Free Republic

Gorbachev and his ilk call for ‘new thinking,’ but really mean new ways to dictate how people should live This week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the U.S. Congress that inaction on climate change amounted to a new “Berlin Wall” of “short- sighted self-interest.” Ms. Merkel’s claim was upside down. There is indeed a new threat to freedom in the offing, but it is the Green Wall that she is recommending. It will span the globe, and there will be no escape. What collapsed twenty years ago was Communism. What didn’t collapse was anti-capitalism, which remains the principle driver of...

<p>Climate change belief given same legal status as religion An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.</p>

It’s official -- putting plastic bottles into the recycling bin or going on a Greenpeace demo is akin to having a religious experience. Rupert Dickinson, who was made redundant by a London property company, claimed that it had discriminated against him on account of his subscription to the theory of man-made global warming and other environmental issues which he said constituted a ‘philosophical’ belief. In any rational universe, he would be sent away with a flea in his ear for trying it on. But this is not such a world. At an Employment Appeal Tribunal Mr Justice Burton ruled that...

Behind Global Warming Alarms Allie Winegar Duzett, November 4, 2009 As the danger of global warming fades, the influence of those who would use it to expand government regulation grows. Neil Maghami of the Capital Research Center investigates those behind today’s climate of environmental alarmism in his October 2009 article, “The Triumph of Environmental Alarmism: Science ‘Czar’ John Holdren and the Woods Hole Research Center.” In the article, Maghami describes who John Holdren is and why he is significant. Holdren is today President Obama’s science “czar,” and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The OSTP...

Al Gore stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "green" technology, and I don't begrudge him success. Capitalism works when you provide a needed product or service to the market. The problem is that Al Gore's success isn't coming from needed products or services, but rather from his political connection, as he connives, cajoles, and schemes to have his buddies in the government force us to use Al Gore-approved solutions to non-existent problems. That's not capitalism, it's shameless profiteering, and hypocritical to boot. I wonder if all those lefty enviromentalists who decry any opposition to their agenda as...

Tyranny: In his latest absurdity, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is dictating three-minute showers and no singing. Claiming it's to save water, his act is nothing but a "green" fig leaf to cover his socialist mismanagement. 'Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour," Chavez ranted on his Sunday TV show "Alo Presidente." "No, kids. Three minutes is more than enough. I've counted, three minutes and I don't stink." His words echo those of environmental extremists, blaming shopping malls, El Nino, tourists and sabotage. But the water and electricity shortages are his own doing, and the scope of...

PARENTS have accused early childhood centres of "greenwashing" their children by burdening them with the responsibility of saving the world.Tots as young as three have sent letters to Kevin Rudd about their passion for green living and asked companies to reduce their packaging.Others are growing their own food, repairing toys and walking to preschool in an effort to reduce their toll on the environment.But experts have called for caution in teaching children about climate change because of the potential for fear, anxiety, frustration, anger and despair at catastrophic events.Mother Paula Driscoll, from Sydney, said environmental disaster was the new...

From seabeds to mountaintops, people around the world were staging a day of demonstrations Saturday to call for urgent action on climate change. The events were being coordinated by a group called 350.org, whose name refers to the parts per million of carbon dioxide it considers the safe upper limit for our atmosphere. The group said it wants to "inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis" ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December. Divers at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and in the ocean off the Maldives...

Reporting from Seattle - In what would be the largest habitat zone ever established in the U.S. to protect a species from extinction, the federal government today proposed designating 200,541 square miles on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears. Officials said the designation is not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it crucially would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears, the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change. Those steps are crucial for polar bears but are being addressed separately in...

