Free Republic

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION, Canada — Growing up with smokestacks on the horizon, Ada Lockridge never thought much about the pollution that came out of them. She never worried about the oil slicks in Talfourd Creek, the acrid odors that wafted in on the shifting winds or even the air-raid siren behind her house whose shrill wail meant "go inside and shut the windows." Now Lockridge worries all the time. A budding environmental activist, she recently made a simple but shocking discovery: There are two girls born in her small community for every boy. A sex ratio so out of whack,...

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies spend at least $123 million a year to keep public lands open to livestock grazing, according to a government report that environmentalists say bolsters their argument that grazing should be limited. "If we are going to allow grazing on our public lands, the very least we should be doing is we should be recovering the costs," said Greta Anderson, a Tucson, Ariz., botanist and the range restoration campaign coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity. Jim Hughes, deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management -- which, with the Forest Service, manages 98 percent of grazing...

OSLO — Deforestation is often wrongly blamed for causing floods, like in Guatemala this month, under a myth that has skewed agricultural policies, an international report said on Thursday. "There is no scientific evidence linking large-scale flooding to deforestation," the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) said in a report. The frequency of major floods in the past 120 years, back to the late 19th century when forests were far more abundant, has been stable worldwide, it said. That implied that deforestation was not a cause of flooding. It said devastation...

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration proposed new guidelines Monday that it said would prevent overfishing, part of a plan for managing the nation's marine resources. Critics say they ignore important recommendations from a presidential commission. Tougher fines and penalties, more peer-reviewed science studies and market-based decisions are other measures that will "help us toward ending overfishing and rebuilding our fish stocks," said Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The bill describes how to reauthorize the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs the nation's ocean fisheries. Its authorization expired after 1999, though its provisions remain in effect....

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German inventor has angered animal rights activists with his answer to fighting the soaring cost of fuel -- dead cats. Christian Koch, 55, from the eastern county of Saxony, told Bild newspaper that his organic diesel fuel -- a home-made blend of garbage, run-over cats, and other ingredients -- is a proven alternative to normal consumer diesel. "I drive my normal diesel-powered car with this mixture," Koch said. "I have gone 170,000 km (106,000 miles) without a problem." The Web site of Koch's firm, "Alphakat GmbH," says his patented "KDV 500" machine can produce what he...

At least eighty wealthy liberals have each pledged $1 million or more to the newly established Democracy Alliance to fund a network of progressive think tanks and advocacy groups, the Washington Post reports. The goal of the alliance, which was founded last spring, is to foster the development of liberal and left-leaning institutions that can counter the influence of established conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute. According to alliance officials, many liberal groups are too focused on promoting an agenda that was enacted when Democrats enjoyed majorities...

JOHANNESBURG — "Monster mice" are eating metre-high albatross chicks alive, threatening rare bird species on a remote south Atlantic island seen as the world's most important seabird colony. Conservation groups say the avian massacre is occurring on Gough Island in the South Atlantic, a British territory about 1,600 kms (1,000 miles) southwest of Cape Town and home to more than 10 million birds. "Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds and this catastrophe could make many extinct within decades," said Dr Geoff Hilton, a senior research biologist with Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). "We think...

First vanity after more about 2 years. One question: When it comes to dealing with a very difficult civilization; in terms of the values we hold most dear as a civilization with a Judeo-Christian tradition. Should we not ask ourselves, when we feel mildly threatened - "What would God do?"

SEATTLE — With a record number of dead seabirds washing up on West Coast beaches from Central California to British Columbia, marine biologists are raising the alarm about rising ocean temperatures and dwindling plankton populations. "Something big is going on out there," said Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington. "I'm left with no obvious smoking gun, but birds are a good signal because they feed high up on the food chain." Coastal ocean temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees above normal, which may be related to a lack...

WASHINGTON — Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report to be released Thursday. Although the effects on the babies are not clear, the survey prompted several members of Congress to press for legislation that would strengthen controls on chemicals in the environment. The report by the Environmental Working Group is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA. "These...

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted to block the Environmental Protection Agency from using studies that expose people to pesticides when considering permits for new pest killers. By a 60-37 vote, the Senate approved a provision from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that would block the EPA from relying on such testing -- including 24 human pesticide experiments currently under review -- as it approves or denies pesticide applications. The Bush administration lifted a moratorium imposed in 1998 by the Clinton administration on using human testing for pesticide approvals. Under the change, political appointees are refereeing on a case-by-case basis any ethical...

