Free Republic

Environmentalist efforts to save the delta smelt threaten to create a new dust bowl. California’s water wars aren’t about scarcity. Even with 37 million people and the nation’s most irrigation-intensive agriculture, the state usually has enough water for both people and crops, thanks to the brilliant hydrological engineering of past generations of Californians. But now there is a new element in the century-old water calculus: a demand that the state’s inland waters flow as pristinely as they supposedly did before the age of dams, reservoirs, and canals. Only that way can California’s rivers, descending from their mountain origins, reach the...

Anti-plastic-bag forces got a boost today when the California Supreme Court ruled that an environmental impact report is not necessary before a city or county bans the use of plastic shopping bags. The decision strikes down rulings by trial and appellate courts in Los Angeles in the legal fight over an ordinance enacted in 2008 by the south coastal city of Manhattan Beach banning "point-of-sale plastic carry-out bags." Both courts said the city had to prepare an EIR before implementing its ban. "We disagree," a unanimous Supreme Court stated.

In light of the recent environmental controversy over splattergate, where the green propaganda ad in the United Kingdom explosively became gory red in the classroom, it is time to be reminded that it was pacifist-leftist Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935) who pointed out that the Nazis started out green but became bloody red. This political reality came much to the dismay of many German conservationists as they slowly found out the real intent of Adolf Hitler. Naïve German greens had no idea that many of the Fuhrer’s savage premeditations about continental hegemony were often conjured up at his mountain retreat in the...

Eco-Extremism: A light bulb factory closes in Virginia as mandated fluorescents are made in China. It's now a crime to make or ship for sale 75-watt incandescent bulbs in the European Union. Welcome to green hell. Thomas Alva Edison was a genius credited with the invention of many things — the phonograph, the motion picture, the incandescent light bulb, global warming. That last credit was given by those who rank light bulbs right up there with the internal combustion engine as ravagers of the planet. The General Electric light bulb factory in Winchester, Va., closed this month, a victim, along...

...that Audi eco-nazi commercial sent the wrong message at our house...there's too much of that going on right now as it is...I don't need a glimpse into an eco-totalitarian future...I guess the Europeans thought it was very clever, but it disgusted me.

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Thousands of coal miners fearing the loss of jobs if mountaintop removal mining is curtailed or outlawed shouted down a handful of environmentalists at crowded public hearings Tuesday on the much-debated practice. Many in Kentucky and West Virginia wore hardhats and T-shirts and waved signs proclaiming the merits of coal. Environmentalists who have fought for decades to end the destructive form of mining that blasts away peaks to unearth coal showed up in small numbers.

San Jose council votes to ban most plastic and paper bags beginning in 2011 The San Jose City Council on Tuesday voted to make the city the largest in the nation to ban most plastic and paper shopping bags — and took steps to bring other Santa Clara County cities along with them. Although the ban approved Tuesday won't take effect until 2011 — and still must go through an environmental impact study that will require the council's final signoff — it's a major new front in the war on plastic bags, which environmentalists say foul waterways, clog landfills and...

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...

W hen Deerfield farmer Peter Melnik heard about a machine that would make energy from cow manure, he was immediately intrigued. Graphic Farming 'natural gas' Not only would using it make his dairy farm more environmentally friendly, the technology could bring in extra cash by converting methane, an odorous and potent greenhouse gas, into electricity that could be sold to the regional power grid. The machine, called a methane digester, has been popular in Europe since the 1970s, but the idea is just catching on in the United States. Six farms in Vermont have digesters that produce electricity, and Melnik...

The climate “crisis” is a “moral issue that requires serious debate,” Al Gore proclaimed in an April 27 AlGore.com blog post. His conversion to the Anglo-American tradition of robust debate came a mere three days after the ex-VP refused to participate in a congressional hearing with Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Republicans had invited Monckton to counter Gore’s testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But Gore froze like a terrified deer in headlights, and Chairman Henry Waxman told the UK climate expert he was uninvited. Their hypocritical cowardice simply reflects a recognition...

THE Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the US president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent (more than double the European Union average) partly because of spending on such jobs? Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it. He says Spain's torrential spending on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created...

