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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

A Victory for Wildlife
From Earthjustice:

A federal judge ruled that the Bush administration "plainly violated" the Endangered Species Act when it issued a regulation that eliminated reviews of new pesticides by federal wildlife biologists.
The ruling restored the previous standards, which provided greater protection for endangered plants and animals. The ESA mandates that the Environmental Protection Agency consult with wildlife specialists in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure that the use of pesticides will not threaten the survival and recovery of species threatened with extinction.
The August 24 ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Helping Our Peninsula's Environment (HOPE), National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, and the Washington Toxics Coalition.

Read the decision.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 10:48:43 AM

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Industry-Backed Lobbyists Use YouTube to Attack Climate Change
Lobbyists are trying some new media tactics to sway public opinion about climate change. In the latest effort, a video released on the video-sharing site YouTube mocks Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The short, entitled "Al Gore's Penguin Army," is a vapid animation that turns Gore into a fat penguin who bores audiences to death and hypnotizes them into thinking climate change must be stopped. The end lists things you can do to stop global warming including "stop exhaling" and "become a vegetarian." The video also tries to make climate change a partisan issue by showing a "red state" movie theater with a packed audience for X-Men 3 and an empty theater for An Inconvenient Truth.

The filmmaker listed on the site was a 29-year-old from Beverly Hills. Fortunately, a savvy reporter for the Wall Street Journal (subscription-only) checked the IP address of the film's creator following an email conversation and found that the email actually originated from inside DCI Group, a Washington DC public relations group who represents big business, including Exxon Mobile.