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‘Wild & Scenic’ Film Fest coming to Tucson

The biggest environmental film festival on the West Coast is coming to Tucson this week, and you best not miss it.

For the third year in a row, the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival is descending on Tucson, courtesy of our local eco-warriors, the Center for Biological Diversity.

The fest is one day only, this Wednesday, Nov. 12, at the Loft Cinema. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show gets underway at 6:30.

On tap is a choice selection of short, medium and feature length environmental films, from a jeremiad against the evils of the paper coffee cup to a futuristic imagining of a world that successfully combated global warming.

The feature film is Mark Harvey’s “A Land Out of Time,” which outlines the Bush administration’s giveaway of vast swaths of public land to the energy industry.

(The full fest, scheduled for Jan. 9-11 in Nevada City, Calif., has dozens of films and bands, and Tucson’s fest offers only a sampling of seven films. But honestly, how many environmental films can you watch in one day, anyway?)

Earlier today I traded a few emails with Hypatia Porter, whose award-winning short, “For the Price of a Cup of Coffee” will be one of seven films featured on Wednesday.

The 15-minute film explores the ecological cost of disposable goods like paper coffee cups, which we use once and then chuck in the nearest trash bin.

Of her inspiration behind the film, Hypatia writes:

I was feeling overwhelmed with the state of the environment, and was trying to find a way to illustrate the issue that is most important to me - not cups or waste specifically, but a mindset that chooses convenience first.

I realized as I was making the film, that I am absurdly wasteful and given the option of saving 2 minutes by using something wasteful, I take it. Often without any thought.

I believe that if we start to look at what we use, and how much we use, where it comes from and where it goes more discerningly, we’ll be examining the issue at the root of all of our environmental issues, and hopefully start to live a little more sustainably.

Hypatia, pictured here, looks like she could use a cup of coffee herself. But only in a reusable cup, ‘natch.

I love the concept behind this film, because it hits on the idea that in the grand scheme of things, it is not some villain in a black hat — whether it be logging companies, or the Bush Administration, or what have you — that is ultimately responsible for fucking up the environment, but our own mundane, prosaic activities — using and throwing away disposable crap like paper coffee cups and plastic bags, and the million other seemingly trivial acts that we do for the sake of convenience alone that is really doing the planet in.

Dontcha think?

For some previews of films both on the Tucson slate, and not, go here.

I’ll see you at the fest. Bring your friends. And for god’s sake, don’t let me see any of you there drinking from a paper Starbucks cup.

John Collins Rudolf
(Photo at top from “For the Price of a Cup of Coffee”)

Bush admin. to strip land protection power from Congress

In a regulatory jujitsu move, the Bush administration is seeking to abolish a rule used earlier this year by the Democrat-controlled House natural resources committee to withdraw more than a million acres near the Grand Canyon from uranium exploration.

The Interior Department calls the rule — which allows the both the Senate and House committees to issue “emergency declarations” to protect threatened wilderness — redundant.

But the timing is more than a bit suspicious, coming as it does only a few weeks after environmental groups sued the Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne over Interior’s failure to stop granting exploration permits to uranium mining companies near the Canyon.

Taylor McKinnon, public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, who I spoke with last Friday, calls the move a fairly transparent response to a string of victories by environmentalists.

“I don’t hesitate to say that this is a response to the emergency withdrawal at Grand Canyon, and our lawsuit against Secretary Kempthorne challenging his defiance of that,” he tells me.

(For more background about uranium mining near Grand Canyon, check out this post from a few weeks ago)

Interior — and the Bureau of Land Management, which they oversee — argue that places like the Grand Canyon are already protected by federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and others. The AP has a response from BLM here.

Not so, says McKinnon.

“If that were true, all the uranium development of the 1980s would have happened without incident,” he says.

He points to a mine accident in 1984 that led to four tons of uranium ore washing through various tributaries and into Grand Canyon and the Colorado River.

It was incidents like that which led to the rules allowing Congress to withdraw lands unilaterally.

“We would be foolish to trust them again,” he says.

An interesting side note to this circus is the fact that the last-minute rule change is in direct contradiction to a memo issued by White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton earlier this year.

The memo says that last-minute regulatory changes are not going to be tolerated.

“Except in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this Administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than November 1, 2008,” it reads.

What happened?

“They lied,” says McKinnon.

What else is new?

John Collins Rudolf (photo credit: Me)

Uranium exploration near Grand Canyon sparks battle with Bush administration

In the fight to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining and exploration, one battle is over, but another has just begun.

Last week, three environmental groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust – announced they had reached a settlement with VANE Minerals, a U.K.-based minerals exploration firm that had previously received approval from the Forest Service to drill 39 exploratory holes in search of uranium deposits in the Kaibab National Forest, which borders both the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon.

Essentially, VANE is back at square one. If they still want to drill some holes, they will have to go through much more rigorous environmental review than they had previously faced.

Thanks to an injunction by a federal judge back in April, “the writing was on the wall that they were going to lose the case,” says Taylor McKinnon, public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

With the settlement, VANE essentially folded a losing hand.

It’s a big victory, but the issue is far from settled.

“This has been our flagship battle for a much, much larger war,” McKinnon says.

That’s because if mining companies like VANE are willing to go to the time and expense, they very well may be able to gain approval for exploratory drilling in the future.

