Planetsave

Oil and gas leases have been a hot topic for a long time, especially since the controversial disruption of a BLM land sale by student activist Tim DeChristopher in Salt Lake City this past December. The sale which, according to some, was a midnight move by the Bush administration found itself floundering when an unknown bidder (DeChristopher) won parcel after parcel of land. Since December the leased parcels have been pulled back and forth between the BLM and the Interior, between developers and nature-lovers.

This story goes back before DeChristopher, back before the rushed lease sale. Yet it shows that the tug-o-war has been going on for years; and it hasn’t stopped. When the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) recently told the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that it cannot move forward with 11 oil and gas leases without following federal cultural preservation law and consulting with concerned Native American tribes, a sigh was heard coming from Nine Mile Canyon in southern Utah.

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In order to cut harmful emissions from maritime vessels, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the next steps of its coordinated effort on Wednesday. The steps include creating a rule under the Clean Air Act that would establish tough engine and fuel standards for U.S. flagged ships. The proposed rule would harmonize with international standards and lead to improved air quality throughout the country.

The new proposal follows a proposal made between the United States and Canada in March that would set aside thousands of miles of coast between the two countries as an Emission Control Area (ECA). The International Maritime Organization (IMO), a United Nations agency, will begin review of the ECA plan this month. The passage of the ECA plan would result in the enforcement of stringent standards placed on large ships that operate within 200 nautical miles of U.S. or Canadian coasts.

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July 1, 2009 – The U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that up to $32 million dollars of Recovery Act funding will be used to expand the harvest of hydroelectric power. “There’s no one solution to the energy crisis, but hydro-power is clearly part of the solution and represents a major opportunity to create more clean energy jobs,” said Secretary Chu.

The funding would be used on existing facilities in order to modernize the current infrastructures, increase efficiency and reduce the impact that the facilities have on the environment. “Investing in our existing hydro-power infrastructure will strengthen our economy, reduce pollution and help us toward energy independence,” said Chu. The announcement made today is designed to work on non-federal facilities; increasing energy output and environmental stewardship by supporting the deployment of turbines and control technologies.

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Colony Collapse Disorder is still with us

…though not getting the same press it did the last couple of years. According to a joint survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the Agricultural Research Service’s Bee Research Laboratory, 29 percent of honey bee colonies vanished between September 2008 and April 2009. That number is better than previous years…but not much.

I think it’s time to give back to the insect that has given us so much over our lifetimes (they pollinate 1/3 of our food supply). Here are 5 things you can do to help the bees:

1. Provide bees with a safe beneficial place to thrive.
Leave a patch of wildflowers and plants for bees to enjoy.

Leave the dandelions in the ground. Dandelions are probably the most beneficial flower for bees in the early spring. Check out this info from the Daily Green for a list of other plants bees love.

Make a bee post for bees to reside. Drill a variety of holes up to a half inch in diameter into the side of a thick piece of untreated timber. Attach a roof to deflect rain, smooth down the entrances to the holes thoroughly so there are no sharp splinters, and attach it to a sunny wall or fence. Keep the post in a dry, cool place in winter and bring it out in March. (Another bee house idea is shared here).
FYI, don’t build bee homes with new fence posts from home and garden centers. They are unsuitable because they have been treated with chemicals. Speaking of chemicals…
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“We all remember this time last year,” said Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday. “We were in the midst of an energy crisis, paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline, and Americans were seeing their utility bills skyrocketing.” Since then, he went on to say, the energy problems haven’t disappeared and no changes in policy have been made. He warned that, though the prices have gone down, if we do not make any changes, we will fall into the same hole in which we found ourselves last summer.

His solution? Nuclear. Stating that “the cornerstone of any real solution to the American energy problem needs to involve offshore resources and nuclear power…which generates electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions and has a minimal impact on the environment.”  The first step to escaping America’s current energy crisis according to Wicker is to build more nuclear power plants.

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Editor’s Note: This was a multi-party contribution involving Kim Komenich (photos) Kwan Booth (text) NewsDesk.org (editing) Spot.Us (financial support). This is part of a series that we’ll be posting over the next week.

Just about any long-term West Oakland resident can rattle off a list of health issues effecting their community: toxins from cargo ships docking at the nearby Port of Oakland, diesel smoke from Port-bound trucks, pollution from the two freeways that border the neighborhood, illegal dumping, and lack of accessible health care.

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In southeast Utah rests a peaceful town located on the banks of a peaceful river. Here the Green River flows between two canyons, Gray and Labyrinth, allowing for farming and ranching in an arid desert. Driving through Green River, Utah doesn’t take but a few moments, including a stop to purchase some mouth-watering melons, for which Green River is famous. But Green River now has a new claim to fame.

Transition Power Development LLC (TPD) has proposed construction of a 2 unit nuclear power plant known as the Blue Castle Project situated just outside of the peaceful town. In order to maintain the 2 unit nuclear power plant, massive amounts of water would be required. The Kane County Water Conservancy District (KCWCD) has filed a water-rights application in order to facilitate the project. The application requests 29,600 acre-feet of water, which would be diverted from the Green River, a part of the Colorado River drainage.

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San Ramon, CA – Much will be said at the Chevron Corporation’s shareholder conference this week; the agenda is full.  However, there will be little said about Chevron’s involvement in controversial projects concerning tar sand.  Despite the requests of shareholders owning $31.4 billion dollars, Chevron will remain quiet, keeping the Alberta tar sand projects off the agenda.

Tar sand, a source of non-conventional oil, consists of bitumen, a sticky, tar-like form of petroleum which is so thick and heavy that it must be heated or diluted before it will flow. Harvesting tar sand requires huge amounts of energy and water.

In addition to heavy water use, extraction of Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands also involves clear-cutting of the Boreal Forest, formation of toxic “tailings” lakes, habitat destruction of iconic species such as the woodland caribou, and up to five times higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil extraction. All of these factors lead Canada’s Environmental Defence to label tar sand development “the most destructive project on Earth.”

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The Obama administration’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, announced today that he won’t be changing George W. Bush’s rule that global factors, such as climate change, cannot be considered in analyzing the polar bear’s survival.

The rule, instituted in the last months of Bush’s presidency, prohibit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries services from considering whether practices outside the polar bear’s territory are affecting its chances for survival.

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With the recent successes in stopping the further expansion of coal-based energy, activists direly need a complete list of proposed mining projects.

While SourceWatch.org already hosts the CoalSwarm database with all sorts of information about coal plants across different states, it’s lacking information on proposed coal mines. Legal opposition and community protests have been shown to work, so if you live in a coal mining area please add any known projects to this wiki list.

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