Articles by Eric de Place

Western ballot measures would gut environmental protections

A couple of weeks ago, while hurrying to a favorite trout stream, I was pulled over for speeding in a small town. I must have been fried from months of research and writing on the so-called "property rights" movement, because it suddenly occurred to me that the current system is backward.

So I said* to the officer: "Listen, if The Man wants me to obey his laws to keep this town safe, then he should pay me for my time."

Now if my reasoning with the cop sounds ridiculous to you,then you may have difficulty grasping the thinking behind the rash of ballot measures spreading across the West like ... well, like a rash.

But there you have it: there's a well-funded and highly ideological campaign with national marching orders. In 2006, they've landed initiatives on the ballot in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington. All the initiatives have the same aim: to force communities to pay property owners to obey land-use laws. And if communities can't pay, they must grant waivers from the law.

(Don't live in one of these states? There's one headed your way soon. Live in Europe? You're next.)

Wolves are returning to their home in Oregon

It seems that wolves are returning home to Oregon.

A little more than a decade ago, Oregon was wolf-less, along with the rest of the American West, a legacy of government-sanctioned poisoning, trapping, and shooting to make the land safe for cows and sheep. (Here's a cool animated map depicting our shrunken wolf range.)

But then in the mid-1990s, federal biologists reintroduced a few dozen wolves back into their native habitat of Yellowstone National Park and the wilderness of central Idaho. And the wolf population grew faster and healthier than anyone had been expecting.

Ginormous earthworm discovered, may get federal protection

Here's the deal: there's a three-foot-long pink earthworm living in the Palouse region of Idaho and Washington and nowhere else on the planet. It can burrow 15 feet underground and it was re-discovered last year after scientists believed it had gone extinct. Also, it smells like a lily.

At the risk of sounding unserious: awesome!

Efficiency vs. biomass smackdown

This post was written by Clark Williams-Derry, who's on vacation.

An interesting contrast.

The NW Current is reporting that, even with rising prices for fossil fuels, biomass electricity projects -- using, say, wood waste or sewage solids -- are having trouble penciling out. Between capital and fuel costs, it's still cheaper to generate electricity from fossil fuels than from biomass.

Meanwhile, energy-efficiency programs are wildly successful, oversubscribed -- and in Oregon, cost about 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour saved, which is a massive bargain. Says Energy Trust's executive director, Margie Harris:

Energy efficiency is the most cost-effective resource -- half the cost of new generation ... There's more to be acquired if it were the wish of the Oregon Legislature for us to go after it.

True 'nuff.