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Anti-plastic-bag forces got a boost today when the California Supreme Court ruled that an environmental impact report is not necessary before a city or county bans the use of plastic shopping bags. The decision strikes down rulings by trial and appellate courts in Los Angeles in the legal fight over an ordinance enacted in 2008 by the south coastal city of Manhattan Beach banning "point-of-sale plastic carry-out bags." Both courts said the city had to prepare an EIR before implementing its ban. "We disagree," a unanimous Supreme Court stated.

In light of the recent environmental controversy over splattergate, where the green propaganda ad in the United Kingdom explosively became gory red in the classroom, it is time to be reminded that it was pacifist-leftist Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935) who pointed out that the Nazis started out green but became bloody red. This political reality came much to the dismay of many German conservationists as they slowly found out the real intent of Adolf Hitler. Naïve German greens had no idea that many of the Fuhrer’s savage premeditations about continental hegemony were often conjured up at his mountain retreat in the...

Eco-Extremism: A light bulb factory closes in Virginia as mandated fluorescents are made in China. It's now a crime to make or ship for sale 75-watt incandescent bulbs in the European Union. Welcome to green hell. Thomas Alva Edison was a genius credited with the invention of many things — the phonograph, the motion picture, the incandescent light bulb, global warming. That last credit was given by those who rank light bulbs right up there with the internal combustion engine as ravagers of the planet. The General Electric light bulb factory in Winchester, Va., closed this month, a victim, along...

...that Audi eco-nazi commercial sent the wrong message at our house...there's too much of that going on right now as it is...I don't need a glimpse into an eco-totalitarian future...I guess the Europeans thought it was very clever, but it disgusted me.

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Thousands of coal miners fearing the loss of jobs if mountaintop removal mining is curtailed or outlawed shouted down a handful of environmentalists at crowded public hearings Tuesday on the much-debated practice. Many in Kentucky and West Virginia wore hardhats and T-shirts and waved signs proclaiming the merits of coal. Environmentalists who have fought for decades to end the destructive form of mining that blasts away peaks to unearth coal showed up in small numbers.

San Jose council votes to ban most plastic and paper bags beginning in 2011 The San Jose City Council on Tuesday voted to make the city the largest in the nation to ban most plastic and paper shopping bags — and took steps to bring other Santa Clara County cities along with them. Although the ban approved Tuesday won't take effect until 2011 — and still must go through an environmental impact study that will require the council's final signoff — it's a major new front in the war on plastic bags, which environmentalists say foul waterways, clog landfills and...

The Green Nazis: Environmentalism in the Third ReichBy Elmer June 19, 2009 2:14 PM Jurriaan Maessen, Infowars The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. It has been elaborately pointed out how the device of environmentalism is especially favoured by tyrants as a means of controlling their subjects. The current 'green' movement, as we know, is no exception. It has been nurtured from its very conception as a systematic eugenics operation by the deep pockets of the Rockefeller- and Ford Foundations. Throughout...

W hen Deerfield farmer Peter Melnik heard about a machine that would make energy from cow manure, he was immediately intrigued. Graphic Farming 'natural gas' Not only would using it make his dairy farm more environmentally friendly, the technology could bring in extra cash by converting methane, an odorous and potent greenhouse gas, into electricity that could be sold to the regional power grid. The machine, called a methane digester, has been popular in Europe since the 1970s, but the idea is just catching on in the United States. Six farms in Vermont have digesters that produce electricity, and Melnik...

The climate “crisis” is a “moral issue that requires serious debate,” Al Gore proclaimed in an April 27 AlGore.com blog post. His conversion to the Anglo-American tradition of robust debate came a mere three days after the ex-VP refused to participate in a congressional hearing with Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Republicans had invited Monckton to counter Gore’s testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But Gore froze like a terrified deer in headlights, and Chairman Henry Waxman told the UK climate expert he was uninvited. Their hypocritical cowardice simply reflects a recognition...

THE Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the US president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent (more than double the European Union average) partly because of spending on such jobs? Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it. He says Spain's torrential spending on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created...

