Faced with drought and plunging profits, Colorado farmers are under growing financial pressure to hawk their land to developers. Between 1993 and 2001, about 1.5 million acres of farmland in the state were put on the market and developed; 300,000 of the acres were sold in 2001 as a drought began to take hold. State officials are scrambling to come up with solutions that will slow the loss of agricultural lands. Trouble is, some of the solutions -- including more dams and logging to increase water resources for farmers -- won't be to the liking of environmentalists. So far, water …

Cowboys and environmentalists unite! The unlikely amigos are banding together to try to keep natural gas drillers away from ranches on public land in the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado. Yesterday morning, they blocked drilling crews from entering four ranches, arguing that drilling leads to erosion, water contamination, and livestock deaths, but the ranchers say they've been unsuccessful in their efforts to attract the attention of Congress and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "This is a David-and-Goliath issue, and as long as Washington is not behind getting the problem fixed, it will not be …

Detroit automakers sure aren't complaining about the Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate. They anticipate having a close ally in the incoming chair of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who is known for his criticism of clean air regulations and the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. He once referred to federal environmental agencies as "Gestapo bureaucracies." On the other hand, automakers don't quite know what to expect from Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.), who will assume the reins of the Commerce Committee. McCain has been an outspoken proponent of increasing fuel-efficiency standards for cars, SUVs, and …

Ignoring the overwhelming consensus among scientists worldwide, the Bush administration this week unveiled a proposal that would have the U.S. embark on another years-long study to assess whether humans are causing the globe to warm. Industry officials and other climate skeptics lauded the research plan. But many climate scientists said it would simply reopen issues that most experts consider resolved. Others said more research would be helpful, but not at the expense of delaying action to address climate change. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University said, "If you strip away the rhetoric, there's a valuable agenda of research here to pursue. …

Now that President Bush has strengthened his hand with a Republican-controlled Congress, his once-doomed energy plan -- which would provide $30 billion in tax cuts for the fossil-fuel and nuclear-power industries and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling -- stands a good chance of passing. Enviros are pinning their hopes on possible presidential contenders, John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who in the past have promised to filibuster any bill in the Senate that would allow drilling to begin. Meanwhile, Bush's plan to increase logging in national forests as a way to combat wildfires will also be …

Horrendous wildfires in Indonesia five years ago accounted for a whopping 13 to 40 percent of the world's total carbon emissions that year, according to new research published by European and Indonesian scientists in the journal Nature. The fires were probably ignited by timber companies and farmers trying to clear the drought-parched land; ultimately, the fires swept through an area twice the size of Belgium. Most of the greenhouse emissions did not come from burnt trees, but from carbon-rich deposits of peat. The research puts forest fires on the map as a leading culprit of greenhouse emissions, right up there …

To meet energy demands without escalating the problem of global warming, humankind must embark on a research effort as grand in scale as the Apollo project to put a man on the moon, say scientists in a study published today in the journal Science. The 18 researchers -- coming from government, universities, and even such traditional climate change naysayers as ExxonMobil -- conclude that within 50 years, clean energy technologies will need to produce up to three times the energy now generated by coal, oil, and other fossil fuels. Without that kind of output, and unless the use of fossil …

The Bush administration's plan to expand fossil fuel exploration in the West ran into an obstacle Wednesday when a federal judge temporarily blocked the Interior Department from allowing energy prospecting on thousands of acres of public land in Utah. The ruling halted a project by a seismic exploration company to search for oil and gas reserves in Utah's Arches National Park. The company intends to use 60,000-pound "thumper trucks" to vibrate the ground to test for oil deposits. Environmentalists say such testing would cause irreparable harm to the area and are asking the court to require the feds to conduct …

Refiners should have no problem producing nearly sulfur-free diesel by 2006, according to a report released yesterday by an advisory panel to the U.S. EPA. The panel was convened last year by EPA Administrator Christie Whitman to assess possible technological barriers to complying with a clean diesel rule issued in the final weeks of the Clinton administration. That rule requires refineries to reduce sulfur emissions from 500 parts per million to 15 ppm by 2006, a move that will go a long way toward cleaning up tailpipe exhaust from trucks and buses. Such exhaust causes and accelerates respiratory ailments such …