Free Republic

A federal court on Thursday nixed a Trump-era rule that limited state and tribal authority to block projects that could impact their waters, including pipelines. California Federal Judge William Alsup vacated the rule and sent it back to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for further proceedings. The Clinton appointee's move came after the agency asked the court to remand the issue back to the EPA amid litigation filed by states and environmental groups... ...The now-vacated rule had limited states’ authorities to block projects by giving them a strict one-year time limit to do so before the federal government could decide...

A $48-million contract awarded March 23 to AECOM to study impacts of widening 34 miles of the most rural southern part of the 117.2-mile New Jersey Turnpike has upset state environmental activists who say the project conflicts with the state's push to combat climate change; officials say construction remains at least five years off. The contract is the latest step in the overall $1.1-billion turnpike expansion plan outlined last year that focuses on addin a third lane in each direction to the section stretch between exits 1 and 4 through Camden County. But it also renewed criticism from advocates who...

“Louisiana officials say the state’s oil and gas industry is in danger. This comes after President Joe Biden cancelled a March oil lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 80 million acres of available leases would have been sold this week. The damage to Louisiana’s (and the nation’s) oil and gas companies started in January when President Biden signed an executive order banning all new oil and gas leases on public land and waters for 60 days," reports KLFY. Now for the cheering: “Cancelling this huge offshore Gulf oil auction helps protect our climate and life on Earth. President...

Electric vehicles are coming from Volkswagen.  Hate to disappoint, but if you love the environment, this is a step backward. Recently, an amendment to a green energy bill in the House was defeated.  It would have required the secretary of commerce to certify that federally funded buses and charging stations do not contain minerals mined or processed by children.  The Democrat majority said such an amendment was not necessary since the U.S. already has trade agreements prohibiting child labor.  Ah, but not with the Congo or Zimbabwe.  Clever. Why is this important?  The U.S. has produced zero cobalt in the past 40 years.  Without cobalt, there...

Venezuela is in the midst of a massive oil spill covering a pristine national park, in what's the world's second-biggest oil spill of 2020 and nobody's saying a thing. The pristine Morrocoy national park in western Venezuela will likely take 50 years to recover. Here's what the news was last August 12, from a Canadian news agency, and there's been little said since: An oil spill in Venezuela has coated a stretch of the crisis-wracked nation’s Caribbean coastline, treasured for its white sand beaches, clusters of small islands and wildlife. Fisherman and locals living around Morrocoy National Park began reporting oil washing ashore last...

After months of national unrest, it seems incredibly cliché to write the words, "These are extraordinary times.” Nevertheless, out-of-touch statements, actions, and proposals spewing from the mouths of Democratic politicians and their millionaire financiers have made the repetition of these words necessary. While Democrats’ adamancy about keeping Americans out of work through overzealous lockdown orders has received considerable media attention, it doesn’t even represent the worst or most harmful of their current proposals that will economically harm consumers. On the campaign trail, they continue to push policies that lack sensitivity to the ongoing economic pain faced throughout the country and...

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

Funny how the environmental objectives of the "Save the Planet from the Flying Global Warming Monster" squad and that of Marxism line up so neatly. Of course you shouldn't have personal autonomy or private property. It's bad for the 'planet'. And by the planet, we mean the red planet. So it's no surprise that The Nation, where the synergy of the red and the green meet, should roll out a story like this, "If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership." ... And give up...

Environmental groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's plan to open up hundreds of thousands of acres of land in California to oil and gas drilling. The Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over the plan to open more than 700,000 acres of land to oil and gas lease sales. "Defendants failed to consider meaningful alternatives to the plan amendment, failed to analyze and disclose the environmental impacts, and denied the public the opportunity to comment on its environmental analyses as the law requires," the lawsuit reads. It...

