Uncategorized

College field program shows there’s more to citizenship than going to the polls.

Take a break from freaking out about the election and listen to this NPR audio clip about Whitman College's Semester in the West program. It's a biennial, semester-long environmental studies field course, with a heavy emphasis on public lands issues. If you have any passion about environmental issues, traveling, and/or camping, I guarantee this will make you want to go back to school.

(Grist featured Phil Brick, the professor in the story, as an InterActivist back in October 2005.)

I myself am an alumni of the program, and I'd say the audio clip is quite well done. It provides a good snapshot of what life is like during the semester and the kind of intellectual challenges students confront. As the narrator explains, students are "put face to face with people on all sides of complex issues. Students ask their own questions, and draw their own conclusions."

Endangered Rep. tones down committee website

It seems Richard Pombo has decided that using the House Resources Committee website as a dumping ground for anti-environmental talking points may be something of a liability. Or maybe he just thought the new techno design was nifty. You can still read about ANWR and the future of American energy, but some of the more propaganda-ish pages have come down.

I don't know if endangered species can truly "adapt" when their habitats are threatened, but they may try to shed skin.

So says a dumb article

I used this picture in an earlier article -- forgive me. It is just so appropriate to this topic. Anyway, that particular Homo sapiens hugging the dolphin carries my genes into the future.

Speaking of genes, researchers have caught a dolphin with residual back legs. I chose this particular article over the others because it is, well, asinine. I am not particularly empathetic with the excesses of the animals rights movement, but this article makes abso-fricken-lutely no sense. The author lost me immediately when she suggested that these fins will somehow "prove mammals know more than animal rights activists about the Animal Kingdom." Correct me if I am wrong, but animal rights activists also give birth to live young and then nourish them with breast milk. If you send her an email, please, be nice. Don't reinforce her warped image with aggressive and rude diatribes (like this one). God help her, she obviously just isn't that bright.

Looks like she might make it

It looks like Jennifer "alternative fuels" Granholm is going to pull it out in Michigan.

Just may be going down

Larry J. Sabato's crystal ball:

November 6, 2006 Update:

Jerry McNerney (D) will unseat Rep. Richard Pombo (R). Our sources on the ground tell us that momentum is firmly in McNerney's court and that late campaign help from Bill Clinton and scores of environmental groups is giving Resources Committee Chair Pombo a run for his money. Schwarzenegger's get-out-the-vote operation may yet save Pombo, but we will go out on a limb and tap McNerney to win in an upset.

Not green

Virginia's George Allen, better known for other offenses, also has Senate's worst lifetime voting record (PDF) on green affairs, as measured by the League of Conservation Voters. Watch out for that tree.

Am I the only one …

... stressed out to the point of physical illness about tomorrow?

In other news, remember that big kerfuffle over the Sierra Club endorsing Republican Lincoln Chafee? Well, it looks like Chafee's going to win by a narrow margin -- but according to at least one report, he may not be a Republican for long ...

Cliff’s Notes on saving corals and mangroves

Yo-ho-ho mateys! Me hopes ye've not yet thrown ye-selves to Davey Jones' locker over the depressing fishy news of late. Begad, buckos, I could cry enough tears to fill me empty noggin o' rum twice over ... not that I did, mind ye ... it's just the ol' patch makes me eye water a bit. Arrr ...

But in the interest of putting a positive spin on things, I point you to the climate survival guides recently published by two major conservation groups. One focuses on coral reefs -- the "tropical rainforests of the ocean" -- and the other on mangroves -- actual forests near the oceans (confused yet?). And both offer strategies that could protect these fragile ecosystems in the wake of climate change -- even if we can't reverse climate change itself. Think of the reports as wonkier versions of the Worst Case Scenario Handbook.

Misleading campaigns and unconstitutional initiatives

In my previous posts on the 2006 takings ballot measures (here, here, and here), I promised I'd get out the tinfoil hat and talk conspiracy theory. So here goes ...

Energy independence is hot campaign topic

Tomorrow is election day. Get yourself to a polling booth.

In Washington, the buzz right now is that Democrats will win a slight majority in the House and fall slightly short of a majority in the Senate.

I don't have a crystal ball, but whatever the outcome, it now looks possible that a number of freshmen in next year's Congress will have been elected, in part, on a platform of energy independence/alternative energy. Of course, elevating a political issue and solving a problem are different matters. There are many ways to imagine best intentions turning into pork-laden boondoggles (read: more ethanol subsidies). But first you have to get people to pay attention -- and to believe a different future is possible. That seems to be happening this election cycle.

Candidates in competitive races, from Jon Tester to Harold Ford, Claire McCaskill to Maria Cantwell, are running ads on the theme of alternative energy. Windmills appear in at least 17 spots.