BushCo Still Pushing For Drilling

Boy George still keeps trying to open ANWR to oil drilling. After all the times this idea has been rammed down his throat, he still keeps chucking it back up. He was stumping for it again at a press conference just today. From the Houston Chronicle:

"One of the main reasons for high gas prices is that global oil production is not keeping up with growing demand," Bush said during a Rose Garden news conference.

"If Congress is truly interested in solving the problem, they can send the right signal by saying we're going to explore for oil and gas in the U.S. territories, starting with ANWR," Bush said. "And we can do so in an environmentally friendly way."

Lawmakers have blocked exploration in the refuge, Bush argued, despite Energy Department estimates the area could yield a million barrels of oil a day — enough to make 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel.

"That would be about a 20 percent increase of ... crude oil production over U.S. levels, and it would likely mean lower gas prices," Bush said. "And yet such efforts to explore in ANWR have been consistently blocked."

Bush argued that opening more domestic areas to drilling "sends a signal to the world that ... we're going to try to become less reliant upon foreign oil."

Good lord. January 20, 2009 sure seems like a long way off.

Saying What Matters. To Me

It looks like another fine day shaping up here in the best damn place on the face of the earth. Montana that is. The northern Rockies. I think I'll do a short post here, eat a quick lunch, and go out to watch the geese for a while. As long as I'm at it, I may as well watch the clouds roll over the mountains too. Someone has to watch this stuff -- it might as well be me.

As I sit here, I can't help but notice the few things I decorate my wall with. Over here is a fine poster of a bugling bull elk. Right above my computer, protecting my space, is a token of a grizzly bear my daughter bought for me on a trip she made to Glacier with her mother a few years back. From what I heard, she spent the better part of an hour picking out just the right one, and the thought of that nearly brings a tear to my eye. It's truly a special gift. Taped to the wall right next to my screen I have an old cover from an Earth First! magazine. It's a collage of a raised fist with the words 'resistance is life' boldly printed next to it. All of this is a reminder of what's important to me, why I chose to live in Montana and why I intend to stay, and why this blog is what it is. For better or worse, I post about what's most important to me, and that's what I'll continue to do.

You won't see much here about the upcoming elections. Or about war or the economy or health-care either. Some maybe, but not much. Why not? Don't I think they're important too? Of course I do, but all of these issues are amply covered by a myriad of blogs from all over this country. Why should I join in the clamor? I can find out what I need to know from the rest of you.

To my notion, this election is one of the most uninspiring I have ever seen. I'm not really a single issue guy, but I see environmental concerns becoming front-burner issues over the next few years, and very little being said about them beyond a vague acknowledgment and enough blue-sky rhetoric to fly a plane through. We need better. Come November, one of three people will be elected as president. The best we can do is vote for the one we feel is best, hope they get elected, and then hold their feet to the fire. Not an easy task, but a necessary one. I've included a sidebar item from Grist that rates the candidate's environmental positions -- take a look if you're interested.

Bottom line for me is that we need to do everything possible to keep this planet of ours liveable. We've gotten to be much like those reckless, thoughtless renters that trash a place and then move on to the next, except that we have no place to move on to. This is it. If we push our earth beyond it's limits, beyond it's ability to support us, we don't have a home. Without a home all other issues become moot. I've also added a few links to bioregionalist sites. Bioregionalism isn't a new concept, but it hasn't been in the mainstream much. We already see it in some small ways such as farmer's markets and community supported agriculture and the like, but there is far more to it than that, and I think it needs to be on the table as we consider what kind of future we will build. I'll cheerfully admit I don't know where to start with it, or how it could be made a part of our lives given the size of our population and the entrenched power of globalization, but it's something I'm looking into more and more and will post about more if I can come up with some damn thing to say about it. Ideas are welcome here -- I'd like to hear the thoughts of others who are more informed than I am.

Okay. Enough for now. This went on longer than I'd planned. I'd better get my ass outside. Later folks...

Earth Day? Bah, Humbug

I wasn't going to say anything about Earth Day. I've avoided it for years, but I guess a few words won't hurt.

I remember when Earth Day first started. I don't remember if it was ever intended to become an annual event or not, but it's become one nonetheless. It's probably fair to say that it started with the best of intentions. Environmental awareness was growing, and Earth Day was organized to help build that awareness. But anymore it's become just another marketing holiday. Kind of like Christmas. Or Mother's Day. Or back-to-school.

It's been co-opted by business, as so many things are, and these days it's little more than a chance for companies both big and small to hawk their wares and ride the wave of green marketing. We can all go to a feel-good event, wave our eco-flags, blow our party horns, and pat each other on the back for making such conscious choices in the things we buy and sell. Then it's back to business as usual. No, actually it is business as usual. Corporations line up to be official sponsors of Earth Day events, get to look cool and aware, and likely as not sell a ton of stuff as a result. It's called 'greenwashing'. It's pervasive, it's cheap to do, and it's pretty damn effective. Why, all we have to do is buy the right kinds of stuff. No need to worry about the consequences of our consumption. No tough choices to make about how to make our society fit the earth's limits. We can shop our way to a healthy and prosperous future. We can shop our way out of environmental crisis. All we need to do is shop right.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for keeping this home planet of ours wild and healthy. Yes indeed I am. But this kind of circus isn't going to do that. It amounts to consuming to curb overconsumption. A few parallels come to mind -- screwing for celibacy for instance. Or bingeing for sobriety. Ridiculous? Of course. We can do better than that. We can and we must.

