Teamsters May Withdraw Support for ANWR Oil Exploration One of the nation’s most powerful labor unions is “reexamining” its support for drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a policy it has supported for several years. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 1.4 million workers nationally, has supported expanded drilling in Alaska in the past. But that could change, said Leslie Miller, spokeswoman for the Teamsters, because, as she said, there needs to be a solution in the short term for reducing oil prices and boosting the economy. “We have (supported ANWR drilling) in the past, but I believe we are reexamining that position,” Miller told Cybercast News Service. “There may be an announcement coming up on that.” In May 2006, the Teamsters signed a letter along with six other unions calling on Congress to allow drilling in ANWR....
Senate Democratic Leaders May Allow Drilling Vote The Senate Democratic leadership said on Thursday that if Republicans cooperate with a bill that targets oil speculators, they will allow the Republicans to bring an “energy alternative” of their own to the Senate floor. Such an alternative would certainly include lifting the ban on offshore drilling, which would probably pass the Senate with bipartisan support, two Republican Senators told Cybercast News Service on Thursday. “We have proposed to the Republicans that we will bring this speculation measure to the floor and they can offer an alternative,” Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the minority whip, told reporters at a press conference. “You can’t be any fairer than that.” “We would offer a package and allow the Republicans to offer the same,” said Durbin. (The Washington Times on Wednesday listed Durbin as one of several Democrats who are “wavering on offshore drilling.) Republicans told Cybercast News Service on Thursday that such an alternative would include lifting the congressional moratorium on offshore drilling. “I can’t imagine us having a debate about energy and not having, as a proposal, lifting the moratorium,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told Cybercast News Service on Thursday. “I think there is actually very strong bipartisan support for lifting the ban.”....
Tax Credit Bill: Help from High Gas Prices An Ohio congressman has introduced legislation that he said would relieve consumers at the gasoline pump by providing a tax credit for the purchase of fuel this year. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) said his Gasoline Price Relief Act (H.R. 1659), would allow couples who file joint tax returns to reduce their 2008 tax bills by up to $2,000 ($1,000 for individuals), as long as they own validly registered vehicles (including motorcycles and hybrids) fueled by gasoline or diesel. “Prices at the pump are hurting an awful lot of people in this country, and this is a way of getting some of that money back in their pockets so that we can keep the economy moving,” Chabot told Cybercast News Service. Chabot’s bill, meanwhile, would also mandate that the president withhold foreign assistance and arms exports to any oil-exporting countries that are engaged in international price-fixing arrangements....
Warming Is Major Threat To Humans, EPA Warns Climate change will pose "substantial" threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday -- issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming. In a new report, the EPA said "it is very likely" that more people will die during extremely hot periods in future years -- and that the elderly, the poor and those in inner cities will be most at risk. Other possible dangers include more powerful hurricanes, shrinking supplies of fresh water in the West, and the increased spread of diseases contracted through food and water, the agency said. The strong warnings highlighted the contorted position that the EPA has staked out on climate change. Last week, the agency decided not to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, at least not until after President Bush's term ends....
Gore Sets 'Moon Shot' Goal on Climate Change Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace. The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global climate change. Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create "a new political environment" that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels. Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand....
Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life Is Worth Less Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a '96 Camaro with bad brakes. Last week, it was revealed that an Environmental Protection Agency office had lowered its official estimate of life's value, from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. That decision has put a spotlight on the concept of the "Value of a Statistical Life," in which the Washington bureaucracy takes on a question usually left to preachers and poets. This value is routinely calculated by several agencies, each putting its own dollar figure on the worth of life -- not any particular person's life, just that of a generic American. The figure is then used to judge whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost. A human life, based on an economic analysis grounded in observations of everyday Americans, typically turns out to be worth $5 million to $8 million -- about as much as a mega-mansion or a middle infielder. Now, for the first time, the EPA has used this little-known process to devalue life, something that environmentalists say could set a scary precedent, making it seem that lifesaving pollution reductions are not worth the cost....
Green Becomes Official Color of Baseball When baseball's legendary greats came rolling up Sixth Avenue this month for the annual Hall of Fame parade, the familiar red carpet was distinctly green. That's not talking about the hue. The carpet, stretching for 20 blocks through Midtown, was made entirely of recycled fiber and manufactured using solar and wind power. "We did the Oscars. We advised the Grammies. But this is our first green red carpet!" said a clearly excited Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the nonprofit environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The red carpet was just the most visible manifestation of the greening of America's pastime. Across the country, baseball parks now have recycling bins for plastic cups, and solar panels are providing at least some of the energy. Men's rooms are being fitted with no-flush urinals to save water. Grounds crews are switching to chemically benign cleaners, and vending machines are being made more energy-efficient. Teams are even taking the environmental impact into consideration when they decide how to travel for road games....
'Storn Over Rangeland' still rages 17 years later It took 17 years for the late rancher Wayne Hage to win a groundbreaking lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in a long-running dispute over property rights, water rights and grazing on federal land. A federal judge finally ruled last month that the government had engaged in an unconstitutional “taking” of Hage’s water rights and awarded more than $4 million to Hage’s estate. But his family and supporters - while relishing the victory - fear the fight is far from won. “What happened to us in the 1980s and 1990s is now happening across the West, so it is going to be vitally important for Western ranchers to understand what they own and how to defend it, “said Ramona Morrison, one of Hage’s daughters and a member of the Nevada State Agriculture Board who was a freshman in high school when the dispute began. “It doesn’t do you a lot of good to own that water if you really, effectively can’t use it,” said Lyman “Ladd” Bedford, a San Francisco-based lawyer who has argued the case since Hage first filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in 1991. Morrison said the federal agency continually harassed her father, who once was a leader of the Western movement for more local control of public land called the “Sagebrush Rebellion” and who wrote the 1989 book “Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands.”....
Judge: Water delivery system harms Calif. salmon A federal judge ruled Friday that California's water systems threaten to push native, wild salmon into extinction but stopped short of ordering any immediate water cutbacks farmers said would have cost them millions in lost crops. The ruling in a Fresno federal court Friday ultimately could force regulators to change the way they move and use water to help endangered salmon spawn in the state's rivers and swim downstream into the Pacific Ocean. Environmentalists and fishermen had asked the judge to order immediate protections for the fishes' habitat, arguing that the collapse of one of the West Coast's biggest wild salmon runs earlier this spring foretold the extinction of related species. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger denied the groups' request to release more water from a federal reservoir to help young endangered winter-run Chinook salmon reach the ocean. That could have left hundreds of acres of almonds, walnuts and tomatoes without irrigation supplies next month, at the height of California's drought. "I'm on cloud nine here," said Jeff Sutton, who manages a canal system that delivers water to farms from near Redding to just north of Sacramento. "We're obviously ecstatic that the service area is going to continue to finish the irrigation season and be able to harvest the crops." Still, the battle is far from over. The judge's ruling established that the canals and pumps that deliver water to 23 million Californians are causing "irreparable harm" to two salmon species, as well as the threatened Central Valley steelhead. The second salmon population, the Central Valley spring-run Chinook, is on the federal list of threatened species. On Wednesday, attorneys for federal and state regulators, farmers, environmentalists and fishermen are scheduled to meet in Wanger's courtroom to discuss how to protect the fish for the next nine months, while federal biologists rewrite their plan to operate water projects tied to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta....
Home, home on the holistic range Last week's sage-scented verdict from a federal appeals court sent us two sharp reminders: Judicial decisions are awfully blunt tools with which to craft environmental policy. The most endangered species in Oregon may be the cowboy. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals just ordered the federal Bureau of Land Management to take a look -- again -- at how it's managing more than 4 million acres in eastern Oregon. The court's message was clear: The BLM better bear in mind the rising wilderness values of our state's shrub-steppe range. The decision marked one more victory for high-desert environmentalists in their battle to make Uncle Sam a better steward of Oregon's dry side. It sent, too, a clear signal to Oregon cattlemen: Get smarter, or get ready to get off the public range. Last week's decision came hard on the hoofs of a 2000 ruling in which the Supreme Court voted 9-0 to uphold much tighter regulation of grazing on public lands -- a decision that sent shivers through nearly 1,500 ranchers who hold grazing leases on 13 million acres of BLM land in Oregon....
Using food for fuel not solution As Americans continue to look for alternative fuels to power our homes, schools, businesses, and automobiles, we must rethink one such “alternative” that is taking a big bite out of major food crops — ethanol. Far more corn grown in this country is going toward fuel production, not food consumption, causing food prices to escalate around the world. The World Bank’s World Economic Outlook 2008 reports that, “although biofuels still account for only 1.5 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half of the increase in consumption of major food crops, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.” Midwest farmers are the benefactors of government subsidies, tax credits, mandates, and production requirements, which are in fact working against policy goals relating to energy security, environmental protection, and rural prosperity. The government, not the market place, is dictating crop selection and prices. The consequences are being felt around the world and right here at home in New Mexico....
