Free Republic

Chrystia Freeland called climate action 'an insurance policy against higher energy prices.'. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s World Economic Forum-linked finance minister told Canadians on Tuesday that record-high fuel prices are a “reminder of why climate action is so important and why as a country we need to work even harder and move even faster towards a green economy.” “It’s an insurance policy against higher energy prices,” Liberal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said at a press conference. Freeland’s statements come after the Liberal government increased the cost of fuel overnight by imposing a “carbon tax” on Canadians on April 1. On...

Solar panel installations are surging in the U.S. and Europe as Western countries seek to cut their reliance on fossil fuels. But the West faces a conundrum as it installs panels on small rooftops and in sprawling desert arrays: Most of them are produced with energy from carbon-dioxide-belching, coal-burning plants in China. Concerns are mounting in the U.S. and Europe that the solar industry’s reliance on Chinese coal will create a big increase in emissions in the coming years as manufacturers rapidly scale up production of solar panels to meet demand. That would make the solar industry one of the...

Department of Energy's scientists announced this week that they have designed a plastic that can be recycled over and over again. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wrote in Nature Chemistry that they had designed new plastic, called polydiketoenamine or PDK, that could be disassembled down to the molecular level and reassembled into different shapes, textures or colors multiple times. Modern-day plastics are reinforced with chemicals to make them more resilient and often end up making the material more difficult to fully recycle. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... Even the most recyclable plastic is only being...

New sustainable biopolymer technology may one day free the world of its worst pollutant Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University Summary: A new Tel Aviv University study describes a process to make bioplastic polymers that don't require land or fresh water — resources that are scarce in much of the world. The resulting material is biodegradable, produces zero toxic waste and recycles into organic waste. FULL STORY: The invention was the fruit of a multidisciplinary collaboration between Dr. Alexander Golberg of TAU's Porter School of Environmental and Earth Sciences and Prof. Michael Gozin of TAU's School of Chemistry....

Despite the promise of creating 600 permanent jobs, the ethane cracker plant being built about 40 minutes northwest of Pittsburgh by car continues to face scrutiny from environmental groups. Shell Chemical Appalachia decided in 2012 that Beaver County would be the site of a new $6 billion plant to manufacture plastics. Shell chose the Beaver County location because of its proximity to natural gas supplies and because the majority of North American polyethylene — the most common plastic — customers are in a 700-mile radius of Pittsburgh. In a statement published on its website, Shell said it expects to employ...

Who will determine production and consumption? Proponents of Sustainable Development and Green Economy need to answer some pointed questions. And, they need to stop pretending to be economists, because they are not! The United Nations intends to replace Capitalism and Free Enterprise with its Green Economy, or Sustainable Development. However, its concepts of development and economy are deeply flawed and reminiscent of fringe ideas from the Great Depression era. (For a full discussion of Technocracy in the 1930s, see Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation.) Sustainable Development, as most recently promoted by the UN’s 2030 Agenda Conference in...

After Friday afternoon's release of 94,000 emails between Cylvia Hayes and former Gov. John Kitzhaber's staffers, reporters poured over the documents dating back to the beginning of his third term in 2011. Now it's your turn. Cast of characters The Governor's office Mike Bonetto, Kitzhaber's chief of staff, had a front-row seat to the blurring between Hayes' public and private roles. No longer working in the governor's office. .........snip........ You can access the same archive as reporters by going to this link on Gov. Kate Brown's state site.

I saw this story yesterday, but didn't have time to do it justice. I also see The Lonely Conservative and Pirate's Cove have both already covered quite well. If you would, please allow me to weigh in on the matter of our government wasting another $500 million to train workers for green jobs that simply do not exist. I consider this to be another boondoggle government program that throws money down a rat hole. Given at how well they perform at this waste, one would think these programs were designed with that in mind. This story originates with an audit...

Fears about climate change are overblown and shifting weather patterns and rising sea levels should be considered an engineering problem, said the head of the world's largest oil refiner, ExxonMobil. "The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say 'we just have to stop this,' I do not accept," Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil's chief executive, said in a speech on Wednesday (June 27). Tackling global poverty should have a higher international priority than reducing carbon emissions, because it would give billions of the world’s energy poor access to oil and gas supplies, in his view. "They'd love to...

