Free Republic

Called "arguably the greatest American in the 20th century," during his 95 years Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives than any other person. He is one of just six people to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And yet Dr. Borlaug, who died this past September, is scarcely known in his own country. Born in Iowa in 1914, Borlaug spent most of his life in impoverished nations inventing, improving and teaching the "Green Revolution." His idea was simple: Make developing countries self sufficient in food by teaching them how to use...

It is the fact that the letters “Ph.D.” follow my name. It is my degrees in chemistry and a decade of work in environmental remediation that draw people’s dreamy adoration. I am held to a higher standard not just because I’m a pastor but mostly because I am a scientist. Folks assume that I know the answer to any question they might think up. With our increased demand and consumption of oil, with our increased demand for money and the greed that pervades our culture, and with the expectation of instant results born of the very technology that scientists and...

Auto-industry bigwigs these days are either on government welfare (GM’s Whitacre, Chrysler’s Marchionne) or are former green activists (Ford’s Bill Ford). But outside the boardroom, industry experts fear Washington green mandates foisted on them by pols who wouldn’t know a connecting rod from a valve stem. In a business world where Big Auto and Big Government are increasingly indistinguishable, however, few can speak out. An exception is longtime Detroit insider Peter De Lorenzo. As electric-carmaker Tesla’s stock plummeted this week after its government-financed IPO, he unloaded on his blog: The suspension of all rational thought in defense of a Green...

For much of the past year, Current TV has been quietly undergoing an overhaul that will change just about everything but the struggling channel's name. Current declined comment for this story. It's a revitalization project Gore & Co. embarked on after exhausting a more lucrative possibility: selling the channel. Current's founding partner, Joel Hyatt, spent much of 2009 shopping the network with a price tag that wildly overestimated the company's worth, confirmed sources at several media firms. Current even had extensive sale talks as far back as 2007 with Google, where Gore serves as a senior advisor. Now the focus...

Perhaps you've heard of the Smart Grid initiative. Perhaps you understand that the goal of the initiative is to improve and modernize the nation's power transmission and distribution networks. Maybe your electric utility has even installed a Smart Meter at your home or business. What you probably don't know is that the Smart Grid movement is the Trojan Horse of the green agenda, a step toward Cap & Trade. Since the time of grid pioneer Samuel Insull, the goal of utilities everywhere has been to balance generation capacity against electrical demand to ensure system integrity. Curiously, this goal is shared in...

Prince Charles yesterday urged the world to follow Islamic 'spiritual principles' in order to protect the environment. In an hour-long speech, the heir to the throne argued that man's destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions - but particularly those of Islam. He said the current 'division' between man and nature had been caused not just by industrialisation, but also by our attitude to the environment - which goes against the grain of 'sacred traditions'.

Very little has been written about the Bakken Formation and the rich oil reservoir just beneath it in western North Dakota. This recently discovered oil depository potentially holds 1.9 billion barrels in the Three Forks-Sanish formation. For years, the oil industry have known about this oil field, but it was too costly to explore and the technology was not yet available. That is all changing now. The question is whether the EPA, environmentalists and our oppressive government will allow the exploration and harvesting of this tremendous resource that would greatly aid the US in their need for cheap, accessible energy...

Dear___________: Since 2005, Walmart has been committed to achieving three broad sustainability goals — to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain people and the environment. We are now ready to announce another major step as we broaden and accelerate Walmart's efforts to become a more sustainable company. Please join us for a live webcast on Thursday, Feb. 25 from 11 a.m. to noon (CST) for this announcement by Walmart President and CEO Mike Duke, along with remarks by Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp. Please visit WalmartCommunity.com to sign-up...

There has been no more reliable cheerleader for President Obama’s energy and climate change policies than Daniel J. Weiss of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. But Mr. Obama’s recent enthusiasm for nuclear power, including his budget proposal to triple federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors to $54 billion, was too much for Mr. Weiss. The president’s embrace of nuclear power was disappointing, and the wrong way to go about winning Republican votes, he said, adding that Mr. Obama should not be endorsing such a costly and potentially catastrophic energy alternative “as bait just to get talks started with...

A state assemblyman who represents Toyota's North American headquarters in Torrance is so peeved by the automaker's safety problems and its recent decision to close a California plant that he's asking his colleagues to stop buying the Japanese-made hybrid cars. Assembly Rules Committee Chairman Ted Lieu, who is running in June to be the Democratic Party's candidate for attorney general, said he plans to ask the committee on Thursday to reinstitute a "Buy-American" policy when purchasing pool vehicles that the house's 80 members use to get around Sacramento. ... "With the massive safety problems that Toyota is experiencing, I think...