If California regulators get their way, auto makers may soon be forced to rewrite a cliché from the Ford Model T era and start telling customers they can have any color they want as long as it isn’t black. Some darker hues will be available in place of black, but right now they are indentified internally at paint suppliers with names such as “mud-puddle brown” and are truly ugly substitutes for today’s rich ebony hues. So buy a black car now, because soon they won’t be available or will look so putrid you won’t want one. And that’s too bad,...

In their continuing quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, state regulators have uncovered a new villain in the war on global warming : your big screen TV Couch potatoes, beware. The California Energy Commission is considering a proposal that would ban California retailers from selling all but the most energy-efficient televisions. Critics say the news standards could take 25 percent of televisions off the market — most of them 40 inches or larger. (snip) Affordable big screen TVs will still be available under the new standards, spokesman Adam Gottlieb said. In fact, he said the regulations will save you money....

CALGARY - U.S. President Barack Obama says Alberta's oilsands industry "creates a big carbon footprint" that leaves Canada and America facing an environmental dilemma about how to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from energy development. He also says he's eyeing carbon capture and storage as a possible solution. As the public-relations war between industry and environmental groups heats up over the oilsands - the second-largest oil reserves on the planet next to Saudi Arabia - the massive development in northern Alberta has clearly caught the eye of the 44th U.S. president. Obama has previously vowed to end America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling...

Farmers Panic About a ‘Cow Tax’ By Kate Galbraith Should their greenhouse gases be taxed? (Photo: Steve Ruark for The New York Times) The comment period for the Environmental Protection Agency’s exploration of greenhouse gas regulation ended last Friday, with farmers lobbying furiously against the notion of a “cow tax” on methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted by livestock. The New York Farm Bureau issued a statement last week (PDF) saying it feared that a tax could reach $175 per cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and upward of $20 for each hog. Such a tax would represent a...

LONDON: The escalation in Britain's growing surveillance state has created outrage over the way councils are using powers originally designed to combat terrorism and organised crime to spy on residents. British children as young as eight have been recruited by councils to serve as environmental volunteers and report petty offences such as littering by their neighbours. It also emerged last month that around 1,400 security guards, car park attendants and town hall staff have been given police-style powers including the right to issue on-the-spot fines for littering, cycling on the pavement and other offences, the Telegraph reported. Matthew Sinclair, of...

A public outcry [which public?]about wildlife, wilderness and cultural resources in the Vernal area has led federal officials to curtail oil and gas drilling on more acres than originally proposed in a long-term land plan. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Friday released its four-volume final environmental-impact statement and a proposed land-use plan for 1.7 million acres in the Book Cliffs and the Uinta Basin, one of the nation's most active energy-exploration areas. The document proposes closing 186,917 acres to drilling, nearly three times the amount of land the agency wanted off-limits when it released its draft plan in...

A new website campaign designed by a British power company recruits children through games, badges and cartoons to enlist as "Climate Cops," actively keeping records on their parents and neighbors for violations of "energy crimes" against the planet. The "Climate Cops" website encourages children to investigate family and friends and "then build your 'Climate Crime Case File' and report back to your family to make sure they don't commit those crimes again (or else)!" The site also warns children that they "may need to keep a watchful eye" to prevent future violations. A link on the site for teachers to...

Environmentalists have their thongs in a wad because the Bush administration has given oil companies permission to "annoy" and "potentially harm" polar bears. This past week, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations that give legal protection to seven oil companies that are planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. Out of the estimated 25,000 polar bears in the Arctic, about 2,000 supposedly live in or around the Chukchi Sea. Of course, the environmentalists are throwing a fit because they believe that this gives oil companies a blank check to...

Oak Grove Tree-Sit Anniversary ProtestBirthday party celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Memorial Oak Grove occupationBerkeley, December 2, 2007 In 2006, the University of California announced plans to build an athletic training center next to Memorial Stadium on the U.C. Berkeley campus. But the construction of the new building would entail the removal of several trees currently occupying the proposed site. A cry to "Save the trees!" spread throughout the local activist community, and a small protest movement quickly arose to stop the training center. Although everything the university does elicits some kind of protest, this one, as trivial as...

