Free Republic

Environmentalists are torn over the high cost of breaking reliance on fossil fuels. Industrial-scale solar development is well underway in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The federal government has furnished more public property to this cause than it has for oil and gas exploration over the last decade — 21 million acres. In the fight against climate change, the Mojave Desert is about to take one for the team. "I have spent my entire career thinking of myself as an advocate on behalf of public lands and acting for their protection," said Johanna Wald, a veteran environmental...

Let’s face it: Big Oil is used to getting its way. But not any more. President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline -- a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us. His decision represents a victory of historic proportions for NRDC and hundreds of thousands of committed activists like you who have waged an uphill, years-long fight against one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time. Please thank the President right away for his game-changing decision. But get ready to...

WASHINGTON — Federal protections for California's delta smelt will remain intact, but Western water controversies will keep on boiling, with a Supreme Court decision Monday not to hear farmers' ambitious challenge to a key environmental law. The court's decision, issued without comment, effectively upholds the conclusion by a Fresno, Calif.-based trial judge and a lower appellate court that the Endangered Species Act can protect even those plants and animals that don't cross state borders.

Manhattan and the Bronx would be uninhabitable if the accident-prone Indian Point nuke plant suffered a Chernobyl-like disaster, an environmental group charged Monday. A massive radiation release similar to the 1986 catastrophe in Ukraine could also contaminate Brooklyn and chunks of Queens and Staten Island, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The more you learn about Indian Point, the more you know it must close," said Robert Kennedy Jr., a senior attorney at NRDC. "It's too old, it's near too many people, and it's just too vulnerable to fire, earthquake and attack." The doomsday scenario comes...

President Obama’s pick to replace Gary F. Locke as commerce secretary faces an uphill Senate confirmation battle. Even before the White House handed in the name of John Bryson for the job, Senate Republicans had vowed to block any nominee over administration foot-dragging on free-trade agreements. The selection of this particular leftist for a business-outreach post is rallying the opposition. “I find Mr Bryson unacceptable as secretary of commerce for the United States, and I will work in opposition to his conformation,” said Sen. John Barrasso, vice chairman of the Republican Conference, to The Washington Times. Mr. Bryson co-founded the...

WASHINGTON -- Lawsuits filed Thursday that challenge the federal government's approval of a Shell Oil Co. offshore exploration plan present a major test of regulators' power to swiftly review deep-water drilling blueprints. In two separate but overlapping filings, conservationists argue the government was bound by federal law to first finish a post-spill environmental study of the Gulf of Mexico before approving Shell's plan last month. The legal complaints were filed in the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — one by the Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council and the other by Earthjustice,...

Post: The nominee for commerce secretary founded an anti-energy group and believes in redistribution of wealth to help poorer nations. At this rate, we'll be one of them. If personnel is policy, there can be no better choice to help implement President Obama's anti-growth energy policy and redistribution of wealth plans than his choice to be the next secretary of commerce, John Bryson. One would think that the former CEO of power company Edison International would have a more practical view of energy development and management. But he's earned Rep. Darrell Issa's description of him as a "green evangelist." Bryson...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will nominate businessman John Bryson to lead the Commerce Department, a White House official said Tuesday. Bryson's appointment brings another private sector player into an administration that has been making a concerted effort to improve its relationship with the business community.

Is Your Favorite Charity Infiltrated? Before you write a check, sign a petition or declare your unwavering support for foundations or "nonprofit" organizations (NPOs), you may wish to investigate their agendas by using this step-by-step guide. Many large foundations and nonprofit organizations have destructive agendas in opposition to public interest or they receive funding from dubious sources and may be unduly influenced.   Lawyer and former tax expert, Michael Shaw now President of FreedomAdvocates.org says, "Foundations, Non Governmental Organizations (NPOs) and non-profits are generally exempt from income taxes. They have been arranged from the beginning to promote globalism and today...

The Hopi Tribe has a message for the Sierra Club and other environmental groups: Keep out! That is the response of the Hopi Tribal Council on Monday to what it says has been continuous concerted attacks from local and national environmental groups "bent on advancing their interests and agenda at the expense of the Hopi Tribe and its sovereign interest." The council wants the Sierra Club and other environmental groups and on-reservation organizations affiliated with these groups to know they are not welcome on the Hopi Reservation, declaring them persona non grata - no longer favored or welcome. By a...

