Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down. One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food. “I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels. Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.” “We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.” Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle for America to cut back on foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way to fight climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for ethanol’s prospects. Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming. “Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem. Whether Al Gore has caught up with that, somebody ought to ask him,” the professor said. “There are lots of solutions, real solutions to climate change. We need to get to those.”....
Undoing America's Ethanol Mistake - Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." When Congress passed legislation to greatly expand America's commitment to biofuels, it intended to create energy independence and protect the environment. But the results have been quite different. America remains equally dependent on foreign sources of energy, and new evidence suggests that ethanol is causing great harm to the environment. In recent weeks, the correlation between government biofuel mandates and rapidly rising food prices has become undeniable. At a time when the U.S. economy is facing recession, Congress needs to reform its "food-to-fuel" policies and look at alternatives to strengthen energy security. On Dec. 19, 2007, President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act. This legislation had several positive features, including higher fuel standards for cars and greater investment in renewable energies such as solar power. However, the bill required a huge spike in the biofuel production requirement, from 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 to 36 billion in 2022. This was a well-intentioned measure, but it was also impractical. Nearly all our domestic corn and grain supply is needed to meet this mandate, robbing the world of one of its most important sources of food....
Natural-gas vehicles hot in Utah, where the fuel is cheap Troy Anderson was at the gas pump and couldn't have been happier, filling up at a rate of $5 per tank. Anderson was paying 63.8 cents per gallon equivalent for compressed natural gas, making Utah a hot market for vehicles that run on the fuel. It's the country's cheapest rate for compressed gas, according to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, and far less than the $3.56 national average price for a gallon of gasoline. "I'm totally celebrating," crowed Anderson, a 44-year-old social worker, who picked up a used Honda Civic GX two months ago. "This is the greatest thing. I can't believe more people aren't talking about it. This is practically free." Personal ownership of natural gas-fueled vehicles in Utah soared from practically nothing a few years ago to an estimated 5,000 vehicles today, overwhelming a growing refueling network, where compressors sometimes can't maintain enough pressure to fill tanks completely for every customer. "Nobody expected this kind of growth. We got caught by the demand," said Gordon Larsen, a supervisor at Utah utility Questar Gas. Utah has 91 stations, including 20 open to the public, mostly in the Salt Lake City area. The others are reserved for commercial drivers, such as school districts, bus fleets and big businesses such as a Coca-Cola distributor. It's possible to drive the interstates between Rock Springs, Wyo., and St. George, Utah - a distance of 477 miles - and find 22 places to pull off and fill up....
Forget Carbon: You Should Be Checking Your Water Footprint The concept of water footprints -- or "virtual water" -- will tell consumers the amount of precious H2O that has been used in the manufacture of products they buy. As with carbon footprints, a "virtual water" figure will indicate the extent to which a particular product has cost the earth. And, as with carbon footprints, the message is clear: less is better. A new website run by the University of Twente in the Netherlands, waterfootprint.org, gives ethically minded consumers a chance to work out the hidden implications of their shopping habits. Common commodities including groceries, clothes, stationery and electrical goods are evaluated according to a water footprint calculator. In each case, the water footprint covers both the manufacture and transport of the goods. The results are striking. An apple weighing 100g has a water footprint of 70 litres, while a 125ml cup of coffee has a water footprint twice that size, 140 litres. But the water used in producing wheat or meat is much greater. A single kilogram of barley has a water footprint of 1,300 litres, while the industrial production of a kilogram of beef amasses a water footprint of 15,500 litres....
Irrational Green Exuberance The last few years have witnessed an Internet-stock bubble and a real-estate bubble. Could we be approaching the bursting point of the climate-change bubble? The intensity of the current climate crusade, Al Gore’s $300 million ad campaign, and Time’s fifth panicky global-warming cover in three years (“Be Worried, Be Very Worried” read the 2006 cover) are all good contrary indicators suggesting that the hysteria is reaching its terminal stage. Like mortgage-backed securities dealers, the climate campaigners are in a panic because the public isn’t buying what they’re selling. The latest annual Gallup survey on the environment shows that only 37 percent of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about global warming, down from 41 percent last year, about the same level as a decade ago. Americans put global warming way down on their list of major environmental concerns, behind air and water pollution, toxic waste, and the loss of open space. The League of Conservation Voters is apoplectic that the TV anchors aren’t asking more climate-change questions in the presidential primary debates — and, if global warming is indeed the gravest threat in the history of mankind, they do have a point. Perhaps the blasé performance of the media on this matter is telling us something....
