Free Republic

Is $26 million worth the reputation of a venerable, 1.4 million member environmental group ? The Sierra Club may be about to find out. the 120-year-old organization’s hushed financial marriage to the natural gas industry — and its just-as-secretive divorce — have left some long-time supporters feeling angry, betrayed or misled. The news cut especially deep for activists who have spent years fighting the spread of shale gas drilling in states like New York and Pennsylvania. The Sierra Club quietly accepted $26 million in donations from gas industry interests from 2007 to 2010 — years when the group’s national leaders...

STOCKTON - The city has a tentative plan to combat climate change, more than three years after reaching a legal settlement with the Sierra Club and then-Attorney General Jerry Brown. It wouldn't be cheap. If adopted by the Stockton City Council later this year, the plan could cost the city $28.5 million and could cost the private sector $240 million, the document says. The plan itself acknowledges it would require "substantial effort on the part of the entire Stockton community" at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills and keep businesses open.

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...

PRIEST LAKE, Idaho — Chantell and Mike Sackett’s dream house, if it is ever built, will have to be situated just so in order to minimize the view of neighboring homes and maximize the vista of pristine water and conifer-covered mountain. But their roughly half-acre lot in the Idaho Panhandle has proved to be the perfect staging ground for a conservative uproar over the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency. This month, the Supreme Court will review the Sacketts’s four-year-long effort to build on land that the EPA says contains environmentally sensitive wetlands. A decision in the couple’s favor could...

With all the political posturing in Congress over the Keystone XL tar-sands oil pipeline, it’s easy to lose sight of the real issue: This pipeline is dangerous, unnecessary, and would cost the American people far more than we can afford. What we’re watching unfold in Washington, DC, is more than just a high-stakes political power play — it’s a scam undertaken by Big Oil’s congressional puppets on the orders of oil companies that have billions of dollars at stake. The politicians pushing the pipeline are (how can I put this politely?) lying to the American people and pandering for dirty...

Senate Democrats accepted a provision Friday forcing a decision in two months on the Keystone XL oil pipeline as part of the must-pass payroll tax cut package, leaving the White House on the brink of a meltdown with environmental groups. "It's bulls—-," said Sierra Club President Michael Brune. "This is no way to run a government. We've got Republicans in Congress who are willing to hold the entire government hostage simply to give a Christmas present to industry." GOP and Democratic sources told POLITICO that the White House swallowed the House Republican-written pipeline rider in order to get a deal...

Every year, coal-fired power plants produce more than 386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants -- including mercury, arsenic, lead and acid gases. Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, is a particular threat to pregnant women and young children. The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to issue strong, sensible protections from power plant pollution on December 16th of this year. Unfortunately, industry special interests are trying to block this critical safeguard. Tell President Obama to strongly support the EPA's efforts to clean up mercury pollution and protect the health of mothers, children and families. This is an email that I received from...

In response to a petition filed by Earthjustice and several other organizations, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has stated that it will use the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to draft regulations requiring companies to disclose information regarding "chemical substances and mixtures used in hydraulic fracturing." Although the EPA has not indicated what information will be subject to disclosure, the agency stated that it will attempt to avoid duplication of "the well-by-well disclosure programs already being implemented in several states," and that it anticipates that its regulations will "focus on providing aggregate pictures of the chemical substances and mixtures...

Statement of Terry O’Sullivan, General President of LIUNA, On Delay of Keystone XL Pipeline Construction Washington, D.C. (November 10, 2011) – Terry O’Sullivan, General President of LIUNA – the Laborers’ International Union of North America – made the following statement today in response to the U.S. State Department delay of the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline: Environmentalists formed a circle around the White House and within days the Obama Administration chose to inflict a potentially fatal delay to a project that is not just a pipeline, but is a lifeline for thousands of desperate working men and women. The...

Saying they have concerns about emissions from the coal burning power plant at Mt. Tom and potential health effects on Holyoke and Northampton, organizers led by the Sierra Club are trying to get the state to impose tougher standards on the plant's operation. "Big coal does make us sick. We are asking that the Mt. Tom plant stop making money by making us sick,'' the Sierra Club's Drew Grande said at a press conference Thursday near the Holyoke YMCA building.

I remember taking a forestry class my freshman year of college. The curriculum, presented by a veteran instructor from the California Department of Forestry, covered several related topics that included ecology, biology, life cycles, wild-land fire control, conservation, and commerce based on those natural resources. I never heard the associate professor use the word "environment" or "environmentalist" during the course. Granted, it was years ago, and course outlines do change over time as new information on any given subject becomes available. But, the disconnect suggests the environmentalist movement is a recent concoction that has little basis in traditional resource management...

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,...

A leading environmental group has called on Gov. Jerry Brown to take another look at the cap-and-trade rule adopted by the Air Resources Board late last year, saying the regulation doesn't go far enough to meet the standards set by the state's 2006 greenhouse gas emission reduction law. In a letter sent Monday, Sierra Club Director Bill Magavern writes that the rule change approved at the end of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's term "has some serious flaws that will limit its effectiveness in reducing emissions and generating green jobs, and call into question its compliance with the environmental justice requirements...

According to a recently released German study, the supposed "environmentally friendly" compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's), are reported to have "cancer causing chemicals" that are sent out when the light is switched on, reports London's Daily Telegraph: Their report advises that the bulbs should not be left on for extended periods, particularly near someone’s head, as they emit poisonous materials when switched on. Peter Braun, who carried out the tests at the Berlin's Alab Laboratory, said: “For such carcinogenic substances it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”

New Public Utilities Commission Chair Appointed: Governor Dayton has named Senator Ellen Anderson as the new Chair of the Public Utilities Commission. The five-member Public Utilities Commission regulates rates for electric and natural gas utilities and permits new power plants, electric transmission lines, and pipelines. Sen. Anderson (DFL-St. Paul/Falcon Heights) is currently the ranking minority member on the Senate’s Energy and Utilities Committee and was formerly the Chair of the Senate Energy, Environment and Natural Resources finance committee. Her nomination is subject to confirmation by the state Senate.

The handful of Republican lawmakers most likely to provide crucial votes for Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan are threatening to withhold their support without a dramatic rewriting of state environmental law. The demand, pushed in private talks with the governor, would curtail lawsuits against projects threatening ecological damage, grant waivers to big telecommunications companies and exempt many urban developments from environmental review. The legislators have declined to share the details of their proposal publicly, but draft legislation to overhaul the law was obtained by The Times. Sweeping changes in the California Environmental Quality Act would stand little chance of approval...

At a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee today examining job loss in the manufacturing industry, U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) pressed U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on the critical imperative to assess the adverse affects of proposed rules on the paper industry. Senator Snowe, who asserted the paper industry is a cornerstone of America's manufacturing sector, insisted the Department do a better job of understanding the implications of proposed regulations on job creation.

Last fall, leftist ideological groups of socialists and communists teamed up with American labor unions to march together for “One Nation.� Now, as labor leaders struggle to maintain a stranglehold on collective bargaining privileges in Wisconsin, the same groups are once again marching together under a banner claiming unions are the heart of the American dream.As we’ve reported, former White House green jobs czar Van Jones this week issued a rallying call for the progressive movement to “renew itself and become again a national force with which to be reckoned.� On Saturday, progressive groups and labor unions are reportedly planning...

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...

Environmental groups agreed to not fight the project in exchange for funds that could buy up grazing permits. A new sagebrush rebellion has spread across the West from Wyoming to Oregon. But this time the target is a big energy company, not the federal government. El Paso Corp., the owner of the nation's largest natural gas pipeline system, angered ranchers and county officials this summer when it agreed with two environmental groups to set up the funds. Western Watersheds Project and the Oregon Natural Desert Association agreed not to challenge the pipeline in exchange for establishing two new nonprofit funds,...

Tens of thousands of gray wolves would be returned to the woods of New England, the mountains of California, the wide open Great Plains and the desert West under a scientific petition now before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity say ...

