Environment Archives

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April 22, 2008

Make it your Earth Day resolution......

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January 04, 2008

earth911.org...

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December 29, 2007

Video at Raw Story Endangered Birds at American Bird Conservancy...

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November 27, 2007

Animal Comment...

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October 20, 2007

What a drag - I feel for him. I can barely listen to the murdering thug, myself. Shaking his hand at a public event? That would be very difficult. From Contact Music: Hollywood liberal ROBERT REDFORD only agreed to receive his 2005 Kennedy Center Honor from U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH after he was assured it was a recognition "above politics". The staunch Democrat was less than thrilled about shaking Republican leader Bush's hand at the high-profile event, but decided to attend for his family's sake. He says, "It was tough, but you have to shake his hand. You go through the motions because everybody's taking the high road. "I was assured beforehand that this was an honour above politics, and I said, 'If that's the case, OK, I'll have to bite it.' "It really was about my family and giving my kids and especially my grandkids a chance to...

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October 15, 2007

From John Nicols in The Nation: Having now won the Norwegian Primary, it is reasonable to ask why Al Gore would want to slog his way through the snows of New Hampshire. But the inconvenient truth is that never has the man who might yet be president needed to more seriously consider his personal legacy--not to mention the small matter of his potential to make the world anew--than now. There is, after all, the matter of the open space at the end of what is now the most remarkable resume of anyone seeking – or considering seeking – the presidency. Let's review. This is how Al Gore's resumé reads as of this morning: Son of a great senator. Harvard graduate, with honors. Vietnam veteran. Award-winning investigative journalist. Congressman. Senator. Vice President. Winner of the popular vote for President of the United States. Best-selling author. Environmental activist. Academy Award winner. And,...

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September 03, 2007

Read all about the twin freaks here......

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July 07, 2007

Read about Live Earth... Watch it on Bravo TV all day today... From Reuters: Initially rebuffed by Washington, former Vice President Al Gore's Live Earth concerts found a last-minute home in the U.S. capital on Friday after Native Americans offered their museum for the worldwide event. A few blocks from the U.S. Capitol where some Republican lawmakers had tried to prevent the Washington concert from taking place, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian will host one of several Saturday concerts highlighting climate change. "A couple of global warming naysayers used parliamentary tricks in the Congress to block that," Gore said on CNN. "Well, instead of the cavalry riding to the rescue, the American Indians came to the rescue." Concert promoters initially sought the expansive National Mall as its U.S. venue, but two groups already had permits for that space, forcing Live Earth to find another location. Gore turned...

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July 02, 2007

From Kirsten Weir in Salon: "No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored," Carson wrote. "It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I contend ... that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself." Rachel Carson has been shouldering a lot of blows lately, especially for a woman who has been dead more than 40 years. Last month marked the 100th birthday of the woman whose 1962 book, "Silent Spring," is credited with launching the modern environmental movement. While environmentalists paused to celebrate Carson's legacy, those politically opposed to environmental regulation took the opportunity to engage in some birthday-bashing. They blame Carson and her successors for millions of deaths by malaria -- deaths, they say, that could have been prevented if she hadn't scared the world away...

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June 16, 2007

From the Boston Globe: NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment. The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled. And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models. The changes come as NASA prioritizes its budget to pay...

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May 28, 2007

What are the ingredients in even the most expensive perfume? The label lists "fragrance", but what does that mean? Dozens of synthetic chemicals, most untested for safety to humans, animals, and the environment. The National Academy of Sciences reports that 95% of the chemicals used in fragrances today are synthetic compounds derived from petroleum, including known toxins capable of causing cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders and allergic reactions. Some natural fragrance alternatives: LaVanilla V'tae - try Cherries, Five Flowers, and Egyptian Garden Ecco Bella Aubrey Organics More naturally scented products: Savannah Bee - try the heavenly Tupelo Honey EO, Avalon, Alba, JASON, Sanoflore - shampoos, bubble bath, moisturizers, and more Real Purity, Lavera, Canary Cosmetics - cosmetics Sun and Earth, Seventh Generation, and Earth Friendly cleaning products Orange Mate naturally scented air fresheners More on why natural is better, from National Geographic: Synthetic fragrances commonly added to perfumes,...

