Free Republic

A pair of top incoming White House environmental aides has blamed "systemic racism" as a driver of climate change in an attempt to justify a government-led economic overhaul. President-elect Joe Biden named progressive policy adviser Maggie Thomas as Office of Domestic Climate Policy chief of staff and climate advocate Cecilia Martinez as "senior director for environmental justice" on Thursday. Both Thomas and Martinez have cited racial inequality as perpetuating climate change, arguing that the Biden administration's environmental policy must be centered on "racial and economic justice." "Unless intentionally interrupted, systemic racism will continue to be a major obstacle to creating...

America knew, within a couple of hours, the names of Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley, Marc Chapman, Shirhan Shirhan, James Earl Ray, and James Hodgkinson. (Or did you already forget that James Hodgkinson shot House Minority Whip Steve Scalise and three others on a softball field, in an attempted mass assassination of members of the House GOP caucus?) But after searching the Internet for a few hours, there only remain questions, and no answers about Ashli’s shooting. My only assumption can be that the hard facts concerning the shooting are so egregious, and so threatening to the incoming Democratic Congress...

BERLIN -- World leaders breathed an audible sigh of relief that the United States under President Joe Biden is rejoining the global effort to curb climate change, a cause that his predecessor had shunned. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron were among those welcoming Biden's decision to rejoin the the Paris climate accord, reversing a key Trump policy in the first hours of his presidency Wednesday. Former President Donald Trump had questioned the scientific warnings about man-made global warming, at times accusing other countries of using the Paris accord as a club to hurt the U.S....

LONDON - Analysts have raised their European carbon market average price forecasts for 2021 and 2022 after record highs this month on growing confidence in the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) and soaring gas prices that drove up the cost of carbon permits. EU Allowances (EUAs) are expected to average 39.24 euros a tonne in 2021 and 46.24 euros in 2022, according to a Reuters survey of eight analysts. That is up 3.6% and 11.1% respectively from forecasts in October. The price of EU carbon permits has risen almost 40% since the beginning of November on momentum that built ahead...

The news raining down upon us is a narrative devoid of believable facts. In 2007, then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deemed it necessary to “willfully suspend disbelief” to accept General David Petraeus’ progress report on the Iraq war. In 2021, it seems necessary for the American people to willfully suspend belief in our government institutions, the media, and their corporate overlords. The body politic is putrid and lashing out with the most disgusting displays of immorality, deceit, and coercion. Entertainment, education, social media, and the MSM ‘watchdogs of democracy’ are now the defenders, recruiters, and propagandists for this sick, bloated, and...

EUGENE, Ore. - The University of Oregon says it will create an institute focusing on environmental and racial justice after receiving a grant of more than $4.5 million, the biggest humanities award in the school’s history. The Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice will foster collaboration between the university’s College of Arts and Sciences and College of Design in conjunction with the University of Idaho and Whitman College in Washington. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave the university the grant. “Oregon has a dark history of racial discrimination,” John Arroyo, professor of planning, public policy and...

With arrest after arrest of assorted leftists emerging, it looks as though impeachment-happy Nancy Pelosi, has a lot of egg on her Botoxed face. When the Capitol riots happened on Jan. 6, the blame of President Trump was all over. Supposedly, he was the instigator. Supposedly, he'd egged the rioters on. The tape of his urging his supporters to stay strong and fight was Exhibit A in the press, and with no skepticism whatsoever, House speaker Nancy Pelosi declared Trump guilty and rushed a crazily hasty second impeachment just days before Trump's exit. She declared that it was all about...

Today, we are observing turbulence on the surface of news reports. Anyone who has spent much time fishing has likely observed turbulence on the surface of the water, without necessarily understanding what was causing it. Sometimes, it is due to a school of fish attempting to escape from a predator. Today, we are observing turbulence on the surface of news reports. SNIP What is going on? For one, the intrusions and accompanying violence were not the work of rank-and-file Trump loyalists. Some of the intruders may have been what are called right-wing extremists, but clearly, at least some were leftists....

EXCLUSIVE: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham on Friday released a slew of additional documents and transcripts related to his panel’s investigation into the origins and aftermath of the Trump-Russia probe, calling the original probe into whether members of President Trump’s first campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 "one of the most incompetent and corrupt investigations in the history of the FBI and DOJ."

LONDON - France’s Total on Friday became the first major energy company to quit the largest U.S. oil and gas lobby because of differences over climate policies. Total said in a statement it would not renew its 2021 membership with the American Petroleum Institute (API) following a review of the lobby’s climate positions, describing them as being only “partially aligned” with Total’s. The points of difference include API’s support for the rollback of U.S. regulation on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and how to assign a price to carbon, vital to any carbon trading system seen as critical...