Back in 2004, Lancaster University's Professor Roger Kemp, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineering, produced a report for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, on the environmental impact of high-speed rail versus air and car travel. He used the example of the London to Edinburgh route to illustrate his findings. The conclusions were startling and rather annoying for the car hating Green fundamentalists.

FORT HUACHUCA — A longtime critic of Fort Huachuca’s impact on the San Pedro River claims the 2002 biological opinion between the post and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is badly flawed which has led to the errors being incorporated into the 2007 biological opinion. Phoenix physician Dr. Robin Silver said a 21-page study from the Center for Sustainable Economy, a Santa Fe, N.M., based organization, challenges the Army’s figures based on per capita instead of the more scientific economic model. Silver is chairman of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. Garrison Commander Col. Melissa Sturgeon said “the fort...

Vandals Batter D.C. Man's SUV, Slash Its Tires and Scratch In an Eco Note On a narrow, leafy street in Northwest Washington, where Prius hybrid cars and Volvos are the norm, one man bought a flashy gray Hummer that was too massive to fit in his garage. So he parked the seven-foot-tall behemoth on the street in front of his house and smiled politely when his eco-friendly neighbors looked on in disapproval at his "dream car." It lasted five days on the street before two masked men took a bat to every window, a knife to each 38-inch tire and...

Proving once again that foolish ideas don't die or fade away -- they walk the earth eternally, preying on the brains of the living -- scientists at a UK think tank have determined that the greatest threat to the planet is more human beings. "The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights," explains Professor John Guillebaud, co-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). "The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would...

Fascist Ecology: The "Green Wing" of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents Peter Staudenmaier "We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into...

In a few weeks the US Congress is likely to vote to phase out the standard incandescent lightbulb within a decade. The frantic race to see who can best appease the global warming alarmists will claim another victim, the friendly glow of the direct descendant of Thomas Edison's filament-based light bulb.   Why would the humble lightbulb, a staple commodity that has raised the standard of living throughout the world, be in the bullseye?  It was the incandescent electric light bulb that abolished the tyranny of the night. Our 19th and 20th century ancestors believed it one of the greatest...

A new worldwide movement backed by celebrities, musicians, politicians and business leaders is aiming to reverse the effects of global warming over the next decade. Global Cool launched in London and LA today and is calling on one billion people to reduce their carbon emissions by just one tonne a year, for the next 10 years

When did "Climate Change" replace "Global Warming"?So the Democrats in Congress are taking up "climate change". I must've heard that phrase "climate change" a dozen times in the news reports, but I don't think I heard the phrase "global warming" a single time. Are the liberals so afraid of the reaction to the phrase "global warming" that they are now shying away from it? When did this happen? Did I miss the memo?

BOILING SPRING LAKES, N.C., Sept. 23 (AP) — Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker. The agency issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker “clusters,” and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of this town in southeastern North Carolina as protected habitat, subject to more-stringent building restrictions....

Where are the Hurricanes? I blame global warming...http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1155133659.shtml Scott Kirwin Aug 9, 2006 Nearly a year ago the country was being slammed by hurricanes. As Americans suffered some claimed that the ferocity of Katrina and Rita was due to global warming. A search of Dean's World shows that this site is one of the few that argued against that idea over the course of 2005. So here we are, a year later. Where are the hurricanes? Where is the fury of Mother Nature? Where are her righteous swirls of rain and wind that shall smite the evil non-Kyoto Protocol signing...

Governor moves to cut vehicle emissions Adopt Clean Car Program, order tells state agencies By Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.09.2006 advertisement PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano took the first step Friday toward what eventually could be a ban on the sale of cars and light trucks that produce large amounts of "greenhouse gases." In an executive order, Napolitano told state agencies to adopt and carry out a "Clean Car Program" to reduce carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming. While details are still to be worked out, Napolitano said the final...

