FOOD FOR THOUGHT

‘Food Inc.’ Takes Aim At Corporate Ag

The latest salvo against the nation’s agricultural-industrial complex is on the big screen.

Food, Inc., a documentary by filmmaker Robert Kenner, is a forceful indictment of concentrated cattle ghettos, squalid chicken factories and cornfield deserts. At the film’s core is this thesis: the way we eat has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000, and not for the better.

Sure, our shopping cart loads are getting cheaper, but our health, the environment, the animals and the people who handle them pay the price, Kenner argues.

“We spend less of our paycheck on our food than anytime, but it comes at a heavy cost,” Kenner told a crowd at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival, after a screening of the film.

GOP BLUES

Hispanic Vote, Transplants Helped Democrats Rise in the West

For the first time in a century, the mountain West has more Democratic senators, and more Democratic congress members, than Republicans.

That’s part of a shift across the region and the nation, say a pair of Stanford University professors, that has the Republican Party in crisis.

“There is no silver bullet for Republicans,” says Doug Rivers, professor of political science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “For the short-run, the news is pretty bad.”

Guest Column

Outdoor Leaders Praise Passage of Climate Bill

The passage of the Waxman-Markey Climate bill is a historic, bold step in the right direction in terms of embracing innovative and sustained business practice.

Hailed globally as a “sea of change in U. S. policy on climate,” this legislation will reshape energy policy by capping greenhouse gas emissions for the first time, boost production and investment in renewable electricity, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and tend to our cherished natural resources. Concurrently, the bill will create jobs here in the United States and help businesses and communities hardest hit by these new changes.

We commend our forward thinking leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives and say job well done.

FRACKING FRACAS

‘Fracking’ Bill Gets Buried - Again

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., made headlines last month when she introduced legislation to regulate chemicals used in a part of the gas-drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. “Fracking” pumps a brew of chemicals into the ground to help the gas flow and open up gas plays once considered too tough to drill. These chemicals were regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act until the 2005 Energy Bill exempted them. DeGette wants that exemption taken away.

The energy industry has balked, though, saying the chemicals are safe and further regulation would be both costly and unnecessary. Environmentalists say the chemicals could contaminate groundwater and may have already poisoned people who were exposed to them.

DeGette has introduced similar legislation before, but it never caught the attention of the energy industry as much as this time. An Obama White House and a Democratic Congress -- now filibuster-proof -- has boosted its chances. New gas plays in places like New York and Pennsylvania have raised the profile.

But DeGette’s legislation probably won’t see a vote this year, either. She tells New West that fracking will see more studies before it sees more regulation.

Political Commentary: Heath Haussamen

Should Ben Lujan Remain Speaker of the N.M. House?

Does the value of property increase when a highway interchange is built near it? Of course it does. So the fact that the state Department of Transportation abruptly moved the site of a proposed interchange to four-tenths of a mile from land owned by House Speaker Ben Lujan, D-Nambe, in 2007 should raise eyebrows. Of course, Lujan has been doing things for years that should raise the eyebrows of anyone who cares about honest and ethical government, so perhaps the revelations contained in Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal article about the DOT project shouldn’t come as a surprise.

gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day

Interior Unveils Solar Hot Spots Across West

The Interior Department released maps on Tuesday detailing vast stretches of public land in the West that could be opened to utility-scale solar development.

The so-called Solar Energy Study Areas make up 670,000 acres in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and California.

The proposed areas focus on lands considered to have excellent solar access and manageable slopes, with roads and transmission lines or corridors nearby, and with at least 2,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land. Sensitive areas, wilderness areas and other lands with high-conservation values were ruled out.

Update

United Nations Will Study Threats to Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

The United Nations plans to send a fact-finding mission to Canada to investigate environmental threats to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park due to proposed coal and energy mining activity in the area.

Representatives of U.S. and Canadian conservation groups opposed to mining activity that could harm the water quality and wildlife of the Flathead River Valley are in Seville, Spain, this week for a meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), petitioning to have Waterton-Glacier declared a “World Heritage Site in Danger.”

By a unanimous vote, the 21-country panel that governs those issues decided Friday to send a mission to the region to “evaluate and provide recommendations on the requirements for ensuring the protection” of Waterton-Glacier, according to Will Hammerquist of the National Parks Conservation Association, who has been attending the conference in Seville this week. The committee requested a report on the potential impacts of proposed natural resource development operations in the Flathead River Valley due Feb. 1 of next year.

Political Commentary: Joan McCarter

Is Baucus Going to Let Chuck Grassley Kill Health Care Reform?

This week, Senator Max Baucus told the New York Times that the Senate Democrats gave too much away in going into the health care reform process.

He conceded that it was a mistake to rule out a fully government-run health system, or a “single-payer plan,” not because he supports it but because doing so alienated a large, vocal constituency and left Mr. Obama’s proposal of a public health plan to compete with private insurers as the most liberal position.

That's encouraging, but will he take a lesson from that experience and apply it going forward? The problem for Senator Baucus now is that that public plan--critical to the President's reform plan and the one thing that could really ensure that private insurance companies have to actually play fair and participate in real, substantial reform--is the one thing that Republicans refuse to budge on. And Baucus keeps insisting that he has to have his colleague, Republican Chuck Grassley, on board.

News Bite

Western Senators Form Caucus to Combat, Among Other Things, “Anti-Oil Agenda”

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch says he, his fellow Senator Bob Bennett, Idaho's Jim Risch and Wyoming's John Barrasso have created the Western Senate Caucus because: "We have to fight very, very hard to make sure that the West is being treated fairly."

In an announcement yesterday, the three Senators detailed a plan that Hatch likened to the Sagebrush Rebellion during the Carter years.

Barrasso says in the Salt Lake Tribune: "We believe in Western values, values of rugged individualism, of self-reliance and economic freedom," said Barrasso. "We oppose the federal intrusion in the everyday lives of the people of our great country. The government should get out of the way of prosperity and liberty."

The Senators times the formation of the caucus with its introduction of the Clean, Affordable, and Reliable Energy, or CARE, Act, legislation that Hatch described in a press release as, "A comprehensive energy bill... aimed at ensuring that all the energy tools are in place to fuel our economy and fix our nation’s dangerous overdependence on foreign oil."

Hatch also said in the release, "One of the aims of the Senate Western Caucus is to thwart the anti-oil agenda of the Washington elite and their extreme environmentalist allies, while at the same time promoting alternative energy," and he referenced Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's decision this week to repeal oil and gas leases in Utah. You can read some of the details of the CARE act on Hatch's Web site.