One activist can make a difference

The sale of the leases has drawn criticism from environmental groups who fear the sale would threaten Utah’s wild lands and spoil the view from some of Utah's spectacular national parks with drilling rigs. Robert Redford has led the charge.

An environmental activist disrupted an auction of oil and gas drilling leases Friday by bidding up parcels of land by hundreds of thousands of dollars with no intention of paying for them. The activist, Tim DeChristopher, 27, a University of Utah economics student, said he had accomplished his goal of disrupting the auction by winning the bid on 13 parcels and driving up the price of several others.

The Bureau of Land Management had already pulled some parcels from the sale in response to complaints from the National Park Service and others. Ultimately, the agency dropped more than half of the 359,000 acres first proposed for auction.

Obama Names 4 Top Members of Science Team

Obama stated in a weekly radio address: "It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology."

The president-elect picked John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco who are leading experts on climate change. Holdren will become Obama's science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lubchenco will head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which does government research on global warming.

Holdren also will direct the president's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Joining him as co-chairs will be Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Eric Lander, a specialist in human genome research.

Seems like quite a change from the Bush administration. Will we finally get cap-and-trade for CO2?

Obama will choose Energy Secretary next week

According to CNN, President-elect Barack Obama is likely to name Steven Chu, a Nobel prize winning physicist who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary.

Obama will also name Carol Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, as the newly created "climate czar" inside the White House.

Energy is one aspect of Obama's one-year goal to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. His plan willput Americans to work updating the country's infrastructure, making public buildings more energy-efficient and implementing environmentally friendly technologies, including alternative energy sources.



See details of the Obama energy plan at Earth2Tech.

The Story of Stuff Re-visited

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard is a 20 minute movie teaching about the connections between many environmental and social issues. It promotes the idea of sustainable production and consumption. Keep up with activist efforts at the The Story of Stuff Blog.

I just heard this story again on National Public Radio and wanted to share it again, in case you missed it.

Another great piece is environmental writer Terry Tempest Williams who writes about the collision of the human and natural worlds. Listen at NPR.