Category Archives: environmental news

environmental news

Let us cherish the only Earth we have

Is it me or is Planet Earth going to get some major disrespect from the current president of the United States?

I ask because Earth Day is upon us. We commemorate our home planet with marches, speeches and occasionally fiery rhetoric from activists who proclaim the need to take care of our home.

Many of us take these exhortations seriously. Many others don’t.

I fear that one of those who don’t now resides in the White House. The 45th president of the United States, Donald John Trump, has said some pretty hideous things about some of the environmental crises facing this planet of ours.

The worst of those things has been to declare climate change to be  “hoax” promoted by our trading foes in the People’s Republic of China.

I have written about Earth Day previously in this blog. Here is this past year’s entry:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/04/happy-earth-day/

Trump has assembled a Cabinet that includes an Environmental Protection Agency director, Scott Pruitt, who shares the president’s denial of climate change. Pruitt has sued the federal government multiple times dating back to when he served as Oklahoma attorney general.

Indeed, the EPA’s very mission is spelled out explicitly in its title: to “protect” the environment.

What did the president do shortly after taking office? He signed an executive order that rolls back regulations that sought to clean the air. Trump contends that the rules and regulations are “job killers” and he vows to do all he can to restore jobs for heavy industry.

At what cost? To pour pollutants into the air, which well could create hazardous living conditions for millions of Americans?

I remain committed to the idea that climate change is real and that human beings are playing a major role in creating the havoc that’s occurring around the world.

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. This is the only Earth we have. We must cherish it. Protect it. Love it.

This terrestrial affection must exist far beyond a single day.

environmental news

These bikers tend to their ‘track’

GRINDSTONE LAKE, N.M. — You meet the nicest people on occasion while trekking through the woods.

So it was when my wife, Toby the Puppy and I encountered three men raking twigs, pine straw and removing rocks from a trail in front of us.

“Oh, you must work for the park,” I asked one of the young men.

Oh, no, he answered. He is a member of Ruidoso Bike Club and trail maintenance is part of their gig, the young man added. He said the club has a sort of memorandum of understanding with the city parks department to maintain the trails’ upkeep throughout the Grindstone Lake complex of hiking-biking paths.

They do their job quite well.

We trudged about 6 miles from the trailhead near the shore of the lake that is backed up behind a dam. We spotted the young man near the end of our hike and inquired about the vertical elevation we had just endured. His answer? It’s about 800 feet, he said. “You go up and down a lot,” he said, motioning with his hand.

We were impressed with the quality of the trail we hiked. We chose to hike the easier route, given our age and understanding our limits. You won’t see us scrambling up steep grades on our hands and feet. We choose to remain upright on both feet while walking.

The quality is enhanced, I should add, by the absence of litter along the way. Indeed, we saw a good bit of that on several of the hikes we took in this part of southeastern New Mexico.

The mountainsides remain scarred by the wildfire that ravaged this region about five years ago. We learned the blazes burned nearly 50,000 acres and destroyed more than 200 homes. The young man we met earlier said the area remains quite dry and if it doesn’t get some moisture soon, the forest area might close to all visitors.

But there’s good news. Grindstone Lake is up about 100 feet from its level a year ago, according to the biker/trail maintenance man. “It was almost dry last summer,” he said.

All that said, this is a lovely place to relax and unwind from a moderately successful career.

Believe it. Retirement does agree with both of us.

And Toby the Puppy, too.

business news, environmental news, national news, political news

Trump wants more coal jobs … but at what cost?

The president of the United States must be unable to contain himself.

That’s what I believe is happening as Donald J. Trump seeks to undo some valuable environmental regulations designed to do those silly things … such as provide for cleaner air to breathe.

Trump continues to p*** me off. And a lot of other Americans, too.

As Reuters reported: “Flanked by coal miners, Trump enacted his ‘Energy Independence’ executive order at the Environmental Protection Agency. A coalition of 23 states and local governments vowed to fight the order in court.”

What does this mean? Here’s what I believe it does: It rolls back many of the regulations enacted during the Obama administration that are aimed to promote alternative energy production.

You know … things like wind, solar, hydropower. The clean stuff. The sources that regenerate immediately and are far more environmentally responsible than digging and drilling for fossil fuels such as oil and coal.

Trump will have none of that, by golly. He said he’s keeping a campaign promise to bring jobs back to the coal industry. He also pledged to make America totally “energy independent.”

Interesting. The United States already has become the world’s largest producer of fossil-fuel energy. Are we still importing some of the crude? Yes, but our imported-oil-to-domestic-production ratio has been declining steadily over the past decade or so.

I recall during the 2016 presidential campaign how Republicans and other foes of Hillary Rodham Clinton skewered her over remarks she made about supposedly “putting the coal industry out of business.” They never mentioned, of course, the rest of Clinton’s statements in that regard, which dealt with job-retraining for those former coal-mine workers.

Trump seized on Clinton’s statements and beat her senseless with the half-truths about what she had said.

