As sure as April brings showers and May brings flowers, June brings ozone pollution warnings. These alerts come to us by way of air quality reports in our local weather forecasts, and they let us know when ground-level ozone pollution, the primary component of smog, reaches a dangerous level in the air we breathe. We see the alerts almost exclusively in the summer because sunlight and hot weather spur chemical reactions between air pollutants, thereby forming ground-level ozone and, in turn, smog.

Smog, then, fills the air until it's hard for some of us to breathe, especially babies and children, whose lungs are more delicate and less developed. Babies, children, senior citizens, and people who suffer from asthma, allergies, breathing problems, and lung disease bear the brunt of the suffering from smog, but scientific research shows us that no matter how healthy, we all are vulnerable to this dangerous pollutant.

Anyone who spends time outdoors in the summer may be affected, and millions of Americans live in areas where the national ozone health standards are exceeded. (Conversely, ozone in the upper atmosphere -- the good kind of ozone -- forms a layer that protects life on earth from the sun's harmful rays.)

Today until midnight, March 22, is final day of the EPA's public comment period for this ozone pollution standard. Please join tens of thousands of others and take a moment to send EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson a message, urging her to adopt the strongest possible standards for ozone pollution.

Update: You can learn more about Earthjustice's work to save wolves (including an interactive timeline) in our newly updated campaign page.

The wolf lifts its muzzle and—as its breath flows like smoke into the crisp air —you hear the sound of wilderness, crying out from the TV set.

This image alone is worth a visit to your local PBS channel, starting tonight (Feb. 26), to view a documentary examining how wolves in the northern Rockies have been affected by the Obama administration's relaxation of regulations protecting wolves. To see when the program can be viewed in your area, go here.

Earthjustice attorney Doug Honnold, who has spent much of his career working to protect northern gray wolves and grizzly bears in the Rockies, figures prominently in the film. He carefully describes natural and man-made threats to both species, and makes clear his disappointment with Obama's Sec. of Interior Ken Salazar for signing off on a Bush administration decision to stop protecting wolves under the Endangered Species Act.

Dome Peak Roadless Area, Colorado - Photo (c) Ted Zukoski

More than a decade ago, dedicated conservationists within and without the Forest Service began clamoring for a nation-wide policy to protect the last remnants of roadless lands across the National Forests. The rationales were many: providing solitude for wildlife, preventing wildfires (which occur most often near roads), protecting water supplies for cities and towns, and leaving the last scraps of land unharmed by the buldozer after a century of pressure from loggers, miners, and other development.

And after the most comprehensive public input process in the history of American government—more than a million comments from members of the public, hundreds of hearings and open houses, a comprehensive environmental review—President Bill Clinton signed the "Roadless Rule" into law with just a week remaining in his term. The rule proteced 58 million acres of America's last unroaded lands from auction, bulldozing and commercial logging.

But the Roadless Rule immediately came under assault. George W. Bush and the logging lobbyists he hired to run forest policy promptly set about dismantling the rule. And even before the rule had been signed, anti-environmental interests had filed the first of a barrage of lawsuits aimed at taking down the rule.

The rule had its defenders, however. Conservation groups, represented by my Earthjustice colleagues Jim Angell, Kristen Boyles, Tim Preso, Tom Waldo and others, fought off the attacks in court. And, for the most part, they won. Thanks to them, when the Bush Administration finally packed its bags, the Roadless Rule was bloodied but very much alive.

And now, nearly a decade after it was adopted, the Roadless Rule will celebrate another red letter day.

Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle often titles his sports column, "Deep Thoughts, Cheap Shots, and Bon Mots," which always makes me smile and which I'm stealing just for today.

The huge storm that has buried DeeCee under multiple feet of snow is proof that global warming is a hoax.

The fact that we've had a great deal of rain here on the left coast also proves that if the climate is changing it's all for the better and that the drought is over. Or maybe not.