Buried in the details of the deal to close California's $19-billion budget deficit is a roughly $30-million tax break crafted to benefit a company owned by members of one of the state's richest and most politically influential families, according to a legislative analysis obtained by The Times. The provision, which will allow the Humboldt Redwood Co. to deduct $20 million in old losses from future taxes, is also expected to cover penalties and interest for the firm co-owned by three sons of Donald G. Fisher, founder of the Gap and Banana Republic, said company Chairman Sandy Dean. The tax break...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed Natural Resources Defense Council western director Felicia Marcus to the Delta Stewardship Council. The seven-member panel, created as part of the 2009 water policy package, is tasked with crafting and implementing a plan for the future management of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Marcus, a former EPA administrator and Los Angeles Board of Public Works commissioner, replaces another Schwarzenegger pick, Richard Roos-Collins. Roos-Collins, an attorney for the Natural Heritage Institute, resigned earlier this month after his nomination was opposed by environmental groups.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked the state’s air-quality enforcers to postpone a rule to require 33 percent of the power used by utilities to come from renewable sources such as wind and solar energy. Schwarzenegger asked the Air Resources Board to delay until September its adoption of the new regulation, which had been expected this month. The Republican governor said he made the request because of “ongoing discussions with legislative leaders to develop a bill that I can sign.” If those negotiations don’t prove fruitful, the ARB “will be ready and able to adopt the regulations at that time (in...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Monday named five of America's top scientists, environmentalists and conservation experts to his independent commission set up to probe the causes of the Gulf oil spill. The five, mostly drawn from some of the nation's leading academic centers, will join the bipartisan body set up last month in the wake of an explosion that ripped through a BP-leased rig in the Gulf of Mexico. "These individuals bring tremendous expertise and experience to the critical work of this commission," Obama said in a statement released as he toured stricken southern states on a two-day...

Drink the Water by: Heather Latham, April 15, 2009 In a report posted on enjoybottledwater.org, Angela Logomasini, Ph.D. states, “Bottled water regulation is at least as stringent as tap water regulation. Yet a key line of attack against bottled water comes from environmental activists and others who complain that bottled water does not comply with the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] standards for tap water, suggesting that bottled water standards are lower. As a result, they say, bottled water quality may not even be as good a tap water quality. These arguments were outlined in the “study” released by the Natural...

Drumbeat Continues: Administration Enlists Another Soldier for its War on American Energy Production Washington, D.C. - Institute for Energy Research President Thomas J. Pyle issued the following statement in response to Secretary Salazar’s appointment of Ned Farquhar – former employee of the most aggressive of all the anti-energy lawsuit groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council – as the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. “Ned Farquhar’s professional history demonstrates that in the past, he has ascribed to a philosophy right in line with the Administration’s emerging agenda: To artificially increase the price of the energy we use...

Don't plan on seeing the opening of any new public facilities or for that matter new small businesses which have generators or other polluting devices. Local government and others can't get the necessary permits from the South Coast Air Quality Management District due to a November court decision that many are just learning about. If this issue is not resolved, it could mean that the Whittier police station or a Los Angeles County fire station on the border of La Mirada and Habra - both under construction - can't open. Both have small emergency generators and need permits from AQMD....

Sirs, you say: “And perhaps some scientists are coming out against the idea that humankind has warmed the planet and continues to spew increasing pollutants into our atmosphere. If so, they are awful quiet about their challenge. Perhaps they should post their arguments here and let NRDC’s real climate experts take them on.” Well, I am an Expert Peer Reviewer for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); i.e. I am one of the often touted “thousands of UN Climate Scientists”. I and thousands of others speak, publish and sign petitions in attempt to get the media to tell...

WASHINGTON – California's Mary Nichols has an idea for how Washington can respond to global warming: Start with the Environmental Protection Agency. Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, has a big interest in whether that happens. She's believed to be one of two finalists – along with Lisa Jackson of New Jersey – to head the agency for President-elect Barack Obama. An announcement is expected this week in Chicago, when Obama names his environmental team. If Nichols gets the post, she would add to California's growing clout in crafting a national response to global warming. As powerful...

Greens Thwart Gasoline Production By Steven Milloy Four-plus-dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that we need increased domestic oil production to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable fuel. But even if the greens lose the political battle over drilling offshore and in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they nevertheless are way ahead of the game as they implement a back-up plan to make sure that not a drop of that oil ever eases our gasoline crunch. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, successfully pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to block ConocoPhillips’...

In case you haven't noticed, gas prices are soaring, hiking the cost of food and just about everything else. If you believe Hillary Clinton, the blame for all this lies on the shoulders of those greedy oil companies and their bloated profit margins, a notion that like just about every other snake-oil remedy she tries to peddle is simply not the case. We're in the mess in which we find ourselves because of a small handful of people with the money and the power to inflict grievous harm on their fellow humans, whom they just happen to despise. It's about...

