The Los Angeles Times has a sweet little editorial about the latest Bush gambit on the environment.  It is worth a read.

The opening paragraph gets to the heart of the matter.

For Earth Day this year, the Bush administration sent California a few million tons of carbon dioxide, then tried to pass it off as a gift for the environment. The proposed federal fuel economy standards issued Tuesday represent a backdoor attempt to thwart the will of the state, Congress, the federal courts and possibly even the Supreme Court. That's quite a day's work even for President Bush.

I did a little math for earth day. Maybe someone can help me see the light...

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, was pied while giving a keynote speech on Earth Day in Providence, RI. His talk, titled "Green is the new Red White and Blue", was about how corporate environmentalism (putting a price on the atmosphere, and investing in biofuels and techno-fixes) can restore America to its "natural place in the global order."

Read one for YouTube video...

Today is Earth Day and we humans have a challenge to meet.

We are living in a time of enormous import.  The world is changing in ways we humans are as yet ill-prepared to survive, yet alone thrive.  Furthermore, it is not a coincidence that so many of our most critical problems are coming to a crest at the same time.  Peak oil. Water wars. Global warming. Mass migrations. Financial turmoil. Dwindling food supplies. Extreme ideologies. Mass extinction. These problems come of a world straining to be home to an ever increasing number of humans facing enormous change.  

The problems we face are linked together in ways that we are just beginning to understand.  We humans have been fruitful and multiplied and now we have filled almost every niche this world provides.  Even in the harshest climes, from the icy poles to the most extreme deserts, one finds humans eking out a living. Yet, as we spread and occupy this earth, by our very existence we have changed the world we claimed.

of Mother Nature. Forget the candidates for a second this evening...what did you do to show support for the planet on this EARTH DAY 2008? Have you showered the pols with "green" without considering their stances on Mother Nature's natural green? Did you hug a tree today?

Submitted for your perusal....BREAKING!...THE EARTH...ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS TO USE.

Exxon appeal rejected in Louisiana contamination lawsuit. Exxon Mobil Corp. suffered a defeat at the Supreme Court on Monday, as the justices refused to consider an appeal by the oil giant of a $112 million damage award in an environmental lawsuit. Associated Press via Anchorage Daily News

Mississippi River debris spilling into lake. As Mississippi River water hurtles through the Bonnet Carre Spillway and into Lake Pontchartrain, it carries the detritus of the American heartland along for the ride. New Orleans Times-Picayune

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) has been lousy on environmental issues.  He's been lousy on global climate change.  You name the specific environmental issue, Norm's been bad on it.  The League of Conservation Voters gives him a 26.8% overall rating.  

After the Republican electoral defeats in 2006, Norm realized he was in trouble and began moderating his conservative positions.  The two main areas he began moderating was on the occupation of Iraq (he initially opposed the surge though by the time the first vote occurred, he was back in the stay-the-course fold) and environmental issues.

I drive home from having been with the Earth Mother for any length of time and feel clarity about our artificial environment. The longer I’ve been with her, the more profound the clarity is. I stare straight in the face of "progress" as phone lines, gas stations, and eventually the hazy horizon over the city appears.

I can’t help the feeling of wrongness I feel, though I can see some progress is useful, schools are for example. Still, I can’t help the feeling of wrongness. This isn’t meant to be a judgment of the wrongness of civilization, but by the time I describe this feeling; it probably will be.

Hi all!  Happy Earth Day!  It's important that this day not get lost in all of the Pennysylvania primary hype, so bear with me while I chime in with some thoughts on how we can change our habits to benefit our planet.

In honor of Mother Earth, today we will celebrate one of the unknown Bush Sycophant/Crony/Underling/Minion Obfuscators charged with the toil of "protecting" our dear mother.

May the SCUM-O Team proudly introduce Julie A. MacDonald.

It's been mentioned in the comments below that Denis Hayes is not the actual 'founder' of Earth Day, but I am using the language of the endorsement on Darcy Burner's website.

In the midst of all the attention being paid to the Pennsylvania primary today, I thought it might be a good idea to give a small update regarding an '08 congressional race that's been much talked about on DailyKos and elsewhere. Darcy Burner, running for Congress in the Washington 8th against Bush stalwart Dave Reichert, has been endorsed by Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day and chairman of Earth Day Network.

From his endorsement on Burner's website:

Thirty-eight years ago I dropped out of Harvard to launch the first Earth Day. When I did so, I had no idea what the event would grow up to become. Earth Day now is a time for all of us to come together as a unified international community to celebrate the great beauty of our planet, and to reflect on what we can do to protect it from the growing threats of pollution and environmental degradation.

That is why I am so pleased to announce that I am enthusiastically endorsing her bid for Congress.

