"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, `thus far and no further.' If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, `If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behavior.` " Ed Abbey

University of Utah student, Tim DeChristopher arrived at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) building in Salt Lake City intending to join some 200 other people protesting the Bush administration's decision to auction oil and gas rights on federal lands near some of our most iconic national parks. Then he had one of those profound insights that change people's lives forever.

As Tim put it in his online statement:

I have been an environmentalist for most of my life. I have marched, held signs, written letters and spoken to my Congressman. I have built trails and removed invasive species in National Parks. I have educated friends on climate change and donated to a dozen different groups. Countless others have done all these same things for decades in defense of our wilderness and a livable future.

It hasn't worked. Even with a new administration, we are not on track for a livable future. This has been made clear by James Hanson, Bill McKibben, Al Gore and many others. The legitimate pathways to power have not provided us with the ability to defend the survival of our civilization. Yesterday I decided that the crisis facing us requires more critical action than has been taken in the past. When faced with the opportunity to seriously disrupt the auction of some of our most beautiful lands in Utah to oil and gas developers, I could not ethically turn my back on that opportunity. By making bids for land that was supposed to be protected for the interests of all Americans, I tried to resist the Bush administration's attempt to defraud the American people.

During the auction, Tim purchased the oil and gas rights to 10 parcels of BLM land around Arches and Canyonlands National Parks for 1.8 million dollars that he doesn't have. He also drove up the bidding on a number of other parcels that he didn't purchase.

Eventually, bidders representing oil  and gas companies became suspicious and alerted BLM officials who notified Salt Lake City plainclothes policemen (who were already in the room!). Tim was detained, questioned and then released by federal agents, but may face federal charges.

The BLM was offering 131 parcels at the auction on Friday of which it sold 116 including the ones that Tim purchased. The total number of acres offered was 149,000 down from the 360,000 acres that the Bush administration proposed before the public outcry became so great that the BLM scaled back. By the way, the oil and gas rights on those 131 parcels sold for 7.5 million dollars, approximately $57.00 an acre. The price would have been even lower if Tim hadn't been there bidding. These lands belong to the American people but were being sold-off, at white-sale prices, to Bush and Cheney's cronies in the Climaticide mafia.

Tim's actions bore immediate fruit:

BLM official Terry Catlin said the agency didn't want to reopen the bidding on the parcels DeChristopher snagged unless all interested parties were able to compete for the leases. That means the parcels won't be available again until at least February -- after Obama takes office -- during the next scheduled auction.

DeChristopher, who acknowledged upping other bids by about $500,000, said he would be willing to go to jail to defend his generation's prospects in light of global climate disruption and other environmental threats.

"If that's what it takes," he said.

Here's a link to a video and transcript of an interview that Tim did with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
in which he provides an eloquent explanation of what inspired him to this creative act of civil disobedience.  

Tim Christopher got in trouble last Friday not for his bad but for his good (in the truest sense of the word) behavior. In the process he set an example for us all of not only of how to reorient our moral compasses so that they once again point North, but of how to act once we've found the direction in which we wish to travel.  Bravo Tim!

NOTE: You can contribute to Tim's legal defense fund at the Center for Water Advocacy, a non-profit public interest law firm.

Photos Above: 1) Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, 2) Green River Overlook, Canyonlands National Park, 3) Park Avenue, Arches National Park 4) Colorado River, Canyonlands National Park

Photo credits: National Park Service Photo

Earlier versions of this article were published at Climaticide Chronicles and Daily Kos

You might be surprised to find out that despite being the number three wind producer in the world, Spain is dead last among developed countries in meeting its Kyoto targets.  In this diary we'll take a look at how that happened and why Spain (and the rest of the United States) needs a dose of Californication.

According to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the European Union is to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 8% relative to 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. Because at the time the agreement was signed, Spain was considered one of the less developed economies (it currently ranks 5th) among the then 15 European Union members (there are currently 27), its emissions target was set at a 15% rise over 1990 levels. (Greece, Ireland and Portugal were also allowed to grow their emissions.)

However, as of 2007, Spain is 52.3% above its Kyoto target and, despite optimistic government promises that it can still meet the target, it seems extremely unlikely that the Spanish will be able to reduce emissions by 35% relative to 1990 levels in only 4 years.

