Free Republic

UN-backed event ends with unusual call from civil society groups to end capitalism A UN-backed conference in Venezuela has ended with a declaration to scrap carbon markets and reject the green economy. The Margarita Declaration was issued at the end of a four-day meeting of around 130 green activist groups, which the Venezuelan government hosted in order to raise the volume of civil society demands in UN discussions on climate change. “The structural causes of climate change are linked to the current capitalist hegemonic system,” the final declaration said. “To combat climate change it is necessary to change the system.”...

Environmentalists have declared that global warming can’t be stopped without ending the “hegemonic capitalist system,” saying that cap-and-trade systems and conservation efforts are “false solutions.” “The structural causes of climate change are linked to the current capitalist hegemonic system,” reads the final draft of the Margarita Declaration, presented at a conference including about 130 environmental groups. “To combat climate change it is necessary to change the system,” the declaration adds. Environmental activists met in the oil producing, socialist country of Venezuela as part of a United Nations-backed event to increase civil engagement in the lead up to a major climate...

SAN FRANCISCO — Already locked in its third dry year, an ongoing drought could complicate California's battle against global warming and make it more expensive, officials said. For years, dams have been one of California's main sources of clean energy, generating power without spewing greenhouse gases into the air. "If there's less hydro, the power has to come from somewhere," said Victor Niemeyer of the Electric Power Research Institute. "You have to burn more gas, and that costs more money." A power plant operator that uses more natural gas, raising its emissions, must make up by buying "allowances" under the...

Khalifa Al Tajer Mosque, in Bur Saeed Street, Deira has the capacity for 3,500 worshippersDubai's Awqaf and Minors Affairs Foundation (AMAF) on Friday opened the first environmentally friendly mosque in the entire Islamic world to worshippers. The Khalifa Al Tajer Mosque, in Bur Saeed Street, Deira, Dubai, has the capacity for some 3,500 worshippers who attended the first Friday sermon at the mosque given by Sheikh Salih Al Maghamsi, imam of the Quba Mosque in Medinah, Saudi Arabia. Located on 105,000 square feet of land, the new green mosque was designed with energy efficiency in mind and was built with...

The graphic focuses on 10 of the world's most powerful food and beverage companies: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Danone, Mars, Mondelez International, Kellogg's, General Mills, Nestle, and Associated British Foods. Oxfam calls these companies the Big 10 and keeps a scorecard on their environmental impact on a website devoted to the nonprofit's "Behind the Brands" campaign. The campaign aims to make the companies more environmentally and socially conscious. According to one of Oxfam's most recent reports, the Big 10 emitted 263.7 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 and if the companies were a nation, it would be the 25th...

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly floated a rule claiming authority to bypass the courts and unilaterally garnish paychecks of those accused of violating its rules, a power currently used by agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service..... ....Critics said the threat of garnishing wages would be a powerful incentive for people to agree to expensive settlements rather than fight EPA charges. EPA officials did not respond to repeated questions by The Washington Times about why they thought it was necessary to garnish people’s wages. The EPA announced the plan last week in a notice in the Federal Register, saying...

Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich signed legislation that ends Ohio’s in-state wind energy mandate and also signed a measure to keep wind turbines farther away from neighboring property. Gov. Kasich signed Senate Bill 310 on June 13. Wind plants in Ohio, unlike in Michigan, will now have to try to compete with cheaper wind generated electricity from states where wind power is produced more efficiently. In addition, the legislation freezes the state’s overall renewable energy mandate for two years, while lawmakers re-evaluate it. Michigan still has an in-state wind mandate and the state Legislature has not made any serious effort...

A few years ago, Vice President Joe Biden called a wind turbine facility in Saginaw one of the top "100 Recovery Act Projects that are Changing America." In 2010, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act awarded Merrill Technologies Group a $22 million advanced energy manufacturing tax credit that then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm's office said was used to buy advanced manufacturing equipment needed to create wind turbine components in a facility in Saginaw. The Recovery Act also gave Merrill Technologies another $3 million. The former governor trumpeted the facility as the future of Michigan's economy that would help create 89,918 clean energy...

President Obama designated Fort Sill, Okla., as one of the military installations that would house the surge of young illegal immigrants coming to the United States, and the decision could be a factor in the homestretch of another Republican primary, just two weeks after immigration helped sink House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, (R., Va.). Former House Speaker T.W. Shannon has primarily faulted Representative James Lankford for voting to raise the debt-ceiling, but the recent spate of border crossings by minors has given him another weapon to use against his campaign to replace retiring Senator Tom Coburn.

