Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Online publishers, including blogs like this one, can’t be legally blamed for comments posted by readers … Or make that, since we’re venturing into lawyerland, a California Supreme Court ruling November 20 seems to give online publishers that limited protection against libel lawsuits.

The Poynter Institute’s Amy Gahran reports on the ruling, and advises online publishers:

If you allow comments on your site, breathe easier.

People who feel they’ve been libeled by commenters can sue the commenters directly, the court said.

Gahran has links to newspaper coverage and the ruling itself. She adds:

So far, this precedent applies only to lawsuits filed in Calif. — but that state’s Supreme Court is considered highly influential on media law, so it may well carry weight around the U.S.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

How did a small phalanx of environmental groups use political trench warfare in the November 7 elections, to topple their chief enemy in Congress — the dreaded California Republican Rep. Richard Pombo?

(Former representative, that is.)

Rodger Schlickeisen, president of the national group, Defenders of Wildlife, explained it to me, in a frontline interview the morning after the election. It was Schlickeisen who orchestrated the anti-Pombo campaign, using the young Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund to apply newfound political money and muscle, and pulling in a few other groups. I caught him on his cell phone, at the Oakland airport, where he was hurrying to catch a flight back to Washington, D.C.

Schlickeisen has agreed to let me post a podcast of excerpts from our talk. It’s somewhat risky for him, because the talk is kind of rough, with airport noise in the background, and Schlickeisen talking informally, on the run. I think it’s better for you to hear it in his words, however unrehearsed he is, compared to any summing up I could do with writing. You can hear the excitement and triumph in his voice.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

The biggest privately-held natural-gas company, EnCana, is drilling the heck out of the U.S. Rockies, but it makes interesting moves to limit its increasing impacts.

Among its efforts to be effectively polite: Near Pinedale, Wyoming, EnCana experiments with gas-fired drilling rigs (the engines emit less air pollution than diesel engines) and plywood mats under the rigs (to reduce compaction of fragile desert soils).

In Colorado, according to the Rocky Mountain News, EnCana paints its equipment earth-tone colors, to blend in better, and adds sound mufflers to limit the noise pollution.

But in the On The Other Hand Department, EnCana insists on running a 150-foot-tall drilling rig within the city limits of Erie, Colorado, night and day, despite residents complaining about the racket, glaring lights and other effectively rude behavior.

The people in Erie, and their city government, can’t stop the offensive drilling. That lack of local authority, and the industry’s political dominance, as High Country News reported in a 2002 cover story, are a widespread problem around the West.

In Erie, according to the Boulder Daily Camera, EnCana upsets a mother, Robyn Stapleton, and her 1-year-old daughter, Keira. She tells the Camera:

“They better not keep my daughter awake at night and during naps.”

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Concerned about the nonexistent economy on their Montana reservation, members of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe have voted to open their land to coal mining. It’ll be a big change, and it provides a message for everyone on all sides of the West’s energy wars.

The Northern Cheyenne have fended off mining companies since the 1970s, in court battles that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. They’ve also become a leader, among all tribes, in protecting other aspects of their lands and waters. But meanwhile, they have almost no jobs other than the federal programs, and high rates of drug use and other social ills. High Country News, in a 2003 cover story, highlighted the dilemma.

Recently, some Northern Cheyenne formed the Association for the Advancement of Indigenous Resources, and they circulated petitions to get a pro-coal measure on their November 7 ballot. The vote for mining was close — 664 to 572 — and a separate measure, calling for coalbed-methane drilling, got crushed (only 365 voted for it, with 841 against).

The contrasting votes are especially interesting. The Northern Cheyenne reservation has huge reserves of both resources. But voters see the drilling as the greater threat, potentially adding roads, well pads and pollution across more acres and watersheds, compared to relatively confined open-pit mines.

Tribal President Eugene Little Coyote tells the Billings Gazette that the Cheyenne government will proceed “very carefully” in negotiating with coal companies. We’ll see where it goes.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Westerners, for the most part, didn’t go for the ballot measures pushed by wealthy libertarian groups based outside the region.