[A couple of days ago I finally took the leap and started my own blog, Climaticide Chronicles.  Below, by way of an introduction, I have reprinted my welcoming post from Climaticide Chronicles in the hope that some of you might be interested enough to do me the honor of visiting

A recent post by Joe Romm over at Climate Progress, The denialists are winning, especially with the GOP, in which he cited a Pew Poll showing that 13% fewer Republicans believe in global warming now than did a year ago, drew a huge number of denialist responses. After reading them all (groan) it struck me that it might be useful to analyze who climate denialists are and why they behave as they do.

Anyone who has tried to discuss Climaticide with a climate change denialist knows just how frustrating it can be. No matter how well informed you are, no matter how many peer-reviewed studies you cite, or how many times you point out the overwhelming agreement based on the evidence that exists among climate scientists that global warming is real and is principally caused by human fossil fuel use, you will get no where. Your adversary will deny the facts, cherry pick the scientific evidence for bits of data that, taken out of context, support his/her denialist view, or drag out long-debunked counter-arguments in the hope that they are unfamiliar to you and that you will not be able to refute them. If you succeed in countering all of his arguments he will most likely reword them and start all over again.

EcoNoticiario # 5 covers a broad range of topics: health of forests and wetlands in Spain and Cuba, a whole range of environmental news from Colombia, the effects of drought, rising energy costs and volcanic eruptions in Chile, and the ongoing farmers' strike in Argentina.

[I have been writing about the Spanish water crisis in a separate series of diaries. For the latest news see my recent diary: Ten Things America Can Learn From Spain's Water Wars.]

Your environmental word of the week:

sequía-drought

[As always: All translations are mine.]

I have been writing about the Spanish water crisis periodically in my weekly EcoNoticiario, but the situation there has grown grave enough that I thought it merited a diary of its own. Tensions in Spain over water are increasing. In addition to the disputes between town and countryside in Catalonia, there is now evidence of strain between the central government in Madrid and the Generalitat in Barcelona.

In the face of a drought that has now lasted 18 months and reduced Catalan reservoirs to 21% of capacity, the Catalan government has finally revealed a plan, about which there had been much speculation, subterfuge and political maneuvering: to divert water from the Segre River to the Llobregat River, despite warnings from the central government that water policy is a question for federal not regional authorities.

Conflict is not limited to the Northeast: further south, the province of Castilla-La Mancha has announced that further transfers from the Tajo (Tagus) River to the Segura which serves the water-short Murcia area's 2 million people, are impossible.

Diary rescue by Migeru

Some of you may remember that scene at the beginning of The Day After Tomorrow, when an Antarctic ice shelf breaks up under a group of scientists? Well, they didn't just make it up.

The inspiration for that scene came from a real event. Beginning on January 31, 2002 and continuing over a 35 day period, the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen B ice shelf broke up and collapsed, sending thousands of icebergs churning into the Weddell Sea. The area affected covered 3250 km2. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

...the area lost in this [then] most recent event dwarfs Rhode Island (2717 km2) in size. In terms of volume, the amount of ice released in this short time is 720 billion tons, enough ice for about 12 trillion 10 kg bags.

However, as the consequences of our Climaticide continue to manifest themselves in ever more extreme forms, no record is safe. Today Rhode Island, tomorrow Connecticut...

Diary rescue by Migeru

In this week's EcoNoticiario: water, lack of water, and water politics,  fudging CO2 emissions, saving sea turtles, global warming and indigenous peoples, skyrocketing energy costs, and did I mention water?

Spain features very prominently this week because of a slow week in Latin American environmental news combined with a fascinating developing story in Catalonia over how Barcelona is going get enough water to drink.

Your Spanish environmental word of the week:

environment--medio ambiente

Diary rescue by Migeru

The news is coming in fast and furious on the Spanish water crisis, which is becoming the central topic of Spanish politics.  When we last looked at the Spanish press 2 days ago, central government First Vice-President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega had declared that there would be no diversion of water from the Ebro or its tributaries, while Catalan Environment Counselor, Francesc Baltasar, announced that the Catalan government, the Generalitat, would move ahead with construction on the assumption that permission would come later.

It didn't take long for Counselor Baltasar to receive another call from Madrid.

