By Ecological Internet’s Climate Ark with Rainforest Rescue
http://www.climateark.org/ & http://www.regenwald.org/international/englisch/
June 2, 2009

TAKE ACTION HERE NOW:
http://www.climateark.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=biomass_wood

Burning forests to produce electricity threatens to destroy and further diminish many of America and the world’s forests. Protection and regeneration of forests, soils, freshwater, climate and biodiversity are urgent global imperatives, and creating massive new demands for any natural plant material is misguided and will further degrade ecosystems. Achieving global ecological sustainability requires that renewable energy be defined as “no biomass/no burning”.

BRIEF BACKGROUND:
A campaign is growing in Massachusetts, and across the United States and world, against burning wood and other biomass in giant incinerators to produce electricity. This northeast U.S. state claims to be a leader in renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions yet is fast-tracking three large biomass plants to generate 135 megawatts of power in Western Massachusetts, with other plants under discussion. There is no scientific evidence that incinerating wood or trash is clean and green. Biomass burning is exempt from greenhouse gas accounting regulations, yet the plants generate 50% more CO2 per megawatt than burning coal. Shockingly, MA’s plants are being billed as an antidote to global warming as part of the state’s “renewable portfolio standards” under its “Global Warming Solutions Act”. In fact, the proposed biomass would establish incinerators that would immediately increase carbon emissions, making global warming much worse, and also set the stage to eventually deforest much of the region.

Anything that furthers the cutting of dwindling ecosystems, and pollution associated with burning, in the production of electricity should not be considered clean, green or renewable. Protecting and regenerating forests, ecosystems and soils is the most important step we must take if we are to stabilize the global climate. As policy makers seek to expand mandates for renewable energy, it is essential that the focus remain upon true renewables such as wind, solar and ocean derived technologies; and excludes burning or refining plant biomass, garbage or landfill gases. Support the growing U.S. coalition in demanding “no biomass/no burning” in definitions of renewable energy.

TAKE ACTION NOW:
http://www.climateark.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=biomass_wood

DISCUSS THIS ALERT:
http://www.climateark.org/blog/2009/06/alert-no-biomassno-burning-cam.asp

Curbs May Be Eased On Paving In Forests

Technical Shift Has Huge Implications

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 4, 2009; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/03/AR2009010300720.html

LOS ANGELES — The Bush administration appears poised to push through a change in U.S. Forest Service agreements that would make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions.

Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, last week signaled his intent to formalize the controversial change before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. As a candidate, Obama campaigned against the measure in Montana, where local governments complained of being blindsided by Rey’s negotiating the policy shift behind closed doors with the nation’s largest private landowner.

The shift is technical but with large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads passing through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

But as Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company’s 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West.

Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county governments to provide services, and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns.

“Just within the last couple weeks, they finalized a big subdivision west of Kalispell,” said D. James McCubbin, deputy county attorney of Missoula County, which complained that the closed-door negotiations violated federal laws requiring public comment because the changes would affect endangered species and sensitive ecosystems. Kalispell is in Flathead County, where officials also protested.

The uproar last summer forced Rey to postpone finalizing the change, which came after “considerable internal disagreement” within the Forest Service, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report requested by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). The report said that 900 miles of logging roads could be paved in Montana and that amending the long-held easements “could have a nationwide impact.”

Tester and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, then asked for an inquiry by the inspector general of the Agriculture Department, which includes the Forest Service.

“I think we need another set of eyes on it,” Tester said Friday. “I don’t think that’s running out the clock. If this is a good agreement, then what’s the rush? Why do it in the eleventh hour of this administration?”

Probably because the proposal would die after Jan. 20. Obama sharply criticized Rey’s efforts during the presidential campaign, seizing on concerns that a landscape dotted with luxury homes will be less hospitable to Montanans accustomed to easy access to timberlands.

“At a time when Montana’s sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off,” Obama said.

Rey vows to act soon. In a Dec. 12 letter to Tester and Bingaman, he repeated his logic for granting Plum Creek the changes it requested, then closed with a promise to schedule briefings “to describe how we plan to proceed.'’

In a phone interview Wednesday, Rey said he will act immediately after the courtesy meetings with the lawmakers. “Probably in the next week or so, before this goes forward,” he said. Tester said he has not yet heard from Rey’s office to arrange a meeting.

On environmental questions, the Bush administration has a checkered record of following through on promised eleventh-hour changes, said Robert Dreher, a lawyer with Defenders of Wildlife.

“I suppose it’s a legacy issue,” Dreher said. “They’ve already backed off on a couple of things they said they were going to do,” including proposed changes on marine fisheries and industrial emissions.

