As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to "uphold and defend" the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which set out to protect nearly 60 million acres of pristine national forest lands across the country. Not long ago, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who has responsibility for the Forest Service among many things, announced that he will personally review any projects proposed in roadless areas. This move was labelled a year-long "time out" for road building and logging by some in the media, but in fact, there's no guarantee.

With an eye toward nudging the president to a more bold and forthright act, five conservation organizations are launching a major ad campaign aimed directly at the president.

The pictures are not what you'd generally call beautiful, but they're stirring nonetheless: the early stages of the demolition of the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River in Oregon, which has been killing salmon for decades.

The demolition is the result of yeoman (yeowoman too) efforts by a cast of hundreds, including Earthjustice's Mike Sherwood, who jumped through dozens of hoops, went to court, raised hell, and finally prevailed. Demolition will take some months yet—a celebration at the site is planned for October 10, though that could change a little. Go to Waterwatch for updates. Savage Rapids Dam Is Dead. Long Live Savage Rapids.

A good case could be made that the most important U.S. federal environmental laws are the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. And what do they have in common? They were enacted (amended since in some cases) in the early 1970s and signed into law by Richard Nixon, a conservative republican.

Which makes the reaction of the Republican right wing to the recent House passage of a compromise climate bill so interesting.

Remember the John Birch Society? The virulent right-wing McCarthyist outfit born in Indianapolis in 1958? I hadn't heard of it for years, would have guessed it had passed quietly back into the fourteenth century, but low and behold it's still alive, kicking, screaming, and denying the fact of global warming and climate change.

The Alabama-based environmental law firm Wildlaw has just announced the hiring of Mark Rey as a part-time lobbyist to work on national forest restoration projects in the Southeast and to help with land acquisition efforts.

Here's a little backstory. Wildlaw is headed by an attorney named Ray Vaughan, and it has done much good work in the Southeast defending national forests and scarce species and waterways and other resources. Mark Rey was the Under Secretary of Agriculture overseeing the national forests under George W. Bush, and a more reviled figure among environmental activists would be hard to find.

Two long and thoughtful pieces today, one from the Daily Journal, the other from Greenwire, discuss in painful detail the thumping environmental cases suffered at the hands of the Supreme Court this term. In each case, the court overturned a pro-environment ruling from a court of appeals.

The first case involved whether the Navy must protect whales and dolphins from the effects of loud noises. The most recent case, an Earthjustice case as it happens, revolved around a permit the Corps of Engineers awarded to a mining company that allows the company to dispose of toxic mining wastes in an Alaskan lake. In between, the court found that environmental groups didn't have the right to challenge certain Forest Service regulations, that Shell Oil was not responsible for cleaning up a Superfund site in California, and that cost-benefit calculation at a New England powerplant was legal. The decision the court overturned in the last case, incidentally, was written by Sonia Sotomayor, who looks likely to become the next associate justice. In all five cases, the court upheld rules put forward by the Bush administration.

On June 22 the Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 decision that makes lakes and other waterways across the country vulnerable to being used as waste dumps for mining operations and other industrial processes. The case involved the Kensington mine, a gold mine north of Juneau, Alaska. The owner of the mine, Coeur Alaska, was awarded a permit by the Army Corps of Engineers that allows the company to deposit mine tailings into Lower Slate Lake as long as the mine operates, killing all aquatic life in the lake. The company promises to restore the lake to its former state, a process that would take several decades if it is possible at all.

Earthjustice sued to block the permit, arguing that it is in blatant violation of the Clean Water Act and that other methods are available for disposing of the tailings.

The other day I happened to tune in to the Diane Rehm show on NPR to hear John Holdren, the president's science advisor, talk about the new climate change report that made stark headlines last week, reporting that warming is here, is having serious negative effects already, and is largely caused by human activity.

There is actually no original news in the report; rather it is the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey yet released. It was put together by representatives from some 30 government agencies who reviewed dozens, probably hundreds, of research papers from all over the world. As always, John's commentary was clear, direct, and sober. So far, so good.

Biking in to work the other day I heard an underwriting pitch from IBM, touting its new campaign, or slogan, or website, call it what you will, for "A Smarter Planet." Oh boy. Now we're going to teach the planet new tricks, show it where evolution has fallen short.

Don’t you guys get it? It's not the planet that lacks smarts, it's the human race. We should learn from natural systems, pattern human society on systems that work, are sustainable and don't foul their own nests. (Semirelevant aside: Paul Hawken just gave a lovely commencement speech to a group of graduates in Portland. Among many interesting things he said was, Do you realize that humans are the only species on the planet that do not have full employment? Worth pondering. The whole speech is quite wonderful and uplifting in fact.)

The Ketchikan newspaper just published a long editorial titled "We Love Surprises," urging Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to surprise them and approve some new roads and timber sales in the Tongass National Forest despite the recent directive that suggests the administration is planning to take a year or two to study the situation and decide whether to make the 2001 Roadless Rule permanent.

The editorial makes it sound as if the only thing at stake is the very survival of Southeast Alaska. The piece also makes it sound as if the environmental movement is all powerful and dictating how the Obama administration acts in these matter.

If only that were so.