wilderness

Umbra on tree planting

Dear Umbra, My wife recently heard a program on NPR where an expert on global warming said that planting trees in the Northern Hemisphere plays a negligible role in fighting global warming, while playing a significant role in the Southern Hemisphere. Do you have any light to shed on this? Randy Cunningham, Confused Tree-Hugger Cleveland, […]

Community forests help revitalize New England towns

Beyond a set of granite gates on a hillside in Rumford, Maine, a lost city sits amid silver maples and oaks, just across the river from a sprawling paper mill. It’s called Strathglass Park, and it’s a vestige of an experiment in corporate benevolence. Designed in 1904 by noted architect Cass Gilbert, who later designed […]

Montana’s landscape is changing — will America’s be next?

Montana's governor is a politician of such breathtaking dexterity, ability, and raw, hungry, political instinct that your first thought upon witnessing him -- no matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat -- is likely to be, "When does he explode, and in what manner?" For rarely in American politics has anyone this good been that way indefinitely.

Land-rich regions’ residents tell hungry politicians to back off

It is difficult to recognize change while living through it. However, two recent decisions involving the use of the public’s lands signal a historic political and policy transition, particularly here in the Rocky Mountain West. The first of those two is the almost unanimous rejection by Western governors of the Bush administration’s multiyear attempt to […]

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.).

Steve Blackmer, founder of the Northern Forest Center, answers questions

Steve Blackmer. What work do you do? I’m the president of the Northern Forest Center, based in Concord, N.H. What does your organization do? We work to revitalize the rural economy and communities and conserve the forests of the 30-million-acre Northern Forest region of northernmost New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine — the largest […]

Nicole Rycroft, recycled-paper pusher, answers questions

Nicole Rycroft. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m the campaigns director for Markets Initiative. What does your organization do? We work to completely transform heavy paper-consuming industries in Canada (e.g., book, magazine, and newspaper sectors) — to shift them away from papers originating from ancient or endangered forests and to reduce their overall […]

Arctic Refuge drilling debate misses the big picture

Sun-drenched Pelican Island in Florida is about as far from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as you can get in the United States. At first blush, the 5,000-acre warm marsh would seem to have little connection to the 19 million-acre stretch of mountains and tundra. But they are inextricably linked. A buff-breasted sandpiper. © Subhankar […]

Jordi Honey-Rosés, WWF butterfly protector, answers questions

Jordi Honey-Rosés. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? Currently I serve as program officer in the Mexican Forest Program for World Wildlife Fund, working to protect the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in central Mexico. The pine and fir forest region where I work is the winter habitat for the migratory North American monarch butterfly. […]