I find it amazing, but not surprising, that so soon after winning the White House and a majority of the legislative seats, the Democrats cannot be satisfied with their victory, however tainted. Rather, they are after blood, and they want it now. I am one of the few guys over 70 in the U.S. who actually played soccer when he was a kid; part of my junior high and all of my high school years, I lived in the Yakima Valley, where my Hispanic friends all played soccer and where an eclectic, for the time, physical education teacher let us...

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden must place environmental justice at the heart of his plans to tackle climate change by tailoring policies to address the global inequalities at the root of the crisis, guests in a Reuters Next panel said on Thursday. The United States now had an opportunity to heed calls from climate justice movements around the world to push for a fundamental transformation of the global economy, said Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and executive director of the California-based Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network International. “The climate crisis really emerged from interlocking systems of capitalism, resource extraction, racism, patriarchy...

Joe Biden is preparing to deal with climate change in a way no U.S. president has done before – by mobilizing his entire administration to take on the challenge from every angle in a strategic, integrated way. The strategy is evident in the people Biden has chosen for his Cabinet and senior leadership roles: Most have track records for incorporating climate change concerns into a wide range of policies, and they have experience partnering across agencies and levels of government. Those skills are crucial, because slowing climate change will require a comprehensive and coordinated “all hands on deck” approach. **SNIP**...

Jay Gamel, 76, still talks about his Northern California home in the present tense, as if nothing had happened. “The place is a paradise by any measure,” says Gamel, who is semiretired. “The mountains are beautiful, the surroundings are gorgeous. It’s a postcard.” “That place is everything to me,” he says. “It has been my life. It’s the center of my being.” Or it was, until last October, when hot, dry easterly winds known as Diablos drove a fierce wildfire across the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Known as the Glass Fire, the flames tore through more than 67,000 acres of...

Rising temperatures caused by climate change are contributing to low diet quality and malnutrition among young children in many parts of the world, researchers say. Warmer temperatures now equal or exceed the impact of traditional causes of child malnutrition and low quality diets, such as poverty, poor sanitation and low levels of education, according to investigators from the University of Vermont. "Certainly, future climate changes have been predicted to affect malnutrition, but it surprised us that higher temperatures are already showing an impact," study co-author Meredith Niles said. The researchers assessed diet diversity among 107,000 children, 5 years and younger,...

Baby sharks are being born small, exhausted and undernourished as a result of rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change, according to a new study. Researchers looked at the effects of warming waters on juvenile epaulette sharks (Hemiscyllium ocellatum) — a small, egg-laying species of shark found in the Great Barrier Reef, that spends most of its time on the seafloor. Studying their egg sacs in a laboratory at the New England Aquarium in Boston, the researchers discovered that warmer waters led to premature births of the baby sharks inside. "The hotter the conditions, the faster everything happened, which could...

LONDON - Half of the world's climate change financing should go to helping poorer nations adapt to the effects of global warming, such as droughts, rising seas and floods, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Thursday. Extreme weather last year such as torrential rains in Africa, record heat waves and warmer temperatures on tropical oceans is consistent with climate change, scientists say. Last year was one of the warmest on record and as impacts intensify, governments around the world must adapt better or face serious costs, damages and losses, the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2020 said. The 2015 Paris...

The anger and frustration that the Republican base is feeling right now has been years in the making by the Democrats ongoing manipulation of voting laws and regulations culminating in the highly suspect 2020 election. Traditionally, when one’s candidate loses the election for the presidency of the United States, feelings of anger and depression arise. It is in our nature to root for our team, our player and our candidate. SNIP The Democrats committed numerous actions during their campaign that led even the most skeptical voter to conclude that Democrats had engaged in less than ethical behavior to win an...

A flyer urging people to attend an “armed march on Capitol Hill & all state capitols” is almost certainly an anti-Second Amendment trap. A flyer has been circulating on the internet urging people to attend an “armed march on Capitol Hill and all state capitols [sic]” on January 17. It’s framed in terms of standing up for liberty. DO NOT ATTEND. There is a 99.99999% certainty that this is a trap intended to give Democrats an excuse to destroy the Second Amendment and, quite possibly to cordon off from society all Republicans and conservatives. Here’s the flyer, which we reproduce...

The media hides it but, on January 6, there was a huge and peaceful rally on the Mall, and it had nothing to do with and did not contribute to events at the Capitol. The Save America Rally, sponsored by Women For America First, was a totally separate happening from what took place inside the Capitol building. We’re still waiting for the media to figure that out. Yawn. Even so, they’re too biased to be honest and truthful enough to report the distinction so others around the world can know the difference, too. Trump was right when he exclaimed in...