I see where conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh signed a plea agreement for misleading several doctors who gave him pain killers.  I wonder what kind of plea agreement Limbaugh will get for misleading millions of Americans about global warming?

A man who lies to his own doctors has less restraint when speaking to his radio listeners.  Limbaugh should have lost his credibility a years ago but for whatever reason, his spin on the world is still being listened to by millions of people who want to believe in a world created by Rush. 

One of the claims his lawyers made to get more favorable treatment by the courts was that Rush was not hurting anyone else--only himself.  Well, his lies about global warming inspires opponents to pollution control and prevents progress in Washington on this urgent issue.  Our failure to act in a timely way will harm millions.

The tobacco industry lost many legal battles in recent years because they knew the truth about tobacco and promoted lies about its safety causing many unneccessary deaths.  Misleading information about the growing threat of global warming is far more dangerous to hundreds of millions of innocent people all over the planet as coastal storms intensify, sea levels rise and droughts and deserts expand.   Real people are being harmed!

Unknowingly, George Will has written perhaps the best rebuttal so far to his own distorted view of global warming science. In his April 2 column (“Let Cooler Heads Prevail”) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101707.html ) Will attacks the consensus statement from 11 national academies and many other scientists that urge that action be taken on global warming, Will wrote: “Suppose the Earth is warming and suppose the warming is caused by human activity. Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Midwest -- must be bad?”

Good question. Let’s fast forward to Will’s April 23 column, “Arizona’s Thirst for Ingenuity”  (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042101623.html). Here, Will takes on the issue of western water issues arising from “11-year drought in the Southwest that may be the worst in 500 years.” Well, hold on a minute. Is it possible that this drought, which surpasses even the dust bowl years, could possibly be related to global warming?

It does not take an atmospheric scientist to understand that hot temperatures increase drought conditions by increasing both evaporation and transpiration. Doesn’t the fact that the ten hottest years on record have all occurred in the past fifteen years suggest that global warming has lent a helping hand to this extreme drought? You bet.

Scientists have long warned that more severe and frequent droughts would be among the impacts of global warming. The Bush Administration itself, despite its aversion to doing anything about global warming, nevertheless warned in a 2002 report to the United Nations that warming conditions are “…likely to cause many interior portions of the country to experience more frequent and longer dry conditions.” And, according to the highly respected National Center for Atmospheric Research, droughts have doubled globally in their reach over the past thirty years, thanks in large part to warmer and direr climate patterns fueled by global warming pollution.

Like the increasingly intense hurricanes ravaging our coasts, the western droughts are vivid illustrations that we have procrastinated too long in curbing global warming pollution. George Will dismisses the drought in his Arizona-focused article, noting that the residents of Phoenix are “remarkably untroubled.” But others haven’t been so lucky.

The extreme drought conditions have turned America’s southwest in to a tinderbox. The same 2002 Bush Administration report warned that “drying is likely to create a greater susceptibility to fire.” Recent wildfires have laid claim to a million acres and left a dozen dead in their wake.

George Will focuses on the water-hogging impacts of Tamarix, an invasive species of vegetation that sucks water supplies dry and displaces native vegetation degrading wildlife habitat. What Mr. Will may not realize, however, is that scientists out of Stanford University have identified Tamarix as precisely the type of invasive species that will flourish and expand as global warming weakens the long-established, native ecosystems that lie in their path.  A 2002 Standford study concluded that increasingly dry and warmer conditions brought about by global warming would allow Tamarix “to spread to areas currently too moist for it to invade” in eight Western states.

George Will and I share abundant optimism in the ability of America’s engineers to take on any challenge but we differ on the path that they should take.

Will’s Arizona column sings the praises of visionaries who can surmount any problem, even those of a 500-year drought. He expresses confidence in our ability to introduce new breeds of pests to America’s West to feed on Tamarix with a precision that will leave native ecosystems and wildlife habitat untouched. He also cites a scientist who boldly asserts that a new industry of cloud seeding to force rainfall where it wouldn’t otherwise occur will not unbalance precipitation elsewhere in the nation.

