Free Republic

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Saturday called for Republicans to abandon the corrupting influence of the Koch brothers and other wealthy energy magnates. "This is a party that rejects science and refuses to understand that climate change is real," he said of GOP during the annual Blue Jamboree in North Charleston, S.C. "I understand if you stand up to the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry, that you'll lose your campaign contributions," the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate added. "[Climate change] is already causing devastating problems all over this world. To hell with the fossil fuel industry. Worry more about...

After Barack Obama’s totally predictable cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline project (for now, at least) there was great celebration among the environmental brigade of the Social Justice Warriors. The evil pipeline was dead, along with all the jobs it would bring and the opportunity for us to capture and process much of Canada’s wealth of energy rather than it being shipped to China. (Which it will be anyway when the Northern Gateway Pipeline is complete, whether we get some of it or not.) But as with all things in the liberal enclaves of the country, one victory is...

Actor an environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio has pledged to divest from his fossil fuel holdings and increase his investment in renewable energy companies, an environmental group announced Tuesday. DiCaprio attended a meeting of the Divest-Invest Coalition in New York City Tuesday, where he pledged to end his personal and his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s investments in the fossil fuel sector. “Climate change is severely impacting the health of our planet and all of its inhabitants, and we must transition to a clean energy economy that does not rely on fossil fuels, the main driver of this global problem.” the Departed actor...

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” This was Pope Francis’s summary of his Encyclical earlier this year on the alleged destruction of our planet. The leading culprit, in his view, is humanity’s use of fossil FOSL -1.57% fuels, which he believes are immoral and should largely be illegal. This week, the Pope will be meeting with the President, addressing a joint session of Congress, and speaking to a crowd of over a million in Philadelphia, sharing his views in the name of concern for humanity, particularly the poor. “Like...

We have a “moral imperative” to burn carbon dioxide-emitting fossil fuels because the energy they provide is a “liberator” of humanity, says Dr. John Christy, a climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. “We are not morally bad people for taking carbon and turning it into the energy that offers life to humanity in a world that would otherwise be brutal,” Christy wrote in a recent op-ed. “On the contrary, we are good people for doing so.” He also challenged what he says are contradictions in Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si, in...

The United Church of Canada plans to invest nearly $6 million into alternative energy sources that it acquired from selling all of its assets in fossil fuels. The denomination views the move as a bold step toward stewarding the gift of creation. "Care for creation and concern for the way that climate is impacting the most marginalized populations made this move an act of justice, of faith, and of solidarity with First Nations and other impacted communities," said Christine Boyle, General Council commissioner of the United Church and a veteran climate advocate, according to the National Advocate. The church will...

Bonn (AFP) - Calls by the Group of Seven (G7) Monday to slash world carbon emissions did little to boost UN climate talks in Bonn, where frustration mounted over the snail-like progress. Groups of countries pleaded for greater efforts to streamline a draft text for a climate pact due to be adopted at a conference in Paris in just over six months. "We are very concerned about the pace of negotiations," said Amjad Abdulla of the Maldives, speaking for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which are deeply exposed to climate change. "We have not made the big jump...

DivestUMW sit-in spans a week [University of Mary Washington in Virginia, fossil fuel divestment] STUDENTS CONTINUING SIT-IN TO PUSH board TO DIVEST OF FOSSIL FUELS “WE’RE STILL GOING STRONG. WE’RE SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND THE SUPPORT FROM FACULTY AND ALUMNI KEEPS US GOING.” NATE LEVINE, UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON JUNIOR Posted: Saturday, April 4, 2015 12:00 am BY LINDLEY ESTES/THE FREE LANCE-STAR University of Mary Washington junior Nate Levine was planning to spend Easter at home with his family. As a member of DivestUMW, he will instead celebrate at a sit-in protest in the first floor hallway of George Washington...

JACKSON, N.J. (AP) - A theme park plans to cut down more than 18,000 trees for the construction of what it says will be the largest solar farm in New Jersey. Park President John Fitzgerald said in a statement that solar power will significantly reduce the park's reliance on fossil fuels.

The second day of the three-day Loyola University Chicago Climate Change Conference began with a panel discussion on divestment from fossil fuels. The Friday morning panel, titled “The Risks, Nuts, and Bolts of Divestment,” was chaired by Bruce Boyd, principal and senior managing director of Arabella Advisors, a company that works with foundations to improve planetary health and is now measuring global commitment to divestment from fossil fuels and reinvestment in alternative, clean energy sources.  In his opening remarks, Boyd noted that divestments are currently at $50 billion and are expected to reach $150 billion by the start of the...

