Western Govs Hope to Sway Future Energy Policy Citing a lack of federal leadership, the nation's Western governors want to draft a national energy policy they hope will influence the next presidential administration. Governors participating in the final day of the Western Governors' Association meeting in Wyoming said their resource-rich region is well positioned to take the lead on the issue. "We all know that nature abhors a vacuum, and so does politics," said Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. "This group is very, very serious about putting forward a policy recommendation to the next administration." Tuesday's meeting wrapped up three days of discussions on issues related to energy, climate change, water supply and wildlife habitat. Over the next several months, representatives from the governors' offices will craft the energy policy proposal....
Senators Fault Pentagon On Bases' Toxic Cleanup Five Senate Democrats wrote to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday, chastising the Pentagon for resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up three contaminated military bases in their states. They also slammed the Pentagon's refusal to sign cleanup agreements required by law covering 12 other sites on the Superfund list of the nation's most polluted sites. "We would like to know why your department is endangering the public health," wrote Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), who was joined by Sens. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Barbara A. Mikulski (Md.), Benjamin L. Cardin (Md.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.). Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said yesterday she will hold hearings on the matter. Menendez, Lautenberg and Nelson have also asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate....
Four Ways of Looking at Global Warming Policy Assume man-made global warming is a big problem. What should we do about it? The four general policies currently in play are (1) cap-and-trade; (2) carbon taxes; (3) encourage economic growth and allow richer future generations to deal with any problems; and (4) massive government-funded low carbon energy research. Of course, these policies can be mixed and matched in various ways, but all involve the invention and deployment of new low-carbon energy technologies. The first two proposals do it by raising the price of carbon-based energy relative to low-carbon energy technologies. The third one implicitly melds the two-century-long trend toward progressive decarbonization of our energy supplies with a strategy of adaptation. The fourth one aims to accelerate technological innovation by stimulating the research and engineering pipeline. When climate push comes to shove, politicians prefer cap-and-trade schemes. Why? Because they don't have to explicitly tell voters the bad news that they are raising the prices of electricity, natural gas, and gasoline. Senators and representatives instead cloak this mandated energy price increase in the virtuous language of the market, disguising the fact that cap-and-trade is really a hidden tax. Issuing emissions permits is like coining money. If the denizens of Capitol Hill decide to auction the permits,it will provide a vast new revenue stream with which members of Congress can play....
'Om'-ing in Wyoming They pray, enjoy and discipline their kids, walk their dogs, eat together, do art, fall in and out of love, work day jobs, volunteer, disagree, agree to disagree, play, grow older and usually wiser, behave imperfectly, love the land, and believe America's vision as a home of the free and land of the brave. Sort of like your family. "Welcome home" to the Rainbow Family of Living Light, which is conducting its annual international Gathering of the Tribes this year at this site southeast of Pinedale in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. "Welcome home," "we love you," "hello, brother," "hello, sister," are among the frequent greetings heard at the unofficial front gate, along the trails, at the camps and associated kitchens. Some activities aren't like your family. Some Rainbows indulge in certain drugs and eschew others. Some also say people and their bodies aren't shameful, so clothing is optional. The annual gathering runs for the first seven days of the seventh month. The main event happens in the middle of that period, or noon on July 4, when thousands assemble at the main circle for silent meditation before chanting "Om," a sacred sound of the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions....
Coming under fire Wildland firefighters are sending up smoke signals all over the West, as doubts emerge about the Forest Service’s ability to tackle devastating wildfires. In spite of the concerns and a damning, recent Congressional testimony, San Juan Public Lands officials remain confident about the local front against fire, but admit that it has come at a price. The Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, the union representing federal firefighters, recently raised red flags about the Forest Service’s firefighting ability. In mid-June, Casey Judd, the union’s business manager, provided testimony before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee. In essence, Judd accused the U.S. Department of Agriculture of diverting funding away from fire preparedness and fuels reduction and toward administrative expenses. “It’s a mess,” Judd said this week from his office in Idaho. “We’ve basically spent the last 2½ years trying to demonstrate that Congress is not getting the straight scoop from the USDA.” As an example, Judd pointed to the recently completed U.S. Forest Service Albuquerque Service Center, a nearly 100,000-square-foot building centralizing administrative services for the agency. Judd also alleged that $400 million in firefighting funds were skimmed this year to fund administrative positions at the center....