Unfortunately, Mr. Will’s optimism comes to a screeching halt when it comes to our ability to embark on a new energy future that prioritizes clean and secure energy technologies over the gas guzzling and highly polluting technologies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s a peculiar brand of conservative orthodoxy that lauds a privatization of water and mineral rights but rejects any notion of Congress shifting the current largess it bestows on the oil and coal industries toward cleaner energy alternatives that will not only slow global warming, but also wean us from our dependency on foreign oil.

Is George Will’s view on global warming that we can cope by unleashing government scientists to introduce new breeds of pests into our great outdoors, and government engineers to reap rainfall from the skies?

I must confess that my optimism also has limits. While America’s engineers can take on any challenge, some challenges, such as extending America’s generations-old water wars to the skies, may be best left untouched.

I had an Earth Day surprise while attending the Montana Wildlife Federation’s annual meeting in Helena.  A man with a baby daughter approached me and asked if I remembered him.   He looked familiar and it wasn’t until he said his name that I made the connection--Tom Parker from back home in Butler County, Pennsylvania.  It turns out that I taught tree and shrub identification to Tom at the Butler County Conservation School in 1968—two years before the first Earth Day.  I had not seen Tom in three dozen years since our years at the Conservation School.

Tom and his wife Melanie are dedicated conservationists fighting the break-up of a large timber company’s lands near their home.  They want their baby daughter Kira to have a chance to enjoy the Montana that they love. 

Plum Creek is the first and largest publicly-held timber Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) in the Nation that owns a large block of “checkerboard” railroad land in the heart of beautiful Swann Valley.   Plum Creek’s business strategy is to aggressively manage timberlands to extract the most value from every acre they own.  Their CEO is looking for greater quarterly returns and sees more money in selling prime land for trophy home development in Swann Valley than they can ever make growing trees and practicing good forestry.

Melanie provided a compelling presentation making a case against the fragmentation of Swann Valley to the Montana Wildlife Federation.  She’s a wonderful speaker and shares Tom’s deep love for the land.  Somehow I believe Tom and Melanie will prevail in their efforts to save the beautiful Swann Valley.  There is great power in persistence and passion.

I share this story because Tom attributes his passion for conservation to his early exposure at the Butler County Conservation School.  Tom’s conservation ethic is living proof that a small investment in environmental education pays great long-term dividends.

Thanks Tom, Melanie and Kira for making my 36th Earthday special.   

A recent Duke study published in the which assumes a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations, concludes with greater confidence than ever that climate change will almost certainly fall within the range of 3 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

Right now we are now witnessing what happens to the world with just a one-degree average increase in temperature. Arctic ice has been reduced by 250 million acres, 98-percent of the world's glaciers are retreating, sea level has risen by 4-8 inches globally, and 20 million acres of forests have been wiped out by pest outbreaks driven by warm winter weather.  Villages in the Arctic are falling into the sea because permafrost is softening and eroding the ground. Island communities in the Pacific are being forced to relocate because the sea is rising around them. In the lower 48 states we face the consequences of increased hurricane intensity; a message brought home to hundreds of thousands of displaced residents of New Orleans and surrounding communities by stronger hurricanes such as Katrina.

The Duke study underscores that now is the time to do everything we can to cut global warming pollution and develop new energy solutions. One degree of temperature increase has been bad enough. Another 3 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit increase is truly frightening, and not a legacy we should be leaving for our children and grandchildren. We must curb our global warming pollution now.

I have long been troubled by the mounting scientific evidence warning of enormous and unprecedented ecological threats presented by global warming.  Now we see the very beginnings of the predicted consequences—intense storms, hurricanes, coastal flooding, droughts with forest and grassland fires and a breathtaking loss of ice worldwide.

I am also frustrated and angry by the complete lack of progress on energy and conservation policy in Washington DC.  Instead of showing global leadership, our Nation has become a global scofflaw on climate change.   

Meanwhile, their strategy has been to distract national conservation organizations with repeated attempts to damage the legal framework for environmental protection.  We have been forced to spend time and energy preventing repeated attempts by the administration to roll back critical conservation policies that have stood our Nation well for three decades. 

