Environment

By Laura Scott, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

A federal judge last week silenced a plan to allow 540 snowmobiles to roar through Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks every day this winter.

Americans shouldn't buy into the "false promise" that drilling for oil will really solve their energy problems, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey told The Kansas City Star Editorial Board on Tuesday.

Denise Tiller, Midwest Voices Panelist 2008

When I lived in Redondo Beach, California, my ocean view included a power plant. Ugly is the only way to describe a power plant. When I commuted to Orange County, I drove past the refineries in Long Beach. An oil refinery is my vision of hell: fire, smoke, and miles of pipes. It's beyond ugly. I've driven past the nuclear power plant on the way to San Diego and it isn't a great thing to look at, but it is still nicer than a refinery.

As an oil and natural gas tycoon, T. Boone Pickens has made a lot of money from America’s addiction to petroleum.

Now he’s promoting a proposal to dramatically boost the nation’s use of renewable and cleaner energies.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

With his great wealth and forceful personality, T. Boone Pickens could become a great ally for supporters of alternative energies, especially wind power.

By Mandy Earles, Kansas City Star Contributing Writer

The Los Angeles city council approved a ban on plastic shopping bags. However, they declared the ban would not take place till 2010.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Corn-based ethanol's supporters are whining, again. They want to keep governmental mandates to use the fuel. Too bad. It's time to kill the mandates, no matter what Garden City, Kan., ethanol backer Lee Reeve says.

Biofuels should be part of the effort to trim the use of petroleum in this country and around the globe.

However, unreasonable governmental mandates — along with tax credits and tariffs — favoring corn ethanol are skewing market forces in ways that create economic and environmental problems.

By Mandy Earles, Kansas City Star Contributing Writer

The effects of global warming can be seen by the ever increasing temperatures, especially now that these temperatures are affecting the lives of innocent bystanders. The Adelie penguins are slowly but surely becoming extinct because the warmer temperatures make it harder for them to breed.

Missouri’s ill-considered ethanol mandate pollutes Kansas City’s air while costing motorists more money than many of them realize.

Since January, the state has required that most gasoline sold in Missouri contain 10 percent ethanol. This was a political sop to corn growers, a bad idea that looks worse as time rolls on.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, City Council member Russ Johnson and some of his colleagues want regulators to give KC more time to develop a sewer-repair plan. At a meeting Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency should say "hell no."

Denise Tiller, Midwest Voices 2008

A house is the most important investment that most of us make and we quickly discover that home-ownership is more than making mortgage payments. Houses of any age need maintenance. There is always something to repair or replace. But a home is more than just a building, it's the place where we raise families, where we live and we do more than keeping up with repairs, we keep it clean, we paint, we mow the lawn, we personalize our homes.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

When it comes to upgrading Kansas City’s sewer system, going green looks like an extremely attractive option.

But not if it winds up being a tremendous waste of public funds.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

U.S. carmakers for years didn't pay enough attention to making fuel-efficient cars. GM came up with the Hummer, the poster-child for gasoline-guzzling vehicles. Now that gas is near $4 a gallon, however, times have changed.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Gleaned from a weekend of car buying: Why U.S. automakers are struggling to survive, why the Toyota Prius isn't available and why a Honda Civic can make good sense.

Changes must be made to slice carbon emissions in the Kansas City area.

That would improve the quality of life in this region, making it more attractive to new residents and businesses.

But what specific actions should residents and businesses take to reach these excellent goals?

By Steve Paul, The Kansas City Star

Dear Jonah Goldberg:

Your dismissal of environmentalism, published today in my newspaper, is one of the oldest clichés in the right-wing playbook, and it moved me to this response.

What should people do to keep the Earth healthy? Leave your comments here.

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, Americans have become much more conscious of the need to help and protect the environment.

Many households recycle plastics and paper. Littering has become socially unacceptable. Compost piles that turn fall leaves into rich soil are popular alternatives to sending yard waste to landfills.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Aquila has been an incompetently run utility for so long that its recent success in the General Assembly comes as a surprise. Then again, given the lawmakers' spineless behavior in recent days, maybe not.

By Denise Tiller, 2008 Midwest Voices Panel

I think it's important to note that children are even more susceptible to second-hand smoke than adults.

According to the CDC and the EPA, over half of children in the US between the ages of 3 and 11 have nicotine in their blood at levels higher than adult nonsmokers. Exposure to smoke can cause low birth-weight babies and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as well as learning and behavior problems, asthma and respiratory infections, and ear infections.

(Note to the reader: I wrote this sometime in 2007. I've read that Al has added green energy, but I still haven't heard what Tipper's doing with her laundry.)

The environmental hypocrites (hereafter referred to as envirocrites in order to save paper—just want to do my part) are at it again. In February, the Drudge Report revealed that Al Gore uses 20 times as much electricity in his Nashville home as the average American. We later learned that Sheryl Crow takes three tractor trailers, four buses, and six cars on her tours. If anyone deserves the title “envirocrite,” it’s these two.

A visit to Rocky Mountain National Park hardly is complete without at least a couple of views of the elk herds roaming the meadows, dining between stands of trees, or watching the visitors watch them.

Unfortunately, the elk are too many. Upon close inspection, visitors to the national parks see chewed-up young willows and aspens, fav food of the elk. The loss of the young trees means a loss, too, of birds, small animals, and even beaver, which are much less abundant in the park than a few years ago.

The elk sometimes overrun the neighboring towns of Estes Park and Grand Lake, causing traffic problems and decimated gardens.

Environmentalists are overjoyed about the rejection of a new coal-fired power plant in Kansas.

The next step, they say, is to pursue the construction of dozens of wind-powered farms in the state.

Time for a little reality check.

Yes, wind should be an important component of supplying future power for Kansans.

However, coal now provides -- and will continue to provide -- an overwhelming amount of electricity for residents in decades to come.

That's because Kansans love to use their energy. They don't conserve enough. They don't buy enough efficient appliances or light bulbs.

In short, Kansans are like other Americans, boosting their energy consumption by an average of 1 to 2 percent a year. Add that up over a decade or so, and the need for a constant supply of power from coal-fired plants becomes critical.

So, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What a travesty! How appalling! Why, did you know that Gore exaggerated some claims in his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” and a UK judge ruled that the film was one sided and “alarmist”?

How dare Al Gore produce a one-sided documentary that alarms viewers to the threats of global warming! It must be, well, um…. Wait a minute, why is this such a problem?

According to the Washington Post, “High Court Judge Michael Burton, deciding a lawsuit that questioned the film's suitability for showing in British classrooms, said Wednesday that the movie builds a ‘powerful’ case that global warming is caused by humans and that urgent means are needed to counter it.” And, of the hundreds of facts presented in the film, the judge found just nine errors, stating that these errors “arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.”

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, recently wrote a column suggesting we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. A great idea, but politicians have been paying lip service to this issue for years, while we continue to become more dependent on foreign oil. Brownback says we should look for energy alternatives and make greater use of hybrid and plug-in vehicles.

In a different (but related) issue, scientists believe that carbon emissions are warming our atmosphere, leading to climate change that will have a devastating impact on our Earth. (There are other folks out there claiming that global warming is a hoax, that the liberal scientists have a secret agenda to destroy our economy, and even if global warming is real, it's Bill Clinton's fault. For now, let's assume the scientists are right.) Politicians concerned about global warming say we should look for energy alternatives and make greater use of hybrid and plug-in vehicles.