LOS ANGELES - President Bush cannot exempt the Navy from environmental laws banning sonar training that opponents argue harms whales, a federal judge ruled Monday. Navy officials did not immediately respond to the ruling by U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper. Mark Matsunaga, spokesman for the Navy's Pacific Fleet, headquartered in Hawaii, said officials needed time to review it before commenting. The president signed a waiver Jan. 15 exempting the Navy and its anti-submarine warfare exercises from a preliminary injunction creating a 12 nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California. The Navy's attorneys argued in court last week that he was within...

MSM DoesnÂ’t Care About GoogleÂ’s Pro-Jihadi Censorship By Matthew Vadum | November 6, 2007 - 16:41 ET As Islamic scholar Robert Spencer can tell you, the mainstream media has barely noticed that Google, the Internet search engine giant, is now deciding for its users which ideas are acceptable and which are not. ItÂ’s never been a secret that Google leans left and wonÂ’t tolerate ideas it doesnÂ’t agree with. The company hired global warming profiteer Al Gore as senior advisor and has a history of purging content based on ideology. More evidence of the companyÂ’s thinly-veiled, warm and fuzzy politically...

Several environmental groups have announced they are suing the federal government over a fleet of mothballed warships floating east of San Francisco Bay. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups are demanding the U.S. Maritime Administration curb pollution they say the vessels are causing in regional waterways. More than 70 ships comprise the Suisun (suh soon) Bay Reserve Fleet, some dating back to World War II. The old ships were once kept afloat in case of war, but many have fallen into disrepair. A congressional order set a 2006 deadline to scrap more than 50 ships, but a regulatory...

SACRAMENTO A state Fish and Game commissioner, who last month indicated he would support a ban on the use of lead ammunition in areas where condors roam, resigned Thursday, saying his resignation was requested by the Schwarzenegger administration. R. Judd Hanna's resignation came the day after 34 Republican legislators sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a letter asking for his dismissal. The events were the latest in a continuing struggle over attempts by lawmakers and regulators to require deer hunters to use copper bullets in condor zones. Lead poisoning caused by ingesting bullet fragments in the carcasses of fallen animals is the...

Gov. Schwarzenegger recently escalated a battle of words with federal officials over how to manage the remaining wilderness areas in Southern California's national forests. In an August letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Schwarzenegger accused the federal government of not doing enough to make sure wilderness in the San Bernardino, Cleveland, Angeles and Los Padres national forests is protected from road construction. The state and environmental groups want more restrictions on forest roads than are outlined in new forest management plans, 10- to 15-year master plans for land use in the forests. Schwarzenegger charged the federal government with not...

Once again, catastrophic fire has left its devastating footprint on our California landscape. It seems that this time every year, we find ourselves in the same precarious situation of watching our hillsides get drier and drier while the summer gets hotter and hotter, until a fire erupts and we scramble to contain it and minimize its effect. Once the fire's been put out and things return to normal (for the most part), we do little to prevent future fires. Then summer hits once again and we're back to square one. It's time we put an end to this cycle. --snip--...

EL MONTE Maria Valdez didn't consider herself an environmentalist when she pressed this city east of Los Angeles to buy land ringed with factories and railroad tracks for a new neighborhood park. The trash lot is now on its way to becoming a green oasis with a butterfly sanctuary and community garden and Valdez is undergoing a transformation of her own. Next month she will be sworn in as president of the El Monte chapter of Mujeres de la Tierra, a two-year-old environmental group that caters to Hispanic immigrants and translates as "Women of the Earth." "When you get involved...

Joel Schwartz (joel@joelschwartz.com) is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. America's entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are passing up a chance to earn billions of dollars by investing in technologies to reduce California's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The only way to overcome business people's stubborn refusal to get rich is for California policymakers to adopt mandatory GHG controls. That's the conclusion of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Climate Action Team, according to an April report to the governor, and of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley Climate Change Center in an August report, "Economic Growth and Greenhouse Gas...

Green CEOs and good business just don’t mix. Witness this past week’s embarrassing examples of Ford Motor Co.’s Bill Ford and BP’s Lord John Browne – with General Electric’s Jeff Immelt warming up in the bull pen. ... Ford always appeared more concerned about being green than being profitable. In May 2000, he declared that SUVs – his company’s most profitable product – harmed the environment. He lectured a Greenpeace audience that something needed to be done about global warming. Ford focused on turning the company’s massive Rouge plant into an “icon of lean, green manufacturing” and issued reports about...

Environmental groups, lured by the prospect of more than $4 billion for public-transit projects, are backing away from opposing the massive transportation bond on the November ballot. The environmentalists also are daunted by the nearly $7 million in campaign funds amassed by the bond's supporters. Over the weekend, the 75-delegate board of the Sierra Club of California decided against opposing the $19.95 billion bond package, which includes the money for public transit and $14 billion for road construction, plus other projects. Bill Allayaud, the group's legislative director, said Northern California members pushed to fight the bond, while many Southern California...

Officials who OK'd Delta homes illegally failed to consider sea level rise, groups say. Environmental groups plan to file a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court today claiming that flood-control officials violated state law by allowing major levee modifications in San Joaquin County without considering the effect of global warming. The groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, assert that the sea level rise associated with climate change could eventually overtop those levees, putting thousands of people at risk. The suit targets a permit approved June 26 by the state Reclamation Board that cleared the way for the River Islands...

Though much has been done to clean up our waters, much work remains. Sewer overflows and runoff from farms and city streets threaten the life-sustaining properties of our waters, endanger human health and wildlife, and result in thousands of beach closings each year. NRDC works to continue reductions in industrial water pollution while pressing for effective pollution controls on agriculture, logging and other sources previously exempt from them. We help develop and promote strong federal laws and regulations to address polluted runoff, raw sewage discharges, and factory farm wastes and we sue polluters when they violate the Clean Water Act.

He's put the hummers in storage. He's told friends he was deeply impressed by Al Gore's new global-warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." And as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hit the campaign trail last week, he had a new look: a bright green bus emblazoned with a mural of Yosemite National Park. At Schwarzenegger's first stop, near Redding, Calif., along the banks of the picturesque Sacramento River, a woman asked him what he'd do about high gas prices. Schwarzenegger promised to go after price-gouging oil companies, then launched passionately into his plan to build a "Hydrogen Highway" and to impose strict limits...

California's Republican governor and top Democratic lawmakers are talking tough, prompt action to battle climate change, yet unlike its pioneering restrictions on air pollutants, the state is taking more measured steps in regulating greenhouse gases. In fact, Sacramento could end up pushing Washington into action but lagging behind the federal government when it comes to curbing greenhouse emissions. Last week, Democrats led by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Woodland Hills,filed legislation calling for mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by major emitters in January 2008 and a gradual capping of those emissions starting in 2012. Gov. Arnold...

As electric utilities look at new power plants for the next 30 years, overwhelmingly they are plowing money into burning pulverized coal — cheap, abundant domestically and full of carbon dioxide. Some of the 132 new coal-fired plants proposed for the United States will not be built, but federal energy analysts are predicting the new plants will boost greenhouse-gas emissions for the electric industry 43 percent by 2030. Ceres, a coalition of environmentally minded investors and environmental groups, reported Wednesday at its meeting in Oakland that those releases account for nearly all growth in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions for the next...

SACRAMENTO--Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez introduced legislation Monday to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, oil refineries and other industrial sources, a step he said would lead the nation in combating global warming while spurring the state's economy. "(The bill) sends a loud and clear message to ... innovators and entrepreneurs here and abroad to develop and bring clean technologies into the California marketplace," the Los Angeles Democrat said. Nunez announced the legislation on the same day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration released a report calling for development of economic incentives that could include emission caps to cut greenhouse gases, chiefly...

As state and national pressures build to reduce diesel pollution at sea ports, the Port of San Diego has started exploring ways to slash emissions from cruise liners and other ships that call on the city. No one tracks how much air pollution the Port of San Diego creates, but it's widely agreed that having massive diesel engines from cruise liners and other ships idling for hours at the pier isn't good for air quality. The effort centers on providing dockside power so vessels can plug in and turn off their diesel engines, a process called cold ironing. A growing...

The same environmental groups that lobby and sue the government over protecting air, water and human health also are collecting federal grant money for research and technical work, documents show. More than 2,200 nonprofit groups have received grants from the Environmental Protection Agency over the past decade, including some of the Bush administration's toughest critics on environmental policy. "It may be confusing to the public that with the right hand we're accepting government money and with the left hand sometimes we're beating up the government," said Charles Miller, communications director for Environmental Defense. The group has received more than $1.8...

Three environmental groups sued the federal government Thursday, seeking to protect polar bears from extinction because of disappearing Arctic sea ice. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, demands that the government take action on a petition environmentalists filed earlier to have polar bears listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. Once a species is listed as threatened, the government is barred from doing anything to jeopardize the animal's existence or its habitat. In the case of the polar bear, the environmentalists hope to force the government to curb U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon...

