Free Republic

The Tuesday headline was clear: "Obama's new rules will transform U.S. auto fleet." The Associated Press picked it up from there: "Some soccer moms will have to give up hulking SUVs. Nearly everybody else will drive smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity. The higher mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by 2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet. "The new rules would bring new cars and trucks sold in the United States to an average of 35.5...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supporters of nuclear power in the United States failed to win new breaks for the industry when a U.S. congressional panel on Wednesday voted down an amendment to a controversial climate change bill. Waxman argued that the bill was not discriminating against nuclear power, but that nuclear was not renewable energy because it requires uranium, a limited resource. Also, he said the renewable standard was aimed at promoting new power sources and technology. Republicans have blasted the legislation, warning that it could drastically curb the United States' economic growth by making U.S. companies less competitive internationally with...

The Obama administration will issue new national requirements for the emissions and mileage of cars and light trucks in an effort to end a long-running conflict among the states, the federal government and auto manufacturers, industry officials said Monday. President Obama will announce as early as Tuesday that he will combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard, the officials said. As a result, cars and light trucks sold in the United States will be roughly 30 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016. The White House...

Barron's: Bjorn, what do you think will be the outcome of the negotiations to curb global warming this December? Lomborg: The participating nations will again agree to spend quite a bit of money to cut carbon emissions and again achieve virtually nothing. We already tried that twice -- in Rio in 1992, and in Kyoto in 1997. Both of these treaties failed. We will see a lot of posturing, but presumably this isn't about having a lot of environmental ministries or even presidents and prime ministers come out and claim credit for making costly commitments that we won't be able...

<p>Other polls that ask Americans how they feel about a proposed "cap and trade" system to control pollution have tended to produce positive responses. But those surveys never seem to mention what such a system might cost. The latest IBD/TIPP Poll laid it all out in a somewhat lengthy question and drew a very different response: By nearly 3-to-1, Americans oppose a cap-and-trade system that, if opponents are correct, could add $800 to $1,200 per household to energy prices.</p>

President Obama's plan to move quickly to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources relies on technology that analysts agree is neither affordable nor available on a commercial scale and won't be for many years to come. Expensive, small-scale pilot projects are under way that convert vegetation into fuel for cars and capture carbon dioxide before it is released into the air from coal-burning power plants. But these prototypes have not been proved at levels that would make even a dent in the U.S. appetite for fossil fuels, casting doubt on the viability of the president's plans. Still, the administration...

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Democratic leaders are scaling back their plans to cut the gases blamed for global warming and to transition the country to cleaner sources of energy. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Henry Waxman of California announced Tuesday the outlines of a deal that they said would ensure the legislation will please both environmental and industry groups and have the support of moderate Democrats on the House Energy Committee.

“TEA” in Tea Parties has been interpreted as standing for “Taxed Enough Already.” This is catchy and a clever linkage to the original Boston Tea Party. However it is such a narrow acronym that it seriously understates the scope of the current protest movement and lends credence to the left’s assertion that Tea Party protestors are just greedy rich people afraid they’ll have to pay a little more in taxes. The hundreds of thousands who are involved in today’s Tea Party movement are well informed Americans, deeply concerned about a host of issues beyond taxes: national security, socialization, corruption, voter...

...The president and his allies have decided that man-made carbon dioxide is a witch's brew that's killing the planet, and they think that just because the cap-and-trade cure stings doesn't mean we shouldn't have to swallow it. Their solution is embodied in the Henry A. Waxman-Edward J. Markey global warming legislation...Its proponents call it "back to the future." They're not kidding, either........you can test drive Waxman-Markey by sailing down to Haiti, because current CO2 emissions are where Waxman-Markey wants America's to be in 2050. Radical environmentalists think such a CO2 level will be heaven on Earth, but the place that...

As Palin pointed out to Salazar, the USGS assessment "estimates that Arctic Alaska has mean technically recoverable resources of approximately 30 billion barrels of oil, 6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 221 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas."