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DOE 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…
Read MoreThe Bush Administration Needs a Nap
Although the Bush administration is only 7 years old, I would still hope it would act more mature than my 6 year-old. After reading the administration’s 588 page response to the Supreme Court’s order that it consider whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare, however, I’m thinking my son has the edge. The first…
Read MoreSome Good After All
There was a piece in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle that said that people are abandoning their cars in favor of buses and trains in unprecedented numbers and that the experts say the shift may be permanent. The reason is high gas prices, of course, and that corroborates what some of us have been saying for…
Read MoreSupreme Court May Muddy Water Law
At the very end of the current term of the Supreme Court, the justices announced that they will review a Ninth Circuit decision that forbids Coeur Alaska, a mining company, from dumping mine tailings into Lower Slate Lake north of Juneau, Alaska. This is not the best news of the week. The company admits that…
Read MoreHeroics and Visions at Earthjustice Forum
Hundreds of people at an Earthjustice energy forum gave a standing ovation to Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius last week in Denver after hearing her tale of fighting off Big Coal so that Kansas could have a clean energy future. Both Gov. Sebelius and Earthjustice presented their visions of what a national clean energy agenda might…
Read MoreSave a Job. Kill a Prairie Dog.
Oil and gas company propaganda trots out old ‘jobs v. environment’ canard. A Denver Post columnist responds ‘Oh yeah? We’ll take our environment over your jobs!’ The Colorado Oil and Gas Association and the Colorado Petroleum Association must have a lot of money, what with record profits for the industry and tens of thousands of…
Read MoreNatural Gas Junkies & Cowboy Junkies
Will Colorado’s Oil and Gas Commission coddle an industry, or protect our air, water and wildlife for when the boom goes bust? On Monday, I waited for two hours to put in my two cents before the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission. I spoke in support of their efforts to adopt modest proposals to protect…
Read MoreBill and I, Part II
Bill is a long-haul truck driver, plying his trade on the highways of middle America. In my last post about him, I told how he called Earthjustice from his truck, attacking environmentalists for bringing him, and America, to the point of economic ruin. He ranted in my ear for 5 minutes about me being stupid…
Read MoreThe Return of Ecoporn
One of the first things I ever had published in a book was a chapter in The Environmental Handbook, a Friends of the Earth/Ballantine Books number, published for the first Earth Day, in 1970. It was called, "Ecopornography, or How to Spot an Ecological Phony." It’s time to dust it off and send it around…
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