Now Mr. Beck claims that Copenhagen “could mean the end of U.S. sovereignty.” Beck cited UK climate chief Lord Stern who suggested that eating less meat would go a long way toward reducing GHG emissions. Beck noted that a Baltimore school district has gone to ‘Meatless Mondays’ in their cafeteria, which in his world, is just downright un-American. Beck then promised, “My last meal will be a giant steak.” A sentiment that lots of people–Beck fans and otherwise–could get behind. Watch it:

via: Air America via: Treehugger

Republicans boycotted mark-up of the Senate climate bill in committee this week. (Photo: Sen. Sanders office)

Despite GOP boycott, Senate EPW committee passes climate bill, 11-1.

Earlier this week when Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders began speaking to the Environment and Public Works Committeeon the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA), also known as the Boxer-Kerry climate bill, he noted the paucity of Republicans in the room. In fact, just one GOP Senator made the bill’s mark-up just long enough to ask for a five-week delay, the rest of the Republicans on the committee decided to boycott the proceedings, demanding more time to study the bill and come up with amendments that would likely water down it’s effectiveness.

Well, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today overcame that GOP boycott and voted 11 to 1 for a wide-ranging climate bill that would cut greenhouse gases from power plants and factories by 83 percent by 2050. The legislation also calls for a 20 percent emissions reduction by 2020.* Montana’s Max Baucus was the only Democrat to vote against the legislation

“It is insane that we import $350 billion worth of oil a year from foreign countries,” said Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. “Our challenge is to move toward energy independence and energy efficiency and sustainable energy by substantially reducing greenhouse emissions and, in the process, creating millions of good-paying jobs.”

Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) passed the bill without assistance from any Republican senators on her panel, a fact Sanders said he regretted.

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, who recently left the Republican Party, bemoaned his inability to offer any amendments to the bill that would address his home state’s heavy metal and refining industries. But Specter also said that with the Copenhagen climate talks just a month away, it was more important to pass the climate bill out of committee now.

As recently as last week, Sen. John Kerry said the bill would reach the floor of the Senate for a full vote before the upcoming pivotal climate talks.

Senators meet with White House in push for bipartisanship

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) met individually Wednesday with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Carol Browner, the president’s assistant for energy and climate change.

The three senators announced that they would work in conjunction with the White House to patch together a bill that could pass the U.S. Senate.

“The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead,” said the only Republican Senator to voice support for the bill, Lindsey Graham.

*Emission reduction goals use 2005 as baseline year.

Offshore wind turbines. (Photo: m.prinke)

Author takes Kennedy’s Cape Wind claims, rhetoric to task.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar now says he expects a final decision on Cape Wind by year’s end. But the eight-year battle for the nation’s first offshore wind farm is not in the free and clear quite yet. And one of the biggest (and most unlikely) opponents to the project, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is not giving up any time soon, despite the fact that his oppositional planks have once again been systematically dismantled.

I’ve never completely understood Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s staunch opposition to Cape Wind and what would be the first offshore wind farm in the United States. Kennedy, whose family’s Massachusetts compound in Hyannisport would be six miles from the nearest tip of the Cape Wind project area, is an environmental lawyer and activist with an impressive resume including work for the NRDC, Riverkeepers and Pace Law School.

Kennedy’s work has ranged from fighting point-source waterway pollution in New York State and protecting Appalachian mountains from devastating mountaintop removal mining, to working for private industry promoting concentrating solar projects in the Southwest. I could go on, but the point is, few would doubt Mr. Kennedy’s environmental convictions — well, excepting Cape Wind, that is.

Following the lead of his now late uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Bobby began rolling out out every single oppositional bullet point in the book. From negatively affecting the tourism and fishing industries to causing unwanted obstacles for local ferries and airlines, Kennedy’s opposition has not waned, despite the fact that his claims have largely been proven untrue.

Kennedy was first taken to task by authors and environmental strategists, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger who first dissected the dubious claims made about Cape Wind made in 2006.

But more recently, an Op-Ed in Cape Cod Today took Kennedy to task on his claims, and in the opinion of this author, should have quashed tired talking points once and for all. Carl Freeman writes:

“On August 25th, Bobby Kennedy Jr. was a guest on the NPR morning show discussing a variety of issues. I found myself agreeing with almost every point he made until the subject of putting a Wind farm in Nantucket Sound came up.

