New West Network

My Page: Richard Martin

Wildlife Destruction Dept.

When she went outside on a brisk morning in mid-September, Mary Randall got a rude surprise.

"I noticed the windshield wiper was hanging down and I went, 'Hmm, that's odd.'"

Odd doesn't begin to describe it. Along with a broken wiper, the interior of Randall's car – parked outside her home in the Sugarloaf area in the canyons above Boulder – had been completely destroyed by a scavenging bear. [more]

'The Dirtiest Fuel on the Planet'

Along with the ban on offshore drilling in U.S. coastal waters, the Congressional moratorium on leasing federal lands for oil-shale exploration expired last night at midnight. Which will have a larger impact on America's energy future is debatable.

Environmentalists are alarmed about the oil-shale slowdown ending, because they fear it will open the door for taxpayer funding for "the dirtiest fuel on the planet" (as the Natural Resources Defense Council put it) to be exploited at huge expense and with great damage to environment in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, where the world's richest deposits of kerogen lay trapped in rock deep underground. [more]

Destruction of the Western Forests

Two pieces of grim news this week indicate that the beetle infestation plaguing the pine forests of the Western Slope is likely to get far worse in the next couple of years.

First, reports from the Front Range indicate that the mountain pine beetle has, as expected, successfully crossed the Continental Divide and is now boring through trees in Fort Collins, Boulder, Greeley, Loveland, Berthoud and Windsor. [more]

Colorado Polls Swing

After his campaign swing through Colorado last week, putting down in Golden, Pueblo, and Grand Junction, Barack Obama enjoys a solid lead in polls in the state.

The latest poll from the independent surveyors at Quinnipiac University shows Obama with 49 percent of likely voters versus 45 percent for McCain. That's a reversal of the findings from the week after the Republican convention, when Quinnipiac found McCain ahead. [more]

All That Glitters Is Not Green

Wal-Mart claims its new jewelry line is eco-friendly, and based on "sustainable mining." Environmentalists, however, disagree.

Released in July under the brand "Love, Earth," the new gold marketing program claims to produce "fashion jewelry that honors, cherishes and protects our planet." Gold and silver contained in the items purchased through Love, Earth is 100% traceable, Wal-Mart says, through something called the Jewelry Sustainable Value Network, back to the original mines. The precious metals used in the jewelry are "mined and manufactured to our standards and criteria."

In fact, Wal-Mart's gold comes from mines in Utah and Nevada, owned by mining giants Rio Tinto and Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp., which have a long history of environmental problems and pollution. [more]

Controversial Stem Cell Therapy

If your child were blind, would you take him to China to undergo an expensive and unproven stem-cell therapy?

That question was faced by John and Katrina Stewart of Colorado Springs, whose son, Brandon, suffers from optic nerve hypoplasia (ONH), a primary cause of blindness in children. Pursuing a controversial medical procedure that shows great promise but has not been validated by clinical trials, a Chinese company is using stem cells to treat hundreds of patients, many of them from the West, who have diseases previously thought incurable. [more]

In Bed With Big Oil

The worst suspicions about the Dept. of Interior's payment in kind program for energy companies, which is run out of the Minerals Management Service in suburban Denver, were confirmed yesterday by the release of a scathing series of reports on the program's conduct and the behavior of the federal employees associated with it.

Produced by the department's department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, the reports give a picture of an out-of-control party culture that resembled the Playboy Mansion more than a federal agency overseeing billions of dollars of oil and gas royalties. [more]

One Delegate's Story

Having finagled my way onto the floor of Invesco Field, I watched the address by Barack Obama with the South Dakota delegation, seated just to the right of the stage. There I met Cecelia Fire Thunder.

Chatting with Fire Thunder – an imposing woman of impressive bulk and a face that belongs on the side of a mountain – I didn't know her back story. She's a licensed nurse, she told me, with two sons and two granddaughters. She's from Kyle, S.D. and she was a Hillary supporter. Asked if she planned to vote for Obama, who was about to take the stage, she said "Of course. We're Democrats."
[more]

Above the Convention

Bumping along at 7000 feet in a Cessna Citation, we could see below us Colorado's dirtiest power source – and its cleanest.

Below us to the west, near the Colorado-Wyoming border in northern Weld County, stood the Rawhide coal generating station, which provides much of the electricity for the booming towns of Fort Collins, Longmont, and Loveland. To the east lay long rows of white turbines making up the Ponnequin Wind Farm, Colorado's first, built starting in 1998.
[more]

Oil & Gas Vs. Renewables

Tuesday night was Energy Night at the Democratic Convention, and a good night it was: while Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer blew the doors off the Pepsi Center with an impassioned plea to combat the "petrodictators" of the world, former Virginia governor Mark Warner, now running for Senate, delivered a lower-key, more reasoned argument for a balanced energy policy that includes limited new domestic production (including offshore drilling) and a sharp focus on shifting to renewables.

It was both good theater and sound thinking. But still, one has to wonder if the Democrats are really willing to muster the courage, and the votes, to push through a comprehensive energy policy that reduces dependence on fossil fuels, slows the advance of global climate change, and keeps gas and electricity affordable for most Americans. [more]