Celebrated my birthday yesterday, so this is a shortened version.

PETA calls for changes at Winn-Dixie The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has submitted a shareholder resolution calling on Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. to report any progress it has made toward adopting animal welfare policies that pertain to the purchase of eggs, pigs, chicken and turkey. PETA acquired 180 shares of the Jacksonville-based grocer just in time to attend its last annual shareholder meeting Nov. 7, 2007. Members of the media were not permitted to attend the meeting, but according to a representative of PETA who was there Winn-Dixie CEO Peter Lynch pledged to study the controlled-atmosphere method of killing PETA proposed. PETA alleges in the resolution that the poultry that Winn-Dixie purchases are conscious during slaughter, the eggs are from suppliers that give hens very little space and that the pigs are kept virtually immobilized. The non-profit also said other grocery stores, including Safeway and Harris Teeter, have updated their purchasing practices to improve animal welfare standards for some animals by using suppliers that utilize controlled-atmosphere killing....
New ethanol plant bets on a better method than corn The fabled road to U.S. energy independence has wound its way to this small town east of Lake Charles, where a plant opening today could help usher in a new era for ethanol. The 1.4 million-gallon-per-year demonstration plant will attempt what others have found difficult — to produce large quantities of ethanol as cheaply from agricultural waste and nonfood crops as from corn, the main crop used to make the fuel in the U.S. It may be a big bet. Some experts say that so-called cellulosic ethanol still costs at least $1-per-gallon more to produce than corn-based ethanol. But Verenium Corp, the Cambridge, Mass.-based energy firm behind the project, has developed a process it believes will help reduce costs, pave the way for wide-scale cellulosic ethanol production and silence ethanol's detractors. "The issue isn't, 'is there going to be ethanol,' " Verenium Chief Executive Carlos Riva said Wednesday as he stood outside the just-completed plant. "But how can we do it right?" President Bush has signed legislation calling for production of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, five times the current level, to help reduce what he has called the nation's addiction to oil....
The Carbon Curtain Czech President Vaclav Klaus warns that environmentalism is becoming a new totalitarianism. There is still a bear in the woods, but it's no longer the Russian bear. This time, it's a polar bear. Having lived much of his life in a nation once ruled by communists, Klaus recognizes a tyrannical ideology where elites trample on individual freedoms for the greater good when he sees one. Speaking Tuesday at the National Press Club to introduce the English version of his book, "Blue Planet, Green Shackles," Klaus said that global warming is being used as a means to erode our freedoms. Klaus called alarms about man-made climate change a "quasi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something above him" and that it is being exploited by a new elite "certain they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea a reality." On June 2, the Senate is going to take up the America's Climate Security Act, a cleverly titled assault on both our freedoms and our economy offered up by Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner. The bill essentially limits how much gasoline and other fossil fuels Americans can use, as Klaus puts it, "in the name of the planet." A study by Charles River Associates puts the cost (in terms of reduced household spending per year) of Senate Bill 2191 at $800 to $1,300 per household by 2015, rising to $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050. Electricity prices could jump by 36% to 65% by 2015 and 80% to 125% by 2050. The Heritage Foundation says the bill would raise gasoline prices by $1.10 per gallon by 2030. More importantly, Heritage notes, the act "represents an extraordinary level of economic interference by the federal government" that "promises extraordinary perils for the American economy."....
BLM imposes restrictions for grouse Coal-bed methane development plans of more than one well per 500 acres will be shelved in certain areas of the Powder River Basin for the next two years, according to federal land regulators. Federal officials are drawing boundaries over large blocks of areas spanning the industry's "fairway" down the center of the basin between Gillette, Buffalo and Sheridan where the temporary limitations will be enforced beginning this summer. "The oil and gas (industry) is certainly the most significant issue in terms of people, jobs and money," said Bureau of Land Management Buffalo field office manager Chris Hanson. Grazing, recreation and other land uses could also be limited. Hanson and other federal land managers faced a hostile crowd of more than 300 coal-bed methane workers and landowners here Wednesday as they laid out a sage grouse planning process that will shelve numerous pending developments and likely lead to layoffs in the industry....
Climate Debate Rejects Science For Ideology I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats. Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems — from ocean currents to cloud formation — that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative. Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation....
U.S. District Court: Groups ask to shield wolves Conservationists who oppose the removal of wolves from under federal protection - and who call the delisting unlawful - sought an emergency injunction Thursday to stop the animals' killing. Last month, a coalition of 11 environmental groups sued the U.S. Department of the Interior in an effort to keep gray wolves in the Northern Rockies region on the endangered species list. At a hearing in Missoula on Thursday, the coalition's attorney, Doug L. Honnold of Earthjustice, tried to convince U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy to extend federal protections until the lawsuit is resolved. About 17 lawyers representing as many state agencies and nonprofit policy groups defended the management plan, which requires states to maintain a minimum of 300 wolves. Agency officials say they are committed to maintaining at least 450 wolves and that the actual population likely will be about 1,000. The region's wolf population is increasing by about 24 percent annually, according to wildlife officials. But environmentalists say state officials and ranchers have already killed 77 wolves since the delisting, at a rate of more than one wolf per day, and that the states' wolf management scheme represents a return to many of the policies that resulted in wolves' eradication from the Western landscape....
Liberty Is Worth the Abuse We get a lot of abuse, those of us who publicly defend private property rights and voluntary arrangements against the varied depredations of government. Having to constantly face such attacks is a substantial part of the cost of speaking out, and probably explains why more people don't take the risk. For those who might be considering publicly taking up the cause of "life, liberty, and property," I offer the following example to give you a taste of what you can expect. Note that it is far from the most egregious example I could relate; it is not intended to discourage you, but only to prepare you for the cost you may have to bear — to help you develop the requisite toughness. In California, there are two competing eminent-domain propositions on the June 3 ballot. One (Proposition 98) would offer some real protection against such abuses, while the other (Proposition 99), written and qualified for the ballot by those who inflict the abuses (i.e., government entities) and those who gain from them (e.g., big developers), is designed to confuse voters into overriding the real reforms....