Free Republic

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for...your straws? Starting July 1, the nation's capital will officially be implementing arguably Draconian fines on restaurants and bar owners as D.C.'s government will be sending out the plastic Gestapo in full force to ensure that only biodegradable straws are handed out to customers. If you get caught handing out the newly ordained contraband so that your patrons can enjoy a vodka soda or a lemonade with ease, you better be ready to pay up some cold hard cash since you are contributing to pollution according to...

The National Park Service (NPS) quietly removed a visitor center sign saying the glaciers at Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 due to climate change. As it turns out, higher-than-average snowfall in recent years upended computer model projectionsfrom the early 2000s that NPS based its claim glaciers “will all be gone by the year 2020,” federal officials said.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that the world will “end in 12 years” unless climate change is tackled was accepted as a fact by two-thirds of Democrats, even though she said herself that only those with the “social intelligence of a sea sponge” could actually believe it. The New York Democrat drew mockery from Republicans after she made the doomsday warning in a bid to convince people that radical action against climate change is needed. “Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna...

Voters tend to agree with Senator Bernie Sanders that America will be in big trouble very soon if it doesn’t aggressively tackle climate change, even though they question the integrity of politicians who champion the issue. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters agree that the United States has only 12 years to aggressively fight climate change or else there will be disastrous and irreparable damage to the country and the world. Forty percent (40%) disagree, while 11% are undecided.

Joe Biden says he was the guy who “started this whole thing” on climate change, which may come as a surprise to Al Gore. Former Vice President Biden was asked Saturday by an activist with the US Youth Climate Strike if he would support a presidential climate debate hosted by her group, at which point he jumped in to tout his global-warming bona fides. “By the way, I want you to know: I’m the guy that did all this stuff—read RealClearPolitics, it will tell you about how I started this whole thing back in ’87 with climate change,” he said...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has emerged as a figurehead for the Democratic Party — a symbol of the new socialist identity politics consensus. Her Green New Deal brings together the intersectionality narrative, big government take-overs, climate alarmism, and a clear definition of good-versus-evil in politics. If anyone opposes the Green New Deal panacea, they're not just wrong, they're wicked. She is something of a kingmaker in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination race, and at the end of last week, she rejected Vice President Joe Biden because he undermined her polarizing narrative. A Reuters report last Friday revealed Joe Biden's plans...

In support of his position, Graham argued that Republicans need to appeal to young people who support the climate scare. Marc Morano, publisher of the influential Washington DC-based Climatedepot.com, responded, “I can’t imagine that any millennial who cares about this is going to be voting Republican because they are activists at their core. If you’re a millennial and you’re skipping school and all excited about the Green New Deal (GND), there is no way Republicans can appeal to them with some sort of lite version of the GND.” “You don't capitulate to young voters because they have been brainwashed into...

Science commentator Bill Nye had some choice words about the need for urgent action to combat global warming. On "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver" on Sunday, after the host discussed the Green New Deal, Nye demonstrated an experiment that was different from his usual more staid fare. Appearing in a lab coat and donning safety glasses, Nye opined "when something costs more, people buy less of it," in reference to a possible carbon tax that's been floated by politicians as a way to mitigate climate change. ..." “By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising, the average temperature...

The past few presidential campaigns, environmental activists have "been left begging for there to be a single question at a campaign debate about climate change," longtime climate change activist and author Bill McKibben recently told NPR. "This time around I'm not worried in the least. I think it's going to be one of the central topics in the primary," McKibben said, "and then I think whoever wins the Democratic nomination is going to try and ram the issue straight down Trump's throat." Indeed, Democratic voters told a CNN poll this week that aggressively addressing climate change is more important than...

House Democrats passed the first climate bill in nearly a decade Thursday in what they are labeling the “first step” in building a strategy to fight global warming. The House voted 231-190 to pass the Climate Action Now Act, which seeks to block the Trump administration from exiting the Obama-era Paris climate agreement, among other actions. Three Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the measure. The legislation now heads go to the Republican-led Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said it "will go nowhere." Democrats embraced the legislation while acknowledging its limited scope, with a number of progressive...

