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Apparently Sec. of Transportation Ray LaHood thinks he lives in France, or maybe Amsterdam, or some such tiny, closed-in country. That is the only conclusion I can come to with his idiotic statements recently given to CNSNews. On May 3, LaHood announced a snazzy, wondermous, neato and momentous "sea change" in American transportation, a great idea whose time had come. And that great idea was: Everyone should ride a bike to work. Most Americans live between 10 and 25 miles away from their places of work so Americans spend at least a half hour one way in their cars going...

My wife has discovered that P&G's Cascade started reformulating in March. And as your chief cook and bottle-washer will soon discover, it is not the dishwasher that is leaving a white residue on all the glassware, it is the lack of phosphates in your favorite dishsoap.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” • Kenneth Watt, ecologist “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” • George Wald, Harvard Biologist “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into...

Crying over fallen trees

The latest volcano eruption in Iceland is now being used as an example by the Global Warming fanatics of how thinning ice caps can actually cause volcanoes to erupt. The latest is how thinning ice caps in Iceland are releasing pressure on the ground and creating liquid magma. Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland, goes on to say that melting ice caused by Global Warming can influence magmatic systems as seen from the increasing volcano activity at the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago apparently because as the ice caps melted, the land rose.

Barack Obama made a big fuss over his plan to open more U.S. acreage to exploratory oil and gas drilling. But wildcatters aren't overly excited about the prospects. Though the plan added acreage in Alaska for possible leasing, some choice sites there were yanked. Drillers still have to wait for environmental studies before a lease sale may be held. Even then, they'd need to do seismic surveys and get federal air permits before touching drill bit to earth. Expect environmentalists' lawsuits, too. The President asserted that "drilling alone cannot come close to meeting our long-term energy needs." Really? A study...

Cambridge will turn off all nonessential lights in municipal buildings for one hour Saturday, starting at 8:30 p.m., in support of Earth Hour. Turning out the lights for Earth Hour is intended to serve as a call for action on climate change and to symbolize a positive impact can be made by working together. The city will turn out non-essential lights for one hour, and residents are encouraged to do the same Saturday at 8:30 p.m. This year is the third year of the Earth Hour event which attracted more than 80 million participants in the U.S. last year, and...

You must see this short video! YouTube: "Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama, speaks about Green Job Czar, Van Jones, at the Netroots Convention on August 12, 2009. Then Van Jones speaks about [a COMMUNIST] transforming [of] the whole society." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnDxzvc0OXk&feature=related

On the list of insane public policy moves we have come to expect from the current administration, Cap and Tax, Obamacare and Union Card Check, a fourth has garnered relatively little attention, although the implications for all Americans may be among the most far-reaching. The recurring theme is centralized control. On Monday, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will host a rare Congressional “Field Hearing“. A Congressional delegation will venture out of the beltway and actually devote time to a problem in our country. Better yet, they will be listening to real citizens. Sort of. At issue is what...

here is too much of it, the legislators say, and it encourages people to drive instead of taking the bus, walking or riding a bike. All that motoring is contributing to traffic jams and pollution, according to state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), and on Thursday he won Senate approval of a proposal he hopes will prompt cities and businesses to reduce the availability of free parking. "Free parking has significant social, economic and environmental costs," Lowenthal said. "It increases congestion and greenhouse gas emissions."

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New York City's Department of Environmental Protection called on state officials Wednesday to ban natural gas drilling in the Catskills watershed, saying it would pose too great a risk to the city's upstate drinking water system. The DEP took that position in response to the state Department of Environmental Conservation's draft regulations on gas drilling in New York's portion of the Marcellus Shale region, which includes parts of the Catskills where reservoirs supply drinking water for 9 million people. The state is taking public comments on its 800-plus page draft until Dec. 31. The city DEP...

And lo, the cry went up from the mainstream media: When, O when, will the Copenhagen climate summit, which concluded on Friday, discuss the real solution to global warming – fewer people? When will Jesse Jackson get around to talking about race? Writing in The National Post (Canada’s largest newspaper) on December 8, columnist Diane Francis waxed apocalyptic, “The ‘inconvenient truth’ overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.” Francis insisted, “The world’s other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed...

Carbon dioxide is poison. That’s what the EPA says. The public health is at risk. Carbon dioxide is poison and an “endangerment” edict has been issued and the government is going to run your life. Even more than it does already. In one more Obama lurch toward totalitarianism, the administration announced yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency has determined that carbon dioxide is a threat to clean air and that it, the EPA, claims the authority to impose binding rules across the society and economy to cut American production of CO2. That’s right, the same CO2 you exhale something like...

Pelosi: As Copenhagen Begins, EPA Finding Underscores Need for American Clean Energy and Security Act Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement on the EPA’s announcement today that greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment: “The EPA has thoroughly reviewed the scientific literature on climate change, which spans decades of research across a breadth of disciplines and across the globe. The science is clear: global warming is real, its impacts are being felt around the world, and carbon emissions present a danger to public health and the economy worldwide. “As the United Nations Climate Change Conference...

LONDON (Reuters) – Humanity faces a profound emergency and unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, a joint editorial published in newspapers in 45 countries said on Monday. The 56 newspapers said they were taking the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice to implore world leaders to "make the right choice" at U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. "The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw a calamity coming but did not...

NEW YORK Tomorrow 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the perhaps unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. Many if not most will publish it on the front page, warning of a "profound emergency." The Guardian of London, which helped draft the editorial, published it today, with a note at the end. Here it is. * Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past...

The EPA is about to announce that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, something that has in many ways been inevitable since the boneheaded SCOTUS ruling in Mass. vs EPA (which essentially found that the Clean Air Act was always intended to be Kyoto-on-steroids.) With thanks to my colleague Will Yeatman, here's a brief summary of what this means, and why you should be appalled. Under the Clean Air Act, an “endangerment” finding means that the EPA will have to grant a waiver to those states (such as California) that want to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles. The EPA...

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant. An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any...

WASHINGTON – Officials tell The Associated Press that the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated. The EPA will announced its findings at a news conference Monday. The announcement is timed to boost the Obama administration's arguments at an international climate conference — beginning this week — that the United States is taking actions to combat global warming, even though Congress has yet to act on climate legislation. Under a Supreme Court ruling, the so-called endangerment finding is needed before the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases released...

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant. An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any...