Are You Stomping the Environment Flat? Are you an ecological bigfoot? Various environmental groups now offer websites where you can supposedly find out. The site provided by the folks at Redefining Progress informs me that if everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need the resources of 6.5 Earths to supply everyone. I took the test again, this time selecting all the ecological choices, including living a 500-square-foot apartment filled with second-hand furniture in a large apartment building heated with biomass, using electricity generated by solar panels, equipped with low flow toilets and showers, buying all my food at farmers markets, planting my own garden fertilized by compost from my food scraps, eating a vegan diet, recycling all my paper, plastic, aluminum, glass and electronics, owning no car, never flying and traveling no more than 2,000 miles by bus or rail each year. If everyone lived like that we would only need 0.93 earths to accommodate everyone. What happens if I choose a slightly less-ascetic lifestyle? For example, what if I decided to drive my hybrid car 10,000 miles per year, added occasional dairy products to my diet, and did not grow a garden? Redefining Progress calculates that the planet would be on its way to destruction because we would need 1.10 earths to provide that same lifestyle for everyone....
Rabid bobcat attacks Ariz. hikers, is killed with hammer A couple hiking in the mountains outside Tucson were clawed and bitten by a rabid bobcat that did not relent until the man killed it with his geologist's hammer. Rich Thompson, a geologist at the University of Arizona, and his wife, a marine biologist at the school, were receiving rabies shots after Saturday's attack. Thompson said he knew the cat was rabid the moment he saw it staring at him and Katrina Mangin in the Santa Rita Mountains. He said they tried to get away but the bobcat pursued them, lunging at Mangin, climbing up her legs and wrapping its body around her, clawing and biting. The couple fought off the bobcat, but it continued attacking and jumped on Thompson's back. "I hit it with the backpack over my shoulder," he said. The cat fell to the dirt and lunged again. "It attacked me again, and I threw it down." Finally, Thompson took out his hammer and killed the animal. "It's very sad," Thompson said. "This poor kitty cat was deranged by its disease-riddled brain. I love the native cats. It was terrible to have to kill it."....
A Fish Tale There is more than just fish in the sea. It would be hard to know it from observing the progress of the Marine Life Protection Act in Northern California. Otherwise known as the MLPA, it is a multi-year process to redesign California’a nearly 100 state Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) into networks of protected marine habitats. But those working to implement the MLPA along the North Central coast are so narrowly focused on fish they are missing the proverbial forest for the trees. The MLPA is a forward thinking law passed by the California legislature in 1999 that mandates that our state system of MPAs be redesigned using principles of ecosystem management for our marine environment. The first two goals of the MLPA mandate that we “protect the natural diversity and abundance of marine life, and the structure, function, and integrity of marine ecosystems” and “help sustain, conserve, and protect marine life populations, including those of economic value, and rebuild those that are depleted.” The MLPA process along the North Central Coast is making great progress towards protecting fish. The level of conflict and tension between conservationists and the fishing community appears to have been replaced by cooperation....
California farm groups split over June ballot proposition on eminent domain When it comes to water, thirsty California farm groups normally fight as one. But it is water that is behind a growing split in the agriculture community over an eminent domain measure on the June 3 ballot. Proposition 98, backed by the California Farm Bureau Federation and an anti-tax group, would prohibit governments from seizing property, including farmland, for private use. But some farm groups – including the Fresno-based Nisei Farmers League and Western Growers Association – fear the measure would block use of eminent domain for construction of long-sought pipelines, canals and reservoirs, including one targeted for east of Fresno. The anti-98 campaign picked up more steam last week when Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, came out against the measure. The congressman is normally aligned with the farm bureau and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the measure's other backer. But in a letter last week, he said "serious questions have been raised regarding the impact this constitutional initiative will have on our ability to guarantee a plentiful and safe water supply in the future." The farm bureau – which has spent more than $298,000 on the "yes" campaign so far – is standing by the measure and has support from multiple farm groups....