NORTHBROOK — Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk publicly apologized Tuesday for being “careless” in describing his military service and background, after a series of embellishments were revealed that could threaten his bid for President Barack Obama’s former seat. As Kirk apologized, however, he also acknowledged something his campaign had flatly denied just two weeks ago.

Hatched over the last few weeks by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) with backing from House Democratic leaders and the White House, it was a legislative maneuver rich with the kind of irony that often goes unremarked in Washington — a classic backroom special interest deal to help pass a bill that would require heightened disclosure of special interest spending on campaign ads. The idea was to neutralize opposition to tough new campaign spending rules from one particularly powerful special interest group, the National Rifle Association, by exempting it as well as the left-leaning Sierra Club and the ecumenical Humane...

Now Most Americans Think Gulf Wildlife And Beaches Will NEVER Recover Gus Lubin Jun. 16, 2010, 11:31 AM Image: the sierra club A new Gallup poll shows most people are very pessimistic about the oil spill. 59% of Americans say local wildlife will never cover. 49% say local beaches will never recover. Nearly everyone thinks wildlife and beaches will take more than ten years to recover. Most people say the spill will hurt the economy (83%), push up gas prices (79%), and push up food prices (79%). The polling numbers tell you everything you need to know about major publicity...

On the 56th day of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. History, a group of conservationists and scientists are calling on President Barack Obama to fire Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The letter, signed by more than 100 groups and individuals, doesn't blame the former U.S. Senator from Colorado for all the corruption and other problems that have plagued the Interior Department and predate his tenure as Secretary; instead, it blames him for failing to clean it all up as he promised to do when he took over. "We think that Ken Salazar's time is up," said Nicole Rosmarino, with WildEarth...

Rainbow-PUSH leader leads BP spill protest June 3, 2010 BY CHRISTIN NANCE LAZERUS, (219) 648-3086 As crews struggle to contain the largest oil spill in American history in the Gulf of Mexico, critics of BP are starting to turn up the heat. The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a group of protesters on a march outside of BP's Whiting refinery on Wednesday afternoon to focus attention on what he says is the lax environmental enforcement that allowed the Gulf oil spill to occur -- and problems closer to home. "We need the (Environmental Protection Agency) standards enforced," Jackson said. "At this...

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

This revealing note, with sickening photographs, is making the email and message board rounds this week. I don’t know the source, but after my uncle-in-law (who lives in Tuscon) sent the email version to us, I found the message here and here (and, no, that last one isn’t brought to you by striPPers … but by strIpers, as in fisherdoods). It’s about the degradation of Arizona soil (and yours will be next) by thousands, if not millions, of illegal aliens who cross the border into this country via the Sonora Desert, not that pResident Barack “The Zero” Obama would do...

the Senator's not so secret advisor on environmental law happens to be his wife: Susan Daggett. Susan Daggett...has worked for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund ... a commissioner of the Denver Water Board. In 1998 Susan Daggett, an attorney with Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund ... Susan Daggett returned to Washington to work for the Natural Resources Defense Council. She later was the managing attorney with Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund...

NEW YORK (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union has lost a quarter of its yearly donations after a major donor cut off $19 million in annual donations because of economic difficulties. David Gelbaum, a wealthy California conservationist, said he was indefinitely stopping the donations that had made him the New York-based group's largest anonymous donor

“To explore, enjoy, and protect the planet. To practice and promote the responsible use of the Earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out those objectives.” — Sierra Club mission statement. Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress — 2004 book by Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. “The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical concept.” – Edward O. Wilson,...

Politics: Move over, John McCain and Olympia Snowe. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is fast becoming the Democrats' favorite Republican as he partners with John Kerry to push cap-and-trade through the Senate. Earlier this year, eight Republican congressmen made it possible for Waxman-Markey, the 1,400-page job- and economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation, to barely pass the House of Representatives. At the time it seemed dead on arrival in the Senate if it was brought up there this year. Once again, as with their medical plan, the Democrats seek to better the odds by putting a GOP hood ornament on a Democratic clunker....

