Green Options

“I am calling a two-year ‘Time-Out’ from all new mining claims in the Arizona Strip near the Grand Canyon,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, “because we have a responsibility to ensure we are developing our nation’s resources in a way that protects local communities, treasured landscapes, and our watersheds,” said Secretary Salazar.

With an economic crisis knocking at the front door and an energy crisis knocking at the back, the Department of Interior is working to responsibly balance development of conventional energy sources and the accelerated development of clean, renewable energy while at the same time protecting the treasured landscapes, wildlife, and cultural resources that claim America as their home.

By Stacy Feldman, originally published June 24, 2009, at SolveClimate.com

Washington is starting to wake up to something that’s been obvious to marine scientists for years. The winds blowing off U.S. waters could be a key to a national clean energy and green jobs revolution.

On Tuesday, the federal government awarded five leases to three companies that want to develop wind turbines off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts for the production of renewable energy.

They’re the first such leases the Department of Interior has ever issued for the Outer Continental Shelf. If this official statement is any indication, they won’t be the last:

“We made the development of offshore wind energy a top priority for Interior. The technology is proven, effective and available and can create new jobs for Americans while reducing our expensive and dangerous dependence on foreign oil.”

The declaration comes as the U.S. Congress is in the midst of a debate over a proposal that would create a costly long-distance “transmission highway” to carry land-based wind energy (among other clean and dirty sources) from the Great Plains to the power-hungry cities of the American East.

Is the U.S. Interior Department wrongly withholding information that will reveal whether taxpayers are being ripped off in a controversial oil and gas royalty program? Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) see to think so, according to a lawsuit they filed today. Interior claims that disclosure of bidding and contracting information about its Royalty-In-Kind (RIK) sales would reveal oil company trade secrets.

A vocal opponent of the Bush administration’s push for oil shale development, Salazar, a former water lawyer spoke of the tremendous water and energy requirements to develop oil shale using current best practices.

Unfortunately for outgoing Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, the $236,000 renovation of the Main Interior Building Executive Suite bathroom was finally completed just in time for Ken Salazar to move in.

In a last minute effort to alter the endangered species rules before Bush leaves office, officials are speed-reading 200,000 public comments.  If the Administration goes through with their plan, they will implement the biggest changes to the rules since 1986.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has called 15 people to Washington this week to speed read 200,000 comments in 32 hours.  The public comments are regarding a proposal by the interior department to exclude greenhouse gases and the advice of federal biologists from decisions about whether dams and power plants could harm species.

Dale Hall, Fish and Wildlife Service Director, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that the short time frame for processing the comments was requested by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and, indeed would set a record.  Usually the review process takes months.

We’ve suffered through too much of this cowboy politics crap (pun intended) to allow it to happen again.

Palin’s record is already dirty enough to warrant a trip to the free clinic, and that’s just as Governor! What is she capable of if elected as VP?

A major investigation of the Department of Interior has uncovered “a culture of ethical failure.” Over a dozen current and former employees are alleged to have violated policies including drug use, sexual relations between federal employees and oil company employees, rigging oil contracts, working part-time as oil consultants, and accepting gifts like golf and ski trips.