Free Republic

The Arizona House of Representatives has approved a Senate bill allowing ranchers to kill endangered wolves in self-defense. Senate Bill 1211 would allow livestock owners to kill a Mexican gray wolf if one was caught attacking livestock or a person. Wildlife activists say the bill violates the federal Endangered Species Act. But a staff attorney says the bill has been watered down and now meets constitutional requirements.

The average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity hit a March record of 13.5 cents, according data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. ... The BLS’s seasonally adjusted electricity price index rose to 209.341 this March, the highest it has ever been, up 10.537 points—or 5.3 percent--from 198.804 in March 2013. ... per capita electricity production peaked in the United States in 2007.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell announced Monday that the state will sue the Obama administration to allow construction of a 10-mile road to give residents of a remote fishing village access to emergency medical flights at an all-weather airport. Residents of King Cove, Alaska, were outraged in December when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell nixed a plan for a land swap that would have allowed the building of an unpaved road between the small town and the airport at Cold Bay. ... Since Ms. Jewell rejected the land swap, which would have given the refuge 43,093 acres of state land and 13,300...

The rural Nevada showdown between federal government officials and militia members protecting rancher Cliven Bundy has evolved into a battle of government “tyranny,” with many newly arriving militiamen rolling in to draw a line in the dirt about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. ... “This is a better education than being in school! I’m glad I brought you. I’m a good mom,” Ilona Ence, a 49-year-old mother from St. George and Bundy relative who brought her four teenage children to the ranch, told the Las Vegas Sun. “They’re learning about the Constitution.” Ence’s teenage sons posted up a sign...

Will Obama use two small birds to limit oil drilling in the West? Almost half the land west of the Mississippi belongs to the federal government, including 48% of California, 62% of Idaho and 81% of Nevada. No surprise that the Obama Administration wants to control more. But the result could be to suppress the country's booming oil and gas development. In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the...

Wyoming has spent $7.9 million on sage grouse conservation since 2005. That was the finding of a new report by the Western Governors Association, which inventoried the efforts of 11 western states to protect the bird and its habitat. The report comes in advance of an expected 2015 ruling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over whether to add the species to the endangered species list. The sage grouse's listing could curtail energy development throughout the West. ... Utah, by comparison, spent $8.8 million on improvements to sage grouse habitat in 2013 alone.

Multinationals will have wide-ranging powers to sue EU states that enact health or environmental laws breaching their “legitimate expectations” of profit, according to a leaked “investment chapter” from the Canada-EU free trade agreement (CETA), which was signed last November. A separate “nature and scope” document for EU-US free trade talks, which EurActiv has seen, makes clear that similar parameters are foreseen for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement. The CETA investment chapter proposes a definition of “fair and equitable treatment” (FET) for investors which has sparked multi-million dollar lawsuits, such as one by Lone Pine challenging a shale...

Britain could be hit by power cuts next winter because the electricity supply is already “close to its limits”, experts warn. Capacity is so stretched that a cold spell, combined with routine problems at one or more plants, could overwhelm the system and see blackouts in 2014-15, their damning report claims. A major pressure on the National Grid is the forced closure of coal-fired power stations to meet European green directives, the Royal Academy of Engineering says. …

As much as electric car builders hail their vehicles as the future of transportation, one question they couldn't answer fully was just how well their vehicles would withstand a crash. Automakers have spent decades finessing their chassis; what happened when an engine-less vehicle went head-on into a barrier wasn't clear, and as the post crash-test smoldering of a Chevy Volt demonstrated, the batteries posed new challenges. Leave it to Tesla to provide the first hard evidence — with data from U.S. government tests showing the Model S sedan may be the most crash-proof passenger vehicle on the road today. Normally,...

Algae suit generates food to feed your constant hunger When we think of futuristic fashion, our minds often lean toward the minimalist designs of Star Trek or Tron. But maybe what we wear in the future will have more to do with what we eat than what we want to look like. That's the premise behind the algaculture symbiosis suit designed by Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta. The symbiosis suit is designed to make food for you as you go about your daily routine. A number of tubes, placed in front of your mouth, harness the CO2 you breathe and...

Orca Spotted with Plastic Bag in Mouth Researchers snapped a picture of a baby killer whale in the Pacific Northwest holding a plastic bag in its mouth, just the latest example of plastic pollution in the world's oceans. Last month, scientists from the Center for Whale Research monitoring orcas in the Salish Sea say they spotted a calf playing with what at first looked like a small scrap of blubber. When the baby whale dropped the item from its mouth, they realized it was actually a plastic bag.

Former Electric-car Engineer: Electric Cars Pollute More Than Gas The New American 12 July 2013 Is the only "green" aspect of electric cars the money some companies make off them? If former plug-in advocate and General Motors engineer Ozzie Zehner (shown) is correct, this is exactly the case. Author of the book Green Illusions, Zehner once built his own hybrid car that could run on electricity or natural gas. And, he writes in a recent article entitled "Unclean at Any Speed," he was convinced cars such as his "would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence." But he now...

BERKELEY, Calif., July 1 (UPI) — Electric cars, despite their supposed green credentials, are among the environmentally dirtiest transportation options, a U.S. researcher suggests. Writing in the journal IEEE Spectrum, researcher Ozzie Zehner says electric cars lead to hidden environmental and health damages and are likely more harmful than gasoline cars and other transportation options. Electric cars merely shift negative impacts from one place to another, he wrote, and "most electric-car assessments analyze only the charging of the car. This is an important factor indeed. But a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impacts over the vehicle's entire life...

GM foods are banned from restaurants in the Houses of Parliament despite government claims it is ‘probably safer’ than other meals. Government ministers are demanding that ordinary families should abandon their reluctance to eat genetically modified food, however they are banned from MPs’ plates. This week the food and farming secretary, Owen Paterson, launched an extraordinary propaganda campaign to encourage the nation to accept GM crops and farming. He bolstered his campaign with claims that some seven million children in the Far East could have been saved from blindness or death in the last 15 years if only people had...

President Obama blasts global warming skeptics as “flat-earth society,” at Georgetown University speech outlining his climate change and energy agenda. Obama's Climate Change Speech Ignores Science & EU Experience The New American 25 June 2013 President Obama was playing to his most extreme “green” constituency in his climate and energy speech at Georgetown University today, blasting global warming skeptics as “flat-earth society” ostriches with their heads in the sand. President Obama said he does not have "patience for anyone who denies that this problem is real." "We don't have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society," Obama said....

Lawsuit: EPA Conducted Gas Chamber-like Experiments on Elderly, Infirm at University of North Carolina [T]he EPA has been conducting human experiments on people by piping diesel fumes from a running truck mixed with air into their lungs at a North Carolina university. The agency has ginned up yet another green crusade — the lethal dangers of diesel fumes. They even had a gas chamber set up to accommodate the environmental research project that shockingly recalls the death camps in Poland. Read more: http://joemiller.us/2012/10/lawsuit-epa-conducted-gas-chamber-like-experiments-on-elderly-infirm-at-university-of-north-carolina/#ixzz2ThSWxmIY

For a man who regards Brussels as the biggest threat to Britain’s freedom since the Second World War, the choice of beer for Nigel Farage was obvious when we met at the Westminster Arms on Friday: Spitfire. It is brewed by Shepherd Neame in Kent to celebrate the Battle of Britain. Farage, a man of Kent, gulped down the first pint in 15 minutes, ordered a ‘reload,’ polishing off his second in another ten; and the moment we stepped outside, he lit up a fag.

In April, 2011, Wind 1 went online near Falmouth, MA's waste plant. The 262 feet tall structure -- 10 feet taller than the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown -- has blades that extend almost 400 feet, which is about half the height of the John Hancock Building in Boston, reported WGBH-TV. Complaints started almost immediately. According to Fox, Wind 2 is ready to go online but the town said 'enough is enough.' The 262-foot eyesores have created a storm of protests from residents, many of whom blame numerous health problems on the turbine already in use. The blades' low frequency vibrations...

Calif. throws subsidy at Tesla MotorsCalif. throws subsidy at Tesla Motors Oct. 12, 2012 By Joseph Perkins Memo to Occupy San Jose: I’ve got a ripe target for you on Santana Row, playpen for the Silicon Valley wealthy. Not Gucci, Burberry, Ferragamo or the other upscale stores along the Row. But Tesla Motors, the electric carmaker, whose co-founder and CEO, Elon Musk, boasts a $2.4 billion net worth. Musk is not merely a member of America’s 1 percent, for which Occupy has much contempt. He’s a member of the 1 percent of 1 percent. That’s why it is so unseemly...

Does Obama have radical “green” roots? Bret Baier travels across America, revealing rogue regulators, tracing the truth about the president’s environmental agenda and exposing programs that could devastate our economy! Check out a sneak peek of the special below, and tune in on Sunday at 9p ET to watch the full ‘Fox News Reporting: Behind Obama’s Green Agenda’ on Fox News.