Free Republic

BALTIMORE – A doctor who ran against Mitt Romney for Massachusetts governor a decade ago won the chance to challenge him again on Saturday, this time as the Green Party's presidential nominee. Jill Stein, 62, an internist from Lexington, Massachusetts., blasted both Romney and President Barack Obama, saying both had become too dependent on donations from corporations in order to acquire office at the expense of the nation's citizens. "We need real public servants who listen to the people -- not to the corporate lobbyists that funnel campaign checks into the big war chests," Stein told applauding supporters at a...

Federal funds can’t buy success under the sunAs much of the nation broils under the merciless July sun, the Obama administration can’t resist the urge to burn cash on “green” energy projects. Each time one of these solar-energy firms flames out, American taxpayers get singed. Even a sundial would indicate it’s quitting time. The latest to fail is Abound Solar, a Colorado solar-panel manufacturer. The firm filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation on July 2, two years after being awarded a $400 million stimulus loan guarantee. President Obama personally touted the loan during a 2010 radio address called “A Solar...

Shooters have been blamed for starting a number of fires recently in tinder-dry western states, where conflagrations have erupted near shooting ranges. One, Arizona’s Sunflower Fire, has been positively traced to irresponsible members of a bachelor party who fired an incendiary shotgun shell into the underbrush: The Sunflower Fire — which has burned nearly 18,000 acres of the Tonto National Forest and is not fully contained — began in mid-May after five Arizona men gathered to celebrate the upcoming May 19 nuptials of Bryan Reeder. The group — all in their mid-20s — traveled from Mesa to the Sycamore Creek...

The suspicions of Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe were correct: Rather than sitting before the House Energy and Commerce Committee three weeks ago to explain theways he “crucified” oil and natural gas companies, insteadAl Armendariz – who cancelled his appearance at the last minute – met with the Sierra Club for a job interview. This time the recently resigned EPA’s Region 6 administrator will eagerly attack another fossil fuel, joining the litigious environmental group as part of its “Beyond Coal” campaign. If there was any question that Armendariz unfairly regulated the gas and oil businesses under his authority in Texas, Oklahoma,...

The massive western wildfires could have been avoided with intelligent forest management and less hysteria from the greens. As I write these lines, vast wildfires are sweeping through my home state of Colorado and other areas of the American west. Last week, two of my employees had to leave work early to rush home to evacuate their families from imminent danger. Hundreds of houses have already been destroyed, and thousands of acres of trees incinerated, and unknown myriads of wild animals burned alive. This disaster was predictable, and promises to get worse. Over the past decade, from British Columbia to...

The NGO Major Group Organizing Partners have finalized their key document for the Rio+20 Summit. “TheFutureWeWant” outlines the common vision for “sustainable development” throughout the planet sought by those nongovernmental organizations - mostly social and environmental activist groups. There are many noble sentiments in its 283 statements. There also is much that raises serious concerns. “Sustainable,” “sustainability” and “sustainable development” appear in the text an astounding 390 times. Like “abracadabra,” these amorphous words are supposed to transform even corrupt societies into Gardens of Eden under United Nations auspices. They will use less, pollute less, be sustainable, get along and save...

Cove Point in Southern Maryland has become the latest flash point in the fight between the fossil fuels industry and its longtime foes in the environmental movement. Citing a unique Carter-era agreement, the Sierra Club says it will veto plans by energy giant Dominion to build the first natural gas liquefaction and export facility on the East Coast, a site that would handle booming supplies from the Marcellus Shale and other vast deposits for shipment to Asia and elsewhere. The 1970s legal settlement, the Sierra Club argues, gives it the authority to halt any project that would “change the footprint”...

Last week, "an unelected group of people" over at the Environmental Protection Agency revised our national energy policy, approving a new gasoline blend with up to 15% ethanol, known as E15, which may be available in pumps this summer. Currently, most gasoline sold in the U.S. is E10, containing a maximum of 10% ethanol. To review the backstory: the last time ethanol was in the news, it seems like its opponents, who come from both the environmental left and free-market right, had won a significant victory. Last summer, "a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," to use Obama's words...

