Ron Paul and the Enviroment Question

[Lois]

Can anyone tell me where to find out Ron Paul's stance on the Enviroment? I'm not sure what I mean by that -- it's just that my friend, who I turned on to Ron Paul, asked -- "What about Ron Paul and the Enviroment?"

[LizF]

I found a few items on the ronpaullibrary.org website, under "Other Topics": http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/topic.php?id=25

There don't seem to be a lot of recent writings there from RP on the environment, however, the link about the Kyoto treaty (#34 on the list), might be a starting point:

"Kyoto treaty disregards science for a radical anti-American agenda"
http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=24

Other writings you could look at, include: #23, #26

Some that are not as helpful, but have passing references to the environment: #28, #21


There may be better stuff out there, including video clips of RP addressing the subject, but this is what I was able to find for now.

[LizF]

I also found this info in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul

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Environment

Ron Paul believes that polluters are aggressors, and should not be granted immunity or otherwise insulated from accountability. In a radio interview with Dennis Miller, Paul cited the failure of environmental protection under collectivistic countries that do not respect private property, and the effect of private ownership:

"... the environment is better protected under private property rights... We as property owners can't violate our neighbors' property. We can't pollute their air or their water. We can't dump our garbage on their property.... Too often, conservatives and libertarians fall short on defending environmental concerns, and they resort to saying, 'Well, let's turn it over to the EPA. The EPA will take care of us.... We can divvy up the permits that allow you to pollute.' So I don't particularly like that method."[116]

He believes that environmental legislation, such as emissions standards, should be handled between and among the state(s) or region(s) concerned. "The people of Texas do not need federal regulators determining our air standards."[117]

In 2005, supported by Friends of the Earth, he co-sponsored a bill preventing the US from funding nuclear power plants in China.[118] He has voted against federal subsidies for the oil and gas industry, saying that without government subsidies to the oil and gas industries, alternative fuels would be more competitive with oil and gas and would come to market on a competitive basis sooner.[119] Rather than bureaucrats in Washington giving subsidies that favor certain technologies over others, such as ethanol from corn rather than sugarcane, he believes the market should decide which technologies are best and which will succeed in the end.[119] He also sponsored an amendment to repeal the federal gas tax for consumers.[120] Paul believes that nuclear energy is an alternative that should be considered, because it is a clean and efficient fuel and could help with powering efficient electric cars.[119]

Paul believes that states should be able to decide whether to allow hemp production and has introduced bills into Congress to allow states to decide this issue. Hemp can be used in producing sustainable biofuels.[80] This would help North Dakota in particular; the state has built an ethanol plant with the ability to process hemp as biofuel and its farmers have been lobbying for the right to grow hemp for years.[80]

Rep. Paul voted against bills in both 2004 and 2005 that would shield a Saudi Arabian royal family-owned group from liability for a possibly cancer-causing gasoline additive that seeped into the groundwater in New England. A Saudi-owned lobbying group spent more than $1.5 million lobbying Congress since 1998 to limit their liability for the additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), for which cleanup costs in New England would be billions. The bill included $1.8 billion for federally-funded cleanup of New England municipalities and another $2 billion to give to companies to help them phase out the additive. The provision was inserted into President Bush's energy bill of January 2004 by Majority Leader Tom Delay; the bill also included federal subsidies for oil, coal and gas. The Saudi company said that they should not be liable because they had been required to use an additive and it was more expensive to use the other possible additive, ethanol, in New England. Taxpayers for Common Sense said the measure was a "gift horse" for the Saudi-owned company and would subsidize foreign oil regimes in a bill meant to reduce dependence on foreign oil.[121][122][123]

[Oddball]

Can anyone tell me where to find out Ron Paul's stance on the Enviroment? I'm not sure what I mean by that -- it's just that my friend, who I turned on to Ron Paul, asked -- "What about Ron Paul and the Enviroment?"

Q: Which entity is the #1 industrial polluter in America?

A: The U.S. federal gubmint.

Essentially, Dr. Pauls position is that private property is the best environmental policy.

[Colleen]

Hi, I wanted to include some links in case your friend wishes to become very informed on this very important topic.

http://www.freedom.org/front/orgs-front.shtml

[Shatterhand]

Can anyone tell me where to find out Ron Paul's stance on the Enviroment? I'm not sure what I mean by that -- it's just that my friend, who I turned on to Ron Paul, asked -- "What about Ron Paul and the Enviroment?"

I think Dr. Paul needs to be more vocal on environmental issues and he definitely needs to say something about environmental destruction on his official campaign site. What is the campaign waiting for?

Show that your green, Dr. Paul.

[Colleen]

And here is another important one: the petition signed by 18,000 scientists refuting some of the claims of the Kyoto treaty.http://www.oism.org/pproject/

If your friend is a liberal, then the book: Undue Influence, by former Sierra Club honcho, Ron Arnold is good to assist in critical thinking skills required for making ammendments in ones former beliefs. It is a painful journey but one I made, so feel anyone can.

I learned that the most painful thing about all of this is in realizing how woefully we are being mislead.

The environmental movement has been co-opted by the industrialists who create the pollution. Like having the wolves guard the henhouses.

[McDermit]

I think Dr. Paul needs to be more vocal on environmental issues and he definitely needs to say something about environmental destruction on his official campaign site. What is the campaign waiting for?

Show that your green, Dr. Paul.

Agreed. He never even touches on it. There are a ton of people that would be more willing to back him if he took a notable stance on environmental issues. (Leonardo DeCaprio is just waiting for RP to speak about the environment.) I think we could pull in a good number of Hollywood types and Kucinich supporters if RP colored himself green.

[constituent]

show your green-

and yet he has the best, strongest stance on the environment.. what is with that?

no one can touch him on the environmental issues, he needs to attack that head on, the republican party's numbers would explode overnight!

[recess]

I agree I think Ron Paul needs to talk about environmental issues more.
My girlfriend likes RP a lot but wonders why he never says anything about environmental issues, which are very important to her.
I personally think RP would be great for the environment in many ways. He just needs to speak up.

[Colleen]

Ron Paul dislikes the United Nations and its solutions. If you would like to understand why, in relation to the Kyoto & other solutions, then this website will explain it very well.

http://www.freedom21.org/

[Exon]

I've had several long discussions about this with family members who are concerned about environmental issues. Here's some of what we distilled from those exchanges:

Ron Paul's Green Record is Outstanding (http://upstreamdownstairs.blogspot.com/2007/08/ron-pauls-green-record-is-outstanding.html)

Ron Paul and the Environment (http://upstreamdownstairs.blogspot.com/2007/08/ron-paul-and-environment.html)

[Colleen]

Very well said, Exon. You hit it right on the head with that one. The aforementioned link above is from his Liberty Party associate, Henry Lamb. It is jam-filled with the skinny on UN doublespeak/think/act environmental propaganda which is currently dominating environmental discourse worldwide.

Hollywood celebrities, like DiCaprio, are simply missing the whole point. They do not realize that Paul is not critical of environmentalism, but rather the UN and its hoards of appointed bureaucrats (as opposed to elected). These Hollywood dimwits have somehow - as have many worldwide - accepted UN treaties as the only authority/solution to issues of resource management. This approach is flawed and Dr Paul is spot-on in rejecting these entangling alliances.

It is too bad that our celebrities are mostly uninformed/misinformed, as they have the ability to influence numbers of people in erroneous directions and do not even realize whose agenda they speak for(the wealthiest 1%)

We just have to reeducate ourselves. Judging from folks here and other RP blogs, I think we're doing an exceptional job of that.