Free Republic

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in Virginia this week delivered a message to Congress, the White House and developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline: not so fast. Pennsylvania-based Equitrans Midstream’s roughly 300-mile pipeline, envisioned to bring shale gas from the Marcellus and Utica in Appalachia to markets in the Southeast, was fast-tracked as part of the Biden administration’s deal with Congress to suspend the debt limit in June. It’s also supported by Pennsylvania congressmen, including U.S. Reps. John Joyce, R-Blair, and Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, who joined U.S. Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., to introduce the legislation in May that helped...

Over the last year, the green tyranny bureaucracy of the EU has managed to nearly destroy Western Europe's energy relationship with Russia, leaving the continent desperate for energy inputs to keep its power grid functioning. Now, the food supply of Europe is under direct assault via multiple schemes that seem designed to end affordable food at the same time electricity is becoming unaffordable for businesses and residential households alike."Germany bans farmers from properly fertilising land to serve EU green agenda," declares Breitbart.com. "As of Thursday, the use of nitrate fertilisers has been greatly restricted for large swathes of farmland in...

More than two dozen environmental organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the use of natural gas for home heating nationwide, arguing the federal agency must regulate “deadly pollution from heating appliances.” The petition, sponsored by the Sierra Club, claims fossil fuel-fired home furnaces, water heaters, clothes dryers and stoves emit enough nitrogen dioxide (NOx) and carbon dioxide (CO2) that they must be classified as “new stationary sources” of air pollutants, placing them in the same regulatory regime as power plants and factories. The petition resembles – but goes beyond Gov. Jared Polis’ Greenhouse Gas Roadmap for a clean...

Green tyranny has finally provoked mass reactions, and the first government has fallen after imposing insane policies that wrecked the food supply for its people. Green tyranny has finally provoked mass reactions, and the first government has fallen after imposing insane policies that wrecked the food supply for its people. Both the president and the prime minister of Sri Lanka are resigning in the wake of massive mobs storming and occupying their residences, burning the PM’s private house and refusing to leave the presidential palace until both men are out of office. The BBC reports: Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa...

President Joe Biden should prioritize American energy independence and end reliance on adversaries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, 27 state financial officers say in a letter Tuesday to the president. In their letter, they urge Biden to consider the consequences of foreign energy dependence for U.S. businesses and consumers. “Policies implemented during the last year thwart the vitality of American energy production,” the financial officers’ letter to Biden reads. “The rising cost of fuel, coupled with precipitous inflation has, and will, continue to result in dire consequences for working-class families.” The 27 state-level officials are part of the State...

My address to the Colorado Independent Cattlemen’s Association I’m not a cattleman and I’m not going to pretend I know everything you are facing. But I do know that the major weapon being used against your industry is the misnamed control devise called Sustainable Development. I know why and I know who the players are. I hope I can leave you today with some ideas on how to fight them. To begin, let’s set the terms and make one thing very clear. The use of the word sustainable may sound like a comfortable term, not threatening. After all, you, your...

Going solar isn’t necessarily any protection from California’s new “planned” power outages, and local residents and businesses are enduring a lot more than just a few inconveniences. Bloomberg’s Chris Martin has a story on California’s troubles with one of my favorite headlines ever: “Californians Learning That Solar Panels Don't Work in Blackouts.” Apparently, many of California’s would-be Earth-savers had no idea that just putting solar panels on their roofs doesn’t mean they’ll have power when PG&E switches it off. As Martin explains:

Pittsburgh has become the second U.S. city to incorporate United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into its practices, planning and policies, an initiative that will affect more than $4 billion worth of public and private projects in the region during the next 12 years. Mayor Bill Peduto announced the commitment to the 17 U.N. sustainability goals Friday, saying they identify the most important issues facing the globe -- poverty, hunger, climate change, education, gender equality and health, among them. He said the goals will help inform coordinated and collaborative programs and partnerships with universities and nonprofit, business and civic sectors, and...

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is poised to implement a new regulation without legislative approval to join 10 other states in a climate change agreement based on restricting carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.But lawmakers, policy analysts, and tea party activists in Virginia who oppose what they consider costly regulations of industry are raising questions about the economic and scientific arguments underpinning the proposed rule.They say the Virginia General Assembly should have a straight up-or-down vote on Northam’s plan, in part to ensure that any revenue the governor raises from “carbon trading” is collected and dispersed in a manner consistent...