LOS ANGELES — An animal rights group has called on one of the largest aquariums in the United States to stop serving fish to its visitors, likening the practice to grilling up "poodle burgers at a dog show." "It's easy to think of fish as swimming vegetables but of all the places in the country where fish should get a fair shake it's an aquarium," said Karin Robertson, manager of the Fish Empathy Project for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Robertson Friday sent a letter to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, near Los Angeles, asking...

PORTLAND, Maine — The collapse of cod stocks off Nova Scotia changed the marine ecosystem so dramatically that it may be impossible for cod to recover, according to a study by Canadian scientists that could have ramifications for cod stocks at Georges Bank. Once the top predator, cod is now a bit player in waters off Nova Scotia. Its population on the Scotian Shelf has plunged 96 percent since the 1850s, according to archaeological evidence and old fishing records. In its absence, the entire marine ecosystem has been transformed, said Ken Frank, who co-authored the report published recently in Science...

BEIJING — Beijing plans to pump nearly $40 billion into a massive infrastructure building spree to make sure the city is ready to host the 2008 Olympics, state media said on Monday. The groundwork building drive will dwarf Beijing's $2 billion Olympic operating budget and the $2 billion it has put aside for venue construction. "Beijing will raise 320 billion yuan ($38.7 billion) from home and abroad for building 860 infrastructure projects before 2008 to facilitate smooth operation of the 2008 Olympic Games," Xinhua news agency said. Over half the money -- 184 billion yuan -- would go towards expanding...

UNITED NATIONS — In a daylong brainstorming "summit," a dozen U.S. state treasurers and hundreds of financiers and other major investors debated ways Tuesday to pressure more U.S. companies into dealing openly with the financial risk of climate change and with ways to reduce it. "Climate change poses a long-term financial and business risk for many of the companies in which we invest," said Connecticut Treasurer Denise L. Nappier, a co-chair of the event. "For us today it's all about our money." Harvard University environmental scientist John Holdren gave the more than 300 participants an update on the latest climate...

BERLIN — More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond in recent weeks, and German scientists still have no explanation for what's causing the combustion, an official said Wednesday. Both the pond's water and body parts of the toads have been tested, but scientists have been unable to find a bacteria or virus that would cause the toads to swell up and pop, said Janne Kloepper, of the Hamburg-based Institute for Hygiene and the Environment. "It's absolutely strange," she said. "We have a really unique story here in Hamburg. This phenomenon really doesn't seem to...

Joe Schroeder is a man who isn't afraid to pull the trigger on an inventive idea. Living on a portion of his family's farm in Juneau, the self-employed 44-year-old used to spend time pondering ways to fire his shotgun at targets across the open spaces. But, an environmentally conscious shooting hobbyist, Schroeder could not bring himself to fire a single shot. "I couldn't shoot trap because of the crops. The shot was bad for an animal's digestion," said Schroeder, who also didn't want exploding clay targets, which contain significant levels of petroleum pitch, to sprinkle his mother's vegetable garden. His...

U.S. & Europe, Inc. EAST LANSING, Michigan The main purpose behind President George W. Bush's visit to Europe is said to be mending fences with European allies. Beyond the waxing and waning of rhetoric, however, the health of the alliance was never in doubt. Alarmist analyses about the health of the trans-Atlantic alliance, so popular in the wake of the Iraq war, underestimated the ties that bind the affluent, industrialized, and powerful countries of the global North. They failed to recognize - or deliberately ignored - the common grand design that underpins the North Atlantic "Concert," the major industrialized democracies...

LONDON — The current retreat of ice shelves in the Antarctic due to global warming is nothing new -- but this time the problem is manmade and therefore potentially more serious, according to research released Wednesday. Writing in the latest issue of the journal "Geology," British scientists said a survey had shown that ice shelves had retreated thousands of years ago as a result of rising air and ocean temperatures. "What this tells us is that ice shelves don't just break up because they get too big -- as the global warning skeptics argue," said Dominic Hodgson, a scientist with...

BEIJING — A study of giant panda poo in China has proved the endangered animals are expanding their horizons, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. The faeces were found in Fengxian county, in northwest China's Shaanxi province, where giant pandas hadn't been seen since before the 1970s, it said. In December, a farmer told the Fengxian County Wildlife Management Station that he had spotted an animal that looked very much like a giant panda and had seen giant panda dung while collecting bamboo leaves on a local mountain. "Experts with the Shaanxi Provincial Wildlife Management Station confirmed that the dung...