Now he’s signed an executive order to bring all those coal jobs back. At what cost? Are we going to pollute our air with carbon emissions? Are we going to keep contributing — as scientists around the world have affirmed is occurring — to the gradual warming of Planet Earth?

Yes, human activity is contributing to that potential worldwide disaster.

One more point needs to be made.

We have done much to clean our air and water while at the same time producing more energy from more alternative sources than ever before.

The president is just flat wrong on this one.

environmental news

Thanks be to Mad Dog for sounding rational

That did it.

It’s official. James “Mad Dog” Mattis is my favorite member of Donald J. Trump’s Cabinet.

The secretary of defense has spoken in direct contradiction to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the president of the United States by declaring — be sure you’re sitting down — that climate change is real and it presents a threat to our national security.

Who would have thought that a retired Marine general with the nickname of “Mad Dog” would emerge as the premier grownup in the new president’s Cabinet.

Here’s part of what Mattis said, according to the Huffington Post: “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,” Mattis said in written answers to questions posed after the public hearing by Democratic members of the committee. “It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”

Trump has said climate change is a hoax perpetrated by “the Chinese.” The EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, has sued the EPA more than a dozen times and has called for its elimination. He has expressed openly his belief that climate change is not real, joining a paltry list of climate change deniers.

Now we have a defense secretary making sense. He calls climate change a national threat. His remarks well might reveal fissures within the Trump administration. As the Huffington Post reports: “These remarks and others in the replies to senators could be a fresh indication of divisions or uncertainty within President Donald Trump’s administration over how to balance the president’s desire to keep campaign pledges to kill Obama-era climate policies with the need to engage constructively with allies for whom climate has become a vital security issue.”

Semper fi, Gen. Mattis.

environmental news

DST? Wait for the gripes

I slept in this morning.

My biological clock said it was a little before 7 a.m. when I rolled out; the clock next to the bed flashed a little before 8 a.m.

No sweat! My day began and will proceed just as it always does, Daylight Saving Time notwithstanding.

Actually, I am a big supporter of the principle behind DST. It’s not as new a policy as many of us have been led to believe. It’s been around in some form for many, many years. DST became all the vogue in the 1970s with the Arab oil embargo and the fear that we were burning too much fossil fuel when we turned on our lights in the evening.

So the federal government implemented DST to push the clocks forward an hour, allowing us more daylight as spring arrived and summer approached. We burned our lights a little less, saving valuable energy that at the time was coming from too many “hostile” sources in the Middle East. Some states don’t adhere to DST mandates, keeping their clocks set on standard time. That’s their call.

In the past four-plus decades or so we’ve done a good job preserving energy. DST has helped toward that effort.

Ranchers tell us all the time that their livestock doesn’t know the difference between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time. Cattle and horses still need to be fed at the same time no matter what.

So, they rely on a form of Bovine or Equine Standard Time to go about pursuing their livelihoods on the ranch.

I get that.

The rest of us city slickers have different concerns. Those who work for a living have to be somewhere at certain times each day.

Are you worried about being late once you have to push the clock forward an hour? No worries. Go to bed an hour earlier.

Be sure you turn off the lights — and keep saving that still-priceless energy.

Have a great day, y’all.

environmental news, national news, political news, State news

Oops! Perry now leads Energy Department

Rick “Oops” Perry is the new secretary of energy.

The former Texas governor is now in charge of formulating U.S. energy policy and is in charge of managing the nation’s still-massive nuclear arsenal.

He also is another one of Donald J. Trump’s Cabinet appointments who — if you ponder it — is patently unqualified for this job.

He once wanted to get rid of the Energy Department. Do you remember that? He stood on that 2012 Republican Party presidential primary debate stage and said he intended to get rid of three federal agencies if he was elected president.

Except he couldn’t remember the Energy Department, prompting the infamous “oops” response from the governor.

I think I have figured out why the president picked him for this post: His brain freeze amnesia excuses him and gives him license to run the agency he wanted to abolish.

Let us not forget also that the new secretary of energy once said of the president that he is a “cancer on conservatism” that needed to be excised.

Gov. Perry must have been kidding.

environmental news

City Council candidates? Recycling … make it a priority

I have some wishes for the Amarillo City Council candidates to ponder as they campaign across the city in search of votes … and I likely will reveal some of them in this blog during the course of the campaign.

Here’s one that I think needs City Hall’s attention: recycling.

The idea of reusing our products seems to be on no one’s radar. Plastic jugs, bottles and cans, newsprint? Pfftt! Just toss it into the trash can, let the big ol’ trucks pick ’em and haul it all of to the dump.

The city used to place Dumpsters at locations around town. You could toss newsprint — such as old newspapers — into them. The Dumpsters lasted some time, then the city yanked them away. Why? Too many residents were just tossing run-of-the-mill garbage into these recycling bins. It created a headache for solid waste disposal crews, so the city said “to hell with it” and surrendered. It gave up.

I haven’t heard much debate of any kind about the City Council campaign, at least not yet. I hope to hear from some of the candidates for council member and for mayor to discuss the issue of recycling.

