Felice Pace

This morning on the news show Democracy Now! Amy Goodman asked energy guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute why the Bush Administration continues to push drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The question was in response to Lovins’ assertion that oil corporations don’t want to drill in ANWR because of the difficulties, expense and lack of effective security along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Goodman then asked Lovins why – if that is the case – the Bush Administration continues to push drilling ANWR. Lovins said that he didn’t know the reason.

Since Bush first proposed it, I’ve believed drilling ANWR is promoted as a straw dog.

Bush et al understand the core dysfunction of the environmental establishment: all the large “nationals” think they must be seen as THE group – or at least one of the main groups - defending the highest profile environmental issues. The Bush Administration uses this knowledge to “force” the environmental establishment to spend most of their staff resources “defending” ANWR and other high profile places. The establishment merrily goes along with the charade because it is good for fundraising.

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Felice Pace

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio are each planning to introduce legislation for Oregon’s federal forests. DeFazio has distributed drafts of his bill and has been receiving comments back from environmental and timber interests; Wyden has been less forthcoming.

Both members of Congress have indicated that their bills will protect Old Growth Forests while accelerating “thinning” of younger trees. The Oregonian and other Oregon newspapers have published articles about both the Wyden and DeFazio plans for Oregon’s public forests.

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Rob Inglis

If you really cared about the West – and the damage it’s going to suffer at the hands of global warming – you’d live in downtown L.A. That’s what you might conclude after reading Ernie Atencio’s recent HCN story on “The high carbon cost of la vida rural.” And – unfortunately for those of us who kind of like living in rural western places – it’s a conclusion supported by this map showing per-capita carbon emissions across the U.S. Places with high per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are in red, places with low per-capita emissions are green, and places with not enough data (mostly due to a lack of people) are gray.

Kevin Gurney of Purdue University’s Vulcan Project produced the map (which is also available in high-res) using a dataset of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions broken down into emissions per 10 km by 10 km square. He combined this emissions information with Census Bureau population data to get emissions per capita. It’s not an exact calculation because the U.S. Census doesn’t collect its population data in 10 km by 10 km grids. But it’s a start. And it’s enough to make those of us who live in the rural West stop and think.

Felice Pace

In his essay “The latest trend in name-calling” (HCN, June 9, 2008) Ed Quillen has again given us food for thought as well as entertaining observations. Ed identifies use of the word “Eco-terrorists” by both environmentalists and their opponents with emergence of the Bush Administration’s “global war on terror” after 9/11. But in fact use of the term by opponents of the Environmental Movement emerged much earlier. I should know; I have been labeled an “eco-terrorist” many times over the past fifteen years or so by those who oppose my work as a forest and river activist.

I first began hearing the term “eco-terrorist” used to describe environmentalists in the early 1990s – in the middle of the struggle over the Northern Spotted Owl and the Ancient Forests of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. At the time I lived in Siskiyou County California. Siskiyou County is about the size of Connecticut. Last time I checked, the county had about 50,000 resident people and 100,000 resident cattle. This is a free range county and its leaders vie with each other in efforts to demonstrate disdain for environmentalism and support for cowboy “custom and culture”.

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Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

With the start of milling on April 30 at the Dennison Mines’ White Mesa (uranium) Mill six miles south of Blanding, (Utah), the future of Blanding may have never looked brighter.

So writes Buckley Jensen in a recent issue of the San Juan Record newspaper. If I were a bit snarkier, I’d point out that “bright” (and its closeness to the word “glow”), might not be the best word-choice for describing the future of a nuclear-industry town. But I’m not here to critique a small town paper’s glowing review of a potentially hazardous new operation in town. More important is the significance the mill could have in the world of Utah and Colorado uranium mining.

News of a uranium renaissance is nothing new. Thousands of uranium mining claims have been staked in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona in reaction to skyrocketing uranium prices in recent years. But actual mining has been hampered by the fact that there was nowhere to get the ore processed. In fact, the only operating mill in the United States has been the White Mesa Mill, just outside Blanding, and right next to the White Mesa community of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. But it only processed old uranium waste and tailings, not conventional ore.

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Evelyn Schlatter

This past Saturday, the Absolut vodka company issued a formal apology for an ad it ran geared toward its Mexican markets. Absolut is known for its often edgy and creative ads, but this one brought calls for boycotts from U.S. consumers.

So what’s the big stink?

Syndicated conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, a blogger who also writes for Fox News, dubbed the ad “Absolut Reconquista.” The ad shows an 1830s-era map of the United States with the American Southwest as part of Mexico, which is what the boundaries were prior to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which set the present-day border between the U.S. and Mexico in the wake of the U.S. and Mexican War (you’ll see it as “Mexican-American War” as well). The slogan across the map is “In An Absolut World.”

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Felice Pace

Few in the West are unaware that the federal crackdown on immigration has had an impact on western industries. The March 3rd edition of HCN, for example, included this comment on the situation from Bill Crooke’s essay for Writers on the Range:“There are upsides to the employment crunch (in Cody, Wyo.): It’s harder to get fired, and the increasingly desperate business community has to keep raising wages and incentives.”

Crooke may have been thinking more about the energy boom, but the loss of immigrant labor is affecting wages and employment not just in Wyoming but throughout the West. Even Silicon Valley is feeling the pinch. But the largest impacts are on low wage service industries and agriculture. From California to Colorado and Arizona to Idaho growers are wondering who will pick the fruit, prune the vines and hoe the weeds while motel owners wonder who will clean the rooms and restaurateurs are in search of cooks and dish washers. .

