Tennessee has come up with a novel idea - let's legislate mountaintop removal mining. The bill, SB3822, would:

- require environment impact statements prior to issue surface coal mining permits

- prohibit surface coal mining to alter ridge lines above 2000 feet

- prohibit surface mining within 100 feet of any water of the state

Crazy right? What's crazy to me, of course, is that these companies right now are able to open up a mine 100 feet from a lake or river, and that this legislation is even needed.

Of course the coal industry has come out full force against this legislation saying that this legislation would cost 'hundreds of jobs'.

On top of that, at a recent hearing on the bill, environmentalists brought proof of more than 50 violations of the coal industry. In an insanely ironic response, the industry reps said they wouldn't respond to the violations at the hearing because they were little more than speeding tickets.

Couple things, coal industry. If you're saying the violations are essentially no big deal by comparing them to speeding tickets, why not address them? But then, call me crazy, isn't speeding illegal? Don't you get them for a reason?

We'll see what happens.

EPA Administrator Johnson announced today that the government couldn't act too swiftly on regulating emissions. Sure, that makes sense. I mean, that worked for Hurricane Katrina right? Good work Brownie.

Oh, also, this flies in the face of the Supreme Court decision last year that mandated the Bush Administration take action to curb global warming emissions.

Basically, they're saying they need to take months to collect public comments, review scientific data, and make sure that emissions caps wouldn't interfere with other laws, or companies abilities to do business.

In a statement of true hubris, they claim that new emissions standards could negatively impact.....schools! Ahem, what?

Of course, none of this really matters, since by the time any review is done, public comments are collected, and the science is debunked, their term will be over, Johnson and the rest of the Bush appointees will be sippin' pina coladas in their back yards.

By now you may have already heard about the partial collapse of the Wilkins ice sheet in the Antarctic Peninsula.

According to reports, the collapse of the shelf had been expected, but is happening more rapidly than anybody expected. Already last month, and iceberg 25.5 miles by 1.5 miles broke off the shelf, and the rest of it appears to break off in the near future.

Of course, I'm sure the naysayers like James Inhofe will claim that the ice sheet was simply bored and wanted to mix things up a bit. The reality of course is that as global warming has sped up, the impacts are beginning to be felt.

Check out the satellite images from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.

It's been announced that Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA) is calling Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne before her Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in early April.

As we've talked about a bunch here at the EA blog, the Fish and Wildlife Service has been dragging their feet - for years now - on protecting the polar bear with the Endangered Species Act.

The most recent head-in-the-sand move was on January 9th, when FWS said they wouldn't meet the deadline and asked for 30 more days to make the determination. On January 30, FWS Director Dale Hall accepted responsibility for not meeting the deadline, and admitted the department was in violation of the Act.

January 9th went by 77 days ago, and still no word from FWS on the proposed listing. Thankfully, Sen. Boxer is mad as hell, and appears to be not taking it anymore.

In a letter to Kempthorne, Boxer said, "As Secretary of Interior, you are charged with following and carrying-out the law and making decisions based upon science...it is now nearly three months since your department was required by law to make a final decision regarding listing the polar bear. At the same time, I question why your Department did not delay approval of a major oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea, where about 20 percent of the world's polar bears live."

I'm just glad we're not the only ones who noticed that coincidence! We'll keep you posted on the hearing, and what comes out of it. Of course, given the recent wringing Sen. Boxer gave EPA Administrator Johnson, we can expect quite a show.

I'm a little nervous. In the past week, Sen. Hilary Clinton has hinted at supporting mountaintop removal mining, Sen. Barack Obama has re-embraced so-called clean coal technology which Sen. John McCain has long touted as well. One of these three is going to be our next president, and they're all promising a bright new future - so why are they stuck on this dark energy source from our past?

I was relieved to see that the majority of Americans have a better idea: according to a recent poll by the Pew center, more than 80 percent of Americans support increased federal funding for alternative energy. Can you take a moment to tell the candidates to get with it, and stop championing coal?

No matter how the industry tries to pretty it up, coal is filthy and dangerous. And while the candidates talk about coal jobs, the reality is that even though coal mining has gone up in the last fifty years, employment in the industry has fallen 80 percent as a result of automation and the advent of mountaintop removal mining.

Who benefits from the use of coal? The coal industry. Who loses? Everybody else. We lose our health, our forests and mountains, and we speed up global warming.

All the candidates are talking about "change" - but it's hard to imagine a more environmentally regressive energy choice than coal - the stuff we've been dangerously dependent on for more than a century. Please ask our candidates for real energy leadership - and to break away from coal:

I picked this up from Plenty Mag, and it's a little story on Sen. Clinton's recent interview with West Virginia public radio.

In the interview, Clinton responds to a question on MTR with this gem, "I’m not an expert, but … maybe there’s a way to recover those mountains once they’ve been stripped of coal. You know, I think we’ve got to look at this from a practical perspective." She continues by saying she would need advice from people who balance "both the economic necessities and environmental damage".

First of all, the name Mountaintop Removal Mining tells you most of what you need to know in terms of becoming an expert on the issue. Secondly, maybe there's a way to recover those mountains? Short of another ice age, I'm at a loss for what that solution might be.

Then, some facts that Plenty pulls out also contradict her economic/environmental assertion - namely that even as coal production has increased, mining employment has decreased 90%. So what's the economic benefit? The communities themselves suffer from some of the worst poverty in the country AND the worst environmental degradation. I mean, the coal companies surely profit, but that can't be what she's talking about, can it?

