How convenient.

The Obama administration has repeatedly assured the public that they were just a hop, skip, and a jump away from making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, seeing as how its gone through years of environmental impact reviews from various sources and gotten a green light every time (which should hardly come as a [...]

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Squawk.

When it comes to enforcing the environmental laws concerning certain species of federally-protected birds, the Obama administration and their environmentalist allies have been impressively diligent in charging oil companies, coal plants, and power stations when said birds get tangled up in their power lines or drown in their waste pits; in the past five years, [...]

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Downsizing, the wrong way.

Just in case you thought the administration had finished drumming up frightening reasons for why Congress really needs to get their stuff together and undo sequestration, never fear. The past few summers, we’ve watched some truly catastrophic wildfires rage across the American landscape, and the Departments of Interior and Agriculture would like you to know [...]

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Green

When I first caught wind of this story, I’ll confess that I was somewhat surprised to hear it, but at the same time, it reflected some thoughts I’ve had over the years myself. People involved in social movements of all stripes can start out with a genuine interest in doing something good, seeking to donate [...]

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Uhm...?

I have every suspicion that the Obama administration’s continued dilly-dallying has pretty much nothing to do with those stubbornly lingering and entirely ginned-up environmental concerns and everything to do with the symbolic importance wrongly placed upon the pipeline’s construction by certain deep-pocketed and powerful eco-radical groups. The green lobby has managed to turn an otherwise [...]

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Excuses, excuses.

You must be joking. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) objected Monday to the State Department’s draft review of the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline route, saying it included “insufficient information” on environmental issues. In a comment on the State Department’s draft environmental impact statement for the project, EPA said Foggy Bottom failed to fully [...]

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Regrets, we've had a few

It’s been a while since we checked in on the several year old effort of the Ecuadorian government, in league with a number of environmentalist activists in the United States, to pick the pockets of Chevron after taking over their energy exploration efforts in that nation. In fact, the last time we reported on it, [...]

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Stall tactics.

The Environmental Protection Agency and their eco-zealot fans have been all kinds of pumped at the prospect of slapping some greenhouse-gas regulations on new power plants (a major maneuver in that war on coal they’ve been attentively waging), but last month, they hinted that they were leaning toward putting a hold on the proposed rule, [...]

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Geniuses.

Do you suppose the eco-trendy crowd really, carefully thought this one through before jumping on the self-righteously outraged bandwagon? I have some pretty severe doubts on the matter, but they’re in this thing, and they’re certainly not going to back down now that they’ve invested so much time, money, and media coverage to the issue [...]

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"The climate may be heating up less in response to greenhouse-gas emissions than was once thought."

The Economist has been pretty reliable about beating the climate-alarmist drum for years on end now, often peddling the urgent need for an overarching global climate treaty to combat the threat. In a piece this week, however, the British publication took a much more moderate approach and hashed out some of the different studies suggesting [...]

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Taking their sweet time.

Just FYI, President Obama is officially the last man standing in the trumped-up battle over the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction; the state of Nebraska, the State Department, the House, and now even the Democrat-controlled Senate have all given the project very much on-the-record green lights. As fond as the president is of intoning on the [...]

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Walking away?

House Republicans’ big meeting with President Obama on the Hill yesterday didn’t yield any sudden changes of heart on reaching some kind of big deficit bargain (shocking, considering how pure and straightforward I’m sure the president’s motives were, hem hem), but the president also kept his cards close to the vest on energy and how [...]

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Unlike these guys.

Just in case the Obama administration had any doubt as to whether or not the general American public is supportive of the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction while they continue to bend over backwards catering to well-monied, radical environmentalist interests, a new Fox News poll confirms that, why yes — the overwhelming majority of Americans are [...]

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Wealthier is healthier!

Self-fancied environmentalists have an unfortunate tendency to turn to big-government and top-down control as the best and most efficient arbiter of environmental quality, when in fact the effort to coerce people’s behavior into complying with their preconceived notions of ‘green’ living reliably comes with a whole host of unintended consequences and puts a damper on [...]

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Friday afternoon news dump.

TransCanada has only been waiting for the go-ahead for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline for, oh, four or so years now, and the State Department has now several times concluded that the pipeline poses no real reason for environmental alarm — despite the vociferous protestations of its eco-critics. After having released an environmental impact review [...]

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Plans of attack.

Both political realities and economic opportunities are preventing President Obama from playing the full-fledged climate-change champion he would no doubt like to embody; a “comprehensive” climate-change bill, like the one Sen. Barbara Boxer recently announced she plans to bring to floor, is unlikely to even make it out of the Senate, and unless there’s some [...]

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Or, you know... not.

Spare us, can’t you? Because it would be really great if we could all just stop pretending that the federal government’s protestations of love for biofuels is about anything other than keeping their BFFs, Big Ethanol, happy. Looking at you, Vilsack. The ethanol industry is again being threatened and U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack is [...]

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Truth.

Like Ed noted after Sunday’s rather underwhelming anti-Keystone XL pipeline protest in DC, the project really is a no-brainer across all imaginable fronts — and the Obama administration’s continue stalling is getting politically incorrigible. It’s completely understandable that the president would want to wait to make such a controversial high-profile decision until after the election, [...]

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Classic.

Oh, the sweet, sweet irony of environmentalist infighting. The Obama administration (while somehow finding every excuse in the world to dawdle and delay on major economy-impacting items like federal drilling permits, hydraulic fracturing rules, and the Keystone XL pipeline) decided to make an especial project out using public lands for utility-scale solar plants. The Interior [...]

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Two birds with one stone.

Not a bad choice, for a couple of reasons.  Barack Obama will replace outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar with Sally Jewell, the CEO of outdoor sports and clothing giant REI, the White House will announce today: President Barack Obama on Wednesday will nominate business executive and former engineer Sally Jewell to lead the Interior Department, [...]

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What's up with that?

The environmental lobby and many greenie activists endlessly use and abuse the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and plenty of other “ecological sensitivity”-protecting laws and regulations as justifications for expanding their agenda, which includes implementing restrictive land-use policies hostile to drilling activities and punishing hydrocarbon-based industries for supposed infractions. The Obama administration [...]

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Let's cool those jets for a hot second.

Having heard it straight from President Obama last Monday, the “devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms” looming in our immediate future are all imminent catastrophes fueled by rapid climate change about which we simply must do something right away — but this is exactly the type of alarmist rhetoric [...]

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He's really super cereal.

President Obama’s conspicuous mentions of his born-again climate-change priorities in his second inaugural on Monday seemed at least partially designed to reassure the environmental lobby that his neglect of their favorite climate and energy issues since the start of the presidential campaign season is officially over. How much the president can really do for their [...]

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Going global.

Ugh. Yet another eco-globalist heading to a collectivist international conference and attempting to foist a one-size-fits-all environmentalist rulebook upon the masses: The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon says his top hopes for 2013 are to reach a new agreement on climate change and to urgently end the increasingly deadly and divisive war in Syria. … Ban [...]

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