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May 13, 2007

From Sheryl Crow's global warming blog: Last night Thelma and Louise drove the bus off the cliff or at least into the White House Correspondents Dinner. The "highlight" of the evening had to be when we were introduced to Karl Rove. How excited were we to have our first opportunity ever to talk directly to the Bush Administration about global warming. We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there. We reminded the senior White House advisor that the US leads the world in global warming pollution and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country. We felt compelled to...

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April 22, 2007

Read all about Earth Day... Join the Sierra Club......

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February 26, 2007

From the AP: "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary that turned former vice president Al Gore's power-point presentation on global warming into an engaging and entertaining film, won the Oscar Sunday night. The best-documentary win was a triumph for Gore, who has kept a sense of humor about his loss in the 2000 election that was decided in George W. Bush's favor by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. "I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States of America," Gore says in the film, repeating a line he has used often. Sunday, Gore used the Oscar win not to further his political career but to boost his campaign to find solutions for global warming and other environmental problems. "My fellow Americans," Gore said to laughter from the crowd. "People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue,...

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September 12, 2006

When the all the people running the country care about is giving more money to rich people, terrible things like this happen. From CBS News: Most workers thought they would be OK. In part, they say, because of what they heard early on from public officials, including then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "As you get beyond the epicenter of recovery site, the asbestos levels are either safe or nonexistent," the mayor said. Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said this at the time: "Everything we've tested for have been below any level of concern for the general public. Obviously for those working down here, these are very important," she said, holding up a respirator mask. But many workers say they couldn't get respirators at first. And when they did, they were cumbersome and often clogged, making them useless. Within weeks, most of them were feeling...

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July 03, 2006

From the AP: Breathing any amount of someone else's tobacco smoke harms nonsmokers, the surgeon general declared Tuesday - a strong condemnation of secondhand smoke that is sure to fuel nationwide efforts to ban smoking in public. "The debate is over. The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard," said U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. More than 126 million nonsmoking Americans are regularly exposed to smokers' fumes - what Carmona termed "involuntary smoking" - and tens of thousands die each year as a result, concludes the 670-page study. It cites "overwhelming scientific evidence" that secondhand smoke causes heart disease, lung cancer and a list of other illnesses. The report calls for completely smoke-free buildings and public places, saying that separate smoking sections and ventilation systems don't fully protect nonsmokers. Seventeen states and more than 400 towns, cities and counties have passed strong...

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June 30, 2006

OK, so a logical person must ask, why would anyone dispute this? Science is science. Why are Republican politicians and their corporate contributors disputing this? The fast and easy guide to why they do what they do, as always, is Follow the money. Most often, that is your answer. Otherwise, it's To appease religious fundamentalists (but only if doing so doesn't cut into the money). From the New York Times: Surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence. An influential and controversial paper asserting that recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere was probably unrivaled for 1,000 years has been endorsed, with a few reservations, by a panel convened by the United States' pre-eminent scientific body. The panel said Thursday that...

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June 09, 2006

From Katharine Mieszkowski in Salon: To the tune of the Allman Brothers Band's "Ramblin Man," Al Gore's face rides a cartoon airplane across a map of the United States. As he zips from coast to coast in a Web video clip titled "Al Gore: An Inconvenient Story," a ticker at the bottom of the screen displays his rapidly rising CO2 emissions next to the comparatively modest emissions of everyday folk. The climate-change Paul Revere's steed is an airplane, powered by fossil fuels. The implication: Gore's sure spewing a lot of carbon dioxide as he travels the land spreading the word about global warming. Produced by the industry flacks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is funded in part by Exxon-Mobil, the clip dismisses Gore as a hypocrite, leading a carbon-intensive lifestyle while scolding us plebes that we should strive to reduce our own carbon footprints. Of course, nowhere does this...

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June 02, 2006

Just got my copy of the book today and I can't put it down. For the faint of heart, it's loaded with illustrations and an easy read... get the paperback......

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May 22, 2006

From the AP: If Al Gore had been as passionate and personable on the 2000 campaign trail as he is in the global-warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” he might be in his second presidential term now. In this surprisingly entertaining film, director Davis Guggenheim has captured a side of Gore far different from the stiff political operator that came across in his eight years as vice president and his run for the White House. Guggenheim follows Gore on his seemingly selfless crusade to educate the world that global warming is an imminent threat, interspersing interviews with long sequences capturing Gore’s elaborate traveling slide show on the issue. The film is a magnificent primer on global warming and a tough-love commentary on how today’s energy gluttony could be endangering tomorrow. Gore comes off as a wry, likable college professor, the sort whose classes you always looked forward to. “I am Al...