Update: Here's a good post from Sheldon Rampton for today, April 22, Earth Day 2008. The greenwashing video about BP isn't bad either.

Bits And Pieces

Here's a few short items for a Saturday morning:

I posted last week about the upcoming vote in the House on the public lands preservation bill, HR2016. It passed the House on the 9th and will move on to the Senate. It would protect about 26 million acres of habitat, historical areas, and wild lands, and is the most comprehensive land preservation bill to be passed in decades.

* * *

Oil leases in the arctic have been rammed through recently with little regard for endangered species or environmental impacts. The whole scheme is based on the premise of cheap oil, and that is being used as justification for disregarding environmental concerns. From PEER:

By deliberately understating the price of oil, MMS claims that it would not be economically feasible to require oil companies to conduct extensive mitigation of adverse impacts from exploration. Moreover, the false assumption of low oil prices is used to argue that offshore lease sales will have minimal adverse environmental effects because –

• The chances of oil spills would be diminished because the price would be too low to justify extensive investment or production; and
• Oil firms would not have an economic incentive to penetrate pristine areas vital to wildlife;

MMS says oil will go for about $18 to $30 a barrel for a few years, and will peak at about $46 a barrel in 2012 or so. Maybe these folks should get their heads out of the sand and re-check their figures.

* * *

Industry lackeys in government positions have been trying to weaken protections for our national forests for years. They keep re-writing the rules to give industry easier access and they keep getting shot down by federal judges. But they are persistent. They just keep on trying and trying.

Enjoy the weekend folks.

My Election Post

I'll sum up my thoughts on the upcoming elections as briefly as possible, and then I'll likely say no more about it. I'll leave the election blogging to the rest of you.

I'll vote for Obama over Clinton. I'll vote for either one over McCain. Neither excites me very much, but I'll vote Democrat in November.

The same goes for Montana offices. No need to go on much about Hunt. I'll vote for him too. Of all my regular readers, two have already thrown their support to Hunt. The third lives out of state. What more is there to say?

NLCS

Back in 2000 the Secretary of the Interior established the National Landscape Conservation System, the NCLS, to protect and preserve roughly 26 million acres of historical sites, archaeological sites, and wild lands in the west, as well as connecting corridors and trails. It's another visionary plan that takes an ecosystem-wide approach to land preservation rather than the piece by piece approach that's become the norm. Good stuff. There's an alliance of over 70 groups, the Conservation System Alliance, that can give you plenty of information on the system.

The House of Representatives will be considering a bill next week-- HR2016 -- making the NCLS permanent. It passed out of sub-committee on March 12, and will be introduced on the floor of the full House on April 9. I received an email from the Wilderness Society yesterday asking all citizens to contact their representatives and urge them to support the bill. They also passed along a short video clip about the lands in question and asked if I would post it on my blog. Being the way I am I said of course, so here it is:




What's at stake? Only millions of acres of valuable historical lands and wildlands and recreational lands. That's all. We are, above all, biological beings. Not technological drones. I've always felt that our connection to our true home, our wilderness, and to our deep past will do more good for us and for coming generations than any technological marvels or schemes we can cook up. They will give our society a perspective, a context, that we'll lose should we let our natural world and our links to our past slip away due to the relentless and ever-quickening pace of our modern lives. Our techno-wonders and our over-consumption of more and more and bigger and bigger and better and better stuff isn't the answer. Without natural connections we will be rootless and adrift. We can choose not to go that way.

Also in the email was a link to a form we can all use to urge our representatives to support making the NLCS permanent. It's something we can all do, and it's easy -- just click here and get it done.

The PEER Website -- Good Information

I've kind of gotten to like the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). They do much good work exposing questionable environmental practices, particularly by this administration, and offer resources for public employees to become 'anonymous activists' and contribute to help put a halt to such practices. Many folks no doubt would like to speak out but fear for their jobs. PEER runs a pretty good website too.

Recent entries on their daily headlines include a story about the Forest Service using unmanned drone aircraft to do surveillance on our public lands, much like the spy drones Doug posted about last week. Another is about the EPA having to open their closed libraries later this year, but how they're going to do it by offering limited resources, and only accepting information requests from approved applicants. They're worth a read.

They also have an active campaign going about the efforts to open arctic waters for oil exploration, and how the environmental assessments were skewed to hide information about impacts on wildlife, as well as other critical issues. There's a form there to contact your representatives to encourage them to stop the drilling plans. And there's more.

If you're interested in finding out more about environmental threats that you don't hear much about in other media, here's a good place to look. There's a link over in the sidebar.