Free Republic

Electric cars sales are up 66% this year. President Joe Biden promotes them, saying things like, "The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified" and, "There's no turning back." To make sure we have no choice in the matter, some left-leaning states have moved to ban gas-powered cars altogether. California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order banning them by 2035. Oregon, Massachusetts and New York copied California. Washington state's politicians said they'd make it happen even faster, by 2030. Thirty countries also say they'll phase out gas-powered cars. But this is just dumb. It will not...

A number of people are spotted wearing green or waving green flags at abortion rights demonstrations. After the Supreme Court's landmark ruling Friday eliminating the federal right to abortion, a pro-abortion-rights advocate scaled one of the arches of D.C.’s Frederick Douglass Bridge and flew a green banner. Why is green a symbol of abortion rights? This color choice is no accident, as it is a symbol of similar movements previously held in other countries. The Latin American abortion rights movement, also known as the "green tide" or "green wave" has roots in Argentina. Marta Alanis, founder of Catholics for the...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently proposed a new disclosure rule called “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors.” The proposed rule would require public companies to disclose their climate-related risks to investors. The reporting framework is the first significant step toward making environmental, social, and governmental (ESG) reporting a regulatory requirement.Twenty-three state financial officers sent a letter to the SEC outlining concerns with the proposed rule. The State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) led the effort on behalf of its members and identified eight specific problems with the proposed rule:The SEC is not a climate regulator, and...

‘Expansionist, individualist, and exclusionary patterns of housing’ If you’ve heard that Green New Deal supporters want to increase government control over all facets of life more than they want to protect the environment, well, here’s more evidence of that. An assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA argues in the far-left magazine The Nation that California is doomed as long as people keep owning homes. “If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership,” says Kian Goh, who researches urban ecological design, “spatial politics” and social...

The unlikely duo of Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York unleashed their Green New Deal yesterday, and it was a fantastical, wild ride through absurdity. ADVERTISING inRead invented by Teads “Today is about the vision that we’re putting forward,” declared Ocasio-Cortez. And off she went, with a rolling, melodic rhythm — the ringmaster of a journey on which she was taking the gathered throng. “Today is a big day for workers in Appalachia,” she declared. Then we were off to “living rooms being flooded in with the waves of rising sea levels.”...

The zero-billion-dollar CPV business claims another victim. France's Soitec, one of the last companies with a hope of commercializing concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technology, has abandoned its solar business. The company will "refocus" its efforts "on its electronics business," according to the firm. The company uses opaque language, but the message is clear: Soitec is exiting this business as quickly as possible. A quarterly earnings letter reads, "Soitec has initiated efforts to realize value of solar energy business combining significant restructuring measures going forward and will assess [the] most appropriate scenario to extract value from its solar-related assets in compliance with...

The potential loss of the EPA in their anti-fracking campaign probably has environmentalists scrambling to rehash their stance on the well-stimulation process. Too bad for them they’ve already made some pretty ridiculous claims about fracking. The Daily Caller News Foundation has taken the liberty of listing the top five most ridiculous anti-fracking claims here:

A new poll offers details on the way citizens of the world think about climate change, and U.S. participants are looking particularly ignorant to the risks of global warming. Only one in four Americans said climate change was a "major threat," making the U.S. the least concerned nation.

Junk Science: Without evidence to back up their claims, climate zealots have taken to intimidation. They're blacklisting academics who have the nerve to question the "settled science" of climate change. The latest victim of climate McCarthyism is Caleb Rossiter, who, until his op-ed challenging the "consensus" on climate change was published in the Wall Street Journal, was a Democratic academic who briefly forayed into politics but was content to crusade against U.S. support for dictators and against the use of anti-personnel land mines. In that op-ed, Rossiter called himself an "Africanist." He not only questioned the science behind climate change...

To the Editor: The movie “Gasland 2” about fracking is available at the Cheltenham Library. I urge everyone to get on the list to borrow it and host a movie night at home with friends or neighbors. The information about fracking is important and will take all of our voices if we are to be heard over the mega-millions that the gas brings to the oil companies and monied interests. The Keystone XL pipeline is also something that Americans need to understand more about. China and other nations vying for the exportable resources, and who are already invested in these,...