On Earth Day, we celebrate our unique blue planet and look for ways to advance a sustainable future.  So this Earth Day, let's Act Blue and do something that can have a lasting and significant impact: support Energy Smart and Earth Friendly candidates for Congress!

One of the highlights of the 2006 elections was the defeat of former Congressman Richard Pombo (CA-11), a man who seemed to make it his singular mission in Congress to rape and pillage the environment, including leading the charge on repeated attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act and open up ANWR for oil drilling.

Cross posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

Cross posted at Sustainable   Walworth

On this Earth Day, it's time to take another look at how our landscape choices are impacting the planet. Last year I posted a diary here  taking our default landscape choice, the lawn, to task over its extreme dependency on petroleum, and accompanying waste of this dwindling resource.  It is not only oil, however, that our landscapes waste. They waste productive human labor, money (over 45 billion dollars per year in the United States), fertilizers that could be better directed to crop production, but most of all, they waste and abuse water. Water is the basic resource upon which life depends, but our current landscape choices behave as if it were limitless.  The current turf-dominated landscape both attempts to get rid of water, and to introduce it at the same time, thus contributing even further to squandering of water resources.   Below the fold, we talk about how landscaping affects our water resources and explore sustainable, water conserving alternatives to the wasteful dominant landscape paradigm.

(Full disclosure: I am the New Media/Voter Outreach director for Mitakides for Congress)

Many politicians use Earth Day for their own purposes, focusing on environmental issues for one day a year.  However, global warming doesn’t take a vacation for the other 364 days a year - and neither can we. That’s why Jane has decided to walk the talk of green solutions by making her campaign carbon neutral, and committing to work for renewable energy and green jobs when elected to Congress.

By underwriting carbon offsets from CarbonFund.org, an organization that helps individuals, businesses, and organizations to eliminate their carbon footprints, the Mitakides campaign becomes the first one of the first congressional campaigns in the nation (and the first in Ohio) to take responsibility for their own greenhouse gas emissions.

The Michigan Wildlife Conservancy (formerly, the Michigan Wildlife Habitat Foundation) was founded in 1982 by the Jackson, Michigan, businessman Russell Bengel and several others who had the vision and understanding that for wildlife to be preserved, it is necessary to preserve vital habitat.  But, as with many of our formerly wild places, preservation bowed to the pressure of commerce.  As such, the MWC was formed to help restore at least some of what has been lost to that pressure.  Since its founding in 1982, the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy has helped restore more than 6,700 acres of wetalands, 2,400 acres of prarie habitat, installed more than 1,000 stream improvement structures, and have demonstrated the existence of a wild breeding population of cougar throught most the state.

I have been a member of the MWC since 1983, a past president, and currently serve on the executive committee of the Board of Directors.    

This diary is to demonstrate what can be done when public and private interests, rather than opposing each other, work together towards a common goal.  

As we all well know, or at least hopefully do, Earth Day is today, April 22nd! This day was established in 1970 by US Senator Gaylord Nelson after he personally witnessed the oil spill off of Santa Barbara in 1969. Already an advocate against environmental degradation, Senator Nelson worked to promote this day as a grassroots effort by all Americans to call for protection of the environment as an item on the national agenda.

In recognition of the importance that we care for and protect the environment not just for the opportunities it presents for ourselves, but for those of future generations, I will be taking this week to highlight important aspects of the environment that need our attention, as well as things you can do that not only help to improve the environment, but also will give you additional benefits beyond as well.

Happy Earth Day.

Maybe we should start with a disclosure that I am Gaylord Nelson's biographer, which may give me a somewhat different perspective on Earth Day, founded by Senator Nelson (pictured at right), than some others.

That said, do take time to read Meteor Blade's commentary and Q-A with Denis Hayes, who has been associated with Earth Day since Gaylord Nelson hired him to coordinate the first one in 1970.

Earth Day, it is true, has not solved all of the world's environmental problems.  But it has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on how people think about and relate to the environment.

"Agriculture is not just about putting things in the ground and then harvesting them...it is increasingly about the social and environmental variables that will in large part determine the future capacity of agriculture to provide for eight or nine billion people in a manner that is sustainable" - Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UNEP

This Earth Day, I thought it important to consider an often unsung hero of the environmental movement that remains our best line of defense in securing the ultimate goal of environmentalism - our sustainable existence. That unsung hero is the local family farmer, and must be an integral part of the solution to the tsunami of interrelated epidemics on the global horizon from the world food crisis to the world energy crisis and every imported fruit and vegetable driven home from a Supercenter in a plastic shopping bag in between.

Ok, let's make a list:  What are Kossacks doing to reduce their carbon footprint?   What would we like to do?  Why aren't we doing it all?

For me it's a question of money.  Most of my carbon-reducing tactics are also frugalities.  Most of the things I'd like to do, I can't afford to.  And some of the activities I love (like hiking in NH mountains) is no longer economically feasible).

So what's your list?