Oil and Gas
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Orofino, Idaho. The Clearwater National Forest has denied the use of U.S. Highway 12 along the famed Lochsa River for the transport of megaloads bound for what some call the “tar sands hell” of south central Alberta. While the bulk of this battle was successfully fought a couple years ago by opponents of the transport…
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Leaks and spills of Canadian oil are happening now at a critical time- Back in 1989, all the political gears and levers were greased with money and Astroturf public opinion to approve leasing the National Arctic Wildlilfe Refuge for Oil Drilling. Today we seem to be at a similar juncture. In 1989 the political players…
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After years of talk, action- The Wildlife News, like other local and even national media, has reported frequently about the beauty and the threat to the lengthy biannual pronghorn migration route from Jackson Hole to the Wyoming high desert and back. It’s not like nothing was done to conserve this threatened spectacle, it’s that nothing…
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Did non-violent protest work here? The news is that Tim de Christopher is getting out of a California federal prison a bit early, after 18 months instead of 2 years. He will serve out the last 6 months in a Salt Lake City halfway house. Presumably there in work release they will try to have…
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Talk about the need for a presidential candidate science debate leads somewhere- Back in 2008 there was mounting concern that science had always been left out of the presidential debates. This concern led to efforts to demand presidential candidates discuss these issues. Soon there was the formation of Science Debate 2008. This group, small at…
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Oh, the many effects of extracting the world’s dirtiest oil! Despite the huge PR offensive by big oil, Alberta, and Canada’s right wing government, it is hard to overwhelm the public into thinking digging big holes to get out the bitumen is a great idea. Scientists, bloggers, conservation groups, and even segments of the Democratic…
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Slogan might sway elections, has no effect on gasoline prices- Whenever the price of gasoline rises, we hear what is by now a coordinated shout that there needs to be more domestic oil drilling and “damn, the damn bunnies” and the rest of the wildlife too. Thirty seconds thought tells a person that a short…
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Earthquakes, water pollution, political pollution, and now toxic chemicals in the air near fracking wells- It seems every day the news about the negative side effects of fracking gets worse (and the TV ads run by the American Petroleum Institute and others more manipulative). Aside from the methane in the natural gas, a number of…