This week stories include melting glacier ice in Peru and Argentina, undersea waterfalls near Spain, a meeting on sustainable forestry in Cuba, biodiversity education in Costa Rica, and water policy in Colombia. We also have two stories from Chile: one concerning La Niña and the country's ongoing drought, the other about plans to build an Antarctic museum on the Strait of Magellan in Punto Arenas.

Your Spanish environmental word of the week:

humedal--wetland

In this week's EcoNoticiario:

The formation of Antarctica, battles over water in Spain, Galician wines, amphibian extinctions and deep-sea oil in Mexico, saber rattling trumps climate change at Santo Domingo meeting, regulating carbon offsets in Costa Rica, more on the Chilean energy crisis, and tornadoes(!) near Buenos Aires (with a sampling of readers' reactions).

And a new feature.

Your Spanish environmental word of the week:

calentamiento global--global warming

This is the first of what I hope will become a series of diaries on news about global warming climaticide and related environmental issues from newspapers published in Latin America and Spain. Links to the full article are given at the end of each summary/translation.

This is far from an exhaustive list. Articles cited reflect both my personal interests and the time at my disposal. I have purposefully left out articles on subjects that receive broad coverage in the English language press unless I find some unusual local slant on the topic.  For example, nearly every newspaper that I consulted had an article on the opening of the Norwegian seed vault this week. Such stories are usually just translations of English wire service reports and provide no insight into local conditions.

As is to be expected certain newspapers pay more attention to environmental questions than others. Several major Spanish, Costa Rican and Colombian newspapers, for example, provide daily coverage of the environment both at home and abroad. In other papers environmental coverage may be more hit and miss.

As part of a series that it ran during the Bali Conference on reactions to global warming around the world, El País, Spain's leading newspaper did an article (in Spanish) on global warming in Russia. In this diary I'll translate parts of the article and summarize others. It is, to say the least, eye opening.

Any visitor who flies in a helicopter over Siberia will notice, from time to time, flares of orange on the immense white plain: it is the gas that is found with the petroleum and which is always burned and wasted. This same traveler, when lodging in Moscow in winter, may find that his room becomes hellishly hot and be forced to open the windows since most of the radiators are not adjustable.

These images illustrate the principal problem that confronts Russia: its lack of conservation and efficiency in the consumption of energy, which is worsened by the warming being experienced in certain areas of the country. The flame seen from overhead and the open window are symbols par excellence of the wastefulness that is the Russian attitude toward energy use.

Dateline Friday, December 14, 2007

(WR) BALI, Indonesia--Delegates at the Climate Conference in Bali called off their summit today without reaching any agreement.  The decision to stop the negotiations was summed up by one US delegate this way:

It's just been too hot to work.  We're all planning on getting back together after things cool down.

More news below the fold.

As I have diaried before, late last year I was diagnosed with Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL). Initial chemotherapy treatments put me into remission, then in May of this year, after additional preparatory chemo and special radiation treatment, I had an autologous stem-cell transplant, which has enabled me to stay in remission.

But as Newsweek columnist and fellow MCL survivor, Jonathan Alter points out in his November 13 column, the bean-counting bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have adopted measures that from November 1, 2007 effectively bar non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is the 6th most common form of cancer in the US) from receiving the treatment that I received, treatment that in many cases is their only hope for survival.

More below the fold.

 A day or two ago he wasn't so sure.

Just about a year ago I was diagnosed with Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL), a very aggressive but relatively uncommon form of cancer (it affects only a few thousand people a year). This last year has been hard: months of chemotherapy followed by a very harsh, experimental form of radiation treatment and finally an autologous stem-cell transplant. I've survived so far because I've had many great doctors and nurses and the support of my wife (herself a nurse practitioner), the wisest, smartest and kindest human being I have ever known. Even so, the average life expectancy for someone with my disease is only six years although that is up from three years a decade ago.

I'm in the hospital now because I have an acute intestinal infection.  One of the consequences of my stem-cell transplant is that, for at least a year, things that won't even make you sick can kill me. A year from my transplant date I will get all my childhood immunizations again as all my acquired immunity was wiped out when my immune system was "reborn".

So, you may be wondering, is this a diary about health care?  No, this is a diary about global warming.