The powerful Republican head of the House Appropriations Committee got rough with President Obama’s environmental chief over the Environmental Protection Agency's coal mine permitting process on Wednesday. The wood-paneled committee hearing room suddenly seemed like a small-town courtroom as Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) turned prosecutorial on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. At one point, after Jackson fumbled when trying to name any Appalachian mines she had permitted during her tenure, Rogers declared “I rest my case!” At issue is an October Federal Court ruling in the case of National Mining Association vs. Jackson. Rogers said that the ruling makes clear that...

That’s right – all those Greenpeace activists performing agitprop street theatre all over the world are partly financed mainly by western governments. The “activists” are, of course, front line cannon fodder, a mixture of idealistic young students and seasoned agitators who happily block pavements, trespass onto private property and perform acts of vandalism for the “cause”. They do it for the kicks and cost little money. Above them, however, are the Greenpeace executives who jet around the world, hang out in luxury hotels and drive around in expensive limos, hobnobbing with politicians and bureaucrats. There function is twofold – to...

Labor union quits alliance with greens over Keystone pipelineBy Andrew Restuccia - 01/20/12 02:35 PM ET The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) left the BlueGreen Alliance on Friday, citing a disagreement with the group’s members over the Keystone XL pipeline. LIUNA, a vocal Keystone supporter, took aim at other unions for opposing the project. “We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women,” LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan said in a statement. The...

Congressional negotiators struck a deal Thursday that overturns the new rules that were to have banned sales of traditional incandescent light bulbs beginning next year.That agreement is tucked inside the massive 1,200-page spending bill that funds the government through the rest of this fiscal year, and which both houses of Congress will vote on Friday. Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill, which heads off a looming government shutdown.Congressional Republicans dropped almost all of the policy restrictions they tried to attach to the bill, but won inclusion of the light bulb provision, which prevents the Obama administration from carrying...

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) -- The president of a U.N. climate conference has announced agreement on a program mapping out a new course by all nations to fight climate change over the coming decades. The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime to enforce their commitments to control greenhouse gases. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest. Currently, only industrial countries have legally binding emissions targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year, but they will be extended for another five years...

The National Climate Ethics Campaign is pleased to announce that the "Statement of Our Nation’s Moral Obligation to Address Climate Change" will be released Wednesday, November 30 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. in Room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building (The Environment and Public Works Hearing Room). There are now over 1200 signers on the climate ethics statement. Please send the message pasted below to organizations, listservs, and people that might endorse it.

(NaturalNews) Literal beacons of the "green" energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned. Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy...

The White House’s green technology revolution is sitting in an auto lot in Butler, Pa., and nobody is buying. “Nobody comes in to ask, nobody comes in to look … The American people are smarter than the government — they’re not buying that car,” said Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, who owns the auto lot where one of General Motors’ combined electric-and-gasoline powered Volt autos sits unwanted, unsold and unused. The Chevy Volt would cost its buyer almost $40,000 — even after a $7,500 federal check — and that’s more than twice the price of a comparable Chevy Cruze, Kelly told...

Depopulation of Americas may have cooled climate MINNEAPOLIS — By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe’s climate for centuries. The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University. “We have a massive reforestation event that’s sequestering carbon … coincident...

I want to welcome this groundbreaking scientific expedition to the savage lands of the Left Coast. You are here in California to answer an important theoretical question and now you have your answer. Yes, this is what Barack Obama’s second term would look like. Study it. Fear it. And then go home and make sure that it never happens to the rest of the country. Of course, in spite of all of its problems, California is still one of the best places in the country to build a successful small business. All you have to do is start with a...

<p>As liberal protesters watched forlornly from across the street, a loud, rowdy crowd of about 300 in downtown Washington, D.C., demonstrated in favor of a major oil industry pipeline project.</p> <p>“There are those who oppose the pipeline. They say the oil is dirty,” said one of the speakers. “Let me be as kind and as gentle as I can be: F**k them!”</p>

President Obama’s war on fossil fuels is adding to instability in a world already racked by international debt, demographic pressures and unpredictable, galloping technological advances. The domestic implications of his policies are increasingly apparent: The closing off of prospecting and drilling is costing tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of jobs. The attempt to choose winners and losers through “green energy” subsidies is producing market distortions, huge losses of taxpayers’ funds and corruption rarely seen since the Soviet Union’s Gosplan. Using executive fiat for arbitrary environmental rulings after Mr. Obama’s “cap and trade” climate plan quietly died in Congress is eroding...