In the anti-fracking film Gasland, producer Josh Fox proclaims that the process of extracting previously inaccessible oil and gas from shale pollutes water supplies, increases the incidence of cancer and leads to higher levels of seismic activity, despite ample contrary evidence. This self-proclaimed environmental watchdog and anti-fracking crusader has led extensive efforts to end or prevent fracking throughout the United States by obfuscating the truth and stopping communities from reaping the benefits of America's shale boom. Josh Fox and others like him are uninterested in looking for improvements in fracking technology and safety. Instead they seek to shut down shale...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The federal government predicts that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S. The projection comes from a previously unreported analysis by the Department of Transportation that reviewed the risks of moving vast quantities of both fuels across the nation and through major cities. The study completed last July took on new relevance this week after a train loaded...

College students who support divestment of fossil fuel stocks are passionate about their cause. Just look at their word choices. Though they could never function even one week without hydrocarbon energy, they call fossil-fuel companies “rogue entities,” assert that oil, coal and natural gas interests have the “political process in shackles,” and believe most of the world’s known fossil fuel resources must “stay in the ground” to avoid “catastrophic global warming.”Their over-heated hysteria over climate change is fanned by groups like 350.org and college professors who rehash doom-and-gloom forecasts about rising seas, dying species and other cataclysms that they insist...

There’s a big holiday coming up and we wanted to make sure you were reminded far enough in advance to get a card. No… I’m not talking about Valentines Day. It’s Global Divestment Day! (Incidentally, Global Divestment Day, takes place on February 13th & 14th. Sounds like it should be Global Divestment Days to me, but what can you do?) This is apparently the day(s) when environmental activists push all of the colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuel companies because the money is evil or something. To spearhead these activities, the interested parties have tapped the talent and...

Editor's note: Roger Bezdek coauthored this piece. “Social responsibility” activists want universities and pension funds to eliminate fossil fuel companies from their investment portfolios. They plan to spotlight their demands on “Global Divestment Day,” February 13-14. Their agenda is misguided, immoral, lethal … and racist. A mere 200 years ago, the vast majority of humans were poor, sick and malnourished. Life expectancy in 1810 was less than 40 years, and even royal families lived under sanitation, disease and housing standards inferior to what American welfare families enjoy today. Then a veritable revolution occurred. The world began to enjoy a bonanza in wealth, technology, living...

Environmentalism: Re-upping on delusional climate-change fantasies, "Governor Moonbeam" asked in his inauguration speech Monday for the Golden State to meet half its energy needs with renewable energy by 2030. Gov. Jerry Brown, who leads the state that hosted Solyndra, embraces bird-chopping wind turbines and builds crispy critter-producing solar panel farms, is a leading advocate of renewable energy and environmental protection. As pollution from coal-fired plants and industries in China wafted across the Pacific, he took a deep breath at his fourth inauguration as the state's chief executive and doubled down on green energy's failed promise by tasking California to fight...

The new crusade “responds to climate change by urging universities, churches, pension funds and other big institutional investors” to destroy petroleum and coal companies by dumping their shares and reinvesting in a “fossil-free clean-energy economy,” modeled loosely on the anti-apartheid activism of the 1980s.

Ditching fossil fuels as proposed in Lima, Peru by the environmental architects of gloom and doom alarmism and replacing them with renewables The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met in Lima, Peru, December 1-12, 2014, determined to chisel a new treaty that would mandate a cap and trade on greenhouse gas emissions effective by 2020 and would “eliminate the use of fossil fuels entirely by 2050.” The hypothesis that rich nations caused climate change by burning fossil fuels to produce energy has never been proven by IPCC’s computer modeling. The fact that now the hypothesis changed its name...

Energy Transport: New data show fast-rising rail shipments from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation and the need for a safer alternative to rail — like the Keystone XL pipeline. In his post-election press conference, the president noted in justifying his continual kicking of the Keystone XL oil drum down the road that "while this debate about Canadian oil has been raging ... we've seen some of the biggest increases in American oil production and natural gas production in our history." That increase is due in large part to oil recovered from the Bakken shale formation centered on North Dakota. So...

“A few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up, to put it bluntly.” — Bill McKibben, leading environmental activist, 1989 I came across this quote, along with many others of comparable value, while reading Alex Epstein’s just-published book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. But Epstein’s book is much more than a fantastic collection of such delightfully mad environmentalist pronouncements — although that part alone is worth the purchase price. Rather, what Epstein presents is a powerful, systematic, and relentlessly logical philosophical case for the moral value of the fossil-fuel industry, and the fundamentally immoral basis...