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May 07, 2006

From Carl Pope of the Sierra Club: Republicans were boxed in by their continued insistence that the only solution to the oil problem is to increase domestic supply. Experts know it won't work, for the simple reason that the growth in world demand for oil is going to outpace any plausible increase in American output, but that hasn't stopped the push for new drilling. The collapse of Frist's proposal was made all the more spectacular when the leadership withdrew its proposal to eliminate tax loopholes benefiting Big Oil. That meant that the only financing source left on the table was drilling revenues from the Arctic Refuge. Suddenly, the ploy was transparent: It was another gambit to open the refuge to drilling. Sixteen years ago, after a long campaign led by the Sierra Club, Congress came within four votes of adopting legislation that would have required automakers to produce vehicles with...

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April 25, 2006

From Salon: ...The news today that George Bush is halting the accumulation of strategic oil reserves, recommending the elimination of environmental regulations that mandate specific blends of gasoline, and making wild statements of getting rid of boondoggle tax breaks for the likes of ExxonMobil can all be easily explained by one simple equation. High gas prices = political peril. This Friday, the White House will likely trumpet robust economic growth numbers for the first quarter of 2006, perhaps as high as 5 percent. But beneath the rosy statistics lurks a threatening scenario. The housing boom that has fueled the consumer economy for the past few years is losing steam with every passing day. Seventy-three-dollar-a-barrel oil and $3-a-gallon gasoline augur the long-feared return of a president's worst economic enemy: inflation. With the president's popularity in the polls at an all-time low, and midterm elections only six months away, every day that...

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April 13, 2006

From Kelly Overton in the Washington Post: In past decades we have removed animals from pastures, sunshine and fresh air to stack them on top of each other in petri-dish-like buildings. ...As we observe the growing number of avian flu cases worldwide, bide time until the eventual large-scale outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States and hope what the world experienced in 2004 wasn't just a dress rehearsal for SARS, the time has come to reconsider humanity's treatment of nonhuman animals -- if only for the repercussions to our own health. In past decades we have removed animals from pastures, sunshine and fresh air to stack them on top of each other in petri-dish-like buildings. As wild animals lose more and more of their habitats, they are forced to live on the perimeters of cities and towns and in a proximity to humans that increasingly appears to be...

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March 27, 2006

The seal hunt will be starting soon. Canada's commercial harp seal hunt is now bigger than it has been for 50 years, with over a million seals killed from 2003 to 2005. World experts agree that the size of the seal hunt puts the harp seal population at risk. There is not a single reputable "expert" or "veterinary group" that has observed Canada's commercial seal hunt and called it humane. Canadian regulations are neither respected nor enforced and the vast area where the killing takes place means that it is impossible to adequately monitor the hunt. THE SEAL HUNT TARGETS BABY ANIMALS, a practice that is unacceptable to the majority of Canadians. More than 95% of the seals killed are less than three months old. Severe cruelty has been witnessed and documented at the hunt during the past 30 years, and incidents of cruelty are increasing. The federal department of...

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March 20, 2006

From CBS News: In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public. As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway. Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science. But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows. Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: "Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it....

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March 01, 2006

From the AP: "I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," Bush said. In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage. Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared." The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along...

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February 14, 2006

From Ira Boudway in Salon: Local communities are left with cracked foundations, a contaminated creek, poisoned wells, and steep slopes that pour mud down when it rains because there is no vegetation to hold the soil in place. If you go to Google Maps, search for Hazard, Ky., and select the satellite view (or just click here), you will see Appalachian hills as they appear from above: thin grey lines, like lightning, against a background of undulating green. These are some of the oldest and most diverse woodlands in North America, a mixed mesophytic forest -- 290 million years in the making -- that is home to nearly 80 species of trees. Scattered in this green landscape, you will also see oblong patches of gray and brown. These are the scars left by a coal-mining technique known as mountaintop removal, in which hillcrests are blasted and scraped away to expose...