I am sorry to say that everything he claimed to be outraged about concerning Cape Wind was either a complete lie, or at least a distant relative of the truth.”

Read the  point-by-point rebuttal to RFK Jr. by Carl Freeman at Cape Cod Today.

Photo: m.prinke via flickr

Fresh off the first Senate hearing for the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, the bill’s co-author, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) said he was confident the Senate would be able to bring a bill to the floor for a full vote before the Copenhagen climate talks, now just over a month away.

But Kerry also downplayed the importance of coming out of the upcoming talks with a completed document, saying, “I don’t expect Copenhagen to come up with a full treaty.” The senator did say it will be important to set firm political targets and then have a series of follow-up meetings to sort out the technical specifics.

Kerry, speaking on a conference call with a group of young climate activists on Tuesday night, said the timing of getting a climate bill through before Copenhagen was complicated. Kerry told the young leaders that, “The difficulty is that we are somewhat controlled by the healthcare debate.”

To move the bill along, Kerry said natural gas and nuclear incentives will likely play a larger role in the Senate bill — concessions that Kerry said were necessary to get the 60 votes they need for passage — but that moderate members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle need some convincing.

In particular, Kerry named senators Evan Bayh and Dick Lugar of Indiana, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico as fence-sitters that still need to be nudged toward supporting to the bill. When asked a question by a person from Virginia, Kerry added to that list senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb of Virginia.

Kerry reminded the young leaders on the call that it was the environmental movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s who brought about the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, and urged them to “gin up the phone calls; gin-up the mail.”

“This is really when grassroots count,” said Kerry.

But some fence-sitters, like Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, a possible Republican vote in favor of climate change legislation, said the committee was moving too hastily on a complex bill.

“Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now? asked Voinovich. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to take our time and do it right?”

The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will continue holding hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act through the end of this week.

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Image via Center for American Progress Action Fund

Rhone Resch, CEO of the Solar Energy Industry Association today declared a Solar Bill of Rights. Resch made the declaration in a speech today at the opening the Solar Power International conference in Anaheim, California. Resch said that the Solar Bill of Rights was not declared “on behalf of our companies, but on behalf of our customers and our country.”

“We seek no more than the freedom to compete on equal terms and no more than the liberty for consumers to choose the energy source they think best,” writes Resch in the preamble.

The eight points that Resch made in the Solar Bill of Rights are:

1. Americans have the right to put solar on their homes or businesses. Restrictive covenants, onerous connection rules, and excessive permitting and inspections fees prevent many American homes and businesses from going solar.

2. Americans have the right to connect their solar energy system to the grid with uniform national standards. This should be as simple as connecting a telephone or appliance. No matter where they live, consumers should expect a single standard for connecting their system to the electric grid.

3. Americans have the right to Net Meter and be compensated at the very least with full retail electricity rates. When customers generate excess solar power utilities should pay them consumer at least the retail value of that power.

4. The solar industry has the right to a fair competitive environment. The highly profitable fossil fuel industries have received tens of billions of dollars for decades. The solar energy expects a fair playing field, especially since the American public overwhelmingly supports the development and use of solar.

5. The solar industry has the right to equal access to public lands. America has the best solar resources in the world, yet solar companies have zero access to public lands compared to the 45 million acres used by oil and natural gas companies.

6. The solar industry has the right to interconnect and build new transmission lines. When America updates its electric grid, it must connect the vast solar resources in the Southwest to population centers across the nation.

7. Americans have the right to buy solar electricity from their utility. Consumers have no choice to buy clean, reliable solar energy from their utilities instead of the dirty fossil fuels of the past.

8. Americans have the right, and should expect, the highest ethical treatment from the solar industry. Consumers should expect the solar energy industry to minimize its environmental impact, provide systems that work better than advertised, and communicate incentives clearly and accurately.

Image via Pink Dispatcher

ARPA-E funding project modeled after successful Defense program

The Department of Energy today announced major funding for 37 “transformational” energy research projects — projects that focus on a range of topics from an ultrahigh efficiency engine for plug-in hybrids, to advanced algal biofuels and smart grid research.

The $151 million in funding is being awarded through the Department’s recently-formed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The 37 recipients were culled from a highly-competitive program that saw 3,600 initial concept papers received. Of those, approximately 300 full applications were requested and put through a rigorous review process.

“ARPA-E is a crucial part of the new effort by the U.S. to spur the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, creating thousands of new jobs and helping cut carbon pollution,” said Energy Secretary Stephen Chu today in announcing the selections.

Included in the list of funding recipients were several smart-grid research projects, pleasing industry groups. “Having the President championing smart grid sends a critical message to consumers and companies that the U.S. is serious about investments in our energy future,” said Katherine Hamilton, President of the Gridwise Alliance, a a consortium of over 100 public and private organizations working to transform the nation’s electric grid.

Today’s announcement marks the first round of projects funded under ARPA-E, which is receiving total of $400 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, putting “an exclamation point on the Administration’s work to date advancing smart grid,” said Hamilton.

The 37 project grants grants will go to research being conducted in 17 states. Of the lead recipients, 43% are small businesses, 35% are educational institutions, and 19% are large corporations.

President Obama announced $400 million in initial funding for ARPA-E through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in April, as part of the largest federal commitment to science in American history.

Created to support high risk, high reward energy research that can provide transformative new solutions for climate change and energy security, ARPA-E was established under the America Competes Act of 2007, and inspired by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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The 2009 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, ACEEE’s third edition of its annual state-by-state ranking on the adoption and implementation of energy efficiency policies, indicates that the vast majority of states most-lacking in energy efficiency policy guidance are also so-called “Red States”, as measured by their choice in the 2008 presidential election.

States are ranked across six policy areas: utility-sector and public benefits programs and policies; transportation polices; building energy codes; combined heat and power; state government initiatives; and appliance efficiency standards.

Map of 2008 Presidential Election results by state. (Mark Newman/Univ. of Michigan)

2009 ACEEE Energy Efficiency Scorecard

The states needing the most improvement along with their energy use per capita rank, ACEEE scorecard rank, which candidate won the state in the 2008 presidential election, the party affiliation of their current governor and the party affiliation of their senators are as follows:

Arkansas (15/41): McCain - D - D/D
Missouri (27/41): McCain - D - R/D
Louisiana (3/41): McCain - R - R/D
Georgia (29/44): McCain - R - R/R
Alaska (1/45): McCain - R - R/D
West Virginia (8/45): McCain - D - D/D
Nebraska (16/47): McCain - R - R/D
Alabama (9/48): McCain - R - R/R
Mississippi (12/49): McCain - R - R/R
North Dakota (4/49): McCain - R - D/D
Wyoming (2/51): McCain - D - R/R

Implications of the findings

There are a few important comments that should be made about the ACEEE’s bottom grouping of states. First, states are not homogeneous. Just because a state is colored red on a map does not mean that everyone in that state is a Republican, or an energy hog. Second, energy use per capita is not the best indicator to use for comparing consumption because residents in some states have to use more energy than the average American just to keep their houses and places of work comfortable. However, it provides a useful indicator when used along with many.

Finally, despite the seemingly bleak news, the report finds that energy efficiency has risen to a new level of recognition in the U.S. and is becoming a resource that is increasingly recognized for its importance at the state level. As a result, several states (both Blue and Red) have shown marked improvements over their 2008 rankings.

“The most improved states are stepping up their efforts in several ways, such as adopting new building energy codes and setting aggressive new energy savings targets,” said Maggie Eldridge, ACEEE research associate and lead author of the report.

States making strong moves up in the ranks from 2008 to 2009, include Maine (up from 19 to 10); Colorado (up from 24 to 16); Delaware (up from 32 to 20); District of Columbia (up from 30 to a tie for 20); South Dakota (up from 47 to 36); and Tennessee (up from 46 to 38).

The states that are doing the most to implement energy efficiency, according to ACEEE, are: California (1); Massachusetts (2); Connecticut (3); Oregon (4); New York (5); Vermont (6); Washington state (7); Minnesota (8); Rhode Island (9); and Maine (10).

“By embracing a wide range of cost-effective energy efficiency strategies, the leading states are demonstrating that efficiency is their ’first fuel’ to meet energy demands while growing their economies,” said ACEEE’s Eldrige.

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Photo: © Narcisa/Dreamstime
Map: Mark Newman/University of Michigan

As part of an Executive Order regarding federal sustainability signed two weeks ago by President Barack Obama, federal employees and military personnel have been asked to find ways to help green our government. The White House is calling the GreenGov Challenge a “Bottom-up approach to greening government.”