A new analysis by engineers at the Contra Costa Water District shows that a decision made a decade ago to protect fish by shifting the timing of water deliveries could be at the root of what is causing populations of Delta smelt and other fish to crash. The engineers found that the shift led to saltier water in the fall, and for some reason, that is leading to fewer fish.The evidence appears to be the strongest explanation yet for an environmental crisis in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that threatens not only the survival of at least one fish species but...

At the 55th annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 5-9, 2000, called the Millennium Assembly and Summit, far-reaching plans are underway to turn the corner from a world of sovereign, independent nation-states to a world of disparate peoples subordinated to the supreme authority of the United Nations. These plans call for the total restructuring of the mission and powers of the United Nations. To achieve this goal, the UN is scheduled to consider at least two actions, by consensus rather than by formal vote: adoption of the Earth Charter, a document whose...

Current Warming Period Is Longest in 1,200 Years, Study Says Sara Goudarzi for National Geographic News February 9, 2006 It's not normal, a new study says of the current global warming period. Researchers analyzed tree rings, ice cores, fossils, and other "proxy climate records" and found that the present warming phase has lasted longer and affected a broader area than any other such period in the last 1,200 years. The two English researchers behind the study reached their conclusion after studying proxy records from 14 sites around the globe. Each of these records shows how its local environment changed over...

Former Vice President Al Gore was scheduled to speak on global warming this coming weekend in New Orleans, but although Gore’s speech to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners had to be cancelled because of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, his allies are pressing ahead with efforts to enlist the insurance industry in the global warming alarmist army. Ceres, a coalition of environmental activists and left-leaning institutional investors, released a Sep. 8 report in preparation for the NAIC meeting claiming that “affordability and availability of insurance are already at risk from rising weather-related losses” and that “future financial exposure...

Dairyman Chuck Ahlem co-owns Hilmar Cheese, the largest cheese producer in the world. If you don't have milking cows, you probably would never hear about him -- if it weren't for the Sierra Club. Last week, that organization and the San Francisco-based Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to fire Ahlem from his new job -- as undersecretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture -- for allegedly polluting the Central Valley's water table. Schwarzenegger gave Ahlem the job in January 2004 because of the dairyman's experience as a businessman and his leadership...

In Union County, NC, there is a bypass project being considered in the northern corridor of the county connecting I-485 to the eastern portion of Union County. However, certain individuals feel the need for a toll road. Any recommendations from anyone that lives with a toll road in the neighborhood? Thanks.

John Rapanos may go to prison for moving sand, and civil libertarians care more about terrorists. A mere land owner does not present as attractive a cause for civil libertarians these days as some al Qaeda operative getting his three squares a day down in Gitmo. But when an American citizen faces prison time for moving dirt on his property, we say it's time to break out the editorial torches and pitchforks--especially when even the judge doesn't want to sentence the man. Mr. Rapanos's "crime" is to have moved sand on his own property without a federal permit

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a lawsuit that accused the federal government of doing too little to protect undeveloped Western land from off-road vehicles. The court, on a 9-0 vote, said environmental groups cannot use courts to force the federal Bureau of Land Management to more aggressively safeguard about 2 million acres of potential wilderness in Utah. Justices had been asked to clarify when a federal agency can be sued for failing to follow a congressional mandate - in this case, to preserve the pristine quality of lands being considered for wilderness designation. Tina...

Nearly three dozen Ohio counties are among 474 nationwide that must adopt new pollution controls because their air does not meet air quality standards. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its list today, which includes counties in 31 states. EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt told governors that the new standards will require more actions from states to achieve cleaner, healthier air. The EPA already has said it will take actions to reduce pollution from power plants and announced today in a companion regulation new requirements aimed at curtailing air pollution over state parks. The county designation has been long awaited, ever...

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...

Thursday, September 25, 2003 By Theresa D. Mcclellan The Grand Rapids Press MECOSTA COUNTY -- Martiny Township Fire Chief Aaron Holsworth was worried enough Monday as a bomb squad investigated homemade incendiary devices discovered at Ice Mountain Spring Water Co.'s pumping station. On Wednesday, the chief learned the radical and violent Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility. "It kind of changes my whole outlook," he said. Holsworth and his family live across the street from the pumping station on 13 Mile Road east of Big Rapids. "When an organization this big, that is known throughout the whole country, is making their...

