Free Republic

Environmentalist groups want the new Congress to reject common sense policies encouraging more domestic energy production to wean America off foreign energy. Instead, green groups want to discourage energy production and consumption of the most readily available sources: coal, oil and natural gas, because they generate carbon dioxide (CO2), and nuclear, which produces no CO2. For green groups, “energy independence” seems to mean not depending on energy! Will the new Congress yield to their pressures? Green groups say they want public policies that will make the U.S. less dependent on foreign energy sources, but they oppose efforts to produce energy...

WASHINGTON (AP) – Opponents of oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge are going on the offense after playing defense for a quarter of a century. They want the new Democratic Congress to make an oft-challenged drilling ban permanent. Legislation introduced in the House on Friday would make the oil-rich 1.2 million-acre coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a permanently protected wilderness, and end repeated efforts to open the area east of the Prudhoe oil field to energy companies. “The consensus is that there should not be drilling in the refuge, so the logical next step is to...

WASHINGTON - Environmental groups filed two court challenges Wednesday aimed at blocking construction of Maryland's Intercounty Connector, a highway that officials say will ease commutes and take vehicles off local streets. The 18-mile, six-lane highway connecting Interstate 270 in Montgomery County with Interstate 95 in Prince George's County has long been championed by regional business groups, but faced stiff opposition from environmentalists as well as concerns over its cost. It finally won federal approval in May. In one lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club claim the air quality analysis conducted by federal...

Silver Spring, Md. -- Two environmentalists spent about four hours Monday perched on a ledge over an entrance to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration building to protest what they said is the agency's suppression of information on global warming. The pair unfurled a banner that read "Bush: Let NOAA Tell the Truth," while a small group of demonstrators handed out fliers on a nearby sidewalk. Police eventually used a cherry picker from a nearby construction site to reach the demonstrators and lower them to the ground. Both men, Ted Glick, 56, and Paul Burman, 23, were charged with disorderly...

SHEPARD SMITH JUST ANNOUNCED: HOUSE APPROVES ANWR DRILLING!!

If you think environmentalism is all about saving the Earth, protecting the whales, stopping pollution, and the like, here's some news. It's not! Listen to what environmental advocates themselves have to say: "I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism." Judi Bari, Earth First! member.[Environmentalism equals replacing capitalism with socialism.] "The environmentalist's dream is an egalitarian society, based on rejection of economic growth, a smaller population, eating lower on the food...

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - As California recalls the catastrophic earthquake that struck San Francisco 100 years ago, seismologists warn that the golden state's love of cars could turn into a fatal attraction in the quake-prone state. Elevated freeways, highway overpasses, and garages built under homes are vulnerable to crashing down when the earth shudders, said seismologist Jack Boatwright of the US Geological Survey. "The automobile culture is really a knife in the heart of earthquake preparedness," Boatwright told AFP. "We are only as strong as our weakest overpass." Another key weakness is structural, including building code oversights exposed by the...

Is the predicted $3,000 cost increase for cars too high a price to pay to have Pennsylvania meet California Emissions Standards. Yes, California is not a role model for anything. No, $3,000 is chump change. I can afford it, and if you can’t, you should be walking.

One of the perquisites of being president is the ability to have the author of a book you enjoyed pop into the White House for a chat. Over the years, a number of writers have visited President Bush, including Natan Sharansky, Bernard Lewis and John Lewis Gaddis. And while the meetings are usually private, they rarely ruffle feathers. Now, one has. In his new book about Mr. Bush, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State...

In our urgency to deal with really urgent stuff over the past few weeks, we have been piling up news articles regarding what some regard as a universal urgency. That would be global warming or Global Warming or GLOBAL WARMING, depending on one's perspective, provided that one has a perspective. Bill Clinton, speaking last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that mother of all junkets for rich folks who take themselves very seriously, said that GLOBAL WARMING bothered him a bunch. "It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of...