“Energy efficiency is an issue I’m passionate about, and it is a major focus for the Department of Energy,” said Energy Secretary Stephen Chu in a White House blog post today. “For the next few decades, energy efficiency will be our most effective tool for reducing our carbon emissions, and the best way to reduce energy bills for America’s families,” said Chu.

Ideas for the GreenGov Challenge can be submitted through October 31st and in the beginning of November, some of the top ideas will be presented to the Steering Committee on Federal Sustainability to be evaluated and put into action shortly thereafter.

Over the last several weeks, the Chamber has lost several important members because of the umbrella group’s vocal opposition to Waxman-Markey and its questioning of the climate science behind it.

Things seemed to be moving right along for the latest Yes Men hoax until a question from an audience member from an actual representative of the Chamber tipped everyone in attendance off to the fact that this was a hoax.

Eric Wohlschlegel, spokesman for the U.S. Chamber caught wind of the event and interrupted the press conference and moved to the front of the room asking reporters to direct their questions to him, saying, “This is a fraudulent press conference!”

Clearly annoyed, Wohlschlegel began handing out business cards to reporters after a cursory “pre-screening” of their press credentials. I was happy to see former Grist reporter, Kate Sheppard, who now writes for Mother Jones, somehow able to make the cut. Watch it:

The pre-conference press release had several mainstream media outlets including Reuters and The New York Times sufficiently fooled that they ran stories of the Chamber’s new position before it came to light that it was all a hoax.

Monday’s hoax press conference was not the first foray into subversive political action from the Yes Men. In September, the group published a fake edition of The New York Post with a headline that read, “We’re Screwed”, in reference to the climatic impact of global warming on New York City and the world.

Hat tip: earth2tech

Like many other state coffers across the country, Massachusetts is a little short on cash. As part of his effort to raise money for the fiscal 2010 budget, the state’s governor, Deval Patrick, has proposed expanding the state’s nearly three decade-old “Bottle Bill” to include bottled water, juices, and sports drinks.

Having grown up in Massachusetts it always confounded me that bottles and cans of beer and soda could be returned for a nickel but that juices and Gatorade were somehow exempt (bottled water was yet to be the scourge it is today). But as the bottled beverage industry blossomed, so did the amount of plastic in the state’s streams, lakes, parks and landfills.

Supporters of the bill say the current deposit program only covers two-thirds of the bottled beverages sold in the state. The remaining one-third, they say, is ending up as litter — and at much higher rates than returnable bottles.

The Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG) recently pointed to a random sampling of litter collected by volunteers at a Charles River cleanup that contained a ratio of almost 5 to 1 non-returnable containers to returnable (deposit) containers. The group also said they found similar numbers at other locations statewide.

MASSPIRG estimates that because the ration of deposit to non-deposit containers is about 2 to 1, that it is “over twelve times more likely that a non-deposit container will end up littering our waterways than will a deposit container.”

Gov. Patrick’s office estimates the state would raise about $58 million by allowing the redemption of an additional 1.5 billion containers a year, or about $20 million more than the state earns from the current law.

By creating a broader scope of coverage for the bottle bill, legislators hope the bottle bill will not only pay for the community services to clean them up, but that it would increase the state’s recycling rates. Currently, about 65 percent of all bottles sold in the state are redeemed.

Massachusetts is one of just 11 states including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont that require deposits on most carbonated beverage containers at the time of purchase; these deposits may then be redeemed when the empty bottles are returned.

The only other state [check] that has a state-mandated recycling deposit on non-carbonated beverages is Connecticut, where non-carbonated beverages are statutorily defined as water, flavored water and nutritionally-enhanced water, but not mineral water.

What, did Connecticut legislators had to make concessions to the powerful Perrier and Pellegrino lobby to get the bill through?

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More than 7,000 will be writing about climate change for Blog Action Day 2009. (Photo: Nez)

Blog Action Day, a movement to get bloggers from across disciplines and around the world to focus on a single topic for a day has, in just two years, swelled to more than 7,000 bloggers writing for an estimated 11 million readers worldwide. The focus of this year’s Blog Action Day is climate change. And because we are at a critical juncture in the narrative of national and international climate policy, the timing couldn’t be better.

Even if it doesn’t feel like there is the same intensity in momentum right now for action on climate change (at least in the U.S.) that there was 12-24 months ago, there is a tremendous amount of political activity surrounding the climate change issue right now. From the recent climate summit at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly to the meeting of the G-20 in Pittsburgh, the international policy community is gearing up for the upcoming Copenhagen climate change summit beginning in December.

