Free Republic

""OMG this is real! It’s not that he molested children that got CNN to pay attention it’s that he didn’t have high regard for the environment! WTF CNN?!? Jeffrey Epstein's disregard for environmental protections showed his disrespect for the law - CNN""

New York and Connecticut sued the Trump administration on Thursday, alleging it has failed to enforce the U.S. Clean Air Act and allowed five neighboring states to pump unhealthy levels of pollution into their states. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan asks the court to compel President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency to protect states that are downwind from other states with excessive air pollution. “More than two-thirds of New Yorkers regularly breathe unhealthy air, yet the Trump administration continues to ignore the smog caused by upwind air pollution,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in...

California’s beaches, rivers, and streams have become contaminated with alarming levels of dangerous fecal bacteria thanks to the liberal state’s escalating homelessness crisis. President Trump recently spotlighted the terrifying epidemic on Twitter, when he wrote: “We should all work together to clean up these hazardous waste and homeless sites before the whole city rots away. Very bad and dangerous conditions, also severely impacting the Pacific Ocean and water supply. Pelosi must work on this mess and turn her district around!” Predictably, the Left mocked Trump, saying he was wrong. A San Francisco official even disputed his allegations. However, experts say Trump is...

I get it, with all the impeachment and war with Iran hysteria, why would anyone care to cover the ongoing war against Asian Carp. It’s more likely that most people have never heard of the Asian Carp, nor seen a news story about just how much havoc these invasive fish have wreaked over the years. On those sentiments alone you’re probably wondering why anyone should care about the problem or about millions of taxpayer dollars sent to turn the tides against the Asian Carp? It’s true, of all the things repeatedly and often moronically pile-driven into our heads by the...

With the new decade upon us, policymakers should make a New Year’s resolution to revamp a set of environmental rules that are more outmoded than the disco era and leisure suits they predate. Recently, 33 industry groups sent a letter to the White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Mary Neumayr requesting to “expeditiously proceed” with plans to modernize the outdated National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations.NEPA was enacted with the best of intentions while the Environmental Protection Agency was still in its infancy. It began, modestly enough, as an effort to better understand potential negative impacts that major construction...

Years ago, some sharp person here set me straight on how one gallon of fuel, approximately 8 lbs, could produce gases weighing more than the original fuel by combining with other atmospheric gases. Now I read CA wants to ban all gas-powered lawn tools to include golf courses and athletic fields as one mower produces more pollution than 43 new cars driven 12,000 miles a year (516,000 miles total). Most lawn mowers are single cylinder and most cars are 4 cylinders but a great many are 6 or 8 and car cylinders are a much larger displacement than lawnmowers and...

Join Freepers throughout the world to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE-PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer for our nation.

Full Title: President Donald J. Trump Is Committed to Modernizing Environmental Policies and Paving the Way for Vital Infrastructure Improvements "The administration is committed to ensuring that we are good stewards of our environment, while supporting American prosperity."~President Donald J. TrumpMODERNIZING ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS: President Donald J. Trump is modernizing environmental regulations to deliver infrastructure projects that will improve our communities. The Administration is proposing a rule to modernize and accelerate environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) so that infrastructure can be built in a timely, efficient, and affordable manner. Modernizing environmental regulations will help bring new infrastructure...

It must be really hard to have to report a story that flies in the face of CNN’s hype over climate change. CNN published a Jan. 7 story headlined “Glacier National Park is replacing signs that predicted its glaciers would be gone by 2020,” and admitted that “[i]n 2017, the park was told by the agency [U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)] that the complete melting off of the glaciers was no longer expected to take place so quickly due to changes in the forecast model.” The signs were put up over a decade ago, according to CNN.

WASHINGTON—President Trump proposed a major overhaul of federal environmental permitting, responding to business complaints of bureaucratic delays that have bogged down infrastructure projects such as roads and energy pipelines. “We want to build new roads, bridges and highways bigger and faster,” Mr. Trump said from the White House, adding that the proposal would help create new jobs. But environmentalists assailed the changes to rules tied to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, saying they would weaken standards at a time when climate change is making federal review even more critical. “Forcing federal agencies to ignore environmental threats is a...

