Red, Green, and Blue

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The US government likes to declare war on issues in which there are no clear enemies, while physically fighting undeclared wars against foreign people. President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer and recreational drugs. Will George W. Bush declare war on climate change?

Tim Hurst wrote, “I would argue that the only opportunity the current president has to leave a positive and lasting legacy is to take ownership of the climate change and global warming issue” in response to rumors that Bush supports a new climate proposal. Could this be Bush’s declaration of war on climate change? I hope not, as the United States has failed to previously win a war on cancer, poverty, or drugs, and these wars have gone on for decades. We don’t have decades to solve the problem of climate change; we must do it now. Of course, when Bush is involved, I have to be skeptical of his true intentions, especially when the Associate Press reports the Bush administration is motivated to avoid a “train wreck” of climate change regulations. I suspect the Bush climate policy would be a watered down version of these other regulations, besides the White House may already be retreating on the issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last 7 years, the current administration has meddled with the affairs of the Environmental Protection Agency to such a degree, that the badgering and tampering is having a detrimental effect on the morale of agency staffers. And the latest news that EPA officials have ceased their efforts to follow a Supreme Court order to propose regulations for carbon dioxide emissions from automobile tailpipes is, yet another, in a long list of examples where the Bush administration has overstepped its legal boundaries and asserted its political will in matters where it shouldn’t. Even though EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson agreed with the court’s findings and proposed motor vehicle regulation to the Department of Transportation back in December, the agency has not evaluated dangers nor proposed any regulations - and is not expected to. Read the rest of this entry »

…while Mother Nature plays the streets for chump change.

Even in this economic down turn, oil companies are still making record profits!

Is it sad that I dream of a day when we are exploited by the renewable energy industry?
Read the rest of this entry »

A federal judge has blocked a mining company from exploring for any further uranium near the grand Canyon. Several groups had sued the U.S. Forest Service for backing the plan without full environmental reviews. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Murguia of the U.S. District Court in Arizona issued a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction stopping the drilling late last week.

“The Grand Canyon is too important for the Forest Service to give short shrift to the possible and significant negative impacts of uranium mining exploration,” said Sandy Bahr, conservation outreach director for the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter. “The Forest Service should take a hard look at the impacts and the public should have an opportunity to review and comment on this mining exploration,” added Bahr. Read the rest of this entry »

This cartoon popped in my head after reading colleague Tim Hurst’s article “Feds Issue Waiver of Environmental Rules for Border Fence” in Red Green and Blue last week.

Other motivation for this cartoon comes from the historical (and current) treatment of native Americans, and this unsourced quote from MAD Magazine: “The suburbs are where they cut down all the trees and then name the streets after them!”
Read the rest of this entry »

Ecosystem will be severely fragmented by fence

The Bush administration has announced it will wave more than thirty federal laws to finish building a wall along the Mexican border by the end of this year. The Washington Post calls the move the most sweeping use of the administration’s waiver authority during the wall’s construction. The waivers allow the Bush administration to bypass mandatory reviews on how the wall will affect ecological areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. House Homeland Security Committee chair Bennie Thompson called the waiver “an extreme abuse of authority.”

Environmental groups have filed petitions challenging the waivers before the Supreme Court siting several potential ecological hazards that would be created by the fence. Biologists are especially concerned about a handful of extremely rare jaguars that prowl up from Mexico over mountain trails in some of the wildest country in the southwest. Read the rest of this entry »

In a stunning reversal of direction, the Bush administration has officially requested a new addition to the Endangered Species list. What threatened species could elicit this drastic change of course for the Bush Administration? It is, of course, the elusive Climate Change Skeptic (dubium mundus fervesco), whose habitat is being threatened by rational thinking, increased rates of deforestation, low gas-mileage standards, and the abundance of “cheap” coal. The stunning news comes just after a story in the Washington Post reported that the current administration has never requested that an animal be protected by the Endangered Species Act. Of the current administration’s 59 listed species, none of them were requested by the administration themselves.

But the Bush administration is not alone in wanting to protect such skeptics as Fred Singer and Patrick Michaels, in fear that the breed may die out completely in the coming years. Fortunately, the skeptics have received significant funding from coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil. Read the rest of this entry »

Five years have gone by. The U.S. casualty toll is now 4,000. It is estimated that some 80,000 plus Iraqi civilians have lost their lives in the war.

Photo Courtesy of Luke Plunkett @ Kotaku.com

There isn’t a body count for wildlife, native plants, or eco-systems that have been killed in the struggle.

War takes a priceless toll on everything natural. Yet, nature may be the last thing that nations go to war over.

How long before we decide to protect the environment through force?

Can we go to war over the environment and still save it?

This may seem far fetched, but the possibility of an environmental war is already being discussed in the U.N.

“Ecological security must no longer be considered a luxury but rather an inextricable element of a durable peace policy,” states Klaus Topfer. He calls for international guarantees for protecting the environment similar to the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of prisoners and civilian populations in war. For ecological damage poses a threat greater than bombs to populations distressed by hunger, thirst, and disease.

If ecological damage is classified as such a great threat, could wars be declared to save the Amazon rain forest or Mediterranean fish populations?

Dr. Klaus Topfer, head of the U.N. environment program thinks that war is very likely. Perhaps not for the Spotted Owl. But as populations grow, natural resources are going to become more and more scarce. As nation’s need, war will likely occur.

Currently one quarter of the world’s population does not have access to clean water. If trends continue, Pakistan and China, both will be struggling to hydrate their populations. And a scary thing is they possess nuclear weapons. If push comes to shove for H2O, what would their options be?

To prevent this, we have to move away from our unsustainable systems. We need to use agencies like the U.N. to moderate, educate, and propagate nations towards an environmentally sustainable future. Not just for the birds and trees, but for our own survival.

We need to make our peace with green now.

[UPDATE: After posting this, I was introduced to a wonderful piece on the same topic written by A Siegel for his blog Energy Smart. Please be sure to check out his post, too--it contains lots of great information.]

We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that’s all we’ve got

Okay, so maybe the above David Bowie lyric was about alien invasion and the impending end of humankind as we know it, but it’s been playing on a loop inside my head ever since Wednesday, when we “celebrated” the fifth anniversary of our war in Iraq.

Five years. My brain definitely hurts a lot.

While the current administration will have us believe that the surge is working and that stability has returned to once volatile regions, the truth is probably closer to a “whack-a-mole” strategy that shows no signs of leading to a peaceful resolution for this ongoing nightmare.

A majority of Americans now say this war was a mistake, and we continue to hear reports—be it from the peripheries—of civilian lives lost, soldiers’ lives lost, soldiers injured, vets suffering from PTSD, tax dollars spent, etc. Still, perhaps one of the greatest casualties of this war gets very little mention.

I’m speaking, of course, of the environment. Read the rest of this entry »

When the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act last December, the bill included a passage that could effect Canada’s oilsands, and that has the Canadian government nervous.

The law prohibits federal procurement of fuels that produce more global warming emissions than conventional sources. Canada is concerned because the fuel taken from the oilsands is considered alternative fuel under the new energy act and it produces more global warming emissions than other sources. It complicates things because U.S. firms have major investments in the oilsands and the U.S. government currently gets a lot of fuel from there, so the U.S. essentially passed a law that could jeopardize this arrangement. In the province of Alberta, the oilsands represent the second largest oil reserve on the planet after Saudi Arabia.

Read the rest of this entry »