When Matt Simmons hears someone describe him as a "Bush energy advisor," he winces. Yes, he talks to President Bush about oil sometimes, but what he has to say isn’t colored by partisan politics. Simmons wants everyone to realize the energy crunch we’re in, and that’s why he wrote Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy</I> (Wiley, $24.95), which will be published in July.
Following its annual survey of avian life around the world, the conservation organization BirdLife International says that one-fifth of all bird species are facing extinction in the short term as a result of habitat loss and introduced pests.
From his office on the 22nd floor of a black tower north of Times Square, S. David Freeman, the new president of the New York Power Authority (NYPA), can see why he isn’t yet famous for solar power in the Big Apple. A cloud canopy hangs over New Jersey, hiding everything beyond the pewter-colored Hudson River. Higher overcast has blurred the sun into a vague lantern with a soft bulb. The people on the sidewalks carry umbrellas, no doubt convinced that solar power belongs in pocket calculators and California, where Freeman did indeed become famous as the general manager of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which has a field of photovoltic panels beside its defunct nuclear power plant. But he’s hardly deterred by gray weather.
In December, 1992, the adventure-loving chairperson of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Alex Pacheco, and staffer David Barnes helicoptered into the lush Pelekunu Valley on the Hawaii island of Molokai, a largely untamed sliver of paradise 40 miles long and nine miles wide. Pacheco and Barnes planned to camp out for several weeks on its remote Pelenuku Preserve. Their purpose, however, was not to bask in the midday sun or engage in leisurely bird watching.
Under the looming shadow of the 1990 Clean Air Act and the threat whooping federal fines if they don’t reduce pollution, states are taking a hard look at a symbol of the bad old days–smoke-belching 1960s and 70s cars. But getting the clunkers off the road is no simple matter.
You may recognize the Florida panthers as the ferocius cat flashing its teeth on pro hockey T-shirts sold in sporting goods stores, or peering from one of the Sunshine State’s hottest selling specialty license plates. Its cash-register-ringing popularity belies and irony: The Florida panther is perhaps the world’s most endangered carnivore, with only about 70 surviving in the wild, including the young. Down from the days when a panther scalp brought a $5 bounty from cattlemen tired of the cats killing calves, almost everyone now wants the save the panther. But can they?
Environmental groups are backing a provisional amendment to the recently passed Senate Highway Bill calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve its fuel-efficiency standards testing procedures to bring its published miles-per-gallon tabulations in line with real world driving conditions.
Environmentalists are cheering a bipartisan coalition of 14 U.S. Senators who agreed last week not to eliminate the minority’s right to filibuster judicial nominees. Several of the judges nominated by the White House to fill vacant posts have spotty environmental records at best, and the filibuster may be the only tool Senate Democrats will have to stymie any such appointment efforts.
Even those of us who look down our noses at gas-guzzling SUVs have to face up to the fact that our lives are made easier by cheap oil–and it is still pretty cheap. If you think $2.50-a-gallon gasoline is expensive, just try to imagine $6 a gallon. Europeans have long lived with fuel prices that high, leading to societies far less car-centered and much more conservation-minded than the U.S.
Some prominent environmentalists–as well as Senators McCain and Lieberman, who back legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions–are supporting further development of nuclear power to serve as an emission-free bridge to an economy based entirely on renewable energy.
