Free Republic

In the community of Shady Grove Woods, trees are becoming more and more scarce. Residents and other anti-Intercounty Connector activists marched through the neighborhood on Saturday, pointing out the trees that were cut down to make way for the six-lane highway. ‘‘It’s just that we didn’t have a say in it in so many ways and we’re not talking about a two-lane road, we’re talking about a major highway running through here,” resident Sam Chim said of the ICC. ‘‘We have a lot of nice, private woods back here and now we’re going to have a highway running through instead....

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Western U.S. states and Canadian provinces eyeing a joint carbon trading market are hoping to resolve differences over issues such as how emissions are calculated. Representatives of the six U.S. states and two Canadian provinces in the Western Climate Initiative began three days of meetings in Vancouver on Thursday. Two provinces and two states that are thinking of joining the group are also expected to attend. British Columbia Environment Minister Barry Penner hopes the meeting will help narrow down the options the group will consider as it struggles to set regional greenhouse gas reduction goals...

Environmentalist groups want the new Congress to reject common sense policies encouraging more domestic energy production to wean America off foreign energy. Instead, green groups want to discourage energy production and consumption of the most readily available sources: coal, oil and natural gas, because they generate carbon dioxide (CO2), and nuclear, which produces no CO2. For green groups, “energy independence” seems to mean not depending on energy! Will the new Congress yield to their pressures? Green groups say they want public policies that will make the U.S. less dependent on foreign energy sources, but they oppose efforts to produce energy...

WASHINGTON (AP) – Opponents of oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge are going on the offense after playing defense for a quarter of a century. They want the new Democratic Congress to make an oft-challenged drilling ban permanent. Legislation introduced in the House on Friday would make the oil-rich 1.2 million-acre coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a permanently protected wilderness, and end repeated efforts to open the area east of the Prudhoe oil field to energy companies. “The consensus is that there should not be drilling in the refuge, so the logical next step is to...

Sen. John McCain has signed a letter for the Environmental Defense Action Fund, in which the Arizona Republican emphasizes the group's support for his bill that aims to place "the first-ever national cap on global warming pollution." Mr. McCain, in his letter, mentions no specific type of "pollution," although carbon dioxide has been the main target of anti-global-warming lobbyists. Carbon dioxide is produced in large part by human breathing and cattle flatulence. The Environmental Defense Action Fund sent out the mailing, including Mr. McCain's letter, in which it asked for contributions and for recipients to sign and mail a prewritten...

WASHINGTON - Environmental groups filed two court challenges Wednesday aimed at blocking construction of Maryland's Intercounty Connector, a highway that officials say will ease commutes and take vehicles off local streets. The 18-mile, six-lane highway connecting Interstate 270 in Montgomery County with Interstate 95 in Prince George's County has long been championed by regional business groups, but faced stiff opposition from environmentalists as well as concerns over its cost. It finally won federal approval in May. In one lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club claim the air quality analysis conducted by federal...

What's behind the shameless demagoguery and character assassination being heaped on climate change "deniers"? What's behind the chilling calls for "Nuremberg trials" for dissenting scientists? Why has the green rhetoric escalated to lynch-mob proportions? "A certain shock treatment is needed," says James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to the New York Review of Books, "but it would best be delivered with a two-by-four as a solid whack to the head of politicians who remain oblivious to fundamental physical facts." British writer George Monbiot is even more severe. "[E]very time someone dies as a result of floods...

Less than two weeks before her almost certain reelection to a third term, Olympia Snowe issued a fatwa against Exxon-Mobil and climate change policy skeptics who have had the audacity to openly question her advocacy of Kyoto derived mandatory greenhouse gas emissions controls. Senator Snowe urged Exxon-Mobil to stop resisting her efforts to pass symbolic, expensive and futile GHG regulatory legislation, and most especially to gag two vocal critics: the Competitive Enterprise Institute (headed by economic freedom advocate and 1996 GOP Vice Presidential nominee Jack Kemp) and techcentralstation, a web site devoted to markets, technology and entrepreneurial optimism, as opposed...

WASHINGTON - Imagine the scene next month: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger brings his California message of fighting global warming to the U.S. Senate, helping launch Sen. Barbara Boxer's campaign for national controls on greenhouse gas emissions. Expect the media-savvy governor to extol California-style bipartisanship -- in contrast to Washington-style gridlock -- as the key to achieving results. Schwarzenegger and Boxer, who will chair the Environment Committee, have touted the state's emissions controls as a model for national action. Then, the TV lights will go dark and the legislative grind begins. Even as public consciousness grows about the threat of climate change,...

Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else. We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate...

Two environmental groups say they will sue to stop construction of the intercounty connector, arguing that building the highway would violate sections of the federal Clean Air Act. Environmental Defense and the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club said the Washington region already fails to meet certain clean-air standards and that building the six-lane, 18-mile highway would increase pollution. The $2.4 billion intercounty connector would link Interstate 270 in Montgomery County with Interstate 95 in Prince George's County. "There are elementary schools and nursing centers close to the ICC, and people who live and work within several hundred yards of...

4x4 drivers face £300 bill to park outside home By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor Last Updated: 1:38am BST 26/10/2006 Millions of drivers of sports cars and 4x4s face hefty charges to park outside their own homes under a scheme being pioneered by a local council. Town hall chiefs across the country were said last night to be closely watching a move by Liberal Democrats in Richmond upon Thames, south-west London, to target the owners of so-called "gas-guzzlers". Owners of these 4x4s parked in Richmond could face hefty charges The borough wants to introduce a sliding scale of charges for...

DUBLIN -- In a stainless-steel cabinet between two gurneys, Josh Moonman stores bottles of a pink fluid, labeled with skulls and crossbones, that is used for embalming bodies. "If I were to open one of those lids now and let you smell it, it would knock you back," says Mr. Moonman, an embalmer for Ireland's Fanagan Group of mortuaries. Because the fluid contains formaldehyde, which is poisonous, European Union regulators are considering banning the chemical as a potential threat to human health and the environment. Among the worries, environmentalists say: decaying bodies leaching toxic chemicals into the ground. But a...

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. - In a town that is one of the key battlegrounds in the Interstate 69 fight, environmental groups Monday announced a federal lawsuit to block design and planning of the Evansville-to-Indianapolis leg of the highway. The plaintiffs, including the Hoosier Environmental Council and several business owners, allege that the Indiana Department of Transportation ignored harmful environmental impacts of building a direct route between Evansville and Indianapolis. It also claims INDOT was biased against a route that would have upgraded the existing U.S. 41-Interstate 70 corridor into a new highway. It accuses 11 defendants - state and federal agencies...

For nearly a century, Californians have fashioned themselves the innovators the United States and the world follow. Not so on global warming. The California Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger have just passed and signed global warming legislation that looks an awful lot like a watered-down version of the failed Kyoto Protocol. That's soooo 1990s. Kyoto was supposed to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide, the main human-generated global warming gas, to 7% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Nationally, carbon dioxide emissions have risen about 18% since then. California legislation cuts state's emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a much larger effective...

Negotiations are intensifying between the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said he expects to introduce amendments next week on Assembly Bill 32 -- which would make California the first state to impose pollution caps on industries to combat global warming. The Democratic leader said in an interview that he intends to address governance and enforcement concerns of environmentalists, business groups and the Schwarzenegger administration to pass the bill by the Aug. 31 close of the legislative session. "This bill is going to be on the...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and other senators yesterday announced an agreement on legislation to open more federal waters to oil and natural-gas exploration. With lawmakers under pressure to help ease fuel prices, the agreement was presented as a breakthrough on stalled energy legislation. It would allow drilling in an area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico that is rich in natural gas, and open the way for coastal states to share in royalty revenue that otherwise would go to the federal government. Addressing Florida lawmakers' concerns, the agreement includes a ban on energy development within 125 miles...

The Washington Post is wailing about the environmental ruination of that great ecological wonder, the Canadian tar sands. Canada's Athabasca Basin holds more hydrocarbons (oil) than anyplace else in the world. It has a huge patch of tarry goo, the remains of a once-vast inland lake, spotted amongst 40,000 square miles of jack pine and black spruce growing amid mosquito-rich swamps. The same evergreen-and-swamp vista extends in a broad band for more than 2000 miles, from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the shores of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast. The Athabasca's population density is less...

WASHINGTON, June 26 — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the federal government is required to control vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas that scientists have linked to global warming. In accepting a petition from states, cities and environmental groups, the justices agreed to hear arguments on whether the Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases as air pollutants that may affect public health or the climate. The case is one of the biggest environmental tests yet for the Bush administration, which has steadfastly opposed binding controls...