As we've noted in this space before, the government's own Energy Information Administration has predicted that energy costs will continue to soar in the months ahead. The cost for people to stay warm this winter in the Northeast and the Midwest are expected to be nothing short of astronomical, a burden that falls disproportionately on the poor and middle class. Because we can see this storm cloud coming (in fact, it's already here), we just wanted to remind everyone that this country's energy policy has been held hostage for years by a small band of extreme environmentalists: -- They have...

In a burst of green penmanship, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed 29 environmental bills into law Thursday on a wide range of issues. One will require all new cars for sale in California starting in 2009 to display stickers explaining how many tons of global warming-causing gases they emit. Another, from a Palo Alto lawmaker, bans sewage dumping and garbage burning from commercial ships within three miles of the coast. Others will require a study of the aging levee system in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, prohibit the use of experimental pesticides around schools, phase out mercury in industrial switches and...

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge blocked plans to extend leases for oil and gas drilling off the Central California coast Friday, ruling that the Bush administration didn't adequately consider possible damage to the ocean and marine life. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the U.S. Interior Department failed to analyze the environmental impact of future oil exploration and production that would be possible under the 37 offshore leases, according to Drew Caputo, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of several groups that sued to block the leases. The ruling from the bench in Oakland's federal...

MISSOULA, Mont. — As the Bush administration prepares to remove Yellowstone's grizzly bears from the endangered-species list, a schism has emerged in the environmental movement over whether the bears remain at risk. The nation's largest environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, supports delisting the bears, whose numbers have bounced back impressively after three decades of federal protection. But other powerful organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, are threatening to sue the Bush administration if, as expected, it removes Yellowstone grizzlies from the list. "The recovery has been a huge success, but removing federal protection...

In a setback for one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's centerpiece environmental efforts, state lawmakers on Thursday approved barely half the money the state Environmental Protection Agency had said was needed to start building a "hydrogen highway" across California. Lawmakers hammering out the state budget in Sacramento approved $6.5 million for the system of nonpolluting hydrogen cars and fueling stations beginning Jan. 1. Some Democrats questioned the expense. They raised concerns about whether the money would be better spent on schools, and whether taxpayers or private companies will own the hydrogen fueling stations the money will help construct. Republicans also questioned...

TORRANCE -- No-pollution cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells are at least a decade away for most people -- but not one California family. In a long-term road test, John Spallino, his wife and two daughters will begin leasing a silver-and-blue, four-seat Honda FCX on Wednesday to get them to work, school and anywhere else they want to roam. The Spallinos will provide reports about the car's performance to Honda as part of the auto industry's first private test of the promising technology that produces only one byproduct -- water clean enough to drink. "Maybe this is the technology of...

WASHINGTON - Efforts since the Clinton administration to clean up the nation's biggest industrial source of air pollution reached what may be a legal dead end Wednesday. A federal appeals court ruled that power plants can throw more pollutants into the air annually when they modernize to operate for longer hours. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Duke Energy Corp. didn't need the Environmental Protection Agency's permission when it made improvements between 1988 and 2000 at eight power plants in North Carolina and South Carolina. While the modifications would allow the plants to operate more hours and,...

Gov. Schwarzenegger's new global warming initiative keeps California at the forefront of national and international efforts to fight the world's most pressing environmental problem according to NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). As part of this week's World Environment Day celebration in San Francisco, today the governor announced specific targets and timetables for reducing California's emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants. If California were a nation, it would rank among the top 10 sources of this pollution worldwide. The following statement is by Ralph Cavanagh, NRDC energy program director: "By aggressively combating global warming pollution, Governor Schwarzenegger is...

Tejon Ranch and its conservation partner, The Trust for Public Land, have figured out which 100,000 acres of the ranch's 270,000 acres will be carved out into a preserve. If the deal goes through, some of Tejon's majestic peaks and canyons in the Tehachapi Mountains could forever be saved from development. A step is being taken in that direction today, though an actual deal is much further away. The majority of the land is in the southeastern portion of the Tehachapis. There's also a swath next to Interstate 5 intended to connect the future preserve with the Wind Wolves Preserve...

Finally, more than four years after its hideous birth, the Clinton "Roadless Rule" is dead. The Bush administration and the Forest Service just announced a final rule that effectively undoes Clinton's reckless decree. Dying with the "Roadless Rule" are the following: - threats of catastrophic wildfire - threats of forest infestation and disease - lack of public access to public lands - improper resource management - unhealthy forests - top-down federal overreach Recall that Bill Clinton, just eight days before he left office, in the dark of night, penned his infamous, unilateral, executive order that locked up over 58 million...