While exploratory drilling causes relatively little damage in comparison to, say, a large heap-leach uranium strip mine, environmental groups like the CBD are determined to stop any exploration near the Canyon.

That’s because under the 1872 Mining Law, the bedrock of federal mining legislation, once a recoverable mineral deposit has been found, it gains a whole host of new legal rights and protections and becomes very difficult – and expensive – to stop.

So, until Congress gets around to reforming the 1872 Mining Act – hell, it’s only been 136 years – stopping exploration is the only way to really nip a mining project in the bud.

A few members of Congress have now gotten into the act, seeking to withdraw a huge section of land near the Grand Canyon from mineral exploration – using an emergency declaration that last three years and that federal law says the Department of the Interior is compelled to respect.

The declaration was passed on June 25, 2008, but has been ignored by Interior, prompting a new lawsuit by environmentalists – filed Monday – seeking to compel Secretary Dick Kempthorne to stop approving exploration projects within the withdrawal area.

TZR founder Adam Klawonn has the skinny here.

To Taylor McKinnon, it’s a classic power struggle between the executive and the legislative.

“I think that the Bush Administration objects to the power afforded Congress over the executive branch in this case,” he says.

The Bush Administration in a power grab? That’s shocking. Just shocking.

John Collins Rudolf

VP pick Palin wins environmentalist ‘Dodo’ prize

As prizes go, it’s probably not one you’d want on your trophy shelf: the Center for Biological Diversity’s Rubber Dodo award.

This year’s recipient is governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

“She richly deserves it,” says Tim Ellis, spokesman for the Tucson-based group. “Her environmental record is a disaster and we just wanted to draw attention to that.”

The handsome trophy, pictured above, honors Palin “for seeking to block Endangered Species Act protection for the polar bear, lying about, then suppressing state scientific reviews, and denying that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming.”

The trophy will be mailed to the governor’s mansion sometime this week, I’m told.

“It’s just about ready to fly north,” says Ellis.

Despite the fairly obvious meltdown occurring in her home state – thawing permafrost, disappearing sea ice, unseasonably warm winters and generally weird weather – Palin still doesn’t believe that human activity is having an impact on the climate.

“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made,” Palin told the right-wing magazine Newsmax earlier this summer.

It’s a view that puts her to the right even of the leaders of her own party.

It was the Bush administration’s Department of the Interior, after all, that finally labeled the polar bear as ‘threatened,’ (albeit without taking any actions that would protect the bear’s habitat from offshore oil drilling or carbon emissions.)

If Palin doesn’t believe in manmade climate change, well, I suppose that’s her right.

But where she crossed the line from fool to crook was by using her power as governor of Alaska to obscure the work of biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, critics say.

Palin claimed that studies by state biologists cast doubt on the conclusions of federal scientists, who had determined that vanishing sea ice threatened the bears. Without scientific consensus, she said, listing the bears as endangered or threatened was a mistake.

“I strongly believe that adding them to the list is the wrong move at this time. My decision is based on a comprehensive review by state wildlife officials of scientific information from a broad range of climate, ice and polar bear experts,” she wrote in a New York Times editorial.

But through a Freedom of Information Act request, a University of Alaska got his hands on the studies in question — which said nothing of the sort.

“Essentially, she lied,” University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner told ABC News.

The move vaulted her over the opposition and earned her the coveted Rubber Dodo – and the enmity of environmental crusaders like Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

“To maintain her ludicrous opposition to protecting the polar bear in the face of massive scientific consensus, Palin stepped over the line to lie about and suppress government science,” Suckling said in a statement.

The irony is, of course, that John McCain was supposedly one of the few Republicans that actually got global warming.

He’s proposed legislation – co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman – that would have put the U.S. on track to cut emissions.

And here he is nominating for his vice-president a woman who basically thinks climate change is some kind of liberal bogeyman cooked up by environmentalists.

In our view, McCain, in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to get elected, shoved Mother Earth under the bus.

And what does this all have to do with Arizona? Maybe more than you think.

Recent studies suggest that we here in the desert may be more closely linked to the health of the Arctic sea ice than previously believed.

It seems that fluctuations in the sea ice may be linked to weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean. In particular, as sea ice declines, more storm systems from the Pacific may head north, bypassing the Southwest.

It does strike me as an interesting coincidence that the so-called Medieval Warm Period happened to coincide with the mega-drought in the Southwest that led to the fall of the Anasazi civilization.

In any case, fly, dodo, fly.

Biologists sue over jaguar’s fate

TUCSON — It was almost 20 years ago when federal officials first realized protetcion was needed for the jaguar, a stocky predator whose status put it atop the food chain throughout the Southwest.

Since then, little has been done to protect the big cat, which is now considered an endangered species. It’s habitat is steadily shrinking as more and more rooftops and bright lights sprout in Arizona’s remote deserts.

So the Center for Biological Diversity is suing top officials for the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Fish and Wildlife Service. They are asking a federal judge in Tucson for a court order that would force both agencies to set aside habitat and create a recovery plan for the jaguar.

In their 15-page complaint filed Aug. 2, 2007, lawyers for the center claim federal officials have missed at least two chances to protect the jaguar. At first, the lack of a solution was an “oversight,” according to the complaint. Then, in 2003, officials decided that helping the jaguar was “not prudent.”

Four jaguars have been sighted dozens of times since 1996, the suit claims. In every case, they were seen along the U.S.-Mexico border, where researchers have set up cameras with night-vision to spot the animals.