Piñon takings "unlikely" A top Army civilian said Friday that the Army will purchase land to expand Piñon Canyon only from "willing sellers" and that it is "very, very unlikely" that condemnation will be used for those purchases. Keith Eastin, assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment, said that if the Army can acquire 100,000 acres on the south end of the existing maneuver site, it probably would not return to ask for any more land in the near future. "I think it highly unlikely that we would be back in any foreseeable future," Eastin said Friday at Fort Carson. "One hundred thousand acres makes sense; anything added right now is outside of our budget." The Army, in an attempt to "turn down the volume" on objections to expansion of the 235,000- acre site, said it believes it has made a forthright effort at compromise. But farmers and ranchers in the area, led by Lon Robertson from the Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition, said: "This is them just trying to twist things. Just because they say they're doing the right thing, it must be the right thing. It isn't." Robertson said the Army still has not answered the question of whether expansion of the current site is needed at all. The Army announced Wednesday that it has scaled back plans to acquire 418,000 acres at Piñon Canyon and will settle for 100,000 acres. The Army said it still needs more land and is looking outside other existing installations. One of those is Fort Polk, La....
More realistic plan for base may avoid condemnation nightmare The showdown between the Army and several members of Colorado's congressional delegation over expanding the training grounds at Pinon Canyon may not be resolved any time soon, notwithstanding a compromise offered by the Army last week. We're glad to see the Army formally back down from its plan to add 418,000 acres of what is primarily private property to the 235,000-acre maneuver site near Fort Carson. Instead, it's now looking for an extra 100,000 acres, and says it expects to find willing sellers to provide the land. This latest plan does have a far more realistic chance of acquiring the desired property without resorting to condemnation. The chance of that happening under the earlier schemes was effectively zero, despite the Army's assurances that it preferred voluntary transactions. But 100,000 is still a lot of territory. Can the Army indeed find enough willing sellers? Assistant Secretary Keith Eastin believes it can. One landowner who controls much of the sought-after property, Denver businessman Craig Walker, has indicated he would now listen to a pitch from the Army....
Federal agency gets 13,000 comments on wolf plans Many of the more than 13,000 people commenting on how to improve U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to reintroduce the Mexican wolf into the wild either strongly support or object to the program. Problem is, that's not the question. The federal agency took public comments from Aug. 7 to Dec. 31 on how best to pursue the wolf reintroduction program, not whether or not the program should exist. The agency received comments from 13,598 people after its call for public input and divided the responses into 26 topics. The topics included: cost of the program; protecting livestock and humans from the wolves; using professional mediation to help ranchers and environmentalists resolve their differences; the boundaries of the area the wolves are being introduced into; disease and wolves; the interaction between wolves and house pets; and the importance of having top predators in an ecosystem. John Slown, a biologist overseeing the process to modify the rules for the Wolf Reintroduction Project, said the issues raised by the public will be used to frame a range of alternatives....
War over how to thin herds rages in mustang country Five mustangs pounded across the high desert recently, their dark manes and tails giving shape to the wind. Pursued by a helicopter, they ran into a corral - unwilling recruits in an emotional debate over whether euthanasia should be used to thin a captive herd that already numbers 30,000. The champions of wild mustangs have long portrayed them as the victims of ranchers who preferred cattle on the range, middlemen who wanted to make a buck selling them for horsemeat, and misfits who shot them for sport. But some environmentalists and scientists have come to see the mustangs, which run wild from Montana to California, as top-of-the-food-chain bullies, invaders whose hooves and teeth disturb the habitats of endangered tortoises and desert birds. Even the language has shifted. In a 2006 article in Audubon magazine, wild horses lost their poetry and were reduced to "feral equids." "There's not just horses out there, there's other critters, from the desert turtle in the south to the bighorn sheep in the north," said Paula Morin, author of the book "Honest Horses." "We've come a long way in our awareness of the web of life and maintaining the whole ecology. We do the horses a disservice when we set them apart." Environmentalists' attitudes toward the horses have evolved so far that some are willing to say what was heresy a few years ago: that euthanasia is acceptable if the alternatives are boarding the mustangs for life at taxpayers' expense or leaving them to overpopulate, damage the range and die of hunger or thirst....
Mountain Megas Rapid change is enveloping the American West. States in the southern Intermountain West—Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah—are experiencing some of the fastest population growth and economic and demographic transition anywhere in the country. The region is growing up, flexing its muscles, and distancing itself from California, which historically has had an outsized impact on the West’s development. In fact, thanks to such maturation, the southern Intermountain West is well on its way to earning itself the title of the New American Heartland as its economy, people, and politics become more central to the nation. Politically, the Intermountain West could be home to several swing states in the 2008 election and in time play the storied “kingmaking” role the Midwest does now. Which is where this document begins: Prepared as part of the Brookings Institution’s Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative, “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper” describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West and proposes a more helpful role for the federal government in empowering regional leaders’ efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive, and inclusive than past eras of boom and bust....