Thousands of women representing social and farm movements marched in central Rio Monday to rail against the "green economy" advocated by the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development. Behind a large banner from the international peasant movement Via Campesina proclaiming "the peoples are against the mercantilization of nature", they marched several miles to the Flamengo park, the venue for the "People's Summit" organized by civil society groups on the sidelines of the Rio+20 event.

SOLYNDRA For Sale Property Size Total building area is approximately 411,618 square feet (excluding mezzanine) o Manufacturing area: 287,448 square feet single story o Office building: 37,210 square feet two-story o Mechanical Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) area: 86,960 square feet usable o Expandable to 739,232 square feet Building Highlights • Highly visible world class manufacturing facility • Frontage along Interstate 880 and Kato Road • Headquarters style office area constructed to LEED Gold Standards • Construction completed in October of 2010 • The total electrical service: 22 Megawatts • Facility is backed up by 2 diesel generators each with 2...

General Motors told 1,300 employees at its Detroit-Hamtramck factory that they were being “temporarily laid off” for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt, the Detroit Free Press reports. “Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee. “We needed to maintain proper inventory and make sure that we continued to meet market demand,” he told The Hill in a phone interview.

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) — Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly once again has vetoed money to fund a commission aimed at developing green jobs. Shelly says legislation that created the Green Economy Commission doesn’t set guidelines on how it would work with the tribe’s executive branch, which has similar goals. He also says the commission is supposed to seek outside funding.

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Such is the inevitable consequence of large government interventions in private markets. Leaving aside the losses associated with transfers of funds from self-sustaining industries to ones...

The Fisker Karma electric car, developed mainly with your tax money so that a bunch of rich VC’s wouldn’t have to risk any real money, has rolled out with an nominal EPA MPGe of 52. Not bad? Unfortunately, it’s a sham. This figure is calculated using the grossly flawed EPA process that substantially underestimates the amount of fossil fuels required to power the electric car, as I showed in great depth in an earlier Forbes.com article. In short, the EPA methodology leaves out, among other things, the conversion efficiency in generating the electricity from fossil fuels in the first place....

WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000. The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns The awards to Fisker and Tesla have prompted concern from...

Barack Obama has spared no effort attempting to shove the US towards a so-called "green economy." The same green economy nearly bankrupted Spain and has been nothing but a miserable failure here. China is now in the process of changing the sticker price of Obama's green economy and they are sending it skyward. They are tightening control of rare Earth metals.The kind used in pretty much everything Obama is trying shove down our throats. BEIJING — In the name of fighting pollution, China has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs soaring in the United States. By closing or...

A green jobs program in one of America's greenest cities is being called a bust 16 months after a $20 million federal grant to weatherize homes in Seattle ended up putting just 14 people to work in mostly administrative jobs and upgrading only three homes in the area. "The jobs are not there," Todd Myers, who wrote the book "Eco Fads," told Fox News. "So we're training people for jobs that don't exist." Seattle is not alone. The Department of Energy has allocated $508 million to 41 states for its Better Buildings Neighborhood Program and 600 jobs have been created...

Las Vegas, NV – Nevada Senator Harry Reid today announced a $4,650,523 million grant for three electric buses in Reno that will travel from the Riverwalk District to the University of Nevada, Reno.  The Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County will receive the funding for three 35-foot composite-body electric buses that will replace three diesel buses. “These clean buses will extend the life of Reno’s downtown bus system for years to come, which is good news for tourists, college students and Nevadans commuting to and from work,” Reid said.  “The electric buses are designed for efficiency in Northern Nevada’s high...

“Solon Corp will stop manufacturing solar panels in Tucson by mid-October, ending the facility’s three-year run,” reports the Phoenix Business Journal. “The company will lay off about 60 employees when it shuts down that part of the Tucson operation. It was the state’s first solar panel production line.” In another blow to the so-called solar power industry, the Boston Herald also reports, “Evergreen Solar Inc., the Massachusetts clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies from the Patrick administration for an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy, listing $485.6 million in debt.” The so-called green scheme was criticized...