On the other hand, the Bush White House went ahead with controversial changes to the Endangered Species Act, despite opposition from environmentalists.

The Plum Creek deal could be accomplished with the stroke of a pen. Because it amends existing easements, the change involves no 30-day waiting period. But the step carries a political cost that the administration evidently has been assessing since June, when Rey said he expected to formalize within a month the change that half a year later is still hanging fire.

“It’s conceivable they don’t want to leave office looking like bad guys,” Dreher said. “There’s been a lot of concern about the nature of the process and the lack of inclusiveness. You’ve got the county government in Montana angry over it. If they do this walking out the door, they’re kind of ramming it down their throats.”

- President Obama now has chance to protect America’s forest
legacy, and allow Oregon and the nation’s overworked forest
biodiversity and carbon stores to recover ecologically

December 10, 2008
By Earth’s Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet
http://www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk/
CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

(Seattle, WA) — Ecological Internet (EI) welcomes Oregon
governor Ted Kulongoski’s decision to block Bush
administration plans to sharply increase logging on 2.2
million acres of BLM forests in Western Oregon. Kulongoski
concluded that President Bush’s hastily arrived at logging
plan did not conform to federal environmental laws such as the
Endangered Species Act, and failed to protect and restore
mature forests to sequester carbon. It would have locked in
Bush’s anti-environment, industrial forestry model for
decades.

By waiting until the deadline and calling for revisions and a
30-day extension for public comment, Kulongoski put off final
approval until the administration of Democratic President-
elect Barack Obama. This decision will ultimately be made by
the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Congress. This
forbearance was not a foregone conclusion, as Oregon has a
long history of forest patronage and destroying terrestrial
ecosystems for short term economic gain causing long term
environmental pain.

This is a major victory for Ecological Internet and others
that campaigned for this outcome, and portends greater
ecological restoration of America’s biodiversity and carbon
stores once the “Toxic Texan” has left town, and the much
anticipated era of ecological hope commences. EI’s Earth
Action Network’s got just what we asked for, and this most
recent victory once again demonstrates our global leadership
in using the Internet to facilitate environmental
conservation.

Posted: Nov 19, 2008 02:14 AM

Updated: Nov 19, 2008 05:21 AM

BASIN CITY, Wash.– For avid duck hunters in Eastern Washington, the season is just getting started.

“The best time is right after Thanksgiving,” said Mike Franklin.

Mike Franklin is the owner of Pacific Wings. His company plans guided hunting. Franklin says business is looking up.

“Coming into this year we were four times busier booked, than past years,” said Franklin.

But a recent report by the US Fish and Wildlife Service shows fishing and hunting, are now trailing behind wildlife watching.

“Wildlife recreation bird watching, wildlife feeding, has been slowly on the rise,” said Tom Buckley, with US Fish and Wildlife in Spokane.

In 2006, the numbers show more than 2 million people in Washington watching wildlife, and in Oregon close to 1.5 million.

“Where they’re spending their money is in film, binoculars,backpacks, camping gear,” said Buckley.

In total more than $45 million nationwide. Some of it, boosting the local economy.

“And then of course, hotels, and gasoline, restaurants,” said Buckley.

Buckley says for many, watching is easier and more fun.

“It’s a little more sedentary than it is trekking through the mountains and woods, or to find an isolated pond to fish,” said Buckley.

And hunters say they’re also helping.

“On our licenses X amount of dollars goes to fund those parking areas,” said Franklin.

http://www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=9374669&nav=menu484_2_9

This article … is a revised version of a keynote address delivered at
the “Climate Change, Social Change” conference, Sydney, Australia, April
12, 2008, organised by /Green Left Weekly/.

The transition from capitalism to socialism is the most difficult
problem of socialist theory and practice. To add to this the question of
ecology might therefore be seen as unnecessarily complicating an already
intractable issue. I shall argue here, however, that the human relation
to nature lies at the heart of the transition to socialism. An
ecological perspective is pivotal to our understanding of capitalism’s
limits, the failures of the early socialist experiments, and the overall
struggle for egalitarian and sustainable human development.

My argument has three parts. First, it is crucial to understand the
intimate connection between classical Marxism and ecological analysis.
Far from being an anomaly for socialism, as we are often led to believe,
ecology was an essential component of the socialist project from its
inception—notwithstanding the numerous later shortcomings of Soviet-type
societies in this respect. Second, the global ecological crisis that now
confronts us is deeply rooted in the “world-alienating” logic of capital
accumulation, traceable to the historical origins of capitalism as a
system. Third, the transition from capitalism to socialism is a struggle
for sustainable human development in which societies on the periphery of
the capitalist world system have been leading the way.

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/742