Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Congress will hold hearings into the contentious emergency evacuation plan for Indian Point, the nuclear power plant just north of New York City. Rep. Sue Kelly, a Republican whose district includes the Westchester County facility, had pushed for a hearing on the issue after a consultant firm found Indian Point's emergency plans rely on outdated technology and are based on unrealistic expectations. Fears about the plant have escalated sharply since the terror attacks of Sept. 11. A House subcommittee overseeing emergency management will conduct hearings in the near future, Washington, D.C., officials said Thursday. Kelly said she...

DENVER - Logging in Beaver Park in South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest can continue now that environmentalists have lost their legal battle to block it.U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham said Tuesday he would not halt the work because a new logging law did not violate a 2000 settlement between the government and environmentalists which limited logging in the forest.Sen. Tom Daschle attached the legislation to an emergency spending bill this summer to exempt parts of his home state from environmental regulations and allow more tree cutting as a way to prevent wildfires.Nottingham said Congress legally changed those environmental regulations...

Environmental issues are not resonating with voters in this midterm election the way they usually do. This is as much a rebuke to the Democrats as it is a tribute to the administration's ability to hide its assault on the rules protecting the nation's natural resources under the political radar. According to the polls, the environment commands voter interest about on a par with taxes, above crime and corporate malfeasance but below the economy, education and health care. Environmental issues could yet make the difference in several tight races, Colorado and New Hampshire among them. But its national impact is...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Hostile to Clinton administration environmental regulations, the Bush White House largely shut out the public from commenting on its reworking of forestry and mining rules that had been years in the making, a Senate panel's Democratic staff says.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP)  --   With nearly twice as many "smog days" as any other state, California continues to lead the nation in dirty air, followed by Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio, an environmental group said.</p> <p>The group, which gathered data from government air quality monitoring stations across the country, said last summer there were 4,634 reported times when smog levels exceeded federal health standards, about a 10 percent increase in violations from the previous summer.</p>

A leading environmental expert has strongly criticised UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for "lacking leadership" on green issues. Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the UK's Sustainable Development Commission, said the government's domestic record on the issue is seriously lacking and he accused the prime minister of "naive adulation" of the business world. Porritt: UK has done well on some issues His criticism comes as Mr Blair prepares to address the World Development Summit in Johannesburg. Mr Porritt, a former head of Friends of the Earth-UK, is now programme director of Forum for the Future, which works on ways to promote...

<p>Johannesburg -- The smoke settles over the rickety shacks and shabby houses as soon as this city wakes. Thousands of poor people without electricity burn scraps of wood in rusty tin cans to keep warm. Others burn coal in old stoves that belch soot and fumes into the cold morning air.</p>

<p>WITH characteristic disregard for the environment, President Bush last week announced a controversial plan to allow the timber industry to log millions of acres of national forest land. The ostensible reason? To prevent catastrophic fires. Rather than pursue a policy of thinning undergrowth and small trees, Bush prefers to give the timber industry a windfall by logging larger, more commercially valuable trees.</p>

<p>BENONI, South Africa (AP) --  Some of the world's top judges swapped ideas Tuesday on how to best enforce environmental laws at a meeting ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.</p> <p>The U.N.-sponsored conference brought together judges from countries as diverse as Costa Rica and Tanzania to discuss ways to enforce environmental legislation, such as establishing an international environmental court or setting up training programs for judges in environmental science and policy.</p>

I post this article to prompt a discussion about the subject of oil production. I don't know a lot about this subject and there are severl things here which I am curious about, especially US production after 1970, and the oil "crisis".This is a follow-up to a short item I published last year. Morton, G. R. (2000) The Coming Energy Crisis, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 52(2000):4:228. I know that Jeremiad's are rarely listened to, and I know that there are Chicken Little's behind every hen house. And until about a year and a half ago, I was...

<p>Washington -- Two weeks before a global environmental summit, the United Nations painted a dismal picture Tuesday of the world's ecological condition, with fresh water becoming scarcer, forests shrinking, air pollution growing and global sea levels rising.</p> <p>Organizers of the summit, which will draw more than 100 heads of states -- but not, as of now, President Bush -- to South Africa, hope these grim facts will help inspire action by participants.</p>

<p>Washington -- In a move environmentalists called an abrupt reversal of federal policy, the Bush administration said Friday that a major environmental law does not apply to vast tracts of ocean under U.S. control.</p> <p>Critics argued the ruling could allow military maneuvers, commercial fishing, ocean dumping and scores of other activities to proceed without public environmental review.</p>

I won't normally ask you to do this, but you might want to direct any tree-huggers you know to read this. My eye was caught by an article in the March/April edition of The American Spectator. It was written by Matt Ridley, author of the book Genome and others, and was reprinted from The Spectator of London. The article was titled "The Borking of Bjorn Lomborg," and it is must reading, especially for Earth Day celebrants.It is proof that unsuspecting Liberals can be hoist on their own petard (unless, of course, they are Algore, who will simply change his story).The...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) --  Al Gore used Earth Day to unleash his harshest criticism of President Bush since losing the White House to him, saying the administration's environmental policies serve "special interests instead of public interests."</p> <p>"America is only as healthy as the air our children breathe, the water they drink and the earth they will inherit," Gore told about 200 Vanderbilt University students and environmental activists Monday.</p>

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A woman who climbed 150 feet up a tree to protest a timber sale fell and died from her injures before rescuers could reach the remote site in the Mount Hood National Forest. The timber sale she was protesting had been canceled three days before her death Friday, and the protesters expected to leave the area within a week. It took rescue crews over two hours struggling up snow-clogged dirt roads to reach the tree-sitters' camp after fellow activists called rescuers, Clackamas County Sheriff's spokeswoman Angela Blanchard said. The caller said the woman, identified as Beth...