Uncategorized Archives

Where HAVE All the Flowers Gone?

One of the great joys of living in the Rockies is taking a summer stroll in a high meadow, surrounded by wildflowers – violet lupines, deep red skyrockets, purple larkspur, penstemons, 6-foot gentians, and many others. Some of these diplays may be changing, however, according to a scientific article written up recently in the LA…

Tr-Ash Talk: Coal Over Clean Water

Tomorrow morning, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will vote on a bill to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate coal ash, introduced by Rep. David McKinley (WV-R). To quote Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone, this is not just a fight about coal ash, “it’s about demonizing the EPA, stalling the clean energy…

Roadless Déjà Voodoo All Over Again in Alaska

The long and winding saga of the Roadless Rule, adopted in the Clinton administration after an exhaustive public process, just took a new turn, though it smacks of desperation. To recap, the Roadless Rule was put in place to protect 58.5 million acres of undeveloped and otherwise unprotected land on the national forests. The rule…

Collusion in Kansas Force-Feeds Coal Power

Either the courts or the EPA should put the brakes on the Sunflower project. A coal plant that will affect air quality for decades is too important to be the end result of a polluted process.

Court: Only EPA Can Regulate Climate Change Pollution

Today, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling once again affirmed the Environmental Protection Agency as the most rightful and authorized regulator of climate change pollution in the land. While some in Congress have been trying to take this power away from the EPA, and have been attempting to block EPA controls on climate change pollution, the Supreme…

Renewable Energy Requires Storage Tech. to Capture Power

An issue that has cropped up as the country moves towards more renewable energy generation is how best to store excess energy generated, say by wind mills during windy periods or solar panels during sunny periods. Energy storage in the form of industrial strength batteries and other technologies is coming, but such things aren’t yet…

Unplugged: Should You Trust Energy Star?

The perils of relying on a trusted label

Friday Finds: Burn Notice

New sunscreen rules keep consumers from getting burned After 30 years of sitting in the sun, this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced new rules for sunscreen that help protect consumers from misleading claims, reports the New York Times. One of the rules requires “broad spectrum” sunscreens to protect against both UVA and…

Pushing Pyromania

Not all burning is bad. For example, campfires rule—when they are done sensitively. I don’t mean with tenderness, but rather with attention paid to the ecosystem and the importance of the fallen wood within it. Those fires bring light, heat and comfort to our small corners of the wild. But in other corners of the…