When I met Sister Dorothy Stang, I knew I was encountering someone remarkable. I met her in Belém, the capital of Pará state in northern Brazil. Belém has more than a million people, and it was not the natural habitat for Dayton, Ohio native Dorothy Stang. She lived far from the city in a remote Amazonian jungle settlement populated by the landless peasants whose interests she tirelessly protected, along with the rainforest itself.

Much to the chagrin of conservationists hoping that the Bush administration would start considering its environmental legacy during its second term, the White House budget proposal for 2006 calls for a six percent cut in funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The White House budget proposal for 2006 is counting on income from opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling, much to the dismay of many environmentalists. The White House is projecting that the federal government will take in up to $1.2 billion over the next two years from oil companies paying for the right to lease oil drilling permits within ANWR.

The House Resources Committee is expected to vote this week to revive the White House energy bill calling for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Last week, the state of California filed suit against the Bush administration contesting federal plans to significantly expand logging throughout national forests in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Several states have joined California in lobbying Congress to let states make their own rules regulating which automobiles get access to high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. If Congress agrees, the upshot would be that drivers of gas-electric hybrids could access HOV lanes with or without passengers from coast to coast.