Bill McKibben '82 has founded 350.org, a worldwide action group that this weekend (Oct. 23-25) will promote demonstrations on every continent. McKibben was at Harvard's Memorial Church for a 90-minute "climate convocation" sponsored by 17 groups. Author and climate activist Bill McKibben '82 ascended into the pulpit of the Memorial Church at Harvard University on Oct. 18, a stage so grand that legend puts it "10 feet above contradiction." McKibben's message is that the Earth is warming rapidly, that climate change is too late to stop, but that it is not too late to act. Acting means getting humankind, with...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed tough new measures to reduce the health toll from air pollution around the Great Lakes by forcing lake freighters to stop burning dirty bunker fuel. But the plan has an unusual opponent: The Canadian embassy in Washington has quietly asked the EPA to weaken the measures, arguing that they could harm trade. It wants ships to be allowed to continue using the high-polluting fuel and to instead install smokestack scrubbers that would clean up their emissions. The Canadian recommendation, if accepted, could delay the clean-air measure for years, because the technology for the...

for example, from his rant against big bottled water: "... the huge soda companies decided to sell you bottled water which is from the same source as tap water, but guess what? when you sell it as natural and in a bottle, it's unregulated. at least tap water is regulated." this from a guy who is currently fined up to his eye balls as a result of pimping unregulated natural supplements for every disease imagineable, while blasting regulated big pharma. shameless.

California, the nation's largest producer of fruits, nuts, vegetables, livestock and dairy products, ranks fifth in the world as a supplier of food and agricultural commodities. Cash receipts totaled more than $36.6 billion in 2007. By comparison, Coca Cola's 2008 revenue was $32 billion. The state provides more than half of the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables using more than 25% of California's landmass for agricultural production. The Central Valley accounts for more than half of that area. A paragon of conservation and modern irrigation technology, California agriculture - comprised of many small and family-owned and operated farms - is...

<p>Most everyone supports a clean environment.  But many environmentalists fail to recognize the need for balance.</p> <p>One of the latest examples of environmental extremism is the campaign to punish or even ban the use of plastic bags.   The Philadelphia City Council has turned down a proposal to ban plastic bags, but proponents promise to try again.  A bill pending before the state legislature would outlaw plastic bags statewide.</p>

Oct 5, 2009 — Three stories touching on philosophy of science were reported recently.  They show that simplistic ideas, and even terms deployed, can be misleading.  That’s why philosophers still have a role in curbing the pretensions of scientists, and clarifying scientific issues and terms lest policy-makers and the public get wrong ideas. Are all invasive species bad?:  We are taught to think that “alien” animals or plants introduced into another country pose a threat.  Often they do, but Mark Davis at New Scientist reminded readers that the honeybee was introduced into the Americas.  He said, “you may be surprised...

The Arctic Ocean is becoming acidic so quickly that it will reach corrosive levels within 10 years, a leading scientist has warned. Waters around the North Pole are absorbing carbon dioxide at such a rate that they will soon start dissolving the shells of living sea creatures. The potentially disastrous consequences for the food chain have been highlighted by Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso of the National Centre for Scientific Research in France. His team of oceanographers have produced startling predictions about the acidity of the Arctic Ocean after research carried out on the Svalbard archipelago, a group of islands half way...

The radical environmentalist movement has wrapped its tentacles around almost every facet of our lives. It's so prohibitive of freedom and progress that even Native Americans want them near them. Whether Congress is imposing prosperity-crushing c(r)ap-and-trade regulations or the EPA is labeling the very gas that we exhale and which makes plants and trees grow as a pollutant, they are simply dangerous. Unfortunately, our own president is one of them. God help us. Here's Mark on Thursday's (October 1) first hour discussing the latest abominations brought to us by the environmentalist movement. Prepare to be infuriated:

The Anti-Defamation League, the country's leading group dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, is rightly sensitive to the offense of trivializing the Holocaust. Why, then, has the ADL said nothing in protest against the Darwinian biologist and bestselling atheist author Richard Dawkins and his comparison of Darwin doubters to Holocaust deniers?...

Moose declining in Minnesota's northwoods, among their few strongholds in lower 48 states Researchers say such sightings of moose, an icon in Minnesota's northwoods, are likely to become more rare. A special advisory committee warned last month that climate change threatens moose. ... Minnesota has an estimated 7,600 moose, nearly all in the forests of northeastern Minnesota, where plentiful swamps, lakes and streams provide good habitat. Yet they're beleaguered by increasingly warm weather and parasites such as brainworms, ticks and liver flukes. "Almost without exception all of the indicators are that the population is declining," said Mark Lenarz, a moose...