According to a criminal complaint, 41-year -old Stephen Louis Olson of Backus was angry the county planned to log the trees. Cass County officials say the stand is thinned every ten to 15 years. About 100 of the 600 trees were slated to be cut down and sold this month. The money would have benefitted the community and school district. - Authorities say the entire forest must be cut down due to safety concerns. Mike Diekmann of the Cass County Sheriff's Office says that if a saw hit one of the nails, "it would explode like a gun going off"...

Is Meg Whitman too green for the conservative core of the Republican Party? Wednesday the San Jose Mercury News released the news that eMeg has offered $200,000 to the Environmental Defense Fund from her charitable foundation, $100,000 more than what was first thought. Then there is Steve Poizner’s Charitable Foundation accounting numbers. While all of the attention is on Meg’s gifts to environmental causes, nobody has asked the obvious question: “Why does Steve Poizner’s charitable foundation only have $7,000 as its balance?” How can a millionaire have such a small amount of cash in his (and his wife’s) charitable foundation?...

A Canadian study shows that people who buy green products tend to lie and steal more than those who don't: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Toronto, October 6, 2009 -Those lyin', cheatin' green consumers. Just being around green products can make us behave more altruistically, a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found. But buying those same products can have the opposite effect. Researchers found that buying green can lead people into less altruistic behaviour, and even make them more likely to steal and lie than after buying conventional products. Buying products that claim to be made...

I want to know how the situation covered on Hannity today is not cause enough for armed insurrection by the people of California against the tyranny of Washington DC. I want to know how governor Schwarzenegger has not called out the national guard and by force of arms turned the water on. I want to know how any rational human being can look at the starving of an area, the destroyed landscape, the human misery caused by artificially starving an area of a natural resource and defend it. I want to know if our government would accept such actions committed...

EPA will also pursue a ban on the manufacture and distribution of lead tire weights in response to a 2009 petition from the Ecology Center, the Sierra Club and other NGOs requesting that the agency establish regulations prohibiting the manufacture, processing, and distribution of lead tire weights.

San Joaquin Valley farms are laying off workers and letting fields lie fallow as their water ration falls. Reporting from Mendota, Calif. -- Water built the semi-arid San Joaquin Valley into an agricultural powerhouse. Drought and irrigation battles now threaten to turn huge swaths of it into a dust bowl. Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That's sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty. [snip] This year has been even drier after a federal court ordered that pumps moving water through the system be turned...

OK, this is clearly a vanity post and not that earth-shattering, but I thought I would share it in light of the recent cap-and-trade news. We are currently in the process of buying a home from some liberal Obama devotees. We don't know them at all, but it is abundantly clear from their bumper stickers, buttons, Obama inaugural pens, books etc. Anyway, in the home inspection process of the negotiations, we discovered that the home has high levels of radon which need to be mitigated. The sellers refuse to pay for this correction which would be, roughly, $900. Now this...

Is the right responsible for inspiring murder, such as that of late-term abortionist George Tiller by Kansas native Scott Roeder?  Some certainly seem to think so.  For instance, the Friday before last Bill O'Reilly had as a guest on his show Joan Walsh, the editor of leftist news site Salon.com.  She appeared because she had criticized O'Reilly for engaging in what she called a "jihad" against Tiller.  Her thesis is that O'Reilly and, presumably, the rest of us who are passionately pro-life are culpable Tiller's death. Of course, this isn't a novel idea among the left.  If there is any...

The Green Left must be thrilled with the new Obama/Pelosi/Reid (OPR) troika in charge of the federal government. Three times already, the troika has blocked the development of domestic oil resources. During his first week in office, President Obama rescinded his predecessor's executive order permitting drilling on the continental shelf and in the Green River Formation. Both areas contain abundant oil-especially Green River (under Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah), which has recoverable shale-oil reserves three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Several weeks later, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unilaterally canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah, on...

For me, purchasing shrimp is a moral dilemma. I have to have conversations with a pantheon of deities in order to just put a package of shrimp in my shopping cart. Why would something as simple and tummy-rubbing as shrimp do this to my already fragile psyche? Because the methods used to get it to my grocer’s seafood case are environmentally detrimental. Both wild-caught shrimp and farm-raised pose problems that just make me squirm. When I was younger I was Mr. Environmentalist. My school reports were always about natural power sources (that was before it was called “alternative energy” or...