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Be Careful What You Ask For
Many of us, self included, have long lamented that environmental issues never play much of a role in presidential elections. I firmly believed that if Al Gore had stressed some of those issues in 2000 he’d be the one now winding up his second term. John Kerry likewise, maybe. Well, now we’ve got a campaign…
Read MoreMercury: Too Toxic to Ignore
What do San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, and Chesapeake Bay have in common? They provide a distinctive signature to some of America’s greatest cities, of course. Residents and visitors to San Francisco, Seattle, Baltimore and Washington love to walk along, play beside, and boat across these waters. All three have storied histories and strong citizens’…
Read MoreShades of Nixon—A New Enemies List
Jamie Saul is a young lawyer, a graduate of Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland and one-time law clerk in the Seattle office of Earthjustice. As he entered his third year of law school, he applied for a position in the Department of Justice in order, as his application said, to “serve as part…
Read MorePetroleum's Two Faces on Colorado Health Protections
They tell Colorado that proposed regulations will cripple the local economy, but investors are told that profits will still boom. Doom? Or boom? Is it the best of times? Or the worst? The oil and gas industry is saying it’s both. But they’re very careful about who receives which message. And the truth is a…
Read More500 Years of Fossil Fuel Furor
Long before global warming came along, fossil fuels were bad for humankind, sez Michael Stermer, a professor and author who laid out his theories this week for the Los Angeles Times. Stermer blames non-renewable fossil fuels for the world’s unending political/economic turmoil of the last 500 years. "Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point,"…
Read MorePromises or Pudding?
A few months ago, we told you about the Lafarge cement kiln in Ravena, NY giving itself an environmental award, despite being the largest mercury polluter in the state. Well, it looks like Lafarge may actually reduce mercury emissions according to new plans to update their plant. Construction, however, won’t even start until 2013. Unfortunately,…
Read MoreAt What Cost?
I just returned from a week in Pinedale, Wyoming, where my fiancé’s great-uncle, Grant Beck, an 82-year-old local and long-time ranching celebrity of southwest Wyoming, has owned and operated a ranch for 63 years. Grant’s ranch is a piece of heaven, complete with a barn, livestock, and endless views that stretch for miles into the…
Read MoreAl Gore's 10 Year Plan to Change the World
A Generational Challenge to Repower America Delivered 7/17/08 in Washington, DC
Read MoreDOE Says Drilling Won't Help for 20 Years
The Energy Information Administration is the official energy statistic keeper for the US Government. Here is what they recently said about opening up the outer continental shelf to new oil drilling. The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact…
Read MoreEPA Devalues Life
As has been often observed here on unEarthed, the Bush EPA has taken regulatory avoidance to unprecedented levels.(See Martin Wagner’s July 11 post A subtle, but nonetheless nefarious new tactic for avoiding regulation to protect human health and the environment is EPA’s recent statistical devaluation of an American life. For purposes of evaluating the costs…
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