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You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

President Kennedy made one of his greatest speeches in Berlin. Some debate whether his German intonation was perfect -- "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- but the speech's venue certainly was perfect. Kennedy wanted a side-by-side comparison of limited government versus authoritarian government, and there was no better place to do that than in the artificially divided German city. The speech also employed powerful repetition: "Let them come to Berlin!" Today, there are those who say that America has become more like the dysfunctional, oppressed East Berlin of 1963 than its efficient, free contemporary to the West. New York Times columnist...

Richard Curtis’s eco-fascist snuff movie was a disaster for the green movement, I think we can all agree. Well, not quite all of us to judge by one or two bizarre comments and newspaper responses I’ve seen today. Let’s just dispense with a few of them. 1. It was an internet “hit.” (~~snip~~) 2. It was all part of Richard Curtis’s “cunning plan”. (~~snip~~) 3. Richard Curtis is a secret “denier” and devised the project as satire.(~~snip~~) 4. This was an unfortunate accident. It isn’t representative of the green movement.(~~snip~~) 5. It’s actually “funny” and people who don’t think so...

“10:10″ is a campaign to get people around the world to lower their carbon consumption by 10% in the year 2010. Global Warming and all that, you see. It’s quite a large, well-organized movement, funded in part by the British government.This morning, the 10:10 campaign released “No Pressure,� a much-anticipated video promoting the notion of compliance to the carbon-reduction drive, a video scripted by famed British screenwriter Richard Curtis (Notting Hill, Mr. Bean, etc.) and produced by a professional film crew with top-notch actors. However…Within minutes of its unveiling earlier today, “No Pressure� caused such an uproar that it was...

The Green Nazis: Environmentalism in the Third ReichBy Elmer June 19, 2009 2:14 PM Jurriaan Maessen, Infowars The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. It has been elaborately pointed out how the device of environmentalism is especially favoured by tyrants as a means of controlling their subjects. The current 'green' movement, as we know, is no exception. It has been nurtured from its very conception as a systematic eugenics operation by the deep pockets of the Rockefeller- and Ford Foundations. Throughout...

Many of our elected leaders, it seems, are being "green-washed." From the Governor's Mansion to the White House, public officials are racing to become the most radical supporter of clean energy, as well as the fiercest opponent of man-made climate change. Does anyone not think that green energy and man-made global warming are urgent priorities? Evidently, just those crazy global warming "deniers" — the American people. According to a recent Gallup environmental survey, global warming is last on the list of Americans' environmental worries. In fact, four in 10 Americans worry only a little or not at all about global...

With two-thirds of Oregon county governments, including Lane County, facing financial crises, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Monday urged residents to accept modest local property tax increases and more logging on federal forests to help stave off deep cuts in county law enforcement and other critical services. Those steps are just two of 54 recommendations in a task force report delivered to the governor on Monday. Kulongoski commissioned the report last year to address the imminent loss of about $238 million in annual federal timber payments, including $47 million a year to Lane County. The top recommendation was for Oregon...

A statewide cap on driving? Here’s the thing nobody is quite willing to say out loud about implementing California’s climate change law in the land use arena: The state may have to place an overall cap on vehicle miles traveled (VMT), even as it must accommodate more growth. Last Friday at UCLA Extension’s annual Land Use Law and Planning Conference, keynote speaker Anthony Eggert, senior policy advisor at the California Air Resources Board, issued what amounted to a plea for help from the 400 land use practitioners gathered in the room. CARB is charged with implementing AB 32. Land use...

Two more eco-terrorists sentenced Last modified Friday, June 1, 2007 7:40 PM PDT By: Associated Press - EUGENE, Ore. -- A federal judge sentenced two women to prison Thursday for their roles in arson fires around the West that caused more than $40 million in damage over a five-year period. Suzanne Savoie and Kendall Tankersley were the fifth and sixth of 10 radical environmentalists to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Eugene after they pleaded guilty to arson and conspiracy. All were members of an underground cell of the Earth Liberation Front known as "The Family." U.S. District Judge...

Environmentalism: So global-warming alarmists now want to limit our use of toilet paper. What's next, one-room shacks with bamboo fences? Don't laugh. That's also on their list of recommendations. Singer Sheryl Crow says she's spent most of her save-the-planet tour of campuses "trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming." Eureka! She's found a really practical idea. "I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting," Crow said.

BANGKOK, Thailand — After two reports predicting a warmer Earth where life is fundamentally changed, a U.N.-sponsored scientific panel next month will issue a third study describing how a united world can avert the worst, by embracing technologies ranging from nuclear power to manure controls. Under a best-case scenario for heading off severe damage, the global economy might lose as little as 3 percentage points of growth by 2030 in deploying technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says the panel's draft report, obtained by The Associated Press. But it won't be easy. "Governments, businesses and individuals all need to be pulling...