".........The green office isn’t merely a desk and telephone tucked away in the dark corner of a nondescript government building. It’s a substantial undertaking, with all the luxury, bells and whistles of a bureaucracy that means business. Eric K. Shinseki, who resigned as secretary in the wake of the VA scandal of the sin of omission, traveled the country to boast of the green initiative. In one instance, he traveled to Massachusetts to flick the switch at a half-million-dollar windmill project at the Massachusetts National Cemetery. “Nationally,” he said, “VA continues to expand its investment in renewable sources of energy...

In the late 1980s the Democratic Party decided that appealing to its donor base required strict adherence to the notion of abortion on demand. Anyone who was pro-life (like Al Gore [1], Jesse Jackson [2], and Harry Reid [3]) either switched sides or was chased out of the party.Today, there are virtually no pro-life Democrats. And soon, thanks to a major push from Barack Obama to please his Sierra Club and Hollywood donors by saddling the coal industry with strict new regulations, there may be no pro-carbon energy Democrats. In turn, this may create a long-term advantage for Republicans...

Breeders were shocked: ‘I couldn't believe it when I first saw them,’ said Aida Vallelado Molina, who raises dogs with her dad.A pair of Spanish dog breeders was shocked recently when two puppies were born green. "I couldn't believe it when I first saw them," said owner Aida Vallelado Molina, 27. She added: "I thought the puppies were maybe dirty somehow, and I tried to clean them, but the color wouldn't come off and then I realized it was the color of their fur." Aida Vallelado Molina says at first she thought the puppies were dirty somehow.Aida Vallelado Molina says...

The problems that arise from having a mouth is that sometimes they open. It’s even worse when the owner doesn’t know how to keep it shut. But, when it comes to liberal Democrats, it has become an epidemic…and they just cannot contain themselves. Especially when it comes to the financially driven fear-fest known as climate change…because, you know…we’re all going to die. Ladies, and Gents, I present to you… 10 Things Liberals Insanely Link To Global Warming: 1) Global Warming Causes Rape Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, cuz global warming be raping everyone up in here! Back in February,...

"Feeding the masses on unicorn ribs". That was how Walter Russell Mead once poured scorn on Obama's misbegotten attempts to revive the US economy by creating five million "green jobs." Mead was quite right, of course. And there was plenty of evidence to back him up, such as the 2009 report by a Madrid university professor Gabriel Calzada Alvarez that for every expensive "green job" created by government subsidy, 2.2 jobs were destroyed in the real economy. The Obama administration responded as only the Obama administration knows how: by calling in its left-wing attack dogs. Friendly organisations including George Soros's...

Note to new readers: This article explores the consequences of using so much fuel to produce our food. If you come out of it thinking it’s telling you to drive rather than get some exercise, you didn’t read it!

There is little doubt among the students in Brandon Cone’s engineering class at Campbell County High School that a war is being waged against coal. The children of the mechanics who fix the mines’ great diesel trucks, the welders who staff their machine shops and the railroad employees who see the final product shipped across the country and beyond have obvious pride in the local industry. “We power a lot of the country just from Gillette,” said Corey Silver, a junior whose father works at the Cordero Rojo mine, a comment widely echoed by his peers. The students’ pride in...

An environmental advocacy group backed by hedge fund tycoon Tom Steyer is set to unleash a seven-state, $100 million offensive against Republican "science deniers" this year, a no-holds-barred campaign-style push from the green billionaire that could help decide which party controls the Senate and key statehouses come November. The Steyer-backed outside group, NextGen Climate, has billed itself as a progressive, pro-environment counterbalance to the wealthy oil and gas industry -- as well as the primary foil to the pro-business Koch brothers and their well-funded conservative donor network. The outfit, launched last year by the San Francisco billionaire, has already pledged...

But the content is eye-opening. O’Keefe’s crew pose as a Middle Eastern potentate named “Muhammad” and his American ad executive. They approach the Tickells with an offer of $9 million to finance an anti-fracking film. “Muhammad’s” motives are clearly expressed: he wants to keep the U.S. dependent on Middle Eastern oil, and to that end he wants to stamp out fracking. The Tickells have no problem with this at all. They discuss the need to keep the film’s source of funding secret, and talk about how they can create a false impression as to who paid for it. You hear...

The government is to make drastic changes to its financial support for solar energy farms, in a move condemned by green activists and renewable power companies as likely to reduce the UK's ability to generate low-carbon power and green jobs. The move is being seen as another victory for the Conservative party, many of whom are opposed to what the prime minister has been alleged to call "green crap", such as renewable energy measures that add to consumer bills.

We see a lot of buildings being built with LEED Green Building standards. Often these are built with public money. Even the Federal Government has realized there is a limit to much of this outcome driven politicized regulation and has limited public funded projects to Silver level if Gold or Platinum will result in added cost. The surprising thing about the Green Building craze is that they are often energy hogs and they often become so-called "sick buildings" dispite their aledged intent under the LEED standards. How is that possible? First let's discuss energy usage. While Green Standards mandate 30%...