Free Republic

Environmental organizations that offered more than 150,000 comments calling on the U.S. Forest Service to reject an agreement to allow additional mining in the North Fork area said the response demonstrated strong public opposition. More like "stuffing the ballot box," said an industry spokesman who noted that the environmental opposition would undermine a bargain fashioned over five years of talks. The Forest Service proposes reinstating the North Fork coal-mining exception to the Colorado Roadless Rule. The exception would allow Arch Coal to extend the West Elk Mine near Somerset below the roadless area. The roadless exemption would allow construction of...

Ted Cruz demolishes Sierra Club president on global warming hoax

Groups question keeping Four Corners Power Plant open for 25 more years. A coalition of environmental groups has filed a notice of intent to sue the Office of Surface Mining, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others over a July decision to allow the Four Corners Power Plant to operate through 2041. A coalition of environmental groups announced earlier this week its intent to take legal action against several federal agencies for extending operations at the Four Corners Power Plant and Navajo Mine just outside Farmington. On Dec. 21, San Juan Citizen Alliance, among other regional and national conservation groups,...

It's no secret that many U.S. environmental groups have become more strident and ideological during the Obama residency. But you may be surprised just how extreme they have become. In early October, a national network of environmental groups - called Stop the Frack Attack (STFA) - held a summit in Colorado to discuss their campaign strategies. The STFA alliance is led by Earthworks and includes other well-known national activist groups, such as the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Food & Water Watch. Dozens of smaller groups, which routinely serve as the face of national groups in state- and...

Ted Cruz sat down with Glenn Beck Thursday, and had this to say on the subject of ‘climate change’ RWW News: Ted Cruz Says That 'Climate Change Is Not Science, It's Religion' (video) “You know part of the reason he (the president of the Sierra Club) didn't know the facts? Because climate change is not science, it's religion.Look at the language where they call you a "denier" Denier is not the language of science. Look, I'm the child of two scientists. My parents are both mathematicians, computer programmers. My dad was self-taught geophysicist. The essence of the scientific method is...

The Sierra Club should start printing retractions (something they’ve been getting a lot of practice doing), because researchers from Yale University have concluded that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, doesn’t contaminate drinking water! “[There is] no evidence of association with deeper brines or long-range migration of these compounds to the shallow aquifers” concludes the new study, which was published in the highly prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The study, the largest of its kind, sampled 64 private water wells near fracking sites to determine if they could be contaminated by fracking fluids. “[The chemicals] are likely not a...

Speaks with WHO’s Jan Mickelson regarding Sanctuary CitiesHOUSTON, Texas– U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, spoke with Jan Mickelson regarding immigration, Syria refugee crisis and 2016 presidential race.Below is an excerpt featuring the Senator’s remarks on stopping sanctuary cities and enforcing immigration law. Full interview​ can be listened to below:Listen to the Audio.MICKELSON: You are in the right place, right time to talk about sanctuary cities, you’ve introduced along with David Vitter, the Stop Sanctuary Policies Protect American’s Act. Talk to us about that:CRUZ: Well the Senate is going to vote on that next week, I’ve joined with David Vitter of...

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...

A U.S. judge on Friday approved a deal between conservationists and Montana officials to restrict road-building and logging in roughly 22,000 acres of state forest lands that make up core habitat for federally protected grizzlies. The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by conservationists after the state had sought to open 37,000 acres , mostly in the Stillwater State Forest, to timber harvesting despite what environmentalists said would be the destruction of prime grizzly bear territory. ... U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in a decision last year found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by...

This week, Sen. Ted Cruz held a hearing to attack the clean air and clean water safeguards that protect millions of families all across America. Sierra Club President Aaron Mair was there to talk about how communities of color, which are disproportionately affected by pollution and climate disruption, rely on these safeguards to protect them. A friend to big polluters, Cruz unsurprisingly tried to cover all their talking points. His game? To attack the climate science that shows how carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels is causing climate disruption in the first place while assailing the Clean Power Plan, which...

[VIDEO] Ted Cruz demolishes Sierra Club president on global warming hoax

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is showing Sierra Club President Aaron Mair to be an ideological hack and global warming alarmist. At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Cruz subjected him to a withering cross examination. Mair was reduced to stammering and frequent awkward pauses which he used to receive whispered advice from staff. He repeatedly referred to the discredited “97 percent of scientists concur” claim, and was unwilling to acknowledge valid scientific data that disproves the claim. Mark Steyn, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday, called Cruz’s relentless questioning of Mair “a thing of...

Climate change is real. Climate change is happening. And we have an obligation to address climate change for ourselves, our children and future generations. With that said, the Sierra Club needs to do better. During a hearing of a Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday regarding regulation and minorities, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is running for the Republican nomination on an arch-conservative platform that includes rejection of mainstream climate change science, seized an opportunity to show off his debating skills. ... ..He asks Mair about the satellite temperature record, which he says has shown no warming during the last 18 years....

WASHINGTON – Overregulation robs minority Americans of opportunity, Sen. Ted Cruz argued Tuesday at a Senate hearing that did double duty as a platform to critique the administration and to amplify his own campaign themes. “Fighting for economic opportunity is why I ran for office,” Cruz said after the hearing, citing his “opportunity conservative” philosophy that focuses on “easing the means of ascent up the economic ladder.” ... “They seemingly regulate everything under the sun,” Cruz said. Federal regulation has exploded in the last half-century, he said, from 20,000 pages to 175,000, “all in incredibly small print” that no individual...

Two allotments delayed pending more studies. A coalition of environmental groups have forced public land managers to delay a grazing permit decision on Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Grand Canyon Trust, Western Watershed Project, Wild Earth Guardians, National Resource Defense Council, Wildlands Defense, the Sierra Club and Durango-based Great Old Broads for Wilderness collectively filed a 27-page protest against the proposed Flodine and Yellow Jacket grazing allotments on the monument ... they want the two allotments permanently closed to grazing ... The groups challenged a recent decision plan by the BLM to issue 10-year terms for the allotments, located...

City-parish president candidates Joel Robideaux and Dee Stanley navigated questions on coal-generated power, the disruption an elevated interstate might cause in Lafayette and whether the city has too many traffic signals — all posed at a Thursday evening forum sponsored by the local chapter of the Sierra Club. In a campaign season where the candidates have often found themselves repeatedly addressing the same issues in the string of debates and forums leading up to the Oct. 24 election, Stanley and Robideaux covered some new ground at the environmental group’s forum at the Lafayette Public Library downtown. Robideaux, a longtime state...

As Twitchy reported, among those greeting Pope Francis in Washington, D.C., this morning were a group of PETA protesters dressed as nuns, some with beards and some walking on stilts — classy as always. The group was part of the Pope Francis Moral Action on Climate Justice Rally on the National Mall, which also attracted other “green” groups such as Greenpeace, the Earth Day Network, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Sierra Club. Marc Morano of Climate Depot reports that organizers of the rally obtained a permit in August for 200,000 people, while liberal website ThinkProgress today reported that the...

Presidential candidate and former Gov. Jeb Bush got into some hot water recently over his past work with a foundation run by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for its funding of Planned Parenthood. What went unnoticed, however, was that Bush worked with Bloomberg as he gave millions to environmental groups to take down the coal industry. Bush, who’s looking to win the Republican presidential nomination, served as a founding director of the Bloomberg Family Foundation — now called Bloomberg Philanthropies — from 2010 through 2014. During Bush’s second year with the organization, Bloomberg donated $50 million to the...

The crazy corrupt corporation known as Newark Watershed Conservation Development Corporation (NWC) picks up about $10 MILLION a year from taxpayers to run a shadow government that allegedly funnels largess into the pockets of pals of US Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ). But true to form, New England media lefties zip their lips while pulling “SEND” off of their keyboards. And did we expect anything else? Reformers like Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club calls the NWC the “Newark Watershed Development & Corruption Corp.” Supposedly set up to run land holdings around northwest New Jersey reservoirs, Tittel says, “the NWCDC was...

It's a case of dueling press releases. But it deserves a minute of Minnesotans' time -- especially those Minnesotans who oppose the Sandpiper Pipeline and can't understand why their fellow residents keep rejecting their arguments. For those opponents, gaining this understanding is crucial. For indisputable evidence now has surfaced that the pipeline's backers are carrying the day -- evidence in the form of Friday's unanimous vote in favor of the pipeline by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. How can that be? How is it that even in famously liberal and environmentally sensitive Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the commission...