Friday, 10 Mar 2006

Don't Let the Door Hit You ...

Interior Secretary Gale Norton resigns

Gale Norton, secretary of the Department of Interior, announced today that she will resign her position, effective at the end of the month. "Now I feel it is time for me to leave this mountain you gave me to climb," she wrote in her resignation letter to President Bush, "catch my breath, then set my sights on new goals to achieve in the private sector." The private sector should welcome her with open arms: In her tendentious career at Interior, Norton stripped protection from wilderness areas, pushed for more logging, advocated increased oil and gas drilling, and proclaimed a love of snowmobiles that bordered on the erotic. Beltway speculation is swirling that Norton's departure is related to her possible connection to the ongoing scandals surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.


The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants farm-animal owners to attach microchips or other ID tags to their furry and feathered charges so they can be monitored by a centralized computer network. Sounds like Animal Farm meets Big Brother. Yet, while some small-scale farmers are critical of the scheme, many in the agriculture community say it's high time the U.S. more carefully tracked livestock in order to curtail diseases like avian flu and mad cow. The question is how best to do it -- and the devil, as Muckraker discovers, is in the details.

Eden Come, Eden Go

Climate change threatens newly discovered tropical paradise

One short month ago, the world thrilled to the news that researchers had discovered an untouched jungle in the Foja Mountains of New Guinea in Indonesia, full of unknown or rare plants and critters. Now -- you saw this coming, right? -- a U.S. climate scientist has warned that global warming may wipe out many of the forest's species before they're identified. Climatologist Michael Prentice reports in New Scientist that temperatures in the newly discovered paradise have risen precipitously since the 1970s: about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit every decade. "This is five times the previous estimated warming for the region," Prentice said, "and among the fastest in the world." Prentice derived his findings from climate records compiled by mission stations, coffee plantations, and mining companies in the region -- but it's not clear why the area is warming up at such a fast rate.

The Leak Shall Inhibit the Earth

Northern Alaska pipeline leak may rank as one of region's largest

Cleanup crews have been working in subzero temperatures to sop up crude oil and soiled snow near northern Alaska's Prudhoe Bay after what looks to be one of the largest spills ever in the region. The source of the crud(e) was discovered last Thursday by a BP oil worker: a quarter-inch rupture in the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, apparently caused by corrosion, 650-odd miles north of Anchorage. While the oil industry maintains it has an aggressive program for monitoring such leaks, this spill is one in a long series of breaches of the aging pipeline since at least 2001. These come in the wake of a 1999 attempt by six pipeline employees to blow the whistle on neglected maintenance. Enviros say this latest leak refutes industry claims that "gentle drilling" practices can keep Alaska's wilderness -- including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- safe from being soaked in petroleum.


Tomasita González is pushing to bring clean, running water and electricity to low-income communities of color in the Albuquerque area -- including her own. In answering reader questions, González -- an organizer with the SouthWest Organizing Project and this week's InterActivist -- chats about her favorite bilingual kids' book, New Mexico's status as a "nuclear colony," the rights of a toothpaste tube, and more.

This Protest Brought to You by the Letter ... Yeah, by the Letter

Thousands of biologists ask Senate not to gut Endangered Species Act

As a Senate committee prepares to craft a bill revising the Endangered Species Act, 5,738 biologists from around the country have signed a letter begging senators not to neuter the act. The missive, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, states, "For species conservation to continue, it is imperative both that the scientific principles embodied in the act are maintained, and that the act is strengthened, fully implemented, and adequately funded." Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chair of the Senate Environment Committee and no friend of the green community, is trying to draft a bipartisan bill with the cooperation of committee members James Jeffords (I-Vt.), Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.). The House has already passed an ESA bill -- penned by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) and loathed by enviros -- that would, among other things, require private property owners to be compensated if development plans were stymied by species protections.

We Love a Plan in Uniform

U.S. military aims to trim energy use

After years of pooh-poohing fuel efficiency, the U.S. military has been ordered by the Department of Defense to cut energy use at all military bases and facilities by 2 percent per year -- to which they replied, "Yes, sir! Right away, sir!" The Pentagon's demand comes on the heels of a $2.7 billion increase in fuel expenditures from fiscal year 2004 to 2005. The Air Force, which guzzles more fuel than the rest of the military combined -- in part due to the fact that its famed B-52 bombers still feature engines designed five decades ago -- reports that 11 percent of electricity at its bases now comes from alternative sources. The Army and Marines hope to develop a hybrid Humvee (oh, the irony), and Navy skippers get cash bonuses for fuel conservation. It almost makes renewable energy and energy efficiency sound, well, patriotic. Nah, that can't be right.