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(Dry Desert, California) The unexpected discovery of a nest of red-cheeked squirrels amidst the huge, partially constructed MegaPyre Solar Power plant has halted construction, casting doubt on the viability of what has been considered to be the environmentalist's crown jewel of renewable power facilities. The 20 gigawatt plant was expected to provide electricity to much of southern California, and was only 6 months away from completion when the nest of squirrels, which are on the endangered species list, was found. Due to federal regulations regarding endangered species, moving the nest to another location is not permitted. The situation has confounded...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices dropped to their lowest in more than four years on Wednesday after OPEC announced a record supply cut that dealers said may fail to fully offset slumping world energy demand. U.S. crude oil prices fell $3.54 to settle at $40.06 a barrel after dipping below $40 for first time since July 2004. London Brent fell $1.12 to $45.53. Oil prices have fallen more than $100 since July as a global financial crisis cuts into consumer and industrial fuel demand, and top forecasters are now predicting the first decline in world energy use since 1983....

(excerpted from one section) Greenhouse Effect ... Can We Change the Climate? It may seem hard to believe that people can actually change the Earth’s climate. But scientists think that the things people do that send greenhouse gases into the air are making our planet warmer. All use energy. But we need to use energy wisely if we want to slow global warming. Once, all climate changes occurred naturally. However, during the Industrial Revolution, we began altering our climate and environment through agricultural and industrial practices. The Industrial Revolution was a time when people began using machines to make life...

People affected by worsening storms, heatwaves and floods could soon be able to sue the oil and power companies they blame for global warming, a leading climate expert has said. Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University, said a breakthrough that allows scientists to judge the role man-made climate change played in extreme weather events could see a rush to the courts over the next decade. He said: "We are starting to get to the point that when an adverse weather event occurs we can quantify how much more likely it was made by human activity. And people adversely affected...

Flights at Stansted were today grounded after at least 50 climate change protesters broke into the airport and occupied a runway.Activists cut through fencing and once on the landing strip chained themselves together and surrounded themselves with their security fencing to create a ‘fort’.Members of the Plane Stupid organisation, who are protesting against the proposed second runway, grounded flights after achieving their aim of closing the airstrip. The occupied runway had been due to reopen at 5am. Airlines were told to divert their planes in the skies and, although the airport terminal has been opened to passengers, no aircraft...

When it comes to environmental wackiness, how far gone is the New York Times? Perhaps all we need to know is that in its editorial of today the Times calls the Kyoto Protocol: a modest first effort to control global greenhouse gas emissions. Modest? In terms of benefits, yes. According to Junk Science, it's widely acknowledged that the complete implementation of Kyoto would lead to a temperature saving of 0.07 °C by the year 2050. But there's nothing modest about Kyoto's cost. Junk Science estimates that to lower global temperatures by 1 °C would set the world economy back ....

Tamsin Omond: Retiring from the 'frontline' I'm too terrified of jail to carry on, says eco-warriorBenedict Moore-Bridger 15.10.08     CAMBRIDGE graduate and "face" of the climate change campaign Tamsin Omond today revealed she was withdrawing from frontline action, admitting the thought of prison "terrifies" her.The 23-year-old told the Standard that her first full night behind bars had given her a "reality check", and how her parents are now concerned for her future.Ms Omond became one of the leading names in climate change campaigning after joining the so-called "Commons Five" who scaled Parliament in February to protest over plans...

A self-confessed hostility toward people who drive Hummers, along with worries about family and finances, prompted a 72-year-old Southlake man to scratch paint on five of the sports utility vehicles, police said.... The vehicles, he complained, "have a big carbon footprint and they use four times as much gas as the rest of us," according to the affidavit. Detective K. Fulgium, who wrote the affidavit, also said Jeppe complained that Hummer drivers take two parking spaces and "park wherever they want." Jeppe told Fulgium that he is a member of two well-known environmental groups....Police subsequently learned that the man was...

It took 4.2 million gallons of oil spewing from a blowout at a rig in the Santa Barbara Channel 40 years ago to ignite the modern conservation movement, trigger new environmental protections and lead to a moratorium on new offshore oil drilling. But the high price of a gallon of gasoline is fueling a change in attitude. Recent national polls indicate that seven out of 10 people support new drilling offshore along the federal outer continental shelf, which extends from three to 200 miles beyond the shore. If costly new exploration in those areas is allowed, oil from those fields...

Environmentalism Is the Threat—Part III Time to Start Taking Names [Articles in this series: 1. Evil Incarnate | 2. Green Hegemony | 3. Environmentalism Is the Threat—Part I, Part II, Part III] Things like weather, climate, animal populations, extinctions, long-term ecological relationships, and the behavior of the seas are impossible to predict because, as we've seen: 1. there are too many causative variables bearing on all these kinds of things and they can never all be known, 2. life itself is always unpredictable, and 3. because all these kinds of things are determine by chaos-theory type cycles, usually many of...

California's two energy agencies Friday endorsed a plan that would require utilities to obtain a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The California Energy Commission, a policy-and-planning agency, and the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates utilities, issued the joint recommendation that, if implemented, would be the most ambitious renewable-energy plan in the U.S. But the target raises questions about how much the goal could cost consumers. The plan's price tag is "the question of the hour," says Jackalyne Pfannenstiel, an economist who chairs the California Energy Commission. She endorses the goal but said it could be...

* * * * *The spectators shown in the photo above are watching four tree-sitters come down from a 90-foot redwood at UC Berkeley, ending a 21-month sit-in. The protesters had been trying to block the razing of a forest to make way for development. What else is there to say?

You MUST see this video. It is hilarious. The people in it are actually serious. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ed0_1220618296

** EXCERPT ** WASHINGTON – At the National Governors Association conference where she first met John McCain, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had other business: making her case to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species. Months later she sued Kempthorne, arguing that the Bush administration didn't use the best science in concluding that without further protection, the polar bear faces eventual extinction because of disappearing sea ice as the result of global warming. Palin, McCain's vice presidential running mate, has had frequent run-ins with environmentalists. In her 20 months as governor, Palin has questioned...

Summary: The debate over energy and environmental policy has taken a surprising turn. With gasoline hovering around $4 a gallon, environmental groups are on the defensive. Americans want lower gas prices but environmentalists want to use high fuel prices to force dramatic changes on society. Many greens continue to oppose all new energy production, but the major environmental groups have a new strategy. They think their allies in Congress can convince the public that more oil won’t lower gas prices. ... Today’s green activists take their cues from professional pessimists like Paul Ehrlich. He’s the Stanford University professor who famously...

New York and 11 other states are suing federal environmental regulators over greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries, the New York attorney general's office said on Monday. The suit, led by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, charges that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the federal Clean Air Act by refusing to issue standards, known as new source performance standards, for controlling global warming pollution emissions from oil refineries. Note: Other states in the suit are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. New York City and Washington D.C. also joined in...

In a 3 a.m. blast of emails and text messages, Democrat Barack Obama announced that his selection for a vice presidential candidate is Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. And, for the most part, representatives from the environmental community were pleased with the news they awoke to Saturday morning. During his 35 years in the Senate, Biden has been most active on the Foreign Relations Committee, which he now chairs. But in that time he has also racked up a respectable environmental record, earning an 83 percent lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters. LCV, which has endorsed Obama, today...

We haven't talked about a good environmentalist wild-west style shootout in a while. Authorites in California have endorsed the construction of a 150 mile electricity transmisson line to carry power from wind and solar projects in the desert to San Diego. State law requires utilities to supply 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2010 – a benchmark SDG&E has said it cannot meet. The San Diego utility supplies 6% today. Unfortunately the transmission lines are proposed to go through some pretty areas and some environmentalists aren't too happy. “The idea that we’re going to sacrifice critical pieces of...

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats. To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this...

Maine is notorious for having one of the strongest environmental regulations on the planet. Mainers care more about rats birds bugs weeds and puddles than they do about unemployment, poverty, budget deficits and homelessness. Maybe that's way the later four are so common in Maine. Similarly in states like California where citizens and its agriculture must suffer a drought to protect a bunch of sucker fish or in Florida where a big swamp matters more than new jobs or agriculture the welfare and rights of human beings are compromised along with their jobs and homes to protect useless dumb animals...