Environmental groups are suing the Interior Department to block expanded oil and gas exploration in an ecologically sensitive area of Alaska's North Slope. The 18-page lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Juneau focuses on the government's decision in January to allow drillers to lease previously closed acreage in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Bush administration's decision opens up 389,000 acres for leasing, giving drillers a chance to find and produce an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the tundra north and east of Teshekpuk Lake....

In our urgency to deal with really urgent stuff over the past few weeks, we have been piling up news articles regarding what some regard as a universal urgency. That would be global warming or Global Warming or GLOBAL WARMING, depending on one's perspective, provided that one has a perspective. Bill Clinton, speaking last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that mother of all junkets for rich folks who take themselves very seriously, said that GLOBAL WARMING bothered him a bunch. "It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of...

Eco-terrorists have struck again. Not in the dead of night, to be pursued by diligent agents of the FBI, but right out in the open, in a public meeting, under the auspices of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On January 24, one of those ubiquitous FDA panels of "outside experts" voted, by an 11 to seven margin, to recommend that FDA ban non-prescription, over-the-counter asthma inhalers, used routinely by millions of asthma-sufferers to control the symptoms of their debilitating condition. As frequently noted in the press, while such recommendations are not binding, they are most often adopted. The...

Did you know that the National Audubon Society has earned more than $25 million in royalties by allowing oil and natural gas production in Louisiana's Rainey Wildlife Refuge and Michigan's Baker Sanctuary? In fact, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey commissioned by U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in 2001 reported that 77 of 567 wildlife refuges in 22 states had oil and gas activities on their land in 2000, according to Arctic Power, the Alaskan group pushing for ANWR oil exploration. Ironically, the Rainey refuge is the winter habitat for snow geese migrating from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge...

Greenhouse gasbags gather in Montreal Posted: December 3, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Henry Lamb © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Once again, the global warming industry is holding its annual party, this time in Montreal. Nearly 10,000 celebrants have gathered to eat, drink and be merry – and to bash the U.S. for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. Less than half the crowd are official delegates from 180 nations; the rest are advocates representing hundreds of non-government organizations. The stated purpose of the meeting is to construct the regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in phase two of the Kyoto Protocol –...

SENATE, No. 2806 STATE OF NEW JERSEY 211th LEGISLATURE INTRODUCED NOVEMBER 10, 2005 Sponsored by: Senator BOB SMITH District 17 (Middlesex and Somerset) Senator HENRY P. MCNAMARA District 40 (Bergen, Essex and Passaic) SYNOPSIS Establishes NJ Commission on Global Climate Change. CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT As introduced. AN ACT establishing the New Jersey Commission on Global Climate Change. BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey: 1. a. There is established the New Jersey Commission on Global Climate Change, which shall comprise thirteen members as follows: (1) two members appointed by the President...

Story can't be posted here due to copyright complaint, but it's interesting reading, so click this link to go directly to it. And by the way, 'unexpected' downside? Who couldn't predict that a rapidly-spinning blade in the sky would put the smackdown on birds?

IRELAND could face a total bill of between €500 million and €600m for failing to meet its greenhouse gas limits under the Kyoto Protocol. But the Government yesterday said it would only have to pay €280m once a series of gas-cutting measures were introduced. A report commissioned by the Department of Environment found Ireland significantly in breach of its limits under the Kyoto agreement. The legally binding treaty sets Ireland to a greenhouse gas emission limit of 13% above 1990 levels by the first commitment period 2008-2012. The report estimates that Ireland will produce 8.1 million more tonnes of carbon...

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a wild and awe-inspiring landscape relentlessly mischaracterized. Here is the October issue of Smithsonian magazine: "Though ANWRs coastal plain boasts a dazzling abundance of wildlife -- the largest concentration of land-denning polar bears in Alaska, enormous flocks of migratory birds, wolves, wolverines, musk oxen, Arctic fox and snowy owls -- the caribou remain the symbol of the fight over the refuge." This theme has become the environmental touchstone for ANWR, and it is a fraud. ANWR is wild and awe-inspiring not for its abundance of wildlife but for the unsettling scarcity of it, for...

As we've noted in this space before, the government's own Energy Information Administration has predicted that energy costs will continue to soar in the months ahead. The cost for people to stay warm this winter in the Northeast and the Midwest are expected to be nothing short of astronomical, a burden that falls disproportionately on the poor and middle class. Because we can see this storm cloud coming (in fact, it's already here), we just wanted to remind everyone that this country's energy policy has been held hostage for years by a small band of extreme environmentalists: -- They have...