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February 07, 2006

This week, oil giant ExxonMobil announced record-breaking profits for 2005: more than $36 billion -- the largest profit ever recorded in history. Despite its enormous profits, ExxonMobil still refuses to act as an responsible company. Its policies include: * Active support of drilling in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; * Efforts to block meaningful action to cut global warming pollution and the funding of junk science to hide the real facts about global warming; * The conscious decision to forgo investment in clean energy solutions; and * The failure to pay all of the punitive damages awarded to fishermen and others injured by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Check out the video at the Sierra Club - Expose Exxon......

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February 03, 2006

Another truly evil deed. From the AP: The judge said Whitman knew that the collapse of the buildings released tons of hazardous materials into the air that would have endangered the public and yet she encouraged residents, workers and students to return to the area. A judge attacked former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman for reassuring Manhattan residents soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks that the environment was safe to return to homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood. "No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts wrote, calling Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking." Whitman spokeswoman Heather Grizzle said Thursday that the former New Jersey governor had no comment....

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February 02, 2006

Yeah. Right. From the New York Times: ...The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget. A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports. The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1....

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January 03, 2006

From John Simerman, Dwight Ott, and Ted Mellnik of Knight Ridder: Nearly 600 people who died because of Hurricane Katrina might have survived had floodwalls on two New Orleans canals not collapsed, a Knight Ridder analysis of where bodies were found after the storm indicates. The bodies of at least 588 people were recovered in neighborhoods that engineers say would have remained largely dry had the walls of the 17th Street and London Avenue canals not given way - probably because of poor design, shoddy construction or improper maintenance - after the height of the storm. In contrast, 286 bodies were recovered in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East and neighboring St. Bernard Parish, where Katrina's storm surge poured over levees and flooded neighborhoods. The role of the 17th Street and London Avenue canal floodwalls in the destruction of New Orleans has been hotly debated in the four months...

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December 21, 2005

From Bloomberg: U.S. Senate Democrats blocked a bid to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, handing President George W. Bush a defeat on a top domestic priority. The drilling provision is attached to the $453 billion defense budget for fiscal 2006, which passed the House Dec. 19. Democrats, with help from some Republicans, used a procedural tactic known as filibuster to block consideration of the bill. The 56-44 vote fell 4 votes short of the three-fifths margin needed to cut off debate. Republicans have 55 seats in the 100-member Senate. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist met immediately after the vote with Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska, who sponsored the oil-drilling provision. The provision ``has to come out,'' said Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi, a former majority leader. ``Now we have to go on.'' Stevens has said the defense bill can be quickly rewritten without the drilling provision...

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November 20, 2005

Visit stopglobalwarming.org for what you can do (one thing is to urge your mayor to join the mayor of Seattle's US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement)......

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November 11, 2005

The fight isn't over yet. From Katherine Mieszkowski in Salon: Environmentalists were celebrating Thursday as House Republicans dropped a plan to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "We're definitely popping the champagne," said Melinda Pierce, lobbyist for the Sierra Club. "It's a significant victory." Then again, those who oppose the controversial plan to drill in the refuge may want to put a cork in the festivities. Yes, moderate Republicans did manage to excise the plan from the current House budget bill. But that doesn't mean caribou and musk oxen won't one day be roaming around oil derricks on the northern tundra. Here's why. The Republican-friendly budget bill, which dropped the drilling plan, will slash about $50 billion from federal programs like food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare and student aid. Assuming that Republicans muster enough votes to move this draft of the bill on to conference committee, it must still...

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September 11, 2005

Here is a copy of the Anatomy of a Disaster PDF... From the Los Angeles Times: President Bush activated the National Response Plan on Saturday, Aug. 27, two days before the hurricane struck, when he declared a federal emergency in Louisiana. Under the plan, this made the Department of Homeland Security "responsible for coordinating federal resources utilized in response to major disasters.""The moment the president declared a federal disaster, it became a federal responsibility," said Jane Bullock, who spent 22 years at FEMA under presidents of both parties....[The] failures raise unsettling questions about the federal government's readiness to deal with future crippling disasters. An examination of how the plan was administered during the crucial early hours of this natural disaster reveal more confusion than coordination and repeated failures of leadership. The plan on paper was not always apparent on the ground. Cooperation among government agencies faltered at almost every level,...

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September 10, 2005

He is following the words of Jesus. You know, the words the so-called "Christian Right" never mention, much less follow. Kurt Vonnegut on Bill Maher's show last night said this; Maher replied they follow the old testament, not the new (the testament of Jesus). From Matthew Chapter 6: Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly....