Taxes fund environmental suits - Environmental law firms reap billions in fees to fund lawsuits October 15, 2009 The federal government has paid out billions of dollars to environmental groups for attorney fees and costs, according to data assembled by a Cheyenne, Wyoming, lawyer. Karen Budd-Falen of Budd-Falen Law Offices [main@buddfalen.com or 307-632-5105] said the government between 2003 and 2007 paid more than $4.7 billion in taxpayer money to environmental law firms -- and that's just in the lawsuits she tracked. The actual figure, she said, is far greater. "I think we only found that the iceberg exists," she said....

The night Van Jones resigned, Newsreal editor David Swindle emailed me and said: watch how long it takes them to use the “L” word. That’s not for liberal, mind you; it’s for “lynch.” Destruction of the enemy is always the agenda of the left. While conservatives prepare arguments, assemble evidence, leftists are busy looking into their quivers for a poison arrow, which always turns out to be a tainted label, and always pretty much the same label: racist (or sexist, or Islamophobe). So it wasn’t surprising to see the following post from Carl Pope the radical head of the Sierra...

Carl Pope, the white male executive director of the Sierra Club wrote an after the fact defense of former Obama administration official Van Jones published at the Huffington Post tonight that smears everyone, including Jones, with racial insults.Pope says he served with Jones on the board of the Apollo Alliance and calls himself a friend of Jones.But like so many privileged liberal white males, Pope doesn't see Jones as a Yale Law grad and successful author. No, he sees Jones as just another black man from the ghetto.Pope lets his inner racist out as he writes a defense of Jones...

Four independent groups are launching more than $1 million in attack ads Tuesday targeting five House Republicans who voted against energy legislation in June, spokespeople for the groups said. The ads from the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, MoveOn and Americans United for Change, will target Reps. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), Denny Rehberg (R- Mont.), Roy Blunt (R- Mo.) and two Virginia Republicans, Frank Wolf and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. The ad casts the members as siding with “big oil and energy interests” and against “the jobs we really need” because they voted against the legislation that would...

Below Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck explains the Apollo Alliance on his July 28 show. Beck mentions the Obama administration’s “stimulus” blueprint, “The New Apollo Program: Clean Energy, Good Jobs,” which you can read here.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The Sierra Club has joined other environmental groups in intervening in Virginia proceedings to try to block a high-voltage multistate transmission line. The Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, said it filed papers Monday with Virginia's State Corporation Commission. SCC spokesman Ken Schrad says Monday was the deadline for intervening in the $1.9 billion line proposed by Pennsylvania's Allegheny Energy Co. and Ohio's American Electric Power Co. The Piedmont Environmental Council and the National Wildlife Federation also have filed notices of participation. The 765-kilovolt Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, or PATH, would run across parts of northern Virginia and...

Dr. Howard Dean’s fans come out for the big Democratic summer shindig As Tom Andrews, the director of the leading national antiwar coalition, began his speech at the Maine Democrats’ big outdoor summer shindig in Falmouth, John Baldacci signaled his bodyguard/driver to move the large, dark SUV up the driveway. The vehicle soon hid in the trees, its engine quietly humming. At first, the governor seemed to be paying attention as Andrews, the former First District congressman, launched into rousing tales of how the country, under President George W. Bush, had gone "from peace and prosperity to war and recession."...

Sierra Club New Jersey Director Jeff Tittel continued his unrelenting assault on Gov. Corzine’s environmental record today. Just two hours before Obama took the stage at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel to rally the Democratic base for Gov. Corzine, Tittel put out a release calling the governor “Unbama.” “The Sierra Club, which endorsed President Obama for election and has worked with his administration on many environmental issues, finds the differences between the Obama and Corzine Administration’s striking. In many instances when it comes to the environment they are on opposite sides,” said Tittel, whose organization yesterday issued a...