Millions of acres of prime recreational opportunities in Montana are threatened with closure. Your action could mean the difference between a "closed" sign and a "trail open" sign. Please take a moment to read the information below and act on the action items. the U.S. Forest Service is planning a de-facto Wilderness management regime on all "Recommended Wilderness Areas" (RWA). Under normal circumstances, the "Recommended" Wilderness classification is just that: a recommendation. The decision of "whether Wilderness" is supposed to be left to Congress and the American People. Sadly, the Northern Region of the U.S. Forest Service seems to think...

Time has always passed this town by. Created a century ago by legendary "Sugar King" Claus Spreckels to provide homes for his factory workers, Spreckels evokes an era when neighbors gathered on the front porches of sturdy Craftsman houses, stately Victorians and storybook cottages. People here still do that. But now, ironically, the distant past is reaching out to pull the town into the present. Monterey County officials have decreed that a 1907 map permitting 73 new homes is as valid today as when it was drawn. The development would immediately increase the size of Spreckels by 40 percent. Despite...

A thin white smile curves across the blank face of the South Pacific Ocean, more than a mile below. A little lower, the whiteness re-solves into an arc of breakers, and the tiny turboprop heads straight for them. Only at the last moment does a filament of land seem to emerge from the ocean. We touch down at Funafuti International Airport, Tuvalu’s only functioning airstrip,interrupting a soccer match on the runway. The islands of Tuvalu, scattered over 500,000 square miles of equatorial ocean midway between Hawaii and Aus-tralia, appear so wispy and are so low-lying, no more than 15 feet...

In case the rest of you are living in a cave, there are fires raging out of control in the Los Angeles/San Diego Area. They are so serious that many of us here in Southern Nevada are checking bed space and hotel rooms in case of major evacuations from the Los Angeles basin. As of the time of this writing, over 50,000 homes are threatened, and the situation is changing by the minute. At least 17 people are dead and it has consumed more than 800,000 acres stretching from the Mexican border to the suburbs northeast of Los Angeles. And...

Florida growth regulators notified Collier County on Monday that they had signed off on landmark changes to the county's rural growth plan, but opponents are vowing a legal challenge. County commissioners approved new growth rules this summer in response to a 1999 order from Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet that required the county to work with its citizens to come up with better environmental protections for its rural land. The rules apply to some 93,000 acres on the edge of Golden Gate Estates known as the rural fringe. Other changes, still under state review, would apply to almost 200,000...

Lightning Ignites New Fires in Central Oregon 07/24/2002 By AP and KGW Staff Nearly 1,000 lightning strikes hit central Oregon yesterday afternoon and last night igniting several new fires across the state. Firefighters are now chasing the new wildfires, including one that has prompted the voluntary evacuation of campgrounds on Suttle and Blue lakes northwest of Sisters. Heavy lift helicopters are set to begin attacking the Cache Mountain fire this morning, said David Widmark, spokesman for the Northwest Interagency Coodination Center in Portland. Smoke billows skyward and spreads east near Summer Lake, Ore., Tuesday. (AP Photo) The Cache Mountain fire...

National Guard troops mop up Winter Fire to free experienced crews By JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press PAISLEY, Ore. (AP) -- Their cots lined up 12 inches apart, and olive drab tents tautly pitched in a grassy field, National Guard troops tossed footballs, listened to rock and roll and called home on cell phones as they waited to join the battle against forest fires burning across Oregon. Fresh from training after being called up by Gov. John Kitzhaber, 250 members of the 82nd Armored Cavalry out of Redmond were scheduled to begin mopping up hot spots and smoking stumps in...

National Guard troops to join firefighters By BRAD CAIN The Associated Press 7/22/02 7:37 PM PAISLEY, Ore. (AP) -- Touching down from a helicopter tour of fires across Oregon, Gov. John Kitzhaber urged Congress to boost its commitment to preventing future blazes in the nation's forests. "This is as much a war as the war we are fighting in Afghanistan,' Kitzhaber said at Paisley High School, which houses 814 firefighters hoping to contain the 31,500-acre Winter Fire in the Summer Lake Basin of south central Oregon. "Congress has got to put in a permanent appropriation to keep resources coming" for...

Canada lynx study scientists defended Group says state biologists met code of ethics Dan Hansen Staff writer They've been vilified by some in Congress, some in the Legislature, some of their peers, and editorial writers nationwide. In the eyes of government critics, they stand as proof that "bad science" rules natural resource decisions. But two Washington biologists were cleared of wrongdoing in the eyes of their peers within an international organization of wildlife scientists. And a media watchdog group recently issued a report that the story of a lynx study gone awry was blown out of proportion by journalists...

Eco-Terror Expert Calls For Inquiry of Green Anarchists Marc Morano, CNSNews.com, Thursday, July 18, 2002 An expert on eco-terrorism is calling on the FBI to investigate an organization that is touting a nationwide tour to "destroy civilization" and raise money for convicted eco-terrorists, but a spokesman for the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program said the agency is taking a hands-off approach for the time being. The Green Anarchy Tour 2002, currently traveling from Ashland, Ore., to Washington, D.C., advertises its participants as "anarchists," refers to police as "the fascist force we are up against" and calls convicted eco-terrorists "prisoners of war."...