Idaho Power plans to cut off electricity on Tuesday to plant in Pocatello, Idaho, that makes material for solar energy, because the factory owes $1.9 million in unpaid utility bills. The dispute is with Honolulu-based Hoku Scientific, Inc., which is backed by Chinese financing and enjoys federal and state incentives. Officials for the utility said Idaho Power agreed to hold off until March on collecting the $1.8 million Hoku already owed, providing the company stayed current in its bills. It didn’t. That’s a telltale sign of trouble as thanks to hydroelectric plants and thermal energy, Idaho enjoys some of the...

Big Green has an unlikely new sales pitch to convince Congress to fund ever-expanding land grabs by the National Park Service -- save wildlife migration. A map overlay showing all the U.S. wildlife migration paths would blot out nearly half the nation -- a very clever diagram for empire-building bureaucrats. The obscure but well-heeled Wildlife Conservation Society (2010 assets $764 million) unveiled the idea last week in "Spectacular Migrations in the Western U.S.," a 45-page report on the purportedly urgent need for a widespread network of wildlife migration corridors to avert countless extinctions. The WCS is a consortium of zoos...

Federal funds skew business investment during Obama termDisturbing revelations continue to emerge about how more than half a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars were shoveled into the Solyndra solar-panel boondoggle. It is becoming increasingly clear that the only “green” involved in this scandal is money. There is no compelling reason to empower the government to use public funds to engage in risky investments. There also is no reason to believe that government bureaucrats - especially political appointees, not usually known for their business acumen or technical expertise - are smart enough to pick winners in competitive business sectors. Energy Secretary...

Vancouver, WA - Police officers are continuing to process evidence and investigate Thursday’s raids in Operation Gang Green. The bust that netted 6,800 marijuana plants and saw 49 people arrested isn’t over just yet. “We’ll analyze evidence to look for further connections between involved parties,” said Cmdr. Mike Cooke of the Clark-Skamania Drug Task Force. “We’re going to move forward to present a solid case for prosecution.” Police don’t think the bust will necessarily take marijuana off the street in Clark County. “Our indications are, this isn’t being grown locally to be smoked locally,” Cooke said. “It will affect drug...

Several of Barack Obama's top campaign supporters went from soliciting political contributions to working from within the Energy Department as it showered billions in taxpayer-backed stimulus money on alternative energy firms, ABC News and iWatch News have learned. One of them was Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and energy investor who raised at least $500,000 for the candidate. He became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key loan program advisors while his wife's law firm represented a number of companies that had applied for loans. Recovery Act records show Allison Spinner's law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, received...

Petrodollar rich foreign governments buy their way into US board rooms - click the link to watch the video

Some of the world's wealthiest are going green, spending their own greenbacks to protect the environment and fight global warming. In honor of the 37th annual Earth Day this Sunday, we are highlighting our picks for the 11 greenest billionaires. These moguls have made significant commitments to the environment, whether through investment in technology, commitment to earth-friendly living or simply by raising the world's environmental awareness. Among the green billionaires are high-profile folks like Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT) co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Gates' investment firm invested $84 million in California's Pacific Ethanol (nasdaq: PEIX), which makes ethanol from corn;...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- In a sign of increasing investor concern about global warming, two big insurers agreed to disclose information about the risks they face from climate change and how they'll try to combat those risks, mutual fund family Calvert and investors' coalition Ceres said Tuesday.

SACRAMENTO – In Michigan, where automakers still reign, the Rev. Charles Morris cites Scripture and California policy as he campaigns for curbs on tailpipe and smokestack emissions linked to disruptions in global weather patterns that can threaten water, power and food supplies. “California is the leader of the pack,” says the Catholic priest who tends a parish in Wyandotte, just outside Dearborn. “They put in emission reductions. They put in reformulated gas,” Morris said. “The sky didn't fall. The sun still shines. It belies the myths put out there.” Religious leaders such as Morris – joining a growing number of...

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...