The Obama administration has ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to conduct studies on the possibility of removing four hydroelectric dams on the Snake River in Washington state in order to “protect” 13 species of salmon on the federal endangered species list. The studies were part of a new “Adaptive Management Implementation Plan” created by a coalition of nine government agencies (which calls itself “the Federal Caucus”) that which manages the salmon population in the Columbia River basin. The plan aims at trying to reverse a decline in the salmon population...

Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt. (snip) The Senate rejected the amendment by a largely party-line 61-36 margin, with Feinstein opposing the restoration of water deliveries to farmers. The California senator claimed she was blindsided by the amendment to the bill she was managing in the Senate, bizarrely comparing the move to a "Pearl Harbor." "No one from California has called, written or indicated they wanted this on the calendar," Feinstein protested.

Delta smelts: Preferred over humans. Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt.There was a time when the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive agricultural region in the world. It was a large part of what made the Golden State golden.Now it's a place where farmers no longer farm, but instead line up at food banks to feed the families of those who once fed the rest of the country and a good chunk of the...

I have liberal friends and relatives who were frightened, frightened, by George W. Bush. Something about a “Republican war on science.” Then Sarah Palin came on the scene. Then my liberal friends got really scared. All I heard them talk about was how scary she was. The same people who were losing sleep because George W. Bush was president were losing more sleep for fear that Sarah Palin would soon be one elderly president’s heartbeat from the Oval Office. ... But this post isn’t about Sarah Palin. It’s about people who are truly frightening. Someone, for instance, who believes humans...

It appears that the marginal-at-best Green Party will go to any lengths to thumb its collective nose at the American voting public. A report from The Hill suggests that the party whose platform is equal parts ecological wisdom and social justice has extended feelers to disgraced former Green Jobs Czar, Truther Jones. Having garnered a thimbleful of plausibility with the nomination of perennial Presidential candidate Ralph Nader as their choice in 1996, the party received nearly 2.7 % of the votes in the 2000 Presidential election. By 2008, the political geniuses at Green Party central had whittled their share of...

The night Van Jones resigned, Newsreal editor David Swindle emailed me and said: watch how long it takes them to use the “L” word. That’s not for liberal, mind you; it’s for “lynch.” Destruction of the enemy is always the agenda of the left. While conservatives prepare arguments, assemble evidence, leftists are busy looking into their quivers for a poison arrow, which always turns out to be a tainted label, and always pretty much the same label: racist (or sexist, or Islamophobe). So it wasn’t surprising to see the following post from Carl Pope the radical head of the Sierra...

The cult of enviornmentalism is being preached at St. Mary’s Resurrection Elementary School in New Jersey. In this Fox Report below, you’ll see Catholic school children start their day by pledging “allegiance to the earth and all Her sacred hearts”, an allusion to the Sacred Heart of Mary and Jesus. You’ll also hear them sing their song, “Whose the greatest mom of all? Earth Mama!” It’s hard to believe that a Catholic teaches children to replace Mother Mary with Mother Earth as the “greatest mom of all”, because actually, Catholic educators, Mary isn’t just the greatest mom of all, she’s...

When I heard about the ELF group's latest acts of terrorism immediately the first question that popped into my head was "well what kinds of books do they read?"...... little did I know how brilliant that really was. For those around me who may have forgotten, Jim David Adkisson who shot up the Tennessee Unitarian Church also read books from O'Reilly and a few others, and when the drive by media found out this fact they proceeded to morph the discussion of despicable acts into one of their usual political rallies against their enemies in talk radio. The shooting itself...

Book Review: The environmental movement has cultivated a warm and fuzzy public image, but behind the smiley-face rhetoric of "sustainability" and "conservation" lies a dark agenda. The Greens aim to regulate your behavior, downsize your lifestyle, and invade the most intimate aspects of your personal life. In this stunning exposé, Steve Milloy unveils the authoritarian impulse underlying the Green crusade. Whether they're demanding that you turn down your thermostat, stop driving your car, or engage in some other senseless act of self-denial, the Greens are envisioning a grim future for you marked by endless privation. Steve Milloy is the founder...

Remember James G. Watt? He was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior. A Westerner who believed the country’s resources should be wisely used, not hoarded. This was an abrupt reversal of the trend under Nixon and Carter in which millions of acres were put under the control of the federal government annually, and the definition of “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act had broadened beyond all meaning. Enraged environmentalists finally settled on a line of attack towards Watt that had little to do with his (and Reagan’s) policies, which most Americans would consider common sense if they bothered with the...

Australian geologist Ian Plimer argues that, for many agnostics and atheists, the cause of environmentalism has replaced organized religion as a matter of personal faith. (Ian Plimer is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne and Professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaid._ "Environmentalism Is the New Religion"

Crews dredging PCBs from the Hudson River on Friday ripped away remnants of what was once Britain's largest fort in Colonial America, a mistake that incensed local officials who had feared the cleanup project would damage such relics in the area. Neal Orsini said he was awoken around 4 a.m. by the sound of dredging along his riverside property in Fort Edward, 45 miles north of Albany. Orsini said he later discovered that the dredgers had torn out the riverbank, along with two wooden beams that had been part of the original fort's waterfront bastion. A third beam was later...

or some time now, Al Gore and other global warming alarmists such as Henry Waxman, President Barack Obama, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been clamoring for cap-and-trade legislation. Such a measure, they declare, will reduce global warming by cutting the amount of carbon dioxide released into the environment. The plan is founded on a government-imposed, economy-wide “cap” on the amount of carbon dioxide that companies will be allowed to emit; those companies will then be permitted to buy or sell “emission credits” among themselves. Cap-and-Trade has already passed the House, and there is a very good chance that the...

Faced with the prospect of an economic disaster caused by a man-made drought, hundreds of concerned citizens from California's Central Valley today engaged in a massive protest at the Concord, California district office of Democrat George Miller. Miller and Congressional Democrats had an opportunity just a few weeks ago to turn on valley water pumps again, in time to avert a disaster via HR 3105, but Miller voted instead to protect a non-threatened species of fish [the Delta smelt] and his extremist supporters rather than California farms, farm workers and the millions of people who depend on them for food.

Bill Clinton: Make college campuses greener August 13, 2009 7:51 PM | No Comments Former President Bill Clinton spoke about the environment today in Chicago, offering his reputation, his folksy wit and his foundation's Rolodex to university and college presidents seeking green technologies to retrofit their campuses. Former President Bill Clinton speaks at the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment Summit at the Palmer House Hilton today (Tribune / Abel Uribe) Clinton spoke to the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment, some 250 university presidents and top managers looking to green up their campuses, train students for a...

Last night Sean Hannity poked fun at the latest environmental doomsday prediction. As Hannity noted, the statement was so overblown, even Al Gore, America’s most famous prophet of doom, might be expected to roll his eyes. In his address to the Global Environment Forum in South Korea this week, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged delegates to December’s climate change summit in Copenhagen to “seal the deal”: We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet. Questions arise: if Ki-moon really believed this, wouldn’t he be hunkered down with his loved ones instead of...

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon (who cares if I spelled it right?) made a speech in his native Korea that was meant as a call to arms for all the envirofascists around the world. As Ban Ki Moon says, world leaders are now seeing how environmentlism and a commitment to saving the planet can help them exercise ridiculous amounts of control over their citizens. Yippee. According to Ban Ki, we have 4 months to save the planet. Unfortunately, it may already be too late to save us from Ban Ki Moon and his International Socialists.

An Open Letter to President Obama Regarding the Appointment of Science Advisor John Holdren Dear President Obama, I note with dismay your appointment of Dr. John Holdren as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Although Dr. Holdren’s experience in academia and administration may be adequate, his publicly expressed views regarding population control disqualify him from holding office. I will set aside objections to Dr. Holdren’s scientific competence. Despite his strong scientific credentials, he advanced theories...

The law of unintended consequences, like the laws of physics, will catch up with you every timeI am not against health care reform or whatever they're calling it nowadays. We could use some tort reform and insurance deregulation. I am against clueless crusaders trying to save the world by building monstrosities with my money. Having hope in our politicians is like having hope that those one-thousand monkeys pounding away on a thousand typewriters will eventually produce the great American novel.Consider what our government has accomplished, or should I say destroyed, so far.Starve People, Feed Cars!What a great idea ethanol is!...