'Paradise Is Burning': Fires Prompt California Evacuations On the eve of one of the biggest tourism weekends of the summer, rampaging wildfires are prompting the evacuation of a picturesque stretch of the California coast and blanketing other popular spots with a haze of brown smoke. "It's paradise. And paradise is burning," Brian Courtney, 50, said as he sat outside a shuttered Big Sur restaurant and talked with neighbors awaiting what they viewed as an inevitable order to clear out of town. "It's very unsettling," Mr. Courtney, an artist who lives several miles from the main road, Highway 1, said. "I'm waiting for somebody to tap me on the shoulder and say, 'Get out.'" During a visit yesterday to a firefighters' camp at a state park on the outskirts of Big Sur, Governor Schwarzenegger pleaded with local residents to heed instructions to leave. "It's tough to move out of your home. We understand it, but do it. Listen to our authorities and the people that know better," the governor said. "We cannot think selfishly here and say, 'I am going to stay in my house ...' and all those things. It doesn't work." About 300 separate wildfires were burning across California yesterday, officials said. Most were uncontrolled and in the northern half of the state. Mr. Schwarzenegger said roughly 1,400 fires had broken out in the past few weeks. "That is, I think, the most amount that anyone has ever heard in this state at one given time," he said. "In the last two, three years we've seen there is really no fire season any more. It used to be that late summer into fall is the fires but now it's all year round."....
Thirsty Denver joining beetle battle? Front Range water consumers could help pay for the removal of trees infected by pine beetles in western Colorado under new legislation. Senate Bill 221 lets the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority loan money to water providers, which would pay to remove trees devastated by beetles in Eagle and Summit counties and other places, said Democratic state Sen. Dan Gibbs, of Silverthorne. “This really takes forest health, in particular how we pay for forest-thinning projects, to a whole other level,” Gibbs said. The bill lets the Colorado water authority issue bonds to finance the loans, Gibbs said. The money to pay back the loans could come from higher water bills in Denver, Colorado Springs and other places, he said. Denver residents get some water from Lake Dillon in Summit County, for example, so Denver Water could pay to remove infected trees and to plant new ones to protect their water supply, Gibbs said. If a forest fire occurs, exacerbated by infected trees, water supplies could be tainted because dirt will spill into rivers and lakes at a greater rate, Gibbs said. Gibbs points out that a significant amount of dirt was dumped into Colorado water supplies after the Hayman Fire, which burned almost 138,000 acres southwest of Denver in 2002....
Here's the drill: BLM pulls rank on state Amid all the loud noises erupting from the recent series of hearings conducted by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regarding water and wildlife protection, one reality has escaped public notice. When all debate is done, the state agency may not have the authority to enforce whatever rules it finally adopts. Citing a list of legal precedents, the Bureau of Land Management claims jurisdiction to conduct leasing on federal lands as it sees fit. This assertion was made early last month in a letter to the commission from Sally Wisely, director of BLM's Colorado State Office. "BLM believes that certain draft rules would be pre-empted by federal law if applied to oil and gas operations on federal lands," Wisely wrote in a five-page letter that repeatedly proclaimed supremacy regarding activities on the federal domain. "The COGCC may avoid the pre- emption problems discussed above by adding language to the draft rules which acknowledges that COGCC regulations do not apply to federal lands and minerals absent BLM concurrence." In the federal hierarchy, BLM administers all matters pertaining to minerals, even on Forest Service lands. All of which appears to set the stage for a direct state-federal conflict of the sort that has not existed for a century or more. For its part, Colorado's Department of Natural Resources, of which COGCC is a part, shows no inclination to back down. "Issues regarding water and wildlife are expressly reserved for the state and we intend to protect them under the state constitutional provisions and mandates," said Mike King, DNR deputy director....
Land deal raises a few questions Sen. Max Baucus bills it as the most significant conservation deal in Montana history, and he’s right. This week’s announcement that Plum Creek is selling 320,000 acres for conservation purposes may be hard to top. The Montana Legacy Project was made possible by a provision in the recently approved U.S. Farm Bill that allows federal bonds to be sold, providing up to $250 million toward an overall purchase price of $510 million. The balance must be raised by the nonprofit partners in the project, including the Trust For Public Lands and the Nature Conservancy. The basics sound simple, but in reality the project will be complex, involving three closing transactions over the next three years. How those transactions unfold remains to be seen, raising plenty of questions about the project. Plum Creek, for instance, is requiring “fiber supply agreements” to ensure that timber continues to flow from the lands that are sold to its Western Montana manufacturing facilities for up to 15 years. How much timber will be harvested, and who gets to decide? More important, perhaps: What’s the long-term outlook for Plum Creek in Western Montana? So far, the Montana Legacy Project’s backers maintain that purchased lands eventually will be conveyed to the U.S. Forest Service, the state of Montana and to private ownerships, provided there are conservation easements discouraging subdivision and development and maintaining public access. The nonprofit partners say they have no plans to assume long-term ownership of the lands....Issuing bonds for federal acquisition instead of appropriations? This is a precedent which will lead to more federal acquisition than otherwise would be the case. I guess the feds owning one out of every three acres in the U.S. is not enough.