Gore's nutty idea He's a former vice president of the United States, Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author, so the lavish news coverage of Al Gore's latest brainstorm was inevitable. Less understandable is why an idea so irresponsible - in economic terms, in fact, just this side of deranged - attracted so little ridicule. Gore proposed last week that the United States "commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." Not just all new electricity, mind you, which would be challenging enough. But all existing electricity, too. This would of course require utilities to mothball hundreds of existing power plants as they launched a crash construction program of solar plants, wind farms and transmission lines costing hundreds of billions and perhaps trillions of dollars. Gore would subject 300 million people to an experiment in which baseload power that is needed 24 hours a day to keep the economy - and our livelihoods - humming is replaced willy nilly by power sources still susceptible to natural disruption (such as lack of wind or lingering cloud cover), that cost more (at least in the case of solar) and are far less plentiful in some regions than others (Colorado is lucky at least in that regard). He'd inflict monumental utility price hikes on consumers who'd pay for both the shutdown of old plants and construction of the new - with who knows what economic fallout...
Forest Service boots resort owner After shutting down his resorts twice and suspending his permits in May, the U.S. Forest Service is now permanently barring the owner of two Big Horn Mountain resorts from operating his businesses in the National Forest. Following a series of investigations and closures for alleged health and safety violations, the Bighorn National Forest announced Friday it is revoking the special use permits for Meadowlark Lake and Deer Haven resorts. It noted, among other things, the owner has failed to adequately fix two faulty septic pumps and other items that have fallen into disrepair, according a written statement from the U.S. Forest Service on Friday. Jim McCotter, owner of Big Horn Mountain Resorts and Wyoming Mountain Resorts LLC, has 45 days to appeal the decision. McCotter told The Associated Press in May that the problems at the two resorts would be repaired. At the time he said a winter manager at the two locations allowed the resorts to fall into disrepair. "There was another manager at the resorts this winter that had an option to purchase and was legally responsible for the resorts, but he did not raise all his money for purchase and did not make his payments and now has since left the resorts," McCotter said. "While there he did not keep things up as we had previously, but we are now back in control, and have turned back on the power, and are now getting everything repaired and ready again for this summer's activities."....
Natural gas drilling hurting land The industrial takeover of the West is not about oil or the price of gasoline at the pump. Domestic oil production, in fact, has suffered from a shell game. Nearly all the drilling on public lands is, in fact, about methane: natural gas. The booty at the wellhead is methane and stockholder cash. The victims are taxpayers who own public lands - especially hunters and anglers, who've watched as a national legacy is slaughtered like bison. "While there is little to no relationship between the price of gasoline and development of natural gas on public lands - which is what most of this development has been about, as opposed to oil - our rush to produce short-term energy supplies can have a profound effect on the fish and wildlife habitats and water supplies that define the West," said Chris Wood, a Trout Unlimited executive. Wood spoke Monday at a phone conference called by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. The coalition wants "multiple use" returned to public lands that have been hijacked by a singular abuse....
Hunters, fishermen call for curbs on oil and gas drilling Two top-ranking U.S. Forest Service officials from the Clinton administration today pitched in on a campaign by hunters and fishermen to rein in oil and gas development in five Rocky Mountain states. The drilling has skyrocketed under the Bush administration, alienating many in the hook-and-bullet crowd. The group calls itself Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. Introducing a "new vision" (PDF) of how federal oil and gas leases should be awarded were Mike Dombeck, chief of the Forest Service under Clinton and on into the early Bush administration, and Chris Wood, Dombeck's old aide, who is now chief operating officer at Trout Unlimited. Joined by former Wyoming Game and Fish Director John Baughman, Dombeck and Wood released a new report focused on the increased oil and gas drilling that they say is having a big impact from Montana to New Mexico. Dombeck emphasized that the report "is not about dissecting a problem ad nauseum, it's about looking at the challenges in front of us and looking for solutions that can be implemented in a common-sense, doable way." They reached their conclusions after a fairly exhaustive process that involved sending questionnaires to experts, then convening about 200 of them for a meeting....
In reversal, Ford veers from SUV's Ford Motor, which devoted itself for nearly 20 years to putting millions of Americans into big pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, is about to drastically alter its focus to building more small cars. The struggling automaker, reacting to what it sees as a rapid and permanent shift in consumer tastes brought on by high gas prices, plans to unveil its new direction on Thursday, when it will report quarterly earnings. Among the changes, Ford is expected to announce that it will convert three of its North American assembly plants from trucks to cars, according to people familiar with the plans. And as part of the huge bet it is placing on the future direction of the troubled American auto industry, Ford will realign factories to manufacture more fuel-efficient engines and produce six of its next European car models for the United States market....