September 15th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Midway into Ken Burns’ new ode to American history, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (starting on PBS Sept. 27), the filmmaker tells how the nation’s early park caretakers realize that wildlife is integral to preserving the parks.

You’d think this would have been obvious. But it came as an epiphany in the 1930s, decades into the development of the park system.

Oddly, until then, the public had been so busy ogling mountains and gaping at the exotic canyons of America’s national parks, that the animals seemed secondary, even incidental. Wildlife appearances were welcomed, of course. Bison wandering through a Rocky Mountain meadow enhanced the mountain vista beyond. Mountain sheep verified that one was high in the Rockies and the faithful appearance of the Yellowstone bears at the “bear dumps” or roadside feeding stops made an excursion to see Old Faithful complete.

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June 15th, 2009

By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now

Last week, the Obama Administration announced a new youth-jobs program designed to simultaneously boost the country’s economy and ecology: a promising, if labyrinthine, new agency called the Office of Youth in Natural Resources (OYNR), which falls under the Department of the Interior. The OYNR debuts with a program, the 21st Century Youth Conservation Corps, patterned after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930′s (but not expected to create the 3 million jobs CCC did).

The timing couldn’t be better. The White House has been increasingly criticized for the slowness with which ‘Stimulus Act’ money has resulted in actual shovel-ready jobs. Putting kids to work is a great way to counter the criticism.

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January 22nd, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

The stimulus package pending in Congress promises to create jobs, but how green these plans will be is cause for concern and debate.

While environmental advocates are glad to gleeful over the promise of the new administration, they still have questions: Will the focus on energy security overshadow other green moves? Will the sagging economy, which has claimed jobs at solar and wind energy companies just as it has in traditional industries, preempt plans to curb global warming?

While few quibble with emergency assistance to “Main Street,” those with visions of a bright green future worry that funds could be spent before a more orchestrated plan to marry jobs and green initiatives can be developed.

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January 21st, 2009

By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now

It’s about jobs.

America’s newly inaugurated President, Barack Obama, has a Herculean task ahead of him, no question. Virtually everyone from the far right to the hard left agrees that if the new leader wants to rescue America’s economy, it’s all about jobs.

And as Mr. Obama promised, the buzz is about green jobs – a green economy, greening our buildings, revamping parks, wildlife refuges and public spaces. These involve “shovel-ready” jobs, some of which can be started within 90 days of Obama’s inauguration, say eco-leaders, who’ve been lobbying Washington to fund what could amount to an environmental restoration of the United States.

Last week, when the U.S. Congress presented its $825 billion recovery package, legislators gave the first hint that they are listening. The package proposes $90 billion for infrastructure and $54 billion to support renewable-energy production and research — all aimed at modernizing the economy and stopping the river of pink slips that claimed two million jobs in just the last four months of 2008. As Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. David Obey, (D-Wisc.), pointed out – without the recovery plan, the country could face 12 percent unemployment in 2009.

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November 7th, 2008

From Green Right Now

In one final mad dash of activity, look for the Bush administration to significantly roll back several significant environmental restrictions, according to a report from McClatchy Newspapers. It’s expected that the administration will overturn limits that have kept power plants from encroaching upon national parks, blocked uranium mining near the Grand Canyon and protected ground water from contamination at mountaintop coal mining sites in Appalachia.

McClatchy reports that the Bush administration is expected to have the new rules finalized shortly before Thanksgiving. If the administration can get the rules in place quickly, it would make it more difficult for the Obama administration and the new Democratic Congress to undo the changes.

If the relaxed restrictions occur, the areas od potential impact include:

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October 27th, 2008

By Tom Kessler

More than 30 years after the Clean Air Act set a national goal of cleaning up dirty air in major national parks and wilderness areas, conservationists don’t see progress but they do still see a yellowish haze caused by old power plants and factories with outdated pollution controls.

Last week, the Environmental Defense Fund and National Parks Conservation Association sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce deadlines for the states to adopt Clean Air Act plans. To date, only a handful of states have submitted the required plans to comply with the law. The two groups say power plant and factory emissions continue to obscure views at national parks across the country.

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October 1st, 2008

By John DeFore

Once upon a time, the only humans who lived in trees were such fictional folks as Tarzan and the hero of Italo Calvino’s charming romance The Baron in the Trees. That was before the “tree-sitting” phenomenon, in which activists climb into trees threatened by development and refuse to come down.

The population of real-life tree dwellers shrank this month as the last two participants in a 20-year-old protest agreed to leave their perch in Northern California redwoods.

As the story was reported locally, the protest ended after bankruptcy put the Pacific Lumber Company under new ownership. Humboldt Redwood Co., which took the company over, committed to a sustainable-harvest policy that the Associated Press says “promised to spare any redwood that sprouted before 1800 with a diameter of at least 4 feet. It also pledged to avoid clear-cutting, a practice that the timber giant aggressively practiced under its previous owner, Maxxam Inc.”

Humboldt president and chief forester Michael Jani trekked out to the occupied trees himself to make the promise explicit, and the activists are taking him at his word. Last week, the final tree-sitters in Humboldt County gave up their temporary homes, including a 300-foot tree at least 1,500 years old where 22-year-old Billy Stoetzer had lived (in a hammock shelter) for almost a year.

Organizers tell reporters that they’ll keep an eye on the area to ensure that promises are kept. Since Humboldt Redwood is owned in large part by the owners of The Gap, they’d have plenty of opportunities for high-profile protest if things were to change.

For more information about old growth redwood forests, see this National Park Service webpage.

(Photo: National Park Service.)

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