On NBC's Rock Center on Monday, correspondent Harry Smith did a glowing profile of New York City Traffic Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, praising her as a "bold bureaucrat....on a mission to tame New York's mean streets. Her goal, untangle the gridlock and make it safer, greener and cleaner."
As Smith explained in his report, a big part of that plan involved shutting down streets throughout the city, making them only accessible to pedestrians and bicycles: "In Times Square, business improved almost overnight, with half the cars and trucks gone, the 356,000 daily visitors could breathe a little easier, and Sadik-Khan became the high priestess of people-friendly cities."
Pollution
NBC's Harry Smith Gushes Over 'Greener and Cleaner' NYC Traffic Plan: 'Maybe We Should Just Get Rid of Cars Altogether?'
By Kyle Drennen | December 6, 2011 | 5:25 PM EST 
By Ken Shepherd | November 11, 2011 | 6:10 PM EST
MSNBC daytime host Tamron Hall failed to use the J-word -- jobs -- in alerting MSNBC viewers today of President Obama's decision to delay his decision on authorizing the proposed Keystone oil pipeline.
Noting the story on the 2 p.m. Eastern NewsNation program, Hall described the "massive oil pipeline" project as "controversial" because it would run through "an environmentally-sensitive area in Nebraska." As such, Hall added, President Obama wants to explore "other possible routes." Meanwhile "digging is on hold, likely until after the presidential election."
Four hours earlier on Chris Jansing Reports, substitute host Richard Lui very briefly noted that "critics claim the delay will cost the U.S. some 20,000 new jobs." There was no reference to the fact that many of those critics are Democrat-friendly labor unions.
By Noel Sheppard | September 3, 2011 | 10:31 AM EDT
Barack Obama's Hope and Change ether appears to be wearing off on Robert Redford.
On Friday evening, the Oscar-winning actor and environmental activist published a rather scathing piece at the Huffington Post about the man Hollywood blindly put all its faith behind in 2008:
By NB Staff | July 28, 2011 | 10:14 AM EDT
Global warming, aka climate change, is the scapegoat for everything from record snowfalls to disastrous tornadoes. As such, it is also the perfect route for governments to closely control their citizens by regulating the smallest of details, like which lightbulbs they are allowed to use, to supposedly fix the problem.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who grew up under totalitarian rule, is speaking out against what he sees as the latest government attack on democratic freedom, environmentalism, which he argues closely parallels the thefts of freedom under communism. Do you agree with him? Let us know what you think in the comments.
By Susan Jones | July 5, 2011 | 2:15 PM EDT
A major car-rental company is inviting customers to "help save the environment with your next rental."
As part of its carbon offset program, Enterprise Holdings offers customers the option of adding $1.25 to the cost of the rental car, which Enterprise will match dollar for dollar, up to a total of $1 million.
By Aubrey Vaughan | July 2, 2011 | 8:00 AM EDT
Over the past three years, the number of believers in anthropogenic global warming has been on a steady decline, while the number of believers in natural planetary warming and cooling cycle has been on a steady incline. The shrinking pool of people who still swear by Al Gore's Hollywood version of the climate trend is especially populated with journalists and politicians who refuse admit they were wrong and consider any science debunking manmade global warming.
As the numbers fail each year to match Gore's wild predictions, it is becoming increasingly difficult to form any logical support for Gore's gloom and doom global warming scenarios. To rectify the situation, the global warming community has quietly rebranded its cause as 'climate change,' which allows activists to push an environmental agenda without the threat of the earth's temperature not rising with it.
By Clay Waters | July 1, 2011 | 2:07 PM EDT
New York Times reporters Danny Hakim and Nicholas Confessore filed another in a series of front-page stories Friday revolving around the natural gas industry, especially the “fracking” process by which natural gas is obtained from shale and is opposed by liberal environmentalists. This time the scene is the paper’s own backyard: “Cuomo Moving To End a Freeze On Gas Drilling.”
The Cuomo administration is seeking to lift what has effectively been a moratorium in New York State on hydraulic fracturing, a controversial technique used to extract natural gas from shale, state environmental regulators said on Thursday.
The process would be allowed on private lands, opening New York to one of the fastest-growing -- critics would say reckless -- areas of the energy industry. It would be banned inside New York City’s sprawling upstate watershed, as well as inside a watershed used by Syracuse, and in underground water sources used by other cities and towns. It would also be banned on state lands, like parks and wildlife preserves.
By Aubrey Vaughan | June 22, 2011 | 3:02 PM EDT
Debuting in theaters this Friday, the seemingly innocuous Disney-Pixar film 'Cars 2' has become a tool to wedge a fight against fossil fuels in favor of alternative forms of energy.
When John Lasseter moved from executive producer to executive director last year, he overhauled major portions of the plot into a good vs. evil story against big oil.
By Alex Fitzsimmons | June 21, 2011 | 1:10 PM EDT
The Supreme Court on Monday unequivocally rejected the notion that courts should force power companies to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, but none of the major broadcast networks covered the unanimous decision on their evening newscasts or morning shows.
The New York Times teased the ruling on the front page of Tuesday's paper, directing readers to a thorough analysis of the 8-0 decision, but ABC's "Good Morning America" and "World News," CBS's "Early Show" and "Evening News," and NBC's "Today" and "Nightly News" all skipped a decision that prevents environmentalists from using the courts to impose greenhouse gas regulations on electric utilities.
By Alex Fitzsimmons | May 31, 2011 | 12:20 PM EDT
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lobbed incendiary accusations at the coal industry on "Morning Joe" today in a segment that devolved into a nearly 10-minute advertisement for his new anti-coal documentary.
The left-wing environmental activist juxtaposed fossil "fuels from Hell" with "patriotic fuels from Heaven," though neither co-host Joe Scarborough nor Mika Brzezinski pushed back.
"Right now the rules that govern the American energy system were written and devised by the incumbents, by the carbon cronies, to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, most poisonous, most toxic, most addictive, and destructive fuels from Hell rather than the cheap, clean, green, abundant, wholesome, and patriotic fuels from Heaven," blathered Kennedy.
By Kyle Drennen | April 1, 2011 | 12:32 PM EDT
Since Japan's earthquake and following nuclear crisis, the CBS Evening News has done two reports on the Obama administration blocking use of the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada to safely dispose of U.S. nuclear waste. Meanwhile, NBC and ABC have ignored the controversy.
The first CBS report on the issue came on March 22, when Evening News anchor Katie Couric declared: "The crisis in Japan has renewed the debate over nuclear power in this country. Today a federal appeals court heard arguments in a lawsuit over what to do with spent fuel rods." Correspondent Jim Axelrod explained: "An estimated 66,000 metric tons of spent fuel are stored at 77 sites around the country. That's more than 145 million pounds....Plans to make Yucca Mountain in Nevada a long-term storage site were scuttled by the Obama administration a year ago, after 20 years of planning costing $14 billion."
By Kyle Drennen | March 25, 2011 | 5:56 PM EDT
On the March 25 CBS Early Show, co-host Chris Wragge apparently merged his nuclear terms by warning viewers of leaks of "uranium and plutanium" at the Fukushima power plant in Japan. Neither he nor co-host Erica Hill ever corrected the error.
View the video below: