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500 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…
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…
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