Off endangered list, wolves face new pressure from hunters Tony Saunders stalked his prey for 35 miles by snowmobile through western Wyoming's Hoback Basin, finally reaching a clearing where he took out a .270-caliber rifle and shot the wolf twice from 30 yards away. Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies have been taken off the endangered species list and are being hunted freely for the first time since they were placed on that list three decades ago, and nowhere is that hunting easier than Wyoming. Most of the state with the exception of the Yellowstone National Park area has been designated a "predator zone," where wolves can be shot at will. For Saunders, killing that wolf was a long-awaited chance to even things out because he has lost two horses to wolves and blames the canines for depleting local big game herds. "It's hard for people to understand how devastating they can be," said Saunders, 39, who ranches at Bondurant, Wyo., 30 miles southeast of Jackson, Wyo. Since federal protection was lifted March 28 and states took over wolf management, 37 wolves have been killed, just over 2 percent of their population. Since 66 animals were transplanted to the region 13 years ago, an estimated 1,500 now roam Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Environmental and animal rights groups plan to file a lawsuit Monday seeking an emergency injunction to block the killings and trying to put wolves back on the endangered list....
Protection weighed for bird in West's energy areas The fate of basic industries across the Intermountain West — grazing, mining, energy — soon could be at least partially tied to that of a bird about the size of a chicken. The federal government is under a judge's order to reconsider an earlier decision against listing the sage grouse as endangered, and wildlife biologists are scouring the species' customary mating grounds to see how many are left. The species was seen as recently as 2004 over an area as large as California and Texas combined, but its habitat used to be close to twice that and research has shown that many types of human activity continue to harm it. States and even some companies have made efforts to protect the sage grouse on their own, hoping to avoid a federal listing that could stretch across 11 states. The prospect of listing the species has drawn comparisons to the northern spotted owl, whose listing as a threatened species in 1990 drew the ire of logging interests in the Northwest. But the grouse occupies several times as much land as the owl. "It will affect everything we do and know (as) a Western state, everything from livestock grazing to mining to development of sage brush habitat, wind energy," said Ken Mayer, director of the Nevada wildlife department....
Farmers fret over icy Oregon lakes Wallowa Lake is still a bank-to-bank sheet of translucent ice. And despite huge snowpacks in the nearby Eagle Cap Wilderness, the gemlike northeastern Oregon lake's water level remains unusually low for late April. The condition of this glacial lake at a 4,300 feet elevation typifies something that worries farmers, ranchers and county officials across much of eastern Oregon: Snowpacks aren't melting, storage reservoirs aren't refilling, and chilly spring temperatures have delayed the growing season. The snowpack could also make life difficult for anglers. Many Oregonians will head to higher elevations today for the opening of lake-trout season, and they'll find lakes iced over or surrounded by snow. Besides Wallowa, that includes popular Diamond Lake in southern Oregon, where dedicated anglers might have to drag out the ice augers. In central Oregon, only a handful of lakes will be open. The water content of the state's rugged and sparsely settled northeast corner was at 145 percent of average earlier this week, said Jon Lea, a hydrologist with the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service. The water content of all Oregon mountain snowpacks stood at 185 percent of average. "It has been gaining; it hasn't been melting," he said of the snowpacks, which ordinarily would be sending millions of gallons of spring runoff frothing downstream into storage reservoirs....
Breaking the public lands impasse in Washington County The debate over how to manage growth and preserve public lands in Utah has been wedged in a stalemate for decades. The Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2008 is the compromise that breaks the impasse and strikes a balance between conservation and growth. The wilderness debate in Utah is characterized by a lot of rhetoric but very little progress. With this bill, conservation groups that once opposed our efforts are now endorsing the 2008 legislation recognizing the great strides taken to protect wilderness. William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society, said it best when testifying that this bill "represents a breakthrough in what has been a long polarized debate in Utah over land protection." The bill designates 264,394 acres of public land as wilderness, which means one out of every five acres, or 20 percent, in Washington County will be wilderness. Other conservation provisions include the first Wild and Scenic River designation in Utah spanning 165.5 miles of the Virgin River, the creation of two National Conservation Areas to protect the desert tortoise on nearly 140,000 acres and enhanced management of off-highway vehicles. We also have prohibited motorized travel in national conservation areas except on designated roads. Some have raised concerns with the sale and proceeds of non-environmentally sensitive public lands. The lands directed for sale represent less than three-tenths of 1 percent of all land in the county....