Democratic presidential contender billionaire Tom Steyer promised to “declare a state of emergency on day one of my presidency in order to take the drastic steps necessary to prevent climate catastrophe. For too long we have been paralyzed by fear to act. Both Congress and the President have been unable to agree on what steps to take. Some point to the economic destruction that would result from outlawing fossil fuels. Others object to the suppression of individual freedoms we’ve become accustomed to. I will enforce the sacrifices needed to save the planet.” Among the list of “drastic actions” being contemplated...

Orlando is closing out 2019 at about a tenth of a degree behind the hottest year on record for the city, which was 2015, according to the National Weather Service. Overall, Central Florida temperatures this year are tracking along with much of the Florida peninsula, where cities from Jacksonville to Gainesville to St. Petersburg to Miami are likely to record their hottest or second-hottest years on record. “Since 2015, we have been warmer than normal consistently,” said Derrick Weitlich, climate-program leader at the National Weather Service office in Melbourne. “The majority of sites in our area have been in the...

Experts horrified at large-scale forest removal to meet wood pellet demand Plans to shift Europe’s coal plants to burning wood pellets instead could accelerate rather than combat the climate crisis and lay waste to woodland equal to half the size of Germany’s Black Forest a year, according to campaigners...(snip) ...Alex Mason, from WWF’s EU office, said burning forests was “literally the opposite of what we should be doing” to help tackle the climate crisis. “As 800 scientists pointed out last year, converting coal plants to biomass will increase emissions for decades, if not centuries. "

State transportation officials want to do something about traffic and safety on Interstate 94 between downtown Minneapolis and Interstate 694, as well as state Highway 252 between I-694 and Highway 610. Minnesota Department of Transportation is considering converting a stretch of highway into a freeway and putting MnPASS lanes on I-94 and 252. But some are raising concerns about what the proposed changes might mean for residents of north Minneapolis who live along the I-94 corridor. Alex Burns is chair of the Sierra Club North Star Chapter's land use and transportation team. He said that more traffic on I-94 will...

Who better than a finger-wagging teen bereft of accomplishment, or any comprehension of basic economics or history, to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019? Greta Thunberg’s canonization is a perfect expression of media activism in a deeply unserious time. Has there ever been a less consequential person picked to be Person of the Year? I doubt it. I mean, Wallis Simpson, 1936’s Person of the Year, got King Edward VIII to abdicate the throne. Thunberg can’t even get you to abdicate your air-conditioning. These days we celebrate vacuous fire and brimstone. “Greta Thunberg”—the idea, not the girl—is...

The House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources recently approved HR 2854, the 2019 Protect Our Refuges Act, prohibiting the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in any of the nation’s 560 National Wildlife Refuges, some of which are the size of Delaware and even Indiana. The legislation will now be considered by the full House, while a companion bill (S 1856) makes its way through the Senate. The legislation is unnecessary, misguided and based on embarrassingly bad science. Rather than protecting our refuges, it would force farmers to use other insecticides that truly are harmful to bees, birds and other wildlife...

No excerpt from Quarz allowed, story here.

The Twin Ports Interchange reconstruction project through Lincoln Park soared $100 million over budget this month, forcing planners to defer indefinitely portions of the work scheduled for 2020-23. The $343 million project is scheduled to begin in May. Minnesota Department of Transportation figures released Monday at a regular public meeting about the project showed a $443 million price tag. "This is what happens with every big project," Duane Hill, district engineer based in Duluth, said Monday. "You have to manage it as you go along. We thought we did a good job initially coming up with a budget for this...

A liberal watchdog group’s attempt to nail Rudy Giuliani has backfired in spectacular fashion after their FOIA request resulted in the US State Department releasing detailed accusations of corruption against the Bidens – based on interviews with former Ukrainian officials who were in charge of the investigations. Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the group American Oversight, the State Department on Friday night released almost 100 pages of records detailing efforts by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate corruption, which include contacts with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) earlier this year. While...

<p>Environmentalists and Green New Deal proponents love to say we need to take care of the Earth, because “There is no Planet B.” Above all, they insist, we must eliminate fossil fuels, which they say are causing climate change worse than the all-natural ice ages, Medieval Warm Period or anything else in history.</p>