Rupert Darwall is a strategy consultant and policy analyst. He read economics and history at Cambridge University and subsequently worked in finance as an investment analyst and in corporate finance before becoming a special adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has written extensively for publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator and is the author of the widely praised "The Age of Global Warming: A History" (2013). Climate change was political long before Al Gore first started talking about it. In Green Tyranny, Rupert Darwall...

Last week, a group of 21 young people, aged 9 to 20 years, won the right to sue the US government for its inaction in mitigating climate change, when an Oregon federal judge ruled that the plaintiffs' lawsuit was valid and could proceed in court. The chief legal counsel for the plantiffs, Julia Olson, had this to say about the significance of the ruling, urging outgoing President Obama to come to an agreement with a binding court order before Trump's inauguration early next year: We have a President-elect who is an obvious climate denier and both political branches controlled by...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The Paris Agreement to combat climate change became international law on Friday - a landmark deal about tackling global warming amid growing fears that the world is becoming hotter even faster than scientists expected. So far, 96 countries, accounting for just over two-thirds of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, have formally joined the accord, which seeks to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). More countries are expected to come aboard in the coming weeks and months.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh recently joined 16 other state Attorneys General to launch, in their own words, “an unprecedented, multi-state effort to investigate and prosecute the ‘high-funded and morally vacant forces’ that have stymied attempts to combat global warming—starting with holding ExxonMobil and other industry giants accountable for fraud and suppression of key climate science.” In explaining his support of “AGs United for Clean Power,” Frosh said: “There is no doubt that climate change is an existential threat to our society and to our entire planet….I am deeply troubled that oil companies have contributed to the problem by intentionally...

Like a crazed serial killer, the liberal green groups are celebrating their “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. Now to get their next homicidal high, the leftists have turned their ambitions on the oil and natural gas industries. Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the grand, green vision: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired...

This election season has created an unprecedented alliance between the environmental Left and the anti-free market movement. The result is a well-funded juggernaut adept at conducting coordinated and sophisticated assaults on American businesses while attempting to influence crucial elections. Their goals are nothing short of shuttering our American manufacturing industry, halting the production of affordable energy and placing a ruling clique of radicals in office.One such tactic focuses on intimidating universities and other institutions into divesting their financial holdings of fossil fuel investments. Activists behind this campaign talk candidly about how they hope to “revoke the social license” of energy...

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has been issued a subpoena by the attorney general of the VIrgin Islands to hand over all communictions between 1997 and 2007 on climate change. CEI has been a major voice in the climate change debate, debunking many of the "facts" offered by global warming hysterics.... Lawfare writ large. The problem is that while trying to quash this ridiculous subpoena, other groups and individuals will be silenced, or at least, have their First Amendment rights curtailed by this bullying. Of course, this is the purpose of the subpoena in the first place. For years, global warming...

Oh, well, if Hillary kills off what’s left of the coal industry, at least we still have a booming natural gas industry, creating lots of good-paying jobs and with a potential for significant exports to help with our miserable trade balance. Wait, what’s that? U.S. Rejects Multi-Billion Dollar Jordan Cove Gas Export Plan U.S. regulators rejected Veresen Inc.’s multibillion-dollar proposal to build a terminal in Oregon that would export as many as two tankers of natural gas a week. They also denied its plan to build a pipeline with Williams Partners LP to supply gas to the terminal. Williams and...

Obama Administration has illegally bypassed Congress, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the States and their Public Utility Commissions The global warming/climate change industry has been aggressively pushing renewable energy, wind, solar, and biofuels for a long time even though the economies of various industrialized countries need much more energy than what renewables generate. The green activists have been zealously lobbying Congress and the EPA to change the laws, rules, and regulations that would make it much more expensive and difficult for fossil fuel energy producers to survive while passing the higher costs onto consumers, impoverishing those customers on fixed...

Oversight: A federal agency keeps stonewalling congressional efforts to access its internal communications. What's the problem here? If the agency's global warming claim was honestly arrived at, just turn over the documents.

I was interested to read the article from The Sun News on Thursday about the last-minute delay of the permit to pave International Drive. This project will take thousands of cars off of the gridlock of Highway 501, and relieve congestion in Carolina Forest. On the day before we were to receive the permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coastal Conservation League filed an appeal. It seems they want the road to be redesigned to include multiple bear crossings, at a cost of millions of dollars to the taxpayers of Horry County. That’s millions of scarce taxpayer dollars...