Projects like the TckTckTck campaign and the 350 campaign are mobilizing support for action on climate change from grass roots organizations, trade unions, faith groups and businesses in advance of the Copenhagen climate meetings in December.

But what about the government of the United States? Most observers will tell you that for any meaningful agreement to be reached in Copenhagen, the U.S. must take a leadership role, a role that would be far easier to assume having passed a climate bill of their own through Congress. But because the health care debate has taken so much time, many thought the chances of passing climate legislation before Copenhagen was unlikely—but that was before the game-changing op-ed by Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, in Saturday’s New York Times.

Sen. Graham’s support for the Kerry-Boxer climate and energy bill has breathed new life into those hoping for a pre-Copenhagen climate bill from U.S. lawmakers. And with the ink drying on the Senate climate bill and on the docket to begin committee debate at the end of the month, the timing of Blog Day of Action 2009 is absolutely impeccable.

You can follow Blog Action Day’s coverage of climate change on twitter using the hashtag #BAD09.

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Joe Mohr/Red, Green & Blue

via Joe Mohr at Red, Green, and Blue

Pizango was charged with sedition after a deadly and controversial clash in June between police in tribal members led to the deaths of at least 50 people and injured hundreds of others. Pizango and AIDESEP were protesting several laws that would open their Amazonian lands to oil exploration. Pizango quickly fled to Nicaragua, seeking asylum from what he and many others viewed as unfair charges.

Alberto Pizango, exiled leader of Amazonian tribes in Peru, will run for President in 2011 (Image via La Republica).

As a result of the battle, Peru’s government repealed two of the eleven decrees that the tribes were protesting, amid large nation-wide protests. This action lead to cheers from tribes, although the issue of indigenous sovereignty still remains to be a hot political topic in Peru, with many issues unresolved. Several indigenous communities recently protested the co-opting of their lands into national parks that would limit their ability to participate in subsistence fishing and hunting, suggesting that productive cooperation between the tribes and federal government is still limited.

Pizango remains in Nicaragua, but has hinted because of legal concerns that he may soon return to Peru. His candidacy for the presidency would most likely keep Amazonian issues in the limelight, but he would face stiff competition from a number of candidates who have established followings.

Probable candidates include Representative Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who has recently been convicted on charges of corruption and human rights abuses among a series of ongoing trials concerning his presidency; Lima mayor Luis Castañeda, who has led a popular effort to revitalize the nation’s capital and improve roads and infrastructure; former president Alejandro Toledo who was not popular when his term ended in 2006, but is thought by many to have helped stabilize the country and improve its economy; socialist leader Ollanta Humala who was a serious contender for the presidency in the 2006 election; and Representative Lourdes Flores, a perennial conservative candidate who also has a strong base of support. A recent poll showed mayor Luis Castañeda with a marginal lead over Fujimori.

Peru is riding a huge economic surge that has placed it atop Latin America in terms of economic development, mostly because of a thriving commodities market that has also helped make Peru one of the most successful nations in the Americas during the global recession. This emphasis on natural resource extraction has not come without its costs, among them  increased tension with Amazonian tribes, political scandals, and questions about Peru’s long-term commitment to protect the environment and the Amazon.

Ostrom’s work showed that “tragedy of the commons” problem can be solved by voluntary organizations, not just the heavy hand of the state.

The Nobel Prize in Economics were awarded Monday to two Americans. University of California, Berkeley economist Oliver E. Williamson and Indiana University Professor of Political Science, Elinor Ostrom. Williamson’s work has centered on the theory of the firm and transaction cost economics while Ostrom’s has focused on voluntary governance and the collaborative management of natural resources.

Ostrom, the first woman to win in the category, is best known for her work studying the non-governmental management of common-pool natural resources. Her seminal work, Governing the Commons (1990), is required reading for graduate students in environmental policy, environmental economics and natural resource management in universities around the world.

Ostrom’s work showed that the best solution to managing the problem known as the “tragedy of the commons” — the economically deterministic “rule” of resource management that says economically rational individuals will abuse a common-pool natural resource because they have no direct economic incentive to play by the rules — may be voluntary place-based institutions, rather than the top down institutions of the state.

