota Attorney General Wayne...

BISMARCK, N.D. — A federal judge in North Dakota on Thursday blocked a new Obama administration rule that would give the federal government jurisdiction over some state waterways. U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson of North Dakota issued a temporary injunction against a the rule, which gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers authority to protect some streams, tributaries and wetlands under the Clean Water Act. The rule was scheduled to take effect Friday. “The risk of irreparable harm to the states is both imminent and likely,” Judge Erickson said in blocking the rule from taking effect....

A federal judge has ruled that a controversial regulation that would give the Environmental Protection Agency jurisdiction over small streams and ditches is bureaucratic overreach and has halted the implementation of the rule. The judge was not pleased with the EPA, who said they would go ahead and implement the regulation in the 37 states that did not sue to end it.