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These are the Camp Casey folks who stood with Cindy Sheehan. Donate...

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September 09, 2005

No brainer. So of course, the no-brained Bush sheep bleat denials. From the Washington Post: The deployment of thousands of National Guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana in Iraq when Hurricane Katrina struck hindered those states' initial storm response, military and civilian officials said Friday. Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that "arguably" a day at most of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq. "Had that brigade been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," said Blum. Blum said that to replace those units' command and control equipment, he dispatched personnel from Guard division headquarters from Kansas and Minnesota shortly after the storm struck. Blum also said that in a worst-case scenario, up to...

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From Real Time with Bill Maher: We have another guest to help us put Hurricane Katrina in perspective. He is editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, who teaches biological science at Stanford. Please welcome Professor Stephen Schneider. Professor. STEPHEN SCHNEIDER [via satellite]: Hey, Bill. MAHER: How are you, sir? SCHNEIDER: I'm fine. MAHER: Well, if you're not really a professor, you look like one. SCHNEIDER: Okay. Guilty as charged. MAHER: All right, I wanted to have you on to answer a question, because you're a scientist like me--no. But every time I see President Bush talk about this since he got out of his vacation--he keeps saying "natural disaster" in a very defensive way. "It's a natural disaster" - what - "natural." And, of course, obviously, hurricanes are natural. They've been occurring since the beginning of time. We're not going to stop them. But storms feed...

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September 08, 2005

Let's see, keeping the wetlands is good for flood control. So why did Fox News Channel's Brit Hume say environmentalists wanting to preserve the wetlands was a cause of the Katrina disaster on his show last night? His show, by the way, was hysterical. Hume, with his basset hound expression, kept bringing up what Democrats said and did, then immediately mocking them ("Of course, they are wrong and here's why.") Even the Democrat's understandable desire for an impartial nonpartisan (or at the least truly bipartisan) commission to investigate the federal government's response to Katrina was mocked. This continued for the entire show. From Geoffrey Lean in the Independent: The skimping has worsened since President Bush's election, particularly after 11 September. Federal spending on flood control in south-east Louisiana has been cut by almost half since 2001. Funding for flood prevention was slashed by 80 per cent, work on strengthening levees...

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September 02, 2005

From Sidney Blumenthal in Salon: By 2003, the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature. A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that...

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July 30, 2005

From Michael Grunwald and Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post: During the debate over the bill's numerous subsidies, taxpayer groups questioned why thriving energy companies need federal aid to produce energy. ... the energy bill that Congress passed yesterday... gave the federal government new eminent-domain powers to clear paths for power lines -- a long-standing demand of the nation's electric utilities. The utilities said they were being thwarted by not-in-my-back-yard opposition, so the politicians came to their rescue. The provision was just one example of how the energy bill, touted as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil or moderate gasoline prices, has been turned into a piñata of perks for energy industries. "Every industry gets their own little program," said Myron Ebell of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute. "There's pork in there for everybody." The bill exempts oil and gas industries from some clean-water laws, streamlines permits for...

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July 23, 2005

From the Huffington Post: The Sierra Club's lawyers have been sifting through the legal opinions of Judge Roberts, and the picture that emerges is quite alarming. He was one of the few judges who thought that Vice-President Cheney should be allowed to keep the proceedings of his Energy Task Force secret as a matter of right (Sierra Club v. Cheney). He didn't think the EPA should have to take into account the health effects of arsenic, lead and cadmium from smelters (Sierra Club v. EPA). He didn't think the District of Columbia should be able to prohibit the shipment of tank cars full of deadly chlorine gas right past the U.S. Capitol, even though he admitted that there could be "calamitous consequences of a terrorist attack on a rail car transporting Banned Materials through the District" (CSX Transportation, Inc. v. Williams). When the federal government refused to promulgate an effective...

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July 19, 2005

From Alternet: Rainforest Action Network (RAN)... placed a ...full-page ad in the New York Times on Thursday that featured Dick Cheney, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and William Ford, Jr., CEO of Ford. As part of its Freedom From Oil campaign, RAN's ad posed the bold rhetorical question, "What do these three men have in common?" The answer: "They all love gas guzzlers."...

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July 16, 2005

From the Union of Concerned Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) distributed a 34-question survey to more than 460 NOAA Fisheries biologists, ecologists, botanists and other science professionals working in headquarters and regional and field offices across the country to obtain their perceptions of scientific integrity within the agency, as well as political interference, resources and morale... * More than one third of respondents positioned to make such recommendations (37 percent) have “been directed, for non-scientific reasons, to refrain from making findings that are protective” of marine life and nearly one in four (24 percent) of those conducting such work reported being “directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a NOAA Fisheries scientific document;” * More than half of all respondents (53 percent) knew of cases where “commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions or...

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June 28, 2005

From AFP: Vehicles powered by hybrid or clean diesel engines will double their US market share by 2012 as drivers shun gas-guzzlers because of high oil prices, new research predicted. Such environmentally friendly engines are on course for 11 percent of auto sales by 2012 from 4.8 percent this year, according to the research study by JD Power-LMC Automotive Forecasting Services. "Higher gas (petrol) prices are acting as a catalyst for automakers and consumers to find alternatives to the traditional gasoline internal combustion engine," JD Power-LMC auto forecaster Anthony Pratt said. "We anticipate this will lead to dramatic growth, particularly with diesels, over the next several years," he said. Thanks to tough emissions standards imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, new diesel engines have to be far cleaner than the smoke-belching ones of the past. They remain far more fuel-efficient than petrol engines. Hybrid engines that use a combination of...

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June 22, 2005

From John Vidal in the Guardian: President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian. The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy. Article continues In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable. Other papers suggest that...

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June 15, 2005

From Bloomberg: The U.S. Interior Department inspector general concluded that the Bush administration offered in 2002 to overpay a prominent Florida family for oil and gas rights on Everglades land, according to people familiar with the matter. In a report to the Senate Finance Committee to be made public today, Inspector General Earl Devaney says the department nearly tripled earlier estimates of the value of the mineral rights, the three people said. The agreement wasn't completed and the people familiar with the situation said Devaney's findings would scuttle it. President George W. Bush announced in May 2002 that the federal government would pay $120 million in cash plus an undetermined amount in tax deductions to prevent the Collier family's privately held Collier Resources Co. from drilling for oil and gas on 400,000 acres of land it owns in what he called ``critical parts of the Everglades.'' Two previous government assessments...

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June 14, 2005

The Bush dynasty made their fortune in oil, Dick Cheney amassed $60 million as CEO of Haliburton Oil Company, and Chevron named an oil tanker the "Condoleezza Rice" after their former director. And that's just the tip of the oil well. From Pure Energy Systems: A new Yale University research survey of 1,000 adults nationwide reveals that while Americans are deeply divided on many issues, they overwhelmingly believe that the United States is too dependent on imported oil. The survey shows a vast majority of the public also wants to see government action to develop new "clean" energy sources, including solar and wind power as well as hydrogen cars. 92% of Americans say that they are worried about dependence on foreign oil 93% of Americans want government to develop new energy technologies and require auto industry to make cars and trucks that get better gas mileage The results underscore Americans'...

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June 08, 2005

From Andrew Revkin in the New York Times: A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents. In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports. The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust. Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that...

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May 15, 2005

Read about the drive at the site of organizer Seattle Mayor Nickels......

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May 11, 2005

From Common Dreams: Today the Bush administration will announce the formal repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which was issued by the U.S. Forest Service in January 2001 to protect the last remaining wildlands in our national forest system. The rule placed about one-third (58.5 million acres) of the national forest system's total acreage off-limits to virtually all road building and logging. Conservation groups considered it one of the greatest forest conservation measures in U.S. history. For more information about the roadless rule, click here. The following statement is by NRDC Senior Attorney Niel Lawrence: "Today the Bush administration completely ignored the will of the American people by axing our country's most popular forest conservation measure. Americans have made it clear that they want to preserve and protect the small percentage of our national forests that remain roadless and wild. But the president has replaced the roadless rule with...

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April 30, 2005

Just like the photo ops "clearing brush" on his ranch, wearing a fold-creased field jacket fresh from the shipping box. As the Daily Show said on Earth day, it's just as well he scurried back in, because it might have started hailing as it did for his recent appearance on Earth Day, since "the earth hates him." From the AP: The young American chestnut was already sitting in its hole in the ground and a fresh pile of dirt was waiting nearby when the president -- wearing a business suit -- strode out to throw on three shovelfuls and pronounce his Arbor Day commemoration complete. "We don't want to get carried away," laughed President Bush... "This is our little part to help it come back," Bush told reporters. "Our message is to our fellow citizens: plant trees -- it's good for the economy and it's good for the environment." The...

