Free Republic

“А у вас негров линчуют” is a bitter Soviet-era punch line meaning, roughly, “But in your country they lynch Negroes.” There were a million Cold War variations on the joke: The Soviet farm minister meets his U.S. counterpart, who inquires about whether the heroic Soviet farmers are meeting their five-year plans. Asked about each crop in turn, the Soviet minister is forced to sheepishly admit that they are woefully behind on every goal, and then demands: “But what about the blacks in the South?” A U.S. car salesman asks a Soviet counterpart how many months the typical Soviet citizen must...

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (it’s an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you aren’t reassured by the promises from...

I have been asked to mentor a high school student who thinks she wants to be a lawyer. During our initial conversation, we were discussing various practice areas. Since she had also expressed an interest in engineering, I mentioned Oil & Gas Law. Her response was that she wanted to "protect the environment" and wouldn't be interested in that. I sense an educational opportunity here. Can anyone recommend a short article or book written at high school level that will challenge her attitude? Thanks much!

When the temperature dips below freezing, reliable electricity becomes more than a matter of convenience but a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, the reliability of our electric grid is at-risk due to EPA regulations that are shutting down America’s coal plants.Existing EPA regulations already have led to the scheduled shutdown of nearly 20 percent of the U.S. coal fleet. EPA’s newest carbon regulations being finalized this summer will lead to even more shutdowns. With coal responsible for generating nearly 40 percent of America’s electricity, these shutdowns will further strain our nation’s electricity grid and could leave many Americans in...

While much of the debate over climate change surrounds whether or not it is occurring, one glaciologist and retired professor says the real issue is that the topic is being used as a political pawn to siphon money and votes. Dr. Terry Hughes, in an interview with The College Fix, said researchers want to keep federal funding for climate change alive, and politicians want to earn environmentalist votes, and both predict global pandemonium to that end. Hughes, a professor emeritus of earth sciences and climate change at the University of Maine, said for years his colleagues urged him to be...

Although man-made global warming has been thoroughly exposed as an embarrassing scam, the green movement is strangely expanding, not retreating. A member of Congress privately told me this is because the green movement is completely driven by money, not idealism. The rhetoric about saving the earth is nothing more than propaganda to pad the pockets of the one percent at the top who are profiting from it. Last year, a committee in the U.S. Senate conducted an investigation and discovered that a handful of radical left-wing billionaires, millionaires and their foundations are behind the green movement. Contrary to the misperception...

Pope Francis continues his groundbreaking progressive approach to Catholicism with plans to expand next year on one of his favorite causes: climate change and protecting the environment. The pope is expected to make climate change a large part of his leadership efforts throughout 2015, according to ThinkProgress.org, using the papacy to encourage the 1.2 billion Catholics to protect the environment as “God’s creation.” Pope Francis has even gone as far as to call the destruction of the rainforest a sin, and cautioned Catholics and non-Catholics alike that protecting the environment is a sacred matter, going as far as back as...

Despite environmentalists’ worries, cattle don’t guzzle water or cause hunger—and can help fight climate change People who advocate eating less beef often argue that producing it hurts the environment. Cattle, we are told, have an outsize ecological footprint: They guzzle water, trample plants and soils, and consume precious grains that should be nourishing hungry humans. Lately, critics have blamed bovine burps, flatulence and even breath for climate change. As a longtime vegetarian and environmental lawyer, I once bought into these claims. But now, after more than a decade of living and working in the business—my husband, Bill, founded Niman Ranch...

Representatives from the U.S. and 195 other countries are meeting in Lima, Peru for the 20th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, hoping to lay the foundation for a major treaty to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. But evidence shows this is the wrong approach to address climate change and negotiators would be better off focusing on market competition and innovation, which have proven able to reduce emissions intensity and promote economic growth. The U.S. is seeking an agreement based on voluntary reductions in carbon dioxide emissions by each nation. In an attempt...

After weeks of promising bipartisanship and refusing to make policy announcements that might rile Democratic lawmakers, Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan has picked his first political fight, coming out swinging against environmentalists and their powerful allies in the General Assembly. Mr. Hogan vowed Monday to roll back proposed new regulations that would limit phosphorus runoff from farms, siding with Eastern Shore farmers who rely on phosphorus-rich chicken manure for fertilizer and against environmentalists who blame it for choking the life out of the Chesapeake Bay. The regulation, known as the “phosphorus management tool,” or PMT, has been hotly debated in the...