Another western industry which has “suffered” as a result of the immigration crackdown is the ski industry.

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Francisco Tharp

While a nice, fresh pesticide can be just ravishing as a spicy kick to sliced peaches or tossed spinach, a recent study published on the BMC Neurology website suggests that some pest killing compounds are–gasp!–terrible for our health.

More specifically, the study has correlated Parkinson’s disease to pesticide exposure. The guiltiest culprits in this study were herbicides and insecticides, such as organochlorides (which include the now-banned DDT) and organophosphates, says a Washington Post report.

The suggestion that some pesticides contribute to Parkinson’s disease is nothing new, but the study did break ground by reducing the genetic variable. Researchers studied pesticide exposure in people with the disease compared to their healthy relatives.

Despite the finding, the study’s lead researcher says “biological evidence is presently insufficient to conclude that pesticide exposure causes PD,” reports the Post. Nonetheless, it probably couldn’t hurt to go for organic next time you head to the market (or garden, if you’re the home-grow type).

Francisco Tharp

If you’ll be spending any time in the San Francisco Bay area summer and fall, you may want to hold your breath–while you’re there, that is.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California’s agriculture department plans to cover San Francisco, Marin County and the East Bay with Checkmate, a hormone that impedes the reproductive efforts of the light brown moth. Beginning in August, the dustings will occur at night.

State officials see the spraying as a preemptive strike against WMD (Widespread Moth Destruction), which could devastate California’s agriculture industry.

But those rascally health aficionados in the area (yes, the same area that outlawed plastic bags in 2007) are outraged. Hundreds of folks who were sprinkled with Checkmate in Santa Cruz and Monterrey Counties from September to December reported coughing, wheezing, and headaches, among other symptoms.

The article says,

The USDA’s Hawkins said the EPA has generally not been concerned over the toxicity of Checkmate. For example, he said, the agency never set a maximum limit for the pesticide in food or required farm workers to stay out of fields that had just been sprayed.

Somehow this doesn’t make me feel any safer. After all, the USDA doesn’t see anything wrong with genetically modified crops (see HCN’s “Brave New Hay”), and the Environmental Protection Agency extinguished California’s attempt to cut CO2 emissions.

Click here to see why one organization is ready to “run” and “escape” from “a toxic cloud of government corruption.”

Or, click here to see why we have nothing to fear…that’s right, nothing to fear at all.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

How can the West’s cities have it all? Most urban residents want open space, parks, and well-planned, contained development rather than endless land-eating sprawl. And most of us want that development to be affordable, so that we can live reasonably close to where we work.

At first glance it sounds appealing and reasonable, this vision of town life with greenbelts a-plenty and tightly-clustered, not-too-expensive homes and apartments, all surrounded by pristine open space. In places like Boulder, Colo., and Seattle, Wash., strict land-use regulations have made that vision a reality — except for the “not-too-expensive” part.
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Ray Ring

Senior Editor

They’re all the rage, because:

They use less energy. They save you money on your electricity bill. And they kind of save the planet, or at least, they reduce the upward trend of global warming.

So we’re all installing compact fluorescent bulbs in all the light fixtures in our houses.

Turns out, “there’s a catch.”

That’s the warning from the new Santa Barbara-based Miller-McCune think tank:

Low-energy bulbs — also known as compact fluorescent lamps — contain small amounts of mercury. … (And) when you break a bulb with mercury in it, the mercury instantly vaporizes in the air and poses a health risk to people who inhale it. The U.S. National Institutes of Health warns: “Exposures to very small amounts of mercury can result in devastating neurological damage and death.”

One country — the United Kingdom — has begun alerting the public:

So this month, as stores throughout the United Kingdom began pulling traditional tungsten bulbs from their shelves as part of a government mandate to completely replace them by 2011, ministers at the Environment Agency were simultaneously calling for more public education — including warnings printed on bulb labels — about the health and environment risks presented by low-energy lights.

As a sober BBC report put it: “Official advice from the Department of the Environment states that if a low-energy bulb is smashed, the room needs to be vacated for at least 15 minutes. A vacuum cleaner should not be used to clear up the debris, and care should be taken not to inhale the dust. Instead, rubber gloves should be used, and the broken bulb put into a sealed plastic bag, which should be taken to the local council for disposal.”

Sheesh. The Miller-McCune story is here. Is no type of progress completely safe?

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Apologies to all our blog commentators, whose opinions, corrections and additions we greatly value. A technical problem — now corrected — caused all your posts to be erased. We’d be grateful if you repost your comments, although we understand that could be tedious.

But from now on, it should work, and we hope you’ll keep on giving us your responses.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Over the past twenty years, two poisons meant for livestock predators have killed thousands of unintended victims — dogs, bears, bobcats, raccoons and more (see our story here about one family’s experience).

The federal Wildlife Services Agency (an Orwellian agency name if there ever was one) places thousands of M-44 traps, which spew sodium cyanide when tugged on, on public land each year, and provides Compound 1080-laced collars for sheep and goats (see our story here about predator killing by Animal Damage Control, the agency’s former incarnation).

In 2006 alone, reports the Associated Press, these poisons killed more than 14,000 animals, including wolves, foxes and coyotes. M-44s have also harmed several unlucky humans, including Utah resident Dennis Slaugh, who back in 2003 tugged on what he thought was a survey stake and still suffers from the poison’s lingering effects.

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