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Energy Efficiency: Powerful Foe of Global Warming
Energy conservation is the biggest, cheapest way to avoid building new power plants and significantly fight global warming. And it offers powerful economic benefits, as California has found through aggressive programs that have created 1.5 million jobs while cutting energy bills by $56 billion since 1972. Moreover, energy conservation is something individuals can help with…
Read MoreEcuador Gives Rights to Nature
Most environmentalists believe that nature has a right to exist for its own sake, but that’s not how the law works in our country. In the United States, nature is defensible only if a human will miss the forest, species, or clean water when it is gone. To use the law, a human must first…
Read MoreFlorida Takes On Global Warming
I just finished a year-long appointment on Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s Action Team on Energy and Climate Change. We released a blueprint that, if put into action, would make Florida one of America’s most aggressive states in tackling climate change. We studied the gamut: alternative energy sources, vehicle emissions, landfill gases, forestry practices, building construction,…
Read MoreCrisis and Opportunity
The late Dan Luten was sneakily brilliant, somewhat iconoclastic, and possibly a maverick had that word not been so debased lately. In his fifties, he left a job as a chemist with Shell Oil to teach geography at Cal and became deeply involved in conservation. He served on the board of Friends of the Earth,…
Read MoreInterior Goes Nuke-u-lar on Grand Canyon
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne didn’t like the law that required him to promptly protect public lands around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. So he’s getting rid of it. Citizens have only a few days to express their opposition. With less than 100 days left in its life, the current administration has its hands full. …
Read MorePeople Do
Chevron has long been a leader in image advertising, spending an immense amount of money on print and television ads explaining to the public just how utterly wonderful the company is. Years ago, their tag line was "People Do," in answer to rhetorical questions like, "Do people really care what happens to our precious wetlands?…
Read MoreCorps Suspends Phosphate Mine Permit
We won a significant victory in our phosphate case on Oct. 6. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suspended a permit that gave Mosaic Phosphate the go-ahead to destroy 480 acres of high-quality wetlands within Southwest Florida’s Peace River watershed. Our court case is ongoing, but the Corps decision to suspend the permit shows that…
Read MoreCosts of Forest Loss “Dwarfs Bank Crisis”
Attention has been focused on the financial crisis recently. Yet a study headed by a Deutsche Bank economist concludes that the annual costs of forest destruction is between $2 trillion and $5 trillion. So while Wall Street has lost between $1-$1.5 trillion, we are losing "natural capital" at a rate of $2 to $5 trillion…
Read MoreDamned If You Do
Another story the other day, this time from the San Jose Mercury News, showing the perils of importing predators to control pests. This time it’s the mosquitofish, a guppy-sized fellow, brought into California from the East Coast in the 1920s to control, you guessed it, mosquitoes. The fish are voracious—can eat 500 mosquito larvae in…
Read MoreTo the Streets
It’s not all that often that front-rank political leaders call for civil disobedience, but that’s just what Al Gore did in New York on September 24 at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. "I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal…
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