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April 26, 2005

Heard this on the Daily Show, funny but quite likely true: Bush was scheduled to talk at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Earth Day, but a sudden hail storm stopped him. Why, Jon Stewart asks? "Because the earth hates him!"...

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April 17, 2005

From Katharine Mieszkowski in Salon: "Essentially, the agency adopted a do-nothing approach to mercury for the next 12 years," said John Walke, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean-air program. When children in Dr. Kevin Browngoehl's practice suffer from learning disabilities or attention problems, the pediatrician wonders whether methylmercury in the fish their mothers ate before they were born is to blame. "Once the damage has been done, it appears to be a permanent thing. It's something I can't do much about as a doctor," says Browngoehl, who practices in Drexel Hill, Penn... "The mercury is damaging and killing the cells as they're trying to develop areas of the brain that deal with attention and memory," Browngoehl says. "You have a nerve poison being introduced during a critical time of the development of the brain."... The mercury studies are behind the EPA's advisory to moms and would-be moms to...

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Now that there are no checks and balances in our government, the unfettered greed of neoconservative cronies drives policy, rather than what is best for all Americans. From Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker: ...Picking up where Reagan had left off, President George W. Bush, in 2001, included a drilling provision in his ill-fated energy bill; after that bill died, Senate Republicans tried, unsuccessfully, to insert a similar provision into the 2004 budget resolution. Last month, this tactic finally worked, and the Senate approved a budget that would open up the 1002 area... Perversely, one of the key votes in favor of drilling for oil in Alaska came from Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, who backed it in return for a promise from the Bush Administration to extend a moratorium on drilling for oil in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. (“I would understand how some might view it as...

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April 15, 2005

From a letter from Carl Pope of the Sierra Club: Dear Sierra Club Friend, I am saddened to report that California's Giant Sequoias are in trouble. Influenced by timber industry lobbying, the U.S. Forest Service is advancing a forest management plan that would allow logging and road-building inside the magnificent Giant Sequoia National Monument -- once again putting these majestic trees at risk. But the Sierra Club has a strong voice - and we are determined to use it to protest this proposed giveaway to the timber industry. And that's where you come in. The U.S. Forest Service's "forest management" plan will destroy this natural heritage forever by: Please Donate Now * Opening the Giant Sequoia National Monument to commercial logging around and even inside the Giant Sequoia groves; * Allowing bulldozers and other heavy logging equipment within the Monument's fragile habitat; and * Filling up to 3,000 commercial logging...

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April 13, 2005

Too bad more people don't stop to find out what they are putting in their bodies. Or to consider the needless suffering we are inflicting upon our fellow creatures on earth, animals. From Rebecca Clarren in Salon: The happy cow on the label of Horizon organic milk flies across the carton like some grocery-store superhero. The ubiquitous red milk carton in your local supermarket is like a stop sign for consumers: go no further, your quest for healthy milk ends here. The back of the carton assures us that Horizon milk is produced on certified organic farms, where "clean-living" cows "make milk the natural way, with access to plenty of fresh air, clean water and exercise." Horizon cows are not hopped up on antibiotics, continues the cheery copy. "Happy, healthy cows produce better milk for you and your family." Just now, though, at one of Horizon's dairy farms in central...

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April 07, 2005

Poor children, at that, because what other families would feel compelled to take money to expose their children to health risks? From the AP: Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said Wednesday he will block a vote on President Bush's choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency until he receives assurances that a pesticide study being carried out in the Jacksonville area is halted. Nelson, a Democrat, said he was taking the action because EPA administrator nominee Stephen Johnson indicated at a hearing Wednesday that he would not cancel the two-year environmental study of infants' exposure to pesticides. Johnson was nominated by President Bush in March to be the first career scientist in the agency's 35-year history to rise through the ranks to the top job. He would succeed former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who last month became head of the Health and Human Services Department. According to a statement from...

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March 22, 2005

Business as usual. From Shankar Vedantam in the Washington Post: "They are saying if they fail to regulate mercury from power plants at all, it really wouldn't make a difference. To acknowledge the real benefits would be to raise the next question: Why didn't you go further?" When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff. What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion. That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents, said a staff member who helped...

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