Utah Court Says Rivers And Streams Are Public, Regardless Of Location Utah's highest court has ruled that streams and rivers are public even where the land under them is privately owned. Friday's decision means landowners can't stop people from walking on and along riverbeds while fishing or floating. The case turned on a Roy couple's trespassing citation in 2000 for leaving their raft to go fishing and take down some fencing that was strung across Weber River. The ticket was dropped when Kevin and Jodi Conatser appealed a justice-court conviction, but they filed a civil suit to improve on state law that said they could touch a riverbed only to free a stuck raft or assist in floating. ``I'd call it a landmark decision,'' said Robert H. Hughes, the couple's lawyer, who argued the case in April. The Utah Supreme Court said people have to behave reasonably and cause no property damage when they wade or walk immediately along stream and river beds....
Cape Cod patient tested for mad cow disease Public health officials in Massachusetts are investigating whether a patient in a Cape Cod hospital has the human form of mad cow disease. Dr. Alfred DeMaria, the state's director of communicable disease control, confirmed Sunday to The Associated Press that tests are being done to see if the patient has Creutzfeldt-Jakob (KROYTS'-felt JAY'-kuhb) disease, and whether it's the variant attributed to mad cow. There have only been three cases of the human form of mad cow disease reported in the United States in the last several years, and officials say it's extremely unlikely the patient in Cape Cod Hospital has the disease. DeMaria says it will take a few more days before the test results are available. He said there are about a half-dozen cases reported every year in Massachusetts and about 300 nationwide....
PETA Expands Ad Campaign That Uses Teen Pregnancy to Push Pet Message Animal rights group PETA is rolling out its controversial "Sex Talk" ad — in which two parents urge their daughter to have a lot of sex and "pop out all the kids you want" — in the top 10 teen pregnancy states to promote spaying and neutering of pets. The 30-second commercial was launched in January in Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears' hometown of Kentwood, La., after news emerged of then 16-year-old Jamie Lynn's pregnancy. The "Zoey 101" star, who turned 17 in April, has since given birth to a baby girl. "People often point their fingers at parents of pregnant teens, and we want to let the people who let their animals breed feel the heat too," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spokeswoman Melissa Karpel told FOXNews.com. "It's a fun, edgy way to get the message out about a very serious issue." Karpel said 8 million companion animals are currently languishing in shelters across the United States. Not everyone is happy about the ad, however. Karpel said the commercial is only airing in big cities in part because their markets are more likely to accept it, and some stations that were approached won't run it....
Home on the Range My father's 1960 Ford tractor is dependable, and he keeps his baler and other equipment together with duct tape, wire and prayers. If only his health was as dependable as that tractor. Time has taken its toll. My father, Eugene, is a proud, 75-year-old rancher from Chama. He takes pride in his humble profession that pays little but continues a long tradition. And in the ranching tradition, he rarely complains. He is a man who can bolt heavy machinery together, despite being nearly blind as a result from heart complications suffered in 2004. He has the courage to rescue solitary animals from coyote packs, and the tenderness to gently bottle-feed calves at 2 a.m. in below-zero snowstorms. Small ranchers like my father are more common in the state than one might imagine. According to Travis Hoffman of the Colorado Beef Council, 64 percent of the state's 13,100 ranches consist of herds fewer than 50 head. (The national average is 77 percent.) The numbers suggest Colorado's ranching families are "dedicated to their operations . . . the backbone of agriculture," Hoffman said....
George Causey: High plains pioneer No story of the High Plains would be complete without mentioning T.L. “George” Causey, for whom Causey was named. Causey was a rancher, freighter, and most famously, a buffalo hunter. It was his heavy wagons and ox teams hauling the hides to market that made the Portales Road more easily followed by travelers on the Llano Estacado. In the 1860s George Causey had worked for the U.S. Government in Kansas hauling supplies to the Army outposts with a mule team. He soon formed a buffalo hunting outfit and began following the herds as they moved southward into Texas on their annual migration. As the land along the Rio Grande was occupied, the Hispanic settlers from Las Vegas, N.M. and Fort Sumner made annual hunting trips to the plains to hunt the buffalo and antelope for their winter meat. After the meat was “jerked,” that is sliced and dried, it would keep indefinitely....