Eco-terrorists have struck again. Not in the dead of night, to be pursued by diligent agents of the FBI, but right out in the open, in a public meeting, under the auspices of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On January 24, one of those ubiquitous FDA panels of "outside experts" voted, by an 11 to seven margin, to recommend that FDA ban non-prescription, over-the-counter asthma inhalers, used routinely by millions of asthma-sufferers to control the symptoms of their debilitating condition. As frequently noted in the press, while such recommendations are not binding, they are most often adopted. The...

The floating cap of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to what is probably its smallest size in at least a century of record keeping, continuing a trend toward less summer ice, a team of climate experts reported yesterday. The Cryosphere Today (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign) That shift is hard to explain without attributing it in part to human-caused global warming, the team's members and other experts on the region said. The change also appears to be headed toward becoming self-sustaining: the increased open water absorbs solar energy that would otherwise be reflected back into space...

With all that has happened in the state, it’s understandable that the Louisiana chapter of the Sierra Club may not have updated its website. But when its members get around to it, they may want to change the wording of one item in particular. The site brags that the group is “working to keep the Atchafalaya Basin,” which adjoins the Mississippi River not far from New Orleans, “wet and wild.” These words may seem especially inappropriate after the breaking of the levee that caused the tragic events in New Orleans last week. But “wet and wild” has a larger significance...

A profound tragedy is unfolding in New Orleans, the most beautiful city in America, with the richest cultural history and the most wonderful style of living. I lived in New Orleans for seven years. I was married there. My children were born there. I have many friends there. My daughter, her husband and their little baby managed to get out of the city ahead of the flood on Sunday, driving 14 hours into Texas with the few belongings they could stuff into their car. They have no idea what has become of their house and their possessions, not to mention...

Our planet's air has cleared up in the past decade or two, allowing more sunshine to reach the ground, say two studies in Science this week. Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent. That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will...

It took 2 1/2 years for polar explorers Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen to plan their trek across the Arctic Ocean. But once launched, it took only three weeks for it to fall apart. Amid a stretch of extraordinarily heavy snowfall, strong winds and broken and shifting ice, the two men from Grand Marais, Minn., who had hoped to become the first adventurers to cross the Arctic Ocean in summer, abandoned their expedition Thursday after advancing only 45 miles in 24 days. Conditions were so treacherous, in fact, that the men, who had hoped to make the crossing to call...

Britain February 17, 2005 Oil on troubled waters: a protester is led to a bus requisitioned by police to hold them (RICHARD POHLE) Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders By Laura Peek and Liz Chong WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail. What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement. “We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Four leading GOP House members and senators announced a joint effort Thursday to rewrite the Endangered Species Act to toughen up habitat and scientific provisions. Environmentalists immediately criticized the plan as the latest attempt to gut the landmark law. The lawmakers said it was the first time members of the House and Senate had banded together at the beginning of a congressional session to amend the 1973 act. Previous attempts to change the law have failed, but they said this time they hoped to produce a single Endangered Species Act reauthorization bill that could be introduced in...

TAHOMA - Public reaction to the shooting Friday of three bears - a mother and two yearling cubs hibernating beneath a west Lake Tahoe cabin - is so intense the homeowners who authorized it fear for their lives. "It's a nightmare - every other call is a threat from someone who's going to burn down my cabin or shoot me on sight," Russ Tonda said Wednesday. Several weeks ago, the Granite Bay man and his wife discovered about $100,000 in damage to a cabin they've owned for 40 years in the Chamberlands neighborhood here. The culprits apparently were the bears,...

NEW YORK - The Rev. Al Sharpton has joined PETA in calling for a boycott of fast-food chain KFC, in a new TV and radio campaign. Sharpton is urging the black community to join the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' boycott of the franchise, the animal protection group announced Thursday. "If KFC wants to take our money and use it to pay for sloppy practices that hurt animals, I say we send them a message that this is not going to happen," Sharpton says in the ad. Sharpton and PETA are seeking improvements to KFC's practices regarding the...