Thursday, 03 Nov 2005

The Rend Is Near

Senate votes to keep Arctic Refuge drilling in budget bill

The campaign to keep oil drills out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has just been dealt what could be a fatal blow. Yesterday, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced an amendment to drop refuge-drilling language from a filibuster-proof federal budget bill; today, the Senate voted down that amendment, 48 to 51. "This is too important a question to slide into the budget bill," Cantwell said yesterday. "We are setting a very, very dangerous precedent." But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is psyched. "America can't afford $3-a-gallon gasoline and we can't afford to depend on sources hostile to the United States," he said today, though he failed to explain how drilling in the refuge would solve either problem. The Senate budget bill is expected to pass later this week; the House version, which also includes the drilling language, will be voted on as early as next week. The fate of the final compromise budget bill is unclear.


Matthew Simmons has been shaking up the energy establishment this year with his prediction that the price of a barrel of oil could soar from about $60 today to the high triple digits within a few years. But this Cassandra is no fringe operator -- he's a well-connected oil-industry insider who served as an adviser to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign and whose investment firm counts among its clients Halliburton and General Electric. Simmons told Grist's Amanda Griscom Little that global oil production is about to decline even as demand skyrockets, and that things could get "very ugly" after that.

There's No Progress Like Slow Progress

Lots of talk, no targets at Brit-hosted climate meetings

Twenty nations participating in a climate-change confab in London this week vowed to take dramatic action to stop global warming. Hee hee ... we never get tired of pulling your chain, do we? Actually, the energy-hungry attendees -- the G8 industrial nations and up-and-coming economic powers like China, India, and Brazil -- pledged cooperation on deploying clean-energy technologies and mitigation techniques like carbon sequestration. Specific goals and timelines were notably absent from the agreement. On Tuesday night, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who's recently edged away from his long-standing support for Kyoto-type greenhouse-gas emissions caps in favor of U.S.-style emphasis on informal measures and technological solutions, told the assembled environment ministers, "the blunt truth ... is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge." Easy to say while you still have a choice ...


As we hurtle toward the headiest shopping season of the year, Dan Akst gives some thought to the role that big-box chain stores play in our lives and our world. Oft criticized by the green-minded for the way they gobble up space and edge out local businesses, these stores might actually be good for the environment, Akst contends. (Ooh, was that a shiver that just shot down your spine?)

Can't Hear the Forest for the ORVs

Forest Service unveils new off-road vehicle rules

The U.S. Forest Service says its new off-road vehicle (ORV) policy, announced yesterday, will set limits on where the noisy, pollution-spewing machines can be used in national forests -- but conservationists say that's not good enough. The new rule sets no overarching standard for ORV use in the nation's 155 national forests and 20 grasslands; instead, it requires each area to designate approved roads and trails. Many miles of illegally established "renegade routes" could be made legal under the new plan. "It's almost an oxymoron that there is a good illegal route," said Jim Furnish, a former Forest Service deputy chief. Public-lands advocates say ORV use in national forests can erode the land and disturb wild critters -- as well as humans seeking a quiet, exhaust-free wilderness experience. On the other side, Don Amador of the ORV-advocacy group Blue Ribbon Coalition said the new policy was a good start.


Composting is nothing new at Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, but throwing the director out on the compost heap is. After five years as head of the center, sustainable-ag champion Fred Kirschenmann was unceremoniously replaced last week, with two days notice. That stinks almost as bad as the huge corporate hog feedlots that increasingly dominate the state's landscape, writes blogger Tom Philpott in Gristmill. Could the surprise move have something to do with agribusiness contributions to the university's College of Agriculture?