On the rim of the Grand Canyon, there is an area that is not part of Grand Canyon National Park. This land does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the Navaho people. The Navaho tribe, as such, has the right to develop its tribal land to bring tourism, money, and jobs to its population. But this kind of thing gives out-of-town environmentalists and the government employees who run the park a sad. The New York Times article on a proposed $1 billion development actually features quite a few viewpoints, mostly fairly, but it frames the whole...

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA – An unusual marriage took place on Sunday in Bogotá. Dressed in a white suit and a red tie, Richard Torres, a young environmentalist from Peru, sealed his love for a tree in a symbolic act meant to emphasize the importance of preserving nature. "I declare you life partners and forever in pure love, on behalf of the elements of nature and of God " said Colombian actress Kristina Lilley, who performed the ceremony on Bogota's National Park. The participants, some with musical instruments in hand, threw rice at the newlyweds and demanded in chorus: " Kiss, kiss,...

Liberal environmentalists are spending a rainy Monday morning in Washington protesting outside the Capitol Hill townhouse of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. According to a source on the scene Monday, protesters are standing in the yard of Landrieu’s East Capitol Street home holding signs opposing the pipeline. Protesters also brought along a mock black plastic pipeline. The source said Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police are on the scene, but appear to be letting the protesters stand in Landrieu’s yard anyway.

America is on the verge of energy independence. We now pump as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Investments in new technologies are paying off, buoying our economy with new jobs and lower energy prices. What's not to like? Well plenty, if you are an activist who takes your lead from an organization called 350.org that wants to end the use of oil, gas and coal. The "350" comes from the group's goal of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere from its present level of 400 parts per million to 350. Its unclear what good such a...

The Green movement was the last segment of German Society to admit its complicity with National Socialism and the horrors of the holocaust. While countless historical books have decried the industrial nature of the holocaust, such works fail to explain the motive behind the greatest crime of the 20th century. The Nazi economy and its industry were merely the means by which the holocaust was implemented and paid for. “Nazi Oaks” describes the anti-Semitic historical background of the early German green movement in the 1800’s that was later absorbed by National Socialism under the biological umbrella of ‘scientific’ Social Darwinism....

From Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” page. COPENHAGEN — Danish toy maker Lego said Thursday it won’t renew a deal allowing Shell to hand out Lego sets at its gas stations in some 30 countries, following a viral campaign protesting Arctic drilling. Environmental activists Greenpeace launched in July a video showing an Arctic landscape with a Shell drilling platform made of Lego bricks covered in oil. Lego CEO Joergen Vig Knudstorp said the protest “may have created misunderstandings among our stakeholders,” adding the company didn’t want to be embroiled in the environmental campaign. The world’s largest toy maker “should never...

Climate change captured the nation’s attention over the past week as an estimated 400,000 people marched through the streets of New York City to raise a collective voice of alarm about the effects of a warming planet. Just days before the march, the issue got a spotlight in Flagstaff thanks to a visit from Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian and climate scientist who is becoming one of the rising stars in the climate change conversation. Her message about the harmony between faith and climate change earned her a spot on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in...

Anyone who has followed the debate over climate change in recent years has probably noted the seemingly religious fervor with which the pro-alarmist crowd approaches the subject. Opposition to the environmentalist agenda of deindustrialization is not just viewed as wrong policy, but the rankest heresy. To deny that man-made global warming is going to destroy the Earth is tantamount to spitting upon the holy scriptures of the "green" faith. Opposition is not just misinformed or wrong-headed, but is actually sinful and evil, unholiness that cannot be allowed to continue by the Disciples of Gaia. So it is in this context...

PALM SPRINGS – With giant windmills rotating behind her Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a sweeping land-use plan for energy development in California’s deserts that seemed more like a promise than a strategy. :snip: The plan is a state-federal collaboration five years in the making, she said. It encompasses some 22.5 million acres mostly in Imperial, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. It will create energy zones for large-scale solar, wind and geothermal projects on land considered of little importance to wildlife and other natural resources. These zones will be home to the projects that help the U.S. combat...

On Friday, the California State Assembly outdid itself. You can always count on the leftist leaders of what is supposed to be the “people’s house” never lets a crisis go to waste. With the passage of AB 1739 (Dickinson-D), SB 1168 (Pavley-D), and SB 1319 (Pavley-D), 100 years of history was reversed. The authors painted a grim picture of California’s groundwater future. Most of what they said is true. The only problem they didn’t bother to tell you two key truths: 1.It was these same so-called leaders who give up our seat—the property owner and the farmer’s place at the...