My address to the Colorado Independent Cattlemen’s Association I’m not a cattleman and I’m not going to pretend I know everything you are facing. But I do know that the major weapon being used against your industry is the misnamed control devise called Sustainable Development. I know why and I know who the players are. I hope I can leave you today with some ideas on how to fight them. To begin, let’s set the terms and make one thing very clear. The use of the word sustainable may sound like a comfortable term, not threatening. After all, you, your...

Californians are learning to live like the Amish after investor-owned utility PG&E this week shut off power to two million or so residents to prevent wildfires amid heavy, dry winds. Blame the state’s largest blackout on a perfect storm of bad policies. For years the utility skimped on safety upgrades and repairs while pumping billions into green energy and electric-car subsidies to please its overlords in Sacramento. Credit Suisse has estimated that long-term contracts with renewable developers cost the utility $2.2 billion annually more than current market power rates. PG&E customers pay among the highest rates in America. But the...

Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom. Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days. Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning. Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California. While they try to blame climate...

Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble faces pressure from environmentalists to clean up its act. More than 150 groups are pushing the maker of Charmin toiler paper and Bounty paper towels to use recycled materials in its products. Currently, neither of those products uses recycled paper, and about one-third of it is sourced from Canada's boreal forest — a large swath of virgin forest that rings the Arctic Circle and acts as a critical check on climate change. "It's just unacceptable that a company like P&G is making toilet paper, a product that is used for seconds and flushed, from...

Climate change activists' plan to spray fake blood on the Treasury did not get off to the best start. Extinction Rebellion protesters used a hose from an old fire engine to spray 1,800 litres liquid at the 100 year-old building, but they quickly lost control of the powerful water jet. Protesters say they are "highlighting the inconsistency between the UK government’s insistence that the UK is a world leader in tackling climate breakdown, and the vast sums it pours into fossil fuel exploration". The Met Police said five men and three women had been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.

SANTA FE, N.M. — The U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that it was suspending fuelwood permits in all five national forests in New Mexico, as well as one in Arizona as the result of a court-ordered injunction having to do with protections for the Mexican spotted owl. The owl is listed as a threatened species by both the U.S. and Mexican governments. In addition, timber management activities have been suspended, according to a news release. Southwestern Regional Forester Cal Joyner said that the agency is working to resolve the issue. “Our staff is exhaustively exploring every possible option to come...

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives.All of which raises the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste?Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste. We found: Solar...

WHY DOES A FIVE GALLON GAS CAN COST $20? WHY DOES IT TAKE THREE ARMS TO USE AND YET I STILL SPILL GAS ALL OVER THE PLACE? WHAT THE F*** IS THIS RIDICULOUS ENGINEERING OBAMANATION OF A CONTRAPTION AND WHY CAN'T I HAVE A NORMAL GAS CAN WITH A NORMAL SPOUT?!?!?!?! Prepping for a bad storm, I picked up another four five gallon gas cans to top off for my generator and low and behold, WTF are these nightmares? I spilled gas all over myself, all over the generator and all because some environmentalist dickhead managed to convince someone that...

Mankind’s subservience to the commands of nature provides the connecting thread between Nazism and modern day environmentalism and represents a radical rejection of the Enlightenment’s belief in progress. It is what separates the New Left and the modern Left’s softer variants from their predecessors and leaves supporters of capitalism and markets as the last redoubt of belief in the potential of mankind’s unfettered material progress.

"Do Americans Need Air-Conditioning?" a New York Times piece asked in July. Air conditioning, it argued, is bad for the environment and makes us less human. It ran quotes suggesting that, "first world discomfort is a learned behavior", and urging "a certain degree of self-imposed suffering". If environmentalists ruled the world, air conditioning wouldn’t exist. And there’s a place like that. 90% of American households have air conditioning. As do 86% of South Koreans, 82% of Australians, 60% of Chinese, 16% of Brazilians and Mexicans, 9% of Indonesians and less than 5% of Europeans. A higher percentage of Indian households...

A group of environmental activists on Monday began month-long demonstrations against the U.S. government's "brutal" policy against immigrants and asylum seekers.