An end in sight for Cemex in Soledad Canyon? An agreement announced Friday by U.S. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon could halt a nearly decade-long battle between the city of Santa Clarita and global mining company Cemex, Inc. over a planned large-scale mine in Soledad Canyon. McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, on Thursday introduced what he called "win-win" legislation that would cancel Cemex's two, ten-year mining contracts with the federal Bureau of Land Management, effectively ending any chance that the company could mine at the Soledad Canyon site. Through H.R. 5887, Cemex would be given thousands of acres land in Victorville equivalent to the value of the contracts. Cemex would then sell the land to the city of Victorville and other private buyers for purposes other than mining. The legislation would create the methodology for the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine the value of the contracts, said Mike Murphy, Santa Clarita's intergovernmental relations officer. The value of the contracts will determine how much land would be handed over to Cemex. The parties have identified about 5,000 acres of federal land for Cemex in Victorville, which lands within McKeon's 25th congressional district. If the value of the contracts is determined to be more than the value of the 5,000 acres, Cemex could acquire additional land in another area of Victorville with 3,000 available acres. The bill contains a provision that the Victorville land "will not and cannot be used for any future mining," said McKeon. "We're not trading one mine for another."....
Wyo OKs prairie dog export The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission agreed Friday to fill Montana's request for white-tailed prairie dogs and offered to continue exporting the animals each summer through 2010. Montana wildlife officials petitioned Wyoming last week for permission to trap up to 100 of the squirrel-like rodents and relocate them to open country south of Billings, Mont., where they would supplement an existing prairie dog colony. "We have more white-tailed prairie dogs than any state in the nation," said Bill Williams, a Wyoming Game and Fish commissioner from Thermopolis, during a Friday meeting in Casper. "If we're going to transplant some and help out a state with a marginal population, we're the obvious choice as a donor state." Biologists say the prairie dogs occupy hundreds of thousands of acres in Wyoming. In Montana, the animals reside on about 250 acres in Carbon County. Biologists gauge their population by land area and not by a head count. "They're dealing with very small colonies that are sparsely populated on the landscape," said Martin Grenier, a biologist with the Wyoming department. White-tailed prairie dogs, which are cousins of the black-tailed prairie dogs, weigh from 1 to 3 pounds and live in burrows underground. Conservation groups sought federal endangered-species protection for the white-tailed animals in 2004. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied protection but has decided to reconsider that decision....
Spotted owls struggle to survive as rival moves in Two birds of prey are competing for food and habitat on the same small patch of old-growth forest in the Marin Headlands. Muir Woods is a sanctuary for the white-freckled and gold-streaked creature of the night, the northern spotted owl, listed as threatened since 1990. But another owl, an aggressive hunter with the ability to imitate mating calls and adapt to the same living conditions as the northern spotted owl, has been pushing its way westward. The barred owl, native to Eastern and Southeastern states, is now making a home in the same forests that the spotted owl needs for survival. Ranking among the largest in North America, the northern spotted owl once flourished under the canopy of trees found in old-growth forests. They need the cover of redwoods, Douglas firs, oak and Western red cedar trees to build their sometimes lifelong nests and to provide shelter when they hunt. Until recently, development, deforestation and a disease that kills coastal trees, known as sudden oak death, had been the agents of the owl's demise. But now biologists fear that the highly adaptive barred owl could displace the remaining spotted owls by stealing their food and nests. Some imitate the spotted owls' behavior quite successfully and even mate with the female spotted owls, changing their DNA and creating hybrids....
The pace of conservation Intrigued by an encounter with a coyote while out on horseback near her home in upstate New York, author Holly Menino embarks on an intellectual journey to discover what the coyote is doing there. Eventually, her curiosity leads her to the Channel Islands off the coast of California, to a remote park in Chile, to Panama, and on a coyote trapping expedition with field researchers in New York. Her adventures spring to life in the pages of Darwin's Fox and My Coyote. On the Channel Islands, Menino shadows a researcher trying to explain the sudden and almost complete disappearance of the island fox, a tiny but voracious predator that once sat atop the islands' food web. In Chile she helps gather data on the elusive Darwin's fox -- so named because Charles Darwin brought one's pelt back from his historic, New World voyage. In Panama, Menino traverses the treetops in search of nocturnal, raccoon-like mammals called kinkajous. Menino makes a good point towards the end of her book: "Somehow we need to put enough drag on land degradation to give wildlife management time to work through science -- and to give the animals a chance." This optimal integration of natural processes and scientific effort is Menino's take-home message, and it serves as the underlying theme for the issues she discusses in Darwin's Fox. She writes so compellingly of the field researchers' pursuit of information that will conserve species on the brink of extinction that the reader gets caught up in the quest....