The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that it will consider whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, in a potential reversal of Bush administration policy. According to the Sierra Club, Lisa Jackson, the new E.P.A. administrator, has granted its petition that the agency reconsider a controversial decision in December by Stephen Johnson, the Bush administration’s E.P.A. administrator, stating that officials weighing federal applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants cannot consider their greenhouse gas output. “Today’s announcement should cast significant further doubt on the approximately 100 coal-fired power plants that the industry is trying to rush...

SACRAMENTO — While praising President Barack Obama's moves to allow California to impose tighter controls on tailpipe emissions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now finds himself under pressure from fellow Republicans demanding that he weaken the state's broader greenhouse-gas laws as part of any deal to solve the budget crisis. The possibility of compromising the state's landmark standards to curb global warming has environmentalists fuming. They also worry that Democrats will be forced to trade environmental safeguards for GOP concessions on raising revenue. “This is fiscal blackmail,” said Bill Magavern, state director of the Sierra Club. “They know they could never achieve...

Environmental activists and prominent Virginia Democrats banded together Tuesday to tell the federal government to abandon plans to open the state's coastline to oil and natural gas drilling by the end of 2011. Congress allowed a ban on offshore drilling to expire at the end of September, and the U.S. Department of the Interior has been collecting feedback from citizens, elected officials and environmental groups on plans to open up tracts off the state's coastline in the next three years. As the comment period ended Tuesday, a handful of conservation groups sent letters to the federal Minerals Management Service saying...

Toxic air pollution spikes from California's 21 refineries may be sharply curtailed in the wake of a U.S. Court of Appeals decision Friday in Washington. In a suit brought by the Sierra Club and other groups, the court struck down a 14-year-old federal regulation thatallowed refineries, chemical plants and other industrial plants to exceed pollution limits during start-ups, shutdowns and equipment outages. Public health advocates in Southern California's oil refinery hub hailed the decision, saying that facilities routinely operate in malfunction mode to evade pollution caps. ... The Environmental Protection Agency regulation amounted to a "gaping loophole," according to the...

POZNAN, Poland – Some U.S. labor groups that have long feared environmental campaigns as a threat to American jobs are starting to see advantages in going green. This evolution was clear at this week's U.N. climate talks in Poland, where several American labor groups and environmental activists made joint appeals for policies that would promote high-tech renewable energy as the answer to both climate change and job losses.... snip ....Foster said unions and green groups have waged joint lobbying efforts nationwide for laws increasing energy efficiency and promoting renewable energies, and they have teamed up for numerous court battles against...

This is directly off of a flyer that the jackholes from the Sierra Club sent to every household in Vegas. On Global Warming they claim that Barack Obama... "Has a plan to cut global warming pollution 80% by 2050. Will help bring energy costs down by requiring polluters to pay for their pollution and refund that money to the consumers"WHAT THE FLYING F !?!?!?!?!?!I have a headache trying to make legitimate sense of this absolute garbage. Obviously "the polluters" are American utilities and industry. These liars are saying that when the cost of providing services and products goes up due...

The Sierra Club, one of the country's foremost environmental clubs, declined to take a position on Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban, but urged Californians to vote no on Proposition 4, the parental notification measure. Some gays were surprised at the club's omission of the most controversial initiative on the November ballot. The club took positions on several other state ballot measures that concerned environmental issues. Bill Magavern, the California director of the club, told the Bay Area Reporter Monday that Prop 8 "never came up" during meetings of the group's two volunteer committees that determine endorsements. "The last time...

Just go this page http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com once you click it shows you a page of ads, and says: Thank You — your click has been counted! You've given the value of .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. The ads below make The Animal Rescue Site possible. Thats it! No strings attached

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency permitter was surprised to hear Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. blame her agency when it pulled out of the Kensington gold mine permit process. While the company announced EPA comments on the environmental review of the mine would trigger months of delay, EPA scientist Patty McGrath was expecting they would be addressed in a couple of weeks. "They made this decision on their own, without discussing it with us first, which is why we don't understand why they're pointing to our comments as the reason for the delay," McGrath said. Coeur announced it was canceling the...