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Off-Road Vehicle Driving May Be Hazardous to Your Health
Advocates for off-road vehicles (ORVs) — dirt bikes, three-wheelers, and all-terrain vehicles — like to say that their recreation is all about the three F’s: "family, freedom, and fun." Now they’ve decided to add "lung disease" to the list. In California, a 48-square-mile area of Bureau of Land Management Lands known as "Clear Creek" apparently…
Read MoreWayne Newton, Uranium Mining, and the Grand Canyon
In the late 1980s, the country celebrated the 200th anniversary of our most important legal text: the U.S. Constitution. To do so, a commission was established, headed by respected former Chief Justice Warren Burger. And to lead a celebration in Washington, D.C., an equally distinguished American was chosen: Wayne Newton. Wayne Newton!!?? The original Las…
Read MoreColor of Most Politicians: Sickly Green
We don’t get very many comments here at Tom’s Turn—please comment!—so when we do, we pay attention. To this one, for example, from Brenda Hixenbaugh: "Considering the track records of certain officials, isn’t it time that we get people elected who are directly connected to all of this planet’s and our needs? Surely there are…
Read MoreOne Reason to Love National Parks
Over the last few months, I visited two of our flagship National Parks — Death Valley in California, and Zion in Utah. Both share some of the less-than-inspiring features of many national parks: the miles of paved highway, the acres of park land devoted to borrow pits, maintenance yards, employee housing, and snack bars, and…
Read MoreThe Weekly Outrage
"Some courts are taking laws written more than 30 years ago to primarily address local and regional environmental effects, and applying them to global climate change. The Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act were never meant to regulate global climate change." —George W. Bush, April 16, 2008 The…
Read MoreGood News, Bad News on the Rez
The Navajo Nation — America’s largest Native American reservation — has breathtaking scenery, disheartening poverty, and a lot of sunny, windy days. So it was good news both on and off the Rez that the Nation has contracted with an East Coast renewable energy firm to build 500 megawatts of wind power generation there. The…
Read MoreGovernors are Setting National Clean Energy Agenda
No matter what the president said Wednesday about his global warming commitment, many of America’s governors aren’t buying. Long ago they gave up hope of White House leadership on the subject and have taken matters into their own hands. Today, the governors are meeting at Yale to discuss ways they can combat global warming that…
Read MoreHow Do You Describe…Bush?
What’s the best expression to describe the Bush administration these days? Pig-headed? Stubborn? Incorrigible? Mulish? Headstrong? Dogged? Intractable, Recalcitrant, Rigid? Willful? Indeed, all those adjectives apply to the outgoing (not soon enough) Bush administration, particularly with respect to its environmental activities. A handful of illustrations. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse-gas emissions…
Read MoreBut It's a Dry Heat!
Global warming, by definition, impacts the entire planet. But warming will likely have differing impacts on different areas. What does that mean for the climate of the American West? A report prepared by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council last month boiled the answer down to three words: hotter and…
Read MoreA Grande-Sized Oil Play on Colorado Forest Land
In 1996, the Forest Service described the 1.8 million acre Rio Grande National Forest, which rings the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, as "large … and … essentially undeveloped." The agency expected things to stay that way, at least as far as petroleum extraction was concerned. An analysis of the management plan the Forest…
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