Ostrom, a self-described political economist, has said she hopes her work can help inform policy on climate change. Watch as Prof. Ostrom explains the “tragedy of the commons” and the voluntary institutions that can alleviate the problem (hat tip: Environmental Economics)

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California law will require utilities to pay roughly one and half times the ‘market price’ to small-scale solar generators.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday signed a statewide solar feed-in tariff, a provision that requires utilities to buy solar energy back from customers at above-market prices.

The California Solar Surplus Act, AB-920, will require California utilities to buy power from solar-panel generators of 1.5-3.0 megawatts at roughly 15 to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, with the price being determined at auction.

Some critics of the bill say the guaranteed tariff payment may not be high enough to spur significant investment in the solar industry and that it doesn’t do anything to incentivize residential rooftop solar. But other industry leaders fully support the move.

“I think the feed-in tariff in California is a step in the right direction (for) customizing policy to the market segments,” said SunPower’s chief executive Tom Werner at a recent conference in San Francisco.

The codifying of the solar feed-in tariff is part of a larger renewable energy strategy being touted by Schwarzenegger to meet the state’s ambitious 33 percent by 2020 renewables target.

Schwarzenegger vetoed two related bills on Sunday evening. One of which—passed in September by the Democratic-controlled California assembly—would have required the state’s utilities to use renewable energy, like solar and wind power from sources within state borders.

But the governor objected to any provisions that would limit the amount of renewable power utilities could buy from other states, saying they were “protectionist” and would be costly.

Schwarzenegger says he signed the bill because the state “will need to use all of the tools available” to stay on track to meet their renewable energy target would be to allow contracting from out of state generators and to encourage more small-scale solar deployments via this new feed-in mechanism.

via MarketWatch; The Wall Street Journal
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A pending U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service plan would allow state game agents to shoot radio-collared mountain lions on the Kofa refuge for the purpose of limiting predation on bighorn sheep, prized by hunters.

PEER maintains that an increased cougar take may actually completely eliminate the remnant cougar population on the refuge, while not necessarily benefiting the bighorn at all.

“Sterilizing the Kofa wildlife refuge of all cougars is bad biology and even worse wildlife management,” said Southwest PEER Director Daniel Patterson, an ecologist who helped broker a moratorium on removal of radio-collared lions. That moratorium ended in August, allowing elimination of lions linked to bighorn kills when they leave the refuge.

A pending study on the factors affecting the bighorn population will not be finished for another year. PEER maintains that, as a result, there is no scientific basis for making management decisions until the study is completed and its results analyzed.

Ironically, the current dispute arises as the bighorn population is on the rise, according to PEER biologists. Today’s bighorn population, estimated at 436 animals, is larger than the estimated population of 390 bighorn recorded in 2006 and of the estimated 200-375 bighorn reported on the Kofa refuge from 1970-1978.

According to reports, in one of the first reported instances of a lion having killed a bighorn on the Kofa refuge, the sheep was ill and partially blind. “The lion may have very well prevented that sick bighorn from infecting other sheep,” said PEER’s Patterson. “The killing of more lions risks the elimination of a significant natural interaction that serves to prevent the spread of disease in the bighorn population.”

PEER biologists maintain that in the absence of maintain lions, other predators, such as coyotes and bobcats, may fill the void causing as much and possibly more bighorn predation.

“Cougars have an important role to play in the web-of-life and in maintaining the health of bighorn herds, and they will not survive the feds’ proposed removal policy,” added Patterson. “Until these officials fully understand the role that predators play in bighorn populations, they have no business killing and removing them.”

The public comment period for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife cougar removal plan ended last Friday, October 2nd.

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A group calling themselves CO2 Is Green is going public with a campaign to propagate one of the biggest misconceptions about the whole CO2 debate:  Because it is biologically necessary for plant life, CO2 is, by extension, good for plants and animals, in any and all quantities.  The problem with this logic, however,  is that it focuses on the wrong scale entirely.

Put it this way, just like water is necessary for plant life to flourish, too much water can kill a plant, flood a field or a farm, and if there is enough of it, wipe out entire towns and cities.  Just like CO2, water is a critical component of photosynthesis. But just because they are both necessary, we cannot make the logical leap that more is necessarily better.

Watch it:

“Congress is considering a law that would classify carbon dioxide as pollution. This will cost us jobs. There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the earth’s ecosystems and would support more plant and animal life. Please take action. Contact your senator and congressman today and remind them CO2 is not pollution and more CO2 results in a greener earth. Go to CO2isgreen.com, because we all need CO2.”

The Guardian
via House of Sims