The wrapup, combining the actions of voters yesterday with the actions of judges earlier:

Regulatory takings: These various attempts to gut land-use regulations got rejected in Washington, California, Idaho, Montana and Nevada, while Arizona voters went for the idea.

Eminent domain reform: rejected in California, Idaho and Montana, and approved by voters in Arizona, Oregon and Nevada.

Limits on taxes and government spending: rejected in Oregon and Montana, approved by voters in Arizona.

New controls on state judges: rejected in South Dakota, Oregon, Colorado and Montana.

Term limits on state legislators: rejected by voters in Oregon.

(Read on …)

Richard Pombo, the congressman who made it his mission to gut the Endangered Species Act, has not just become endangered; he has become extinct.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Most journalists keep missing the important angles on global warming. So says Tom Yulsman, a leading Western professor of environmental journalism. The angles, in his words:

… Even if we were to stop emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, we would face significant climate change. … So why is no one talking about adaptation (to the huge changes that are coming)? Politically incorrect, I guess.

Yulsman, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, made his criticism in e-mail chat conducted by the national Society of Environmental Journalists. He agreed to share it with GOAT readers.

Yulsman points to climate scientists who say, the emissions limits in the multinational Kyoto Treaty don’t do enough. He paints a bleak picture of the future and most news coverage:

… The news media have been hung up on Kyoto for a long while. And we’ve missed the boat … Modeling by Tom Wigley (at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder) shows that even if Kyoto were fully implemented, including by the U.S., and all countries met their goals out to the year 2100, the impact on climate change would be minimal. So Kyoto is not nearly enough. At best, it’s a first step.

Also consider that the carbon dioxide we’ve already put into the atmosphere will stay there for 100 years. Moreover, much of our CO2 emissions have been absorbed by the oceans, which will eventually give some of it up (venting it back to the atmosphere, adding to the warming trend).

Yulsman also cites a recent talk by James White, a renown paleoclimatologist at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, in White’s words:

“The bad news is that climate change is on its way. And the really bad news is that you can’t stop it. It’s like a freight train. … So for the next 50 years or so, the Earth is going to warm up. … In the last few years it has become very apparent to me that simply not emitting greenhouse gases won’t work. The point of no return for climate change has passed.”

Yulsman goes on:

(Jim White) says … not only will we have to remove carbon dioxide from flue gases, become much more efficient, use biofuels, switch to solar energy, etc., but we will also have to remove carbon dioxide that we’ve already put into the atmosphere.

Jim is a level-headed, serious scientist who is not prone to over-dramatization. So when someone like him says we should think about ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere — a kind of super sequestration — then you know we’ve got a problem.

Jim joins Tom Wigley in advocating what some might regard as radical and fuzzy-headed responses. Wigley, a respected climate modeler, recently suggested that we consider adding aerosols to the atmosphere to block incoming solar radiation as a way to combat global warming. (Talk about risking unintended consequences!) I took this as an indication of the seriousness with which he views the situation. … There is an array of responses we could consider, including some that might have seemed crazy just a year or so ago.

The amazing thing is that this message has not gotten through at all. People do seem to have accepted the reality of climate change. In a Pew poll this past summer, nearly 70 percent said the government should take “immediate action” to curb climate change. But I don’t think the public — or many non specialist reporters — are aware that we’re in for an interesting ride no matter what we do now. And what’s most extraordinary is that hardly anyone wants to talk about adaptation.

By adaptation, I think Yulsman means, we need to start developing new agriculture to replace whole regions that become unfarmable, and better vaccines for tropical diseases that spread to temperate latitudes, and planning for large-scale dislocations of populations, and so global forth.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Journalists wrestle with their ethics, as usual. This time, it’s over the question: Who should publish a claim that Republican Idaho Sen. Larry Craig is gay?

The claim could be bogus. It’s from a gay-rights blogger who won’t provide proof. And the senator denies it.

Yet some newspapers have covered it. Their editors reason, whether or not it’s true, the rumor could affect the senator’s political future, as he represents a highly conservative, highly Mormon state.

(Read on …)