CANCUN, Mexico -- Could the Greens take over the World Trade Organization -- by using concepts from the late 20th century and tactics from the early 20th century? "Sustainable Development," "Sustainable Trade," and "The Precautionary Principle" are the hip buzzwords of anti-WTO-ers, who would like to transform the WTO from within or conquer it from without. But to succeed in their effort, they are relying on tactics that summon up such old-time phrases as "entryism" and "dual unionism." Many decades ago, those tactics guided an earlier left-wing movement, Communism, in its bid for world power. Now we will see how...

Precaution Into Law By James Pinkerton 09/13/2003 Editor's Note: This is the first of a two-part series.  CANCUN, Mexico -- September 11 will be remembered for many things, of course, but something that happened on 9/11/03 will also be remembered. The world may mourn -- or not -- the attack on the US two years ago, but the world environmental movement has definitely moved on. Here at the World Trade Organization meeting, the assembled multitude, both pro-trade and anti-trade, was confronted by the coincidence that Thursday marked the first day in which the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety entered into force. Right...

NEWS AND ISSUES - ENVIRONMENTAL TRADE BARRIERS Environmental trade barriers and the rising threat to prosperity through tradeA new research report reveals that over the last decade more than forty environmental restrictions on international trade have been introduced which appear to disregard the rights of members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) not to be subject to trade coercion. At least twenty more measures are in prospect. Most of the measures have been introduced by the European Union (EU). It appears that despite the fact other members of the WTO do not agree with EU proposals to amend the WTO...

BioPiracy and Other Myths Saying "Yes Patents on Life" Ronald Bailey Cancun—"No Patents on Life," is one the most frequently heard slogans among anti-globalization activists at the World Trade Organization's 5th Ministerial meeting. It is part of a fierce fight over intellectual property rights. Who has the right to make pharmaceuticals and who has the right to grow genetically enhanced crop plants are hotly in dispute at the WTO conference. "Patenting of life forms must be prohibited in order to preserve biodiversity, food security and indigenous peoples' rights and protect them from corporate grip on genetic resources." declared a...

Poor Substitutes Trade is the way out of poverty Ronald Bailey Cancun—Naked bodies on the beach as a protest against the World Trade Organization greeted me on the front pages of the local papers when I arrived in Cancun. That was the lighter side of the "globalphobics,." as people here in Cancun call the anti-WTO protestors.. Today matters got serious. Poor people, small farmers, campesinos, peasants, and traditional fishers from all over the world were gathered together in a downtown gymnasium this morning to listen to fiery speeches by anti-globalization leaders. They were told by speaker after speaker that...

Cancun Delusions Subsidizing the poor to death Ronald Bailey Cancun, Mexico—The World Trade Organization's fifth ministerial meeting will get under way tomorrow here in this Caribbean resort fringed with white sand beaches. Hopping off of the airplane, I immediately rushed through police blockades to get to the anti-globalization "teach-in" being run by the International Forum on Globalization (IFG). I was anxious to hear what these passionate anti-globalizers would have to say about agricultural subsidies. Why? Because the most important achievement of this WTO ministerial would be substantial progress toward truly free trade in agricultural goods. This is the central...

<p>The two pipe bomb explosions at an Emeryville biotechnology firm last week were part of a surge of extremism by animal rights and environmental militants that activists predict will increase as fringes of the movement grow more frustrated with peaceful protest.</p>

<p>Emeryville -- UPDATE: An animal rights activist group called the Revolutionary Cells took responsibility today for planting a pair of pipe bombs that exploded early Thursday at the Emeryville biotechnology firm Chiron Corp., causing minor damage.</p> <p>In a statement posted on the Web site of Biteback Magazine, the previously unknown group said members had "descended on the animal-killing scum Chiron'' early Thursday. "We left them with a small surprise of two pipe bombs filled with an ammonium nitrate slurry with redundant timers,'' the statement said.</p>