Free Republic

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J., - Just like San Juan Capistrano, Calif., has its swallows and Hinckley Township, Ohio, has its buzzards, East Brunswick, N.J., has its salamanders. Each spring, the salamanders make a pilgrimage out of the woods in search of mates and for the past 11 years the good folks of East Brunswick and neighboring South Brunswick have been doing their part to help make the magic happen by closing Beekman Road to help ensure the 3-inch amphibians' safety on their way to required wetlands. The annual migration by hundreds of salamanders began last Tuesday, The (Newark) Star-Ledger reported Sunday....

More than half the Senate on Wednesday urged quick approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ramping up pressure on President Barack Obama to move ahead with the project just days after he promised in his inaugural address to respond vigorously to the threat of climate change. A letter signed by 53 senators said Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman’s approval of a revised route through his state puts the long-delayed project squarely in the president's hands. “We urge you to choose jobs, economic development and American energy security,” the letter said, adding that the pipeline “has gone through the most exhaustive...

Crusade against carbon dioxide threatens the environmentTechnologies advanced as the solution to the purported global warming problem are catching fire — just not in the way intended. Bureaucrats are quickly learning that their regulatory offerings designed to entreat Mother Nature into bestowing cooler temperatures upon the planet have created environmental hazards of their own. It’s well-known that the fluorescent light bulbs being foisted on a reluctant public spread deadly mercury when dropped. In March, the administration will be free to enforce a federally imposed ban on the manufacturing of warm, pleasing and affordable 100-watt light bulbs. This will force more...

It’s a decision President Barack Obama put off during the 2012 campaign, but now that he’s won a second term, his next move on a proposed oil pipeline between the U.S. and Canada may signal how he will deal with climate and energy issues in the four years ahead. Obama is facing increasing pressure to determine the fate of the $7 billion Keystone XL project, with environmental activists and oil producers each holding out hope that the president, freed from the political constraints of re-election, will side with them on this and countless other related issues down the road. On...

Given the way in which he achieved his fame, it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that Felix Baumgartner would be a champion of space exploration. But the Austrian daredevil, who traveled to the edge of space before jumping back to Earth, has branded NASA’s aim to discover whether there is life on Mars a waste of money. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr. Baumgartner, who became the first man to break the sound barrier after leaping from 128,100 feet above the Earth almost two weeks ago, urged the US Government to divert the money it spends on...

Does Obama have radical “green” roots? Bret Baier travels across America, revealing rogue regulators, tracing the truth about the president’s environmental agenda and exposing programs that could devastate our economy! Check out a sneak peek of the special below, and tune in on Sunday at 9p ET to watch the full ‘Fox News Reporting: Behind Obama’s Green Agenda’ on Fox News.

An Alaskan mine that may contain more than $500 billion in gold, copper and other minerals will never get dug if environmentalists get their way. The proposed Pebble Mine, near the headwaters of Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska, could yield a staggering 107 million ounces of gold, 80 billion pounds of copper and 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum, which is used to make steel alloys. Pebble Partnership, which wants to do the digging, is so confident of the bounty beneath the ground it has spent five years and $107 million monitoring the soil, water and air in order to assure...

The city of Santa Cruz, usually at the forefront of environmental causes, became the latest, but probably not the last, local government to ban single-use plastic bags, with the 6-0 vote by the City Council Tuesday night. Santa Cruz banned foam products as well. Santa Cruz's new law on foam products, for instance, will outlaw foam coolers, toys, shipping containers and packing peanuts. The city of Capitola also bans foam ice chests and coolers, and the county bans foam food containers. The 48 and counting plastic bag and foam bans of some type in California offer a patchwork of regulations,...

A U.S. district judge ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Friday to re-assess its plan to allow drilling on some 50,000 acres on the Roan Plateau, which the energy industry says contains one of the largest natural gas fields in the continental United States. Judge Marcia Krieger said BLM had failed to thoroughly assess all the environmental impact to the ecologically sensitive plateau in western Colorado before approving energy development on the mountain. "Like many areas of Colorado, the area has been blessed with an abundance of two major resources, the uses of which are often in...