A Green Revolution Today's headlines are filled with Americans expressing their fears of food shortages and frustration with spiraling grocery prices. As part of the solution, it's time to give genetically modified crops a try. There's much resistance to overcome, however. In the fall of 2006, Friends of the Earth publicly asked governments in the hungry African countries of Ghana and Sierra Leone to recall American food aid that contained genetically modified rice. Four years earlier, when southern Africa was tormented by famine, the U.S. offered 540,000 tons of genetically modified grain. Though the World Health Organization estimated that nearly 14 million Africans, including 2.3 million children under 5, were at risk of starvation, leaders in the region rejected the food. One, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, called it "poison." Had Mwanawasa been listening to environmentalists from rich nations too much? Progress-phobic activists have campaigned hard against genetically modified, or biotech, crops. They call them "frankenfood" and fret about their risks and "unnatural" character. Destruction of property — from hazmat-suit-wearing Greenpeace mobs trampling a field of genetically engineered plants in Britain during the 1990s, to radicals destroying crops more recently at a California research center — is just another part of the crusade. There's no evidence that biotech foods, which are some of the most thoroughly tested products in history, are harmful. Humans have been safely altering their food sources for 10,000 years, cross-breeding livestock and agriculture. Genetically modified crops are part of this advance. Yet opposition remains, fueled by ignorance and hysteria....
A feel for a saddle Durango custom saddlemaker Tom Barnes likes to tell about one of the first rigs he ever built on his own. With an antique finish and silver-capped horn, the saddle was a veritable work of art. "I was all proud of it; it was just a fabulous saddle," he said. After the owner paid for the saddle, Barnes cringed as the man - a welder - tossed it unceremoniously into the bed of his truck. "He threw it over the side in with his gear," Barnes said. "I almost took it back, but I needed the money." Now, dozens of saddles later, the tables have turned. Barnes often has to convince clients to take their new saddles out of their living rooms and start riding in them. "A saddle should get beat up," he said. "That gives it character and stories to tell, like where this or that scratch came from." Barnes, 38, builds his saddles in the back of Durango Custom Hats & Saddles, which he owns and operates with his wife, custom hat maker Melissa Barnes, 37....
The real deal: La Grande, Ore., cowboy nears 100 There are cowboys and there are wannabe cowboys. Mike McFetridge is the real deal. McFetridge is due to turn 100 Nov. 16, and for nearly all of his century he's been a real-life cowboy. Although in an assisted care facility now, it wasn't too long ago that he was in the saddle and doing odd jobs around his ranch. He began riding horses at age 8 and was still riding his tractor, harrowing his field at age 98. "He still kept everything up," his son, Gary, said. McFetridge was born on a ranch that was homesteaded in 1901 on Elk Mountain about nine miles northeast of Enterprise. He started work at age 8 helping move cattle and greasing the log chute on Elk Mountain. In 1926 McFetridge won the Wallowa County Fair All-Around Champion Cowboy award at the Wallowa County Rodeo in Enterprise. His mother, Mertie, took his $125 winnings, went to Pendleton and bought him a saddle with his name across the back in silver, Gary said. Back when McFetridge competed, rodeo was different. Rodeos were more or less an extension of life on a ranch, not a professional athlete's sport. McFetridge had said that they just did it for fun back then. In McFetridge's day, saddle bronc riders had to stay on a full 10 seconds rather than the 8 seconds now required in Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association events. And, bucking chutes didn't come along until later....
Cattle trails crisscrossed Indian Territory before statehood About 1841, a few Texas cattle ranchers began driving herds of longhorns across Indian Territory to sell in Missouri and points east. The long drives were necessary because there were no good cattle markets in Texas. The Texans did not realize they were doing things that legends are made of. Their trail drives would later attract writers of dime novels to the makers of modern Hollywood westerns. The Texans entered Indian Territory at Rock Bluff on the Red River near modern day Preston, Texas. They drove their cattle northeast to Fort Gibson and then followed a military road north along the Grand River before crossing into southwest Missouri. The Texans called the route the Shawnee Trail. In the 1850s, another Texas cattle trail evolved following the Shawnee Trail from the Red River to where Eufaula is located, where it branched east to Fort Smith, Ark. There it turned north to where Maysville, Ark., is now located before crossing into Missouri. After Sedalia, Mo., was founded in 1857, this route was called the Sedalia Trail. Several thousand Texas cattle were driven across Indian Territory in the 1840s and early '50s. The flow of Texas cattle slowed after stock raisers in Missouri noticed that many of their cattle got sick and died after having contact with the longhorns. Missourians called the sickness Texas Fever. Years later, the sickness was traced to ticks carried by the Texas cattle. Angry Missouri farmers organized vigilance committees to stop Texans from driving cattle into their state. In 1855, the Missouri legislature made it illegal to drive cattle from any other state into Missouri....