Sadly, all the candidates seem to have a massive crush on coal - but to claim ignorance on the issue is beyond the pale.

The Cape Wind project in Massachusetts is pretty amazing. Not only would it provide 75 percent of the electricity used on Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard, it would be an amazing step forward for clean energy in the U.S., paving the way for even greater clean energy projects around the country.

After six long years, the project has reached its final review phase - through the Minerals Management Service - and that agency has opened up a public comment period for the project.

We need your comment in favor of the project today. Click here to send in yours.

There has been a lot of controversy around this project, and it's been a long struggle, but we're almost at the end of it. Time and again, the overwhelming opinion is in favor of Cape Wind, but we need to get over this last hurdle to make it a reality.

And, once Cape Wind is in place, it will set a standard for renewable energy policies across the country. So please, make your voice heard, today.

I was strolling through the interwebs this morning when I came across an article entitled, 'The Media Snow Job on Global Warming'. I thought, could they be talking about how the media ignored global warming claims for decades? Could they be talking about the insistence of media reports to call the reality of question into debate? No, no, no. Instead, it's an article decrying how one-sided the media is about global warming, and in particular, the treatment given to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

The article states:

The NIPCC is a counter to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The group was unveiled this week in Manhattan at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, along with its scientific report claiming that natural factors -- the sun, El Ninos and La Ninas, volcanoes, etc, -- not human sources are behind global warming.

The author then takes the Washington Post to task for their bias in reporting on the NPCC report, and its comparisons to the IPCC report from last year, which concluded that global warming is real, and is human-made.

He continues,

The bias is that whatever the IPCC and its defenders claim, the Washington Post and most other outlets report without scrutiny. Meanwhile, the motives and sources of all skeptics are instantly suspected and derided.

There's nothing wrong with scrutinizing the motives of people engaged in a dicey debate. The subjectivity arises from scrutinizing only one side and always with a preconceived notion of what you are going to find.

The rest of the article is devoted to scrutinizing the IPCC report him complaining about people sending him negative emails when he wrote a story called, "Forget global warming: Welcome to the New Ice Age."

In fairness, he does mention that, "Hundreds of scientists may have contributed bits and pieces of work to the IPCC's gargantuan report, but just 62 wrote the chapter said to "prove" that man is behind global warming -- not that many more than the 23 from the new NIPCC [report]"

But, let's break some of this down, shall we?

First of all, the NPCC is a project of Science and Environmental Policy Project, headed up by Fred Singer. Mr. Singer is an electrical engineer and physicist, which is all well and good. But, his body of work contains some pretty sketchy ideas. For instance

- he authored a report that said the link between second hand smoke and cancer was 'junk science'
- said the smoke from the 1991 Kuwait oil fires would rain out in three to five days
- said, "being attacked by Ozone Action is rather like receiving a commendation or a medal"
- said, "both air and water pollution have been virtually eliminated in developed nations"

And, to be clear, a PR firm hired by Phillip Morris sent them a memo in 1993, saying "As you know, we have been working with Dr. Fred Singer".

Additionally, according to his own resume, Mr. Singer has worked as a consultant with Exxon, Shell, Unocal, Sun Oil, and Arco.

So yeah, I'm simply unable to accept scientific data on global warming from someone who's been on Exxon's payroll - the same Exxon who offered $10,000 to any scientist willing to refute the IPCC's claims last year when the report was released.

Add to this that fact that he NPCC report was written by 26 scientists. The IPCC report was written by over 800 researchers, and vetted by 2500 scientists. I'm sorry, but it's pretty long odds that the 26 are right and the 3300 are wrong.

I'll wrap up my screed by saying it's very dangerous when journalists downplay and run roughshod over issues like global warming.

I think most people are aware of the Fish and Wildlife's heel dragging on protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Many of us feel the coincidence between the heel dragging and the leasing of thousands of acres of polar bear habitat to oil and gas companies may not actually be a coincidence.

Be that as it may, we're pretty excited to see that Sen. Kerry has proposed legislation to halt any drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. This bill is a great step forward, though sadly only has three cosponsors right now, so obviously, we've got some work to do.

Last year I spent a lot of time babysitting my niece. Not being a parent myself, it was an educational experience. For instance, I learned that to a 10 year old, "no" usually means, "ask me again in thirty seconds and keep asking every thirty seconds until I say yes."

President Bush is a little like a 10 year-old when it comes to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Since he was elected, he's tried to crack open the refuge to oil drilling every year. And every year activists have gotten Congress to shoot the proposal down.

This time around, in his 2008 budget, President Bush listed $7 billion in profits from drilling leases. This is a typical back-door tactic: if they're counting on the money, they have to allow the drilling to go forward. It's up to Congress to stop this from happening.

You can make sure Congress does the right thing and protects the Refuge once again. Take a moment and email your member of Congress, and ask him or her to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Arctic Wildlife Refuge is an amazing place. Home to the polar bears, porcupine caribou herd and many species of fish, the Refuge is a national treasure. Sadly, it also comprises the last 5 percent of the northern coastline of Alaska not currently open to oil and gas development.

The oil companies won't be happy until they're able to drill every last drop of oil, no matter what the environmental impact. This most recent attempt by the Bush administration to open the Refuge is not a surprise. We know that 2008 is going to be their last chance to give away our public lands and roll back our environmental protections and it's critical that we remain vigilant.

Please e-mail your member of Congress and ask him or her to keep the Refuge protected:

Thank you for all your work - and in fairness to my brother, I should say that his daughter in no other way resembles the Bush administration. She's great!