Free Republic

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Russell Train, a leading American conservationist who helped craft some of the nation's enduring environmental laws, died Monday at age 92.

Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, by Robert Zubrin (Encounter, 328 pp., $25.95) A ruling idea of the last two centuries has been materialism: the notion, as arch-materialist Daniel Dennett asserts, that “there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon.” One consequence of this belief has been the rise of antihumanism—the stripping from people of their transcendent value and a reduction of them to mere things in the world to be studied, understood, reshaped—and ultimately...

The World Wildlife Fund, the posh flagship of the global environmentalist movement, has just released its biennial publication assessing “the state of the planet.” Entitled “Living Planet Report 2012,” the publication bemoans alleged catastrophic effects that humanity is inflicting upon the Earth, and calls for drastic curbs on civilization as a necessary corrective measure.According to the WWF, the human race is currently consuming at a rate that would be sustainable only if we had 1.5 Earths. Since we do not, overall human activity needs to be reduced by 33 percent to put mankind “in balance with the Earth’s biocapacity.”The...

For years Coca-Cola has given millions of dollars to eco-extreme group World Wildlife Fund, whose alarmism and perpetration of falsehoods are unmatched among its cohorts in climate activism. Now Coke has initiated a new campaign with WWF that features its iconic advertising species in an effort to drive more funding to the international nonprofit group to “protect the polar bears’ Arctic home.” The promotion will include new packaging for Coke over the holiday season, changing its familiar red cans to white, and featuring an image of a mother polar bear and her cubs on the side. Coke says it...

The WWF and their new "un-printable" file format, .WWF, turns out to be just a PDF generated with Mac OS Xs built in print to PDF feature, with printing disabled (which can be done without the help of the WWF). However, the WWF has hidden a little surprise in the software. It phone home to the WWF, without telling you, to check for updates, or so they claim.

The hippies at the World Wildlife Fund have created their very own file format, WWF. One catch, you have install their own propitiatory software to view it. Unlike other file formats, such as PDFs, this one saves the environment by preventing you from printing it, ever. You can feel good while running your PC to read a document.

When the new West is won, will there be cowboys? In light of what her neighbors are up to, Double O Ranch owner Vicki Olson isn’t so sure. “I guess the point that I keep hammering at is that if they succeed, that means all of us third- and fourth-generation ranchers are gone,” Olson said. She is the average Montana rancher, 56 going on 70, working a spread gouged from the pebbly soil by her grandparents 100 years ago. Her neighbor, the nonprofit American Prairie Foundation, is methodically acquiring ranches and crafting a 3.5-million-acre wildlife reserve out of private property...

It's enough to turn your stomach. Or, if you're a New Yorker who lived through the September 11th attacks, give you a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. A new ad purportedly for the World Wildlife Fund features dozens of airplanes converging on lower Manhattan -- featuring the Twin Towers -- with the line "The Tsunami Killed 100 Times More People Than 9/11." The ad was first brought to our attention by Gothamist, but was originally picked up by Adweek.com's AdFreak blog, which reports that the ad is from the Brazilian arm of the WWF. Sure, the 2004 tsunami was a...

The global-warming debate is shifting from science to economics. For years, the fight over the Earth's rising temperature has been mostly over what's causing it: fossil-fuel emissions or natural factors beyond man's control. Now, some of the country's biggest industrial companies are acknowledging that fossil fuels are a major culprit whose emissions should be cut significantly over time. A growing number of these companies are pushing for a mandatory emissions limit, or "cap." Some see a lucrative new market in clean-energy technologies. Many figure a regulation is politically inevitable and they want to be in the room when it's negotiated,...

An open-minded review of what extreme environmentalists have wrought on the USA and on the world inescapably leads to the conclusion that they have caused millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in damages and losses. If you think this is incorrect or an exaggeration, let us consider the record with respect to just three issues: the snail darter, nuclear power and DDT. The Snail Darter In 1976, with the Tellico Dam on the Tennessee River 99% complete, its construction was stopped and its destruction was ordered after a tiny fish called the snail darter was discovered in that river.

Greece promised to make Athens 2004 the greenest Olympics ever, but environmental groups have already given the Athens Olympic Organizing Committee (ATHOC) failing grades when it comes to protecting nature. Athens won't be winning any green medals for its performance at the Olympics, according to the non-governmental organization (NGO) Greenpeace. Its report called "How Green are the Games" states that "green energy is the most striking failure for the Athens Olympics." "For a country that markets itself as a country of endless sunshine, solar energy for the Games shouldn't be so difficult. But green energy at the Games is close...