The law of unintended consequences, like the laws of physics, will catch up with you every timeI am not against health care reform or whatever they're calling it nowadays. We could use some tort reform and insurance deregulation. I am against clueless crusaders trying to save the world by building monstrosities with my money. Having hope in our politicians is like having hope that those one-thousand monkeys pounding away on a thousand typewriters will eventually produce the great American novel.Consider what our government has accomplished, or should I say destroyed, so far.Starve People, Feed Cars!What a great idea ethanol is!...

Britain is, thankfully, an ideologically barren land. The split between Right and Left is no longer ideological, but tribal. Are you a nice social liberal who believes in markets, or a nasty social liberal who believes in markets? Anthony Blunt’s memoirs, published this week, reveal a different age, one in which fascism and communism were locked in a seemingly definitive battle for souls. Blunt talks of “the religious quality” of the enthusiasm for the Left among the students of Cambridge. There is only one ideology in today’s developed world that exercises a similar grip. If Blunt were young today, he...

Below Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck explains the Apollo Alliance on his July 28 show. Beck mentions the Obama administration’s “stimulus” blueprint, “The New Apollo Program: Clean Energy, Good Jobs,” which you can read here.

Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him. Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and he may well be Australia's best-known and most notorious academic. Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of "anthropogenic global warming" -- man-made climate change to you and me -- and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed. It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying...

California stands on the verge of ushering in an environmental program which aims to change the face of waste production standards. Several bills currently in the California Legislature propose to codify the European concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) , which has so far been a voluntary practice. It is a strategy which promotes the integration of environmental costs associated with a product throughout its lifecycle into the market price of the product. In other words, b efore the manufacturing of a product begins, EPR suggests that the manufacturer should know how the waste created by the production process should...

Looking at the current Waxman-Markey Climate bill, I don’t see any hint of responsible environmentalism. Driving the razor thin passage of the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill in the House on Friday was the reasoning that global warming and the growth of man-made greenhouse gases present such a serious problem that decisive action must be taken to stem its effects. According to Al Gore and his acolytes the time for science is over, and the time for action is now. This troubling contention, that scientific debate must be suspended and replaced with hard charging policies, has been made in the past with...

As part of his series of profiles on President Barack Obama’s many policy “czars,” last night FOX News host Sean Hannity looked at the new “Science Czar”, John P. Holdren. (Snip) Holdren is no stranger to controversy. As Hannity pointed out in his segment, Holdren has been quoted as calling the United States the “meanest of wealthy countries.” He has also, according to Hannity, “left the door open” to prosecuting “global warming deniers.” Holdren’s radicalism dates back to the late 1960s.

What does an entire generation that has never faced evil do to justify its own existence? It simply invents an evil and devotes its energy forcing everyone else to fight it. Of course, I’m talking about radical environmentalism. Previous generations had clear struggles to overcome. The greatest generation overcame Nazism and Fascism. The civil rights movement fought draconian laws that excluded entire segments of the population from participating in the economy. Now, with Communism defeated, how does a citizen progress? Well, if you’re on the political Left, you simply fight a gas that all humans exhale and force millions to...

— General Motors could literally turn green as it readies itself for major management and cultural changes that will coincide with its escape from bankruptcy protection. People briefed on its plans say the company is looking into changing the background color of its corporate logo from blue to green in an effort to show consumers that it is leaner and greener...

The master of environmental babble was at it again last week. Yup, Al Gore was out committing Goreisms yet once more. And, as always, he spouted a whole lot of propaganda based on just a slim hair of truth. For instance, Gore starts out saying that, "here in the United States, patriotism doesn't mean keeping quiet. It means speaking out and standing up for a stronger, more secure nation." Anyone following the Clinton-Gore administration those eight long years knows what kind of baloney that is. Not only did both Clinton and Gore ask for and receive illegal campaign funds from...

Ready for EnviroCops? This is the question asked by Ed Morrissey at Hoit Air, who informs us of a London Times article about such a development: Whether the British public is ready or not, here come the EnviroCops. The Times of London reports that simply selling carbon credits hasn’t been enough to keep companies from potentially violating carbon-emissions limits. Now they will send green-jacketed police to monitor their operations. […]Of course, the British authorities do not have a Fourth Amendment to limit them, but even this may be a bit much for Brits to swallow. Green-jacketed inspectors can descend on...