Yesterday President Donald Trump announced 2 million acres of reductions in the size of two tracts of land---Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante, set aside by President Obama as national monuments under the 111-year-old Antiquities Act. Predictably, Green lobbyists are up in arms. Ordinary citizens---not so much. Conservatives are celebrating, particularly because Trump's action is a move back toward federalism. As Shawn Regan writes in National Review, the act "allows … [Read more...]
Why do Ranchers Grouse about Federal Regulations to Protect Sage Grouse?
One of the basic principles of environmental stewardship is that the people closest to a problem are likely to understand it best. Yes, there might be exceptions when experts from outside can come to understand it better, but what really happens in those instances is that the outsiders get up close. If they don't, they won't. A great illustration of this is the unintended consequences of federal regulations meant to protect sage grouse, an allegedly endangered species in some of the American … [Read more...]
Did We Run Out of Planet Last Week?
Today, 2nd August, we have collectively consumed all of the planet's renewable resources. So said Nicolas Hulot, France's Minister of State for Ecological Transition, in a YouTube video published August 2 by Transition ecologique et solidaire. Sometimes people we assume are intelligent say things that are so blindingly obviously stupid we can't persuade ourselves to treat them that way, so we think, "Maybe I'm the blindingly obviously stupid one," and we dig hard to try to figure out the … [Read more...]
Does the Bible Require Common Ownership of Land?
Does the Bible validate private property in land, or does it require that land be communally owned? With Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-professed socialist, doing surprisingly well in the Democratic Presidential primary campaign, such thoughts become increasingly common. Someone recently wrote: It seems to me that a theology that takes Creation as evidence of a Creator ... would recoil at privatizing Creation as a private income-generating asset. The way I come at environmental … [Read more...]
The Haunt of Jackals
Various passages of the Bible set forth the complete elimination of human habitation in a land as the epitome of God’s judgment. I have long found it remarkable that much of the environmental movement sees as ideal what Scripture depicts as hideous. One place that does so is Isaiah 34, in which God through the Prophet Isaiah foretells, in sometimes apocalyptic poetic language, His judgment on Edom and the other pagan nations that oppressed Israel and Judah: 1“Draw near, O nations, to hear, and … [Read more...]
One Small Step toward Reining in the EPA
A Cincinnati-based federal court recently put a hold on the federal EPA's controversial "Waters of the United States" rule that would have put farm ponds, drainage ditches, and similar waters, by no means navigable, under its rule, constituting a huge expansion of EPA authority at the expense of states' sovereignty and property owners' rights. As Larry Bell writes, Applying EPA’s interpretation, the agency defines waters of the United States so broadly that they could regulate virtually any wet … [Read more...]
Obama in Alaska: He Didn’t Let Kivalina’s Crisis Go to Waste
The Arctic, like the rest of the world, experiences natural cycles, and some of them can be pretty radical. While most of the world enjoys a pretty stable 24-hour cycle of sunrise and sunset, with the sun visible roughly half of each day, a little longer in summer, a little shorter in winter, the Arctic (like the Antarctic) goes from 24-hour sunlight in mid-summer to 24-hour darkness in mid-winter. Long-term geologic records indicate that it also experiences larger swings from warmer to colder … [Read more...]
Extra! Extra! Missing AGW Intensifies California Drought!
The Old Gray Lady's (aka New York Times) perennial climate alarmist reporter Justin Gillis eagerly reported a new paper, “Contribution of anthropogenic warming to California drought during 2012-2014,” published in Geophysical Research Letters, claiming that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) might have intensified the current California drought by 15 to 20 percent. Alas, nasty facts get in the way, like these: The drought started in 2012, but there's been no statistically significant global … [Read more...]
Climate Hubs Stepping Stone To Broader Climate Legislation
The Obama Administration decided last month that it would placate the “Green” lobby by telling our nation’s farmers how to do their job. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the creation of seven Regional Climate Hubs for Risk Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change. These Hubs match climate change knowledge with local farmers using current networks including local extension agents. This announcement by the Obama Administration was a stepping stone to this month’s announcement of … [Read more...]
Movie Noah Trades Redemption For Destruction
Was Noah a violent, murderous environmentalist who experienced an anthropogenic apocalypse? Did God hate humans because they destroyed His earth? Not according to the Bible. Darren Aronofsky, director of the new movie Noah, starring Russell Crowe, clearly didn’t read his Bible very carefully—or didn’t like what he read. The movie Noah changes a story of love and redemption into an environmentalist propaganda piece about humans destroying the earth, and a call for human extinction. Brian … [Read more...]