If California regulators get their way, auto makers may soon be forced to rewrite a cliché from the Ford Model T era and start telling customers they can have any color they want as long as it isn’t black. Some darker hues will be available in place of black, but right now they are indentified internally at paint suppliers with names such as “mud-puddle brown” and are truly ugly substitutes for today’s rich ebony hues. So buy a black car now, because soon they won’t be available or will look so putrid you won’t want one. And that’s too bad,...

In their continuing quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, state regulators have uncovered a new villain in the war on global warming : your big screen TV Couch potatoes, beware. The California Energy Commission is considering a proposal that would ban California retailers from selling all but the most energy-efficient televisions. Critics say the news standards could take 25 percent of televisions off the market — most of them 40 inches or larger. (snip) Affordable big screen TVs will still be available under the new standards, spokesman Adam Gottlieb said. In fact, he said the regulations will save you money....

CALGARY - U.S. President Barack Obama says Alberta's oilsands industry "creates a big carbon footprint" that leaves Canada and America facing an environmental dilemma about how to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from energy development. He also says he's eyeing carbon capture and storage as a possible solution. As the public-relations war between industry and environmental groups heats up over the oilsands - the second-largest oil reserves on the planet next to Saudi Arabia - the massive development in northern Alberta has clearly caught the eye of the 44th U.S. president. Obama has previously vowed to end America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling...

Farmers Panic About a ‘Cow Tax’ By Kate Galbraith Should their greenhouse gases be taxed? (Photo: Steve Ruark for The New York Times) The comment period for the Environmental Protection Agency’s exploration of greenhouse gas regulation ended last Friday, with farmers lobbying furiously against the notion of a “cow tax” on methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted by livestock. The New York Farm Bureau issued a statement last week (PDF) saying it feared that a tax could reach $175 per cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and upward of $20 for each hog. Such a tax would represent a...

LONDON: The escalation in Britain's growing surveillance state has created outrage over the way councils are using powers originally designed to combat terrorism and organised crime to spy on residents. British children as young as eight have been recruited by councils to serve as environmental volunteers and report petty offences such as littering by their neighbours. It also emerged last month that around 1,400 security guards, car park attendants and town hall staff have been given police-style powers including the right to issue on-the-spot fines for littering, cycling on the pavement and other offences, the Telegraph reported. Matthew Sinclair, of...

A public outcry [which public?]about wildlife, wilderness and cultural resources in the Vernal area has led federal officials to curtail oil and gas drilling on more acres than originally proposed in a long-term land plan. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Friday released its four-volume final environmental-impact statement and a proposed land-use plan for 1.7 million acres in the Book Cliffs and the Uinta Basin, one of the nation's most active energy-exploration areas. The document proposes closing 186,917 acres to drilling, nearly three times the amount of land the agency wanted off-limits when it released its draft plan in...

A new website campaign designed by a British power company recruits children through games, badges and cartoons to enlist as "Climate Cops," actively keeping records on their parents and neighbors for violations of "energy crimes" against the planet. The "Climate Cops" website encourages children to investigate family and friends and "then build your 'Climate Crime Case File' and report back to your family to make sure they don't commit those crimes again (or else)!" The site also warns children that they "may need to keep a watchful eye" to prevent future violations. A link on the site for teachers to...

Environmentalists have their thongs in a wad because the Bush administration has given oil companies permission to "annoy" and "potentially harm" polar bears. This past week, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations that give legal protection to seven oil companies that are planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. Out of the estimated 25,000 polar bears in the Arctic, about 2,000 supposedly live in or around the Chukchi Sea. Of course, the environmentalists are throwing a fit because they believe that this gives oil companies a blank check to...

Oak Grove Tree-Sit Anniversary ProtestBirthday party celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Memorial Oak Grove occupationBerkeley, December 2, 2007 In 2006, the University of California announced plans to build an athletic training center next to Memorial Stadium on the U.C. Berkeley campus. But the construction of the new building would entail the removal of several trees currently occupying the proposed site. A cry to "Save the trees!" spread throughout the local activist community, and a small protest movement quickly arose to stop the training center. Although everything the university does elicits some kind of protest, this one, as trivial as...

Back in 2004, Lancaster University's Professor Roger Kemp, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineering, produced a report for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, on the environmental impact of high-speed rail versus air and car travel. He used the example of the London to Edinburgh route to illustrate his findings. The conclusions were startling and rather annoying for the car hating Green fundamentalists.