A European Union court has annulled a Commission decision rejecting two environmental groups’ request for an internal review of a pesticide regulation. The General Court’s decision on 14 June called into question the narrow wording of the regulation that obliges the EU’s institutions to protect the rights of civil society to participate in environmental decision-making. The plaintiffs in the case—Stichting Natuur en Milieu, a Dutch environmental foundation, and Pesticide Action Network Europe, a group that campaigns against the use of chemical pesticides—welcomed the outcome. François Veillerette, who heads the Pesticide Action Network, urged the commission to accept the decision and...

The federal agency that sells and transmits most electrical power in the Northwest has proposed a plan to cover half of wind producers' lost revenue when they're forced to shut down wind farms during periods of excess hydropower production. The plan would affect Cowlitz PUD, which owns interests in two Central Washington wind farms, but would not lower or raise rates significantly, PUD officials said. "This is not going to do anything that would appear to be a rate-driver," PUD spokesman Dave Andrew said Wednesday. Over the objections of wind energy producers, the federal Bonneville Power Administration last spring ordered...

Global investment in clean energy reached a new high of $260 billion (€203 billion) last year, despite the financial crisis and the anti-environment agenda of Republicans in the US Congress, a United Nations investors' summit was told on Thursday (12 January). Data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which tracks clean energy investment, showed a 5% increase compared with 2010, driven largely by a surge of money going to the solar industry. Investment in solar power rose 36% last year to $136.6 billion. And while the US domestic political scene was riven by the furore over a $535-million government loan to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most detailed data yet on emissions of heat-trapping gases show that U.S. power plants are responsible for the bulk of the pollution blamed for global warming. Power plants released 72 percent of the greenhouse gases reported to the Environmental Protection Agency for 2010, according to information released Wednesday that was the first catalog of global warming pollution by facility. The data include more than 6,700 of the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gases, or about 80 percent of total U.S. emissions. According to an Associated Press analysis of the data, 20 mostly coal-fired power plants in...

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law. But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist. In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required...

Conservative members of the Supreme Court seemed outraged Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s actions in a four-year battle with an Idaho couple who want to build a house on land the EPA says contains sensitive wetlands.

Stacy Lynne educates We Are Change Colorado about the International Council on LOCAL Environmental Initiatives. An arm of the United Nations Agenda 21 and how they are using "GREENWASHING" to take over America

With the Seattle City Council expected to vote on a plastic bag ban Monday, is it time to bid farewell to something Seattleites use 292 million of a year? The bill would banish single-use, carryout bags in not just grocery stores, but department stores, clothing stores, liquor stores, drug stores and home improvement stores. Customers would be able to buy paper bags from retailers for 5 cents each. Customers on food assistance would be exempted from that charge. With seven of nine council members sponsoring the bill – and support from environmental and grocery-store groups – the future doesn’t look...

An endangered listing for the DSL would ruin the oil drilling industry in the Permian Basin, that area of west Texas and eastern New Mexico that produces about 20% of all the oil from the lower 48 states and 5% of total oil produced in the US. The oil produced there also constitutes 68% of all oil produced in the state of Texas.

Last year, a medical-technology firm called Numira Biosciences, founded in 2005 in Irvine, California, packed its bags and moved to Salt Lake City. The relocation, CEO Michael Beeuwsaert told the Orange County Register, was partly about the Utah destination’s pleasant quality of life and talented workforce. But there was a big “push factor,” too: California’s steepening taxes and ever-thickening snarl of government regulations. “The tipping point was when someone from the Orange County tax [assessor] wanted to see our facility to tax every piece of equipment I had,” Beeuwsaert said. “In Salt Lake City at my first networking event...

Increase in critical habitat for a rare spotted frog ...