Politics
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First priority for new Congress is Keystone pipeline. Why? Here in Pocatello, Idaho, today gas prices fell to $1.99 a gallon. They have been dropping for over a hundred days in a row. In January a year ago, prices were over $3.75 a gallon. Meanwhile, the new Republican congress is about to get underway. Their…
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Politicians play to the incoherent fears of wimpy folks. This is bad for protecting the planet and its wildlife- Just two months ago many Americans feared they would soon be stricken by dread Ebola and those who survived would have their heads lopped off by ISIS. Fortunately a cure was deployed for both Ebola and…
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Election results put takers of U.S. public land in a good position? The 2014 congressional elections put an increased number of supporters and sympathizers of the states taking the public lands of the United States in office. They want the states to take over the national forests, the BLM lands, maybe the national wildlife refuges, and even some…
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WASHINGTON — The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) soon to be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives contains several provisions that would undermine current efforts to protect greater sage grouse on nearly 60 million acres of public lands, and would lead to listing greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The livestock lobby…
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Heather Tallis and Jane Lubchenco published a commentary titled “A Call for Inclusive Conservation” in the November 2014 issue of Nature. The essay sought to broker a truce or compromise between two philosophical positions in the conservation movement today that can be characterized as “new conservation” which promotes human utility as the primary goal of…
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Outcome for halting adverse climate change, protecting the environment, curbing pollution and toxics was very negative- Republicans scored an across-the-board victory in Tuesday’s mid-term elections. That they did well is not surprising. Mid-term elections are almost always bad for a President’s party, especially in the sixth year of a two-term President. Republicans, however, did even…
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I sent this into the Helena IR in response to an article that basically tried to portray the idea that environmental lawyers and groups were getting rich off of law suits that are often characterized as “frivolous”. In truth no one wins a law suit if it’s frivolous, and the fact that some groups win…
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Was demonization of wolves sort of a test case? Looking back after almost 20 years at organized attempts to terrify Americans into supporting policies that the right wing likes, it can be argued that demonization of wolves was sort of a test case, an experiment. Turning around the increasingly favorable public perception of wolves was…