I would love to hear how the city could institute a curbside recycling program for residents. This discussion just doesn’t resonate with anyone, it seems.

My wife and I came here from Beaumont, a city of about 120,000 residents near the Gulf Coast. Beaumont isn’t known as an environmentally conscious community. Yet for years it ran a curbside recycling program where residents could fill bins with plastic products, glassware and newsprint; we would put the bins along the street in front of our homes and recyclers would pick them to, um, recycle them.

My understanding is that the program lost some of its steam after we left.

All five City Council seats are up for election on May 6. Is there any notion out there among one or more of the candidates about whether there’s any possibility of establishing a recycling mindset in our fair city?

environmental news, national news

RIP, Packy the Elephant

Those of us of a certain age who grew up in the City of Roses — aka Portland, Ore. — are sad today with news that burst out of the Oregon Zoo.

Packy the Elephant is dead at the age of 54.

Big deal, you say? You bet it is.

Packy came into this world in April 1962. His birth at the time was heralded as the rarest of events. His mother Belle had gone into false labor, causing panic among zoo officials. Then came the real thing. Packy was born.

Packy’s birth became so big, in fact, that they hung a new name on a song that had played in the film “Hatari.” They called it “Packy’s Elephant Walk.”

Packy was one of several Asian elephants to be born at the zoo. I and others just like me watched Packy grow up. I didn’t get a chance to see him grow old, though, as my family and I moved away from Portland in 1984. Our sons, though, did see him — although they likely were too young to remember it today.

Packy was a star.

Still, some social media messages have disparaged the Oregon Zoo — once called the Portland Zoo and the Washington Park Zoo — for its treatment of pachyderms. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell those trolls are talking about. I long have considered the Oregon Zoo to be one of the better such attractions in the country.

And take my word for it: Packy the Elephant was a huge draw for visitors looking to see a bit of zoological history up close.

He had grown ill, as I understand it, in recent years. He suffered from recurring TB.

So, Packy’s time among us has ended.

I am saddened by this news.

environmental news, national news, political news, State news

‘Oops’ Perry now ‘regrets’ earlier call to end DOE

I want to give a half-hearted shout-out to Rick “Oops” Perry for something he said today at his confirmation hearing to become the next secretary of energy.

The former Texas governor said he regrets insisting that the Department of Energy be one of three such agencies he would eliminate if he were elected president.

He tried to say so during a 2012 Republican presidential debate, but suffered a brain freeze at a critical moment. Hey, it’s happened to all of us, right?

He said he’d toss out the departments of Education, Commerce and … then he forgot the third one. He fumbled around before muttering his infamous “oops.”

Why the change of heart? He said he’s learned about the Energy Department and what it does to promote energy policy. I want to presume he also knows about the myriad forms of energy involved in that policy that go far beyond fossil fuel production that, of course, is a big deal here in Texas.

My shout-out would be full-throated if I actually believed he meant the “I regret” statement. I’m not sure I believe much of what Gov. Perry says about anything these days — not that I fully believed him back when he was governor.

I mean, after all, he did call Donald J. Trump a “cancer on conservatism.” He did accuse the president-elect of lacking any ideology. He did say that his party needed to excise that “cancer.” This all came during his second failed effort, in 2016, to become the GOP presidential nominee.

Now, after all that heated rhetoric, he wants to become energy secretary. He wants to run a department he once said he intended to throw into the Dumpster.

I don’t know which Rick Perry to believe.

Or whether to believe a single thing this guy has ever said.

environmental news, national news, political news, State news

Gov. Perry forced to eat his words

Rick “Oops” Perry called Donald J. Trump a “cancer on conservatism.”

He said his one-time Republican presidential campaign foe was devoid of “principles.”

The former Texas governor once pledged to get rid of the Energy Department, except he couldn’t remember it at the time he made the pledge.

Now the man he condemned with such harsh rhetoric has asked him to lead the department he wanted to eliminate.

Go … figure.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rick-perry-seeks-to-lead-the-energy-department-an-agency-he-pledged-to-abolish/ar-AAm122q?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Gov. Perry’s nomination to be energy secretary suggests two important things to me.

One is that politicians’ views of other politicians always are subject to change when the moment presents itself. Perry’s remarks about the president-elect happened to be accurate, in my view. They didn’t stick. So now, if he’s confirmed, Perry will lead a Cabinet agency that he seems to know little about and will work at the pleasure of a man he once described in extremely harsh terms.

The other is that energy development isn’t just about drilling for fossil fuels. Perry, as Texas governor, knows that. We generate a good bit of wind energy in Texas, especially out here on the High Plains.

Trump, though, has expressed next to zero knowledge of, or interest in, alternative energy production. He keeps talking about grabbing the oil fields of the Islamic State and other terrorists and capturing the fuel for our own needs. Is the energy secretary going to assist in that endeavor or will he proceed with promoting a comprehensive energy policy that includes the myriad forms of alternative energy sources available to us?

Gov. Perry is another one of those questionable nominees with whom Trump is surrounding himself.

I am now shaking my head.