Articles by David Roberts

Raincoast responds to Eric de Place

Several days ago, periodic Gristmill contributor Eric de Place of Northwest Environment Watch wrote a post assessing the Raincoast Conservation Foundation's purchase of hunting rights along a broad swath of coastal forest in British Columbia.

What follows is a response from Chris Genovali, Executive Director of the Raincoast Conservation Society.

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While the rest of the global conservation community applauded Raincoast Conservation Society's purchase of commercial trophy-hunting rights throughout a vast region of British Columbia's central coast, Eric de Place of Northwest Environment Watch (NEW) chose to produce an opportunistic hit piece targeting this cutting edge initiative. The article was extremely uninformed and exhibited a significant lack of understanding of grizzly-bear biology, as well as the ecological, political, and cultural context in which Raincoast's initiative has occurred. But it is easy for an armchair critic like de Place to take pot shots from his ivory tower "think tank" when his criticism is based on such superficial arguments.

Earth to Dover, come in, Dover

Good news: A federal judge has squashed the Dover, Penn. school board's attempt to teach "Intelligent Design" in science classes. You can read the ruling (PDF). Here's a snippet:

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

Nice.

(via Pharyngula)

Inhofe and Robertson

Chris Mooney relates an amusing exchange between Pat Robertson and James Inhofe on the 700 Club a while back.

I'll just add for the record that while I cannot speak for all environmentalists, I do not worship "the creeping things, the four-legged beasts, the birds and all that." Indeed, I have no god at all -- a possibility of which Robertson and Inhofe seem incapable of even conceiving.

Stevens and the defense bill

Update [2005-12-19 14:47:12 by David Roberts]: Oops, I forgot the obvious: To try to stop this thing, please write your Senators.

As forecast last week, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) managed to get Arctic Refuge drilling attached to the defense spending bill. He couldn't wrangle it into the budget reconciliation bill, so this is his last-ditch effort. He has said:

Katrina will be on this [defense] bill. That's what makes the defense bill a little bit attractive because Katrina will be there. It is going to be awful hard to vote against Katrina.

The levees will be paid for when we drill in ANWR.

The House passed the bill in a "bleary, pre-dawn vote" this morning (they must be so proud of themselves).

Now everything comes down to the vote in the Senate. Democrats have promised to filibuster the bill.

"I don't have any hesitation to be a part of a filibuster," said Democrat Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. "This is a fight worth waging."

This is really end-game time, folks.

Below the fold, I've put some quotes from people reacting to Stevens' bid, culled from various sources (Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, news reports, etc.).