Since the expressions “global warming” and “climate change” do not frighten people enough, activists are proposing a shift in language to “climate crisis” or “environmental collapse,” with the help of advertising consultants. Neuroscience research suggests that “global warming” and “climate change” do not produce a powerful enough reaction in people, whereas “climate crisis” got “a 60 percent greater emotional response from listeners” according to a recent study. Environmental lobbying has reportedly yielded a 15-point increase in the share of Americans who believe that climate change is a serious problem, but activists are looking for ways to boost that number still...

Sen. Ed Markey, D-ass., in promoting his Green New Deal, warned Tuesday that President Trump’s Florida estate will be underwater within 15 years if the U.S. does not act to stop climate change. “Within 15 years, Mar-a-Lago’s going to be underwater for over 100 days a year, it’s going to be Mar-a-Lagoon, not Mar-a-Lago,” Markey said in a discussion on the Green New Deal at the Council on Foreign Relations. Markey, who has long focused on environmental issues, introduced a resolution on the Green New Deal in February along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. While the legislation failed a Senate...

The impact may not yet be obvious in grocery stores and greenmarkets, but behind the organic apples and bags of rice and cans of cherry pie filling are hundreds of thousands of farmers, plant breeders and others in agriculture who are scrambling to keep up with climate change. Drop a pin anywhere on a map of the United States and you’ll find disruption in the fields. Warmer temperatures are extending growing seasons in some areas and sending a host of new pests into others. Some fields are parched with drought, others so flooded that they swallow tractors. Decades-long patterns of...

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in promoting his Green New Deal, warned Tuesday that President Trump’s Florida estate will be underwater within 15 years if the U.S. does not act to stop climate change.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke sounded the alarms on Monday, saying that civilization has only “ten years” left on Earth if no action is taken on climate change.

More than 3,500 Amazon employees have signed a letter urging the e-commerce giant to take action on climate change, adding to growing activism by technology workers directed at their companies. The letter, published Wednesday on the blogging platform Medium, calls for Amazon to publicly detail how it plans to handle disruption brought on by climate change and reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. "Amazon has the resources and scale to spark the world’s imagination and redefine what is possible and necessary to address the climate crisis. We believe this is a historic opportunity for Amazon to stand with employees and...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., gave a vigorous defense of her signature Green New Deal initiative on Friday, rejecting Republican criticism that it's socialist. The freshman Democrat said she expected the pushback from the GOP to her plan, which calls for a complete transition to renewable energy by 2030. "But I didn't expect them to make total fools of themselves," she told MSNBC's Chris Hayes during an "All In" town hall at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in the Bronx. "I expected a little more nuance, and I expected a little more 'concern trolling,'" meaning disingenuously expressing concern.

Full Header: 'Environmental Crusader' Arnold Schwarzenegger Warns: 'Fossil Fuels Will Kill Us'—after Arriving in a Suburban SUV Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) warned young people that “fossil fuels will kill us” if the U.S. doesn’t switch to renewable energy. The Terminator actor said millions of people die each year because of pollution. “So, therefore, it’s very important for you to get involved to fight and to get rid of fossil fuels because fossil fuels will kill us and fossil fuels will create global climate change. Now I’ve studied this issue very well. It’s another issue I didn’t know much about...

Sen. Mike Lee didn’t quite bring a snowball onto the Senate floor. But the Utah Republican’s prop-filled speech Tuesday mocking the proposed Green New Deal resolution on addressing climate change elicited similar incredulous reactions from Democrats. Lee’s speech — in which the conservative Mormon argued, seemingly genuinely, that the “real solution to climate change” was to have more children — included a dramatic portrait of former President Ronald Reagan firing a machine gun while on the back of a velociraptor, photos of Star Wars characters and Aquaman, and frames from the sci-fi disaster movie “Sharknado.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will bring the Green New Deal up for a vote on Tuesday, forcing Democrats to take a stand on the radical resolution. “I could not be more glad that the American people will have the opportunity to learn precisely where each one of their senators stand on the “Green New Deal”: a radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy,” he tweeted Monday.