Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/03/30/ST2008033002195.html
The North Fork of the Flathead is blanketed by oil and gas leases and they’re not in Canada — they’re right here in Montana, just north of Columbia Falls on Flathead National Forest lands.
The leases date back to the 1970s and have been held in what amounts to legal limbo since 1985, when James R. Conner of Kalispell, members of the Montana Wildlife Federation and the Madison-Gallatin Alliance sued Robert Burford, director of the Bureau of Land Management.
In early 1981, the Forest Service issued environmental assessments recommending that 1.3 million acres of land in the Flathead and Gallatin National Forests be leased for oil and gas development.
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http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/articles/2008/03/20/news/news01.txt
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced yesterday that it will evaluate whether four kinds of seals inhabiting Alaska’s Bering Sea should be placed on the endangered species list because of melting sea ice.
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Central and northern Montana make way for more wind mills; developers keep a sharp eye on the possibility of building ethanol plants; coal is dug in southeastern Montana and burned there and in many other states; and natural gas heats homes and spins turbines.
These are just some of the major movements occurring in Montana related to energy development.
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JUAN GONZALEZ: Dr. James Hansen is widely regarded as the leading climate change scientist in the country. It was his testimony to a Senate committee in 1988 that first brought the threat of global warming to the world’s attention. For the past quarter of a century he has headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA’s premiere climate research center.
Just over a year ago, Dr. Hansen went public with a charge that made headlines around the world, that the Bush administration had been trying to silence his warnings about the urgent need to address climate change.
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http://alternet.org/environment/80508/
EDMONTON – A new U.S. law will not, as first feared, prohibit the purchase of fuels that may have come from Alberta’s oilsands
California Democrat Henry Waxman, in a letter clarifying the legislation he helped write, says the oilsands produce significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional petroleum sources.
For that reason, he says, “it is important that the federal government does not subsidize or otherwise support the expanded use of these fuels.”
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CODY – A series of golden eagle deaths by electrocution from power lines east of Worland has prompted a federal investigation, and the power company involved said it is continuing extensive work to correct the problem.
Thirteen golden eagles have died near Worland since December, most at sites along power lines running through the Cottonwood Oil Field, said Jeff Hymas, a spokesman for Rocky Mountain Power.
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http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/03/27/news/wyoming/24-powerlines.txt
SALT LAKE CITY — Around the same time the American West started heating up five years ago, Colorado started losing its lodgepole pine forests to a beetle infestation.
“The population built up rapidly and exploded. It takes out the mature trees,” said Ingrid Aguayo, an entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service, which estimates that about 60 percent of the lodgepole pines have turned red and brown.
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The state Public Service Commission will hold a hearing Monday in Helena on NorthWestern Energy’s application to make permanent a 2 percent increase in natural gas and electric delivery rates in Montana.
The PSC approved the increase on a temporary basis effective Jan. 1.
NorthWestern agreed to hold its increase to 2 percent — a much smaller rate increase than it originally requested — in a deal negotiated in December with the Montana Consumer Counsel.
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/03/27/state/102st_080327_psc.txt
BISMARCK, N.D. — The future of coal as an energy source depends on capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions and developing technology to do it cheaply, senators from North Dakota and Montana say.
A federal Energy Department official says that goal could be reached within a dozen years.
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http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/03/27/top/70st_080327_coal.txt