My Page: Todd Wilkinson

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SENATORS BURNS AND BAUCUS—CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE

Longtime public school teacher Gene Sentz always taught his students that when someone does you a favor, you say thanks and mean it. Sentz, who is also a sportsman, outfitter and conservationist in Choteau, Montana, has for years led a local grassroots effort with Friends of the Rocky Mountain Front, state and national groups to protect the Rocky Mountain Front in the Big Sky state from oil and natural gas drilling. Following recent action in Congress to safequard this important piece of the West where the stunning views of the Rockies yield to the dramatic roll of the Great Plains, Sentz has written this public thank you as a Christmas card in time for the holiday. President Bush signed the bill protecting the Front Wednesday. Read more here in a story from the Great Falls Tribune. Many neighboring states have closely watched efforts to protect the Front because it represents an important precedent that could reach all the way to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. [more]

WHY PREGNANT MOMS SHOULD AVOID KITTY LITTER

It's a well-known notion that pregnant women should avoid changing cat litter, but because of fears relating to the global AIDS crisis and concerns about bioterrorism, researchers at Montana State University are getting real mileage this month from insights they've reached about a common parasite called Toxoplasma gondii that can harm moms and their unborn children. According to the scientists, the parasite should be a concern to anyone with weakened or compromised immune systems. The fact that their work is featured in the latest issues of the journals "Nature" and "Science" gives them and MSU prestigious affirmation as a research institution working on big issues of the day. Writer Evelyn Boswell of the MSU News Service has the story. [more]

BACK IN THE THICK OF THINGS

One of the American West's most seasoned research scientists has discovered he couldn't stay in retirement for very long. John Varley, formerly director of the Yellowstone Center for Research in the world's first national park, has been plucked to become the next executive director of the Big Sky Institute at Montana State University. [more]

DOES ST. NICK SPEAK MANDARIN?

In this provocative essay from Lester R. Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., the man credited with influencing the environmental thinking of world leaders and rural Westerners alike, examines the costs of American consumerism on the very things that have made the U.S. great as a nation. For years until recently, Brown served as founder and charismatic leader of the Worldwatch Institute which publishes its renowned annual State of the World reports.

In these times of growing trade imbalances with China, the staggering heft of the U.S. fiscal deficit, and a shopping season in which discipline related to our own spending habits routinely gets put on hold, Brown suggests carrying out a little exercise in environmental economics by reading the labels of your gifts. Not even Santa Claus can rescue America from its present course without a willingness on the part of people in this country to change how we think about the real costs of cheap consumer goods.

Read Brown's analysis and look for a book review coming this week from Todd Wilkinson on Brown's critically-acclaimed work "Plan B: 2.0" following a conversation Wilkinson had with Brown in Washington this week. Plan B: 2.0 identifies the major challenges facing the U.S. Congress when it convenes in January and the decisions that will shape the quality of life for global citizens—yes, including Americans—for generations to come. It's timely, given that Congress has announced a hold placed on millions of dollars in earmarks slated to be part of the next federal budget and which would have benefitted a number of western states—some projects that defied the easy definition of pork. [more]

ARE WE ENTERING AN AGE OF SMARTER ADVOCACY?

The founders of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership refuse to accept the premise that wildlife habitat protection is radical. With the clout it is rapidly mobilizing in Washington and across the country, TRCP as much as any other network of groups is bringing common sense, in the old Theodore Roosevelt way, back to thinking about the importance of sustainable healthy ecosystems. Americans, says TRCP chairman Jim Range, are tired of division, name calling and fragmentation. For him, the power of this new old movement will be defined by what outdoorspeople are in favor of, not what they are against. Is the age of "smart advocacy" about to really dawn for the 40 million Americans who hunt and fish?
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FROM THE WAR IN IRAQ TO CONCERNS ABOUT BUMPING AND GRINDING ON THE DANCE FLOOR

Greetings once again all celebrators of the holiday season. Let each of us seek answers to modern cultural dilemmas by pondering "What Would Jesus Do?"
Now, let's get started. New West invites you to add questions of your own. [more]

OLD LEFTISTS THE NEW PALEOCONS?

Heaven knows that folks in the go-go West love their cups of morning java. We are as addicted to caffeine as we are adrenaline-lusted for feats of athletic hedonism.

But is your community a "Latte Town"? Nine years ago, political commentator David Brooks penned a wonderfully sneering piece for The Weekly Standard in which he created a new social category for certain lifestyle communities.

Like De Tocqueville, Brooks has a special fetish for traveling through the hinters of America identifying trends based upon patterns of conspicuous consumption that he believes translate into expressions of conservative or Liberal ideals. I'll get to the punch line later but meantime, read on: [more]

FROM MADISON AVENUE TO THE MADISON RIVER

Mike Gold is a big fish who once swam in the glittering pond of global advertising. As a Londoner and former executive with Saatchi & Saatchi, he helped define the terms of modern marketing that defies international borders and reaches living rooms in the remotest corners of the planet. But Gold also admits that he paid a high price for his success by constantly being away from his family while he was cultivating and implementing advertising deals. Today, prefering a slower paced life west of Bozeman, he is teaching students at Montana State University's College of Business about the connections between product and consumer and the things that matter in life. What inspired this Englishman to make his own life change? Answer: "A City Slickers Moment." Not long ago, writer Carol Schmidt of the MSU News Service penned this story after attending one of Gold's classes.
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IS THERE A FEDERAL BUDGET IMPASSE LOOMING?

It's called "the Washington Monument Syndrome" and it's become a symbol of what happens when negotiations over a proposed federal budget fall into gridlock because of bi-partisan political obstinacy. It's a term which alludes to the tactic that when the government runs out of money because of a failure to enact a budget by Congress and the President, those in power shut down some of the most prominent and beloved public venues in order to get the attention of citizens.

It usually works.

As Democrats prepare to take over control of Congress and an apparently humbled White House continues to show signs of political reconciliation, there remain skeptics in the nation's capital, however, who fear that ugly divides will re-emerge from partisan discussions about how to address the growing federal budget deficit. Will federal land management agencies like the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and BLM—which provide hundreds of millions of outdoor recreation opportunities for visitors—be asked to implement deep across-the-board-cuts in their proposed budgets? Could there be a government shutdown? [more]

A CHANGE IN THE AIR ON CLIMATE AND COAL?

If, as writer Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book The Tipping Point, that it's often the intervention of certain people at critical moments in history that make a difference in changing public consciousnesses, small deeds can add up to a cascade of unexpected consequences.

With the United Nations recently concluding its global summit on climate change in Nairobi, most governments on Earth--bolstered in their conclusions by the mountain of scientific evidence documenting human-caused changes in the atmosphere, oceans, and land from the Arctic North to the Amazon Basin--are moving toward action: Action that is more sophisticated, cooperative, and pragmatic than that layed out in the Kyoto Protocol more than a decade ago. Will the United States, China, and Australia join the rest of the world, engaging in a meaningful policy strategy not because Al Gore says so, but because it can no longer be ignored with even major industry conceding that changes must be made?

Word on the street these days in Washington is that the Bush Administration is about to dramatically reverse course from its obstinate position on climate change and soon will unveil a strategy to address U.S. carbon dioxide emissions into Earth's atmosphere. Suddenly, the talk of clean coal technology in Wyoming and Montana has, thanks in part to a group of local diplomats, become recognized on the international stage. [more]

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