This distraction has prevented Americans from recognizing the profound threats presented by the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted into our atmosphere each month.  Through the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels, we are liberating carbon, methane and other greenhouse gases that have been sequestered for millions of years. The latest EPA report shows that that U. S. emissions are up 1.7% proving that the President’s voluntary program is bankrupt and without merit.

As we change the makeup of our atmosphere, we are surely changing our climate in ways that will have profound impacts on the lives of our children's children.  Using widely accepted predictive climate models, nineteen of the world's leading ecological scientists studied six eco-regions covering 20 percent of the earth's land area.  They published a peer-reviewed study in the January 2004 issue of the magazine Nature.  The landmark study concludes that unless we cut greenhouse gas emissions significantly, between 15 and 37 percent of the living resources of this planet will become extinct by 2050. That hits home for me as I have spent the last four decades trying to keep wildlife in our future.  A second study has confirmed these findings.

John A. Brashear the founding chair of what is now Carnegie Mellon University and one of America’s innovative scientists in the Victorian period once wrote,

"The science most worthwhile in this world is that which takes sunlight from behind the clouds and sprinkles it on the shadowed pathways of fellow travelers." 

I see my job confronting global warming as clearing away the clouds of confusion so the sunshine of sound science can enlighten the pathway to our common future. Looking ahead, I am optimistic that the American public will soon be able cut through all the cynical obfuscation and discover the truth about what lies ahead for all humanity.  For the sake of our grand children, please join with me in this effort.

Ding Darling, the founder of National Wildlife Federation would often say, “ten thousand stallions unconnected cannot move a baby carriage.”  Darling was a movement builder who believed in the power of assembly, the need to organize, work together and to participate in government for positive change.  As an avid angler and duck hunter, Darling believed that sportsmen and women must work together with all who care about wildlife’s future.

Reports over the past decade indicate that sport angling is on the decline and that a suburbanized population is rapidly losing touch with another long-standing outdoor tradition -- hunting.  I feel that Americans are losing touch with nature not just because they don’t hunt or fish as we once did but because they don’t spend any significant time in nature.

Paralleling this trend, the number of Americans who attend public meetings has also fallen sharply over the past several decades.  The numbers are even greater concerning those attending a political rally or speeches, serving on a committee of some local organization, or working for a political party.

By almost every measure, Americans engagement in politics and government has fallen steadily and sharply over the last generation.  This trend continues, despite the fact that average levels of education-one of the best individual-level predictor of political participation-have risen sharply. 

Will a shrinking community of publicly-minded hunters, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts be able to continue providing conservation vision and leadership into the 21st century?  Or will people with television-created environmental opinions drive environmental decision making?  If so, how will they fashion their beliefs and values about resource management?

I worry that on an average, Americans spend over seven hours a day watching television with very little time being spent in the out-of-doors or at civic gatherings of any type. 

Are we becoming a nation of slugs and couch potatoes?

After waiting some time for a mechanical repair to be made to our airplane, the pilot came on the intercom and put our frustrations in perspective, “folks, it’s far better to be down here wishing we were up there than up there wishing we were down here.”

Sometimes it takes others to see our situation more clearly than we see our own and to point it out to us.  There is a growing frustration around the world concerning the United States' failure to participant in the Kyoto Treaty to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to slow climate change.    Even the queen of England in a rare public moment complained about the US failure to lead on this urgent matter. The Europeans are outspoken critics of the U.S. policy as they are seeing changes occur faster than here.  Their climate is highly dependent upon the tail-end of the weakening Gulf Stream which has slowed about thirty percent in recent decades.

People in central Africa are seeing their fragile landscapes dry out and turn into deserts from increased evapo-transpiration brought on by global warming.  Much like victims of second-hand smoke, they are helpless without us.

The United States produces about twenty-five percent of the world’s total greenhouse emissions and the failure of the U.S. to lead in addressing global warming has made it much more difficult for other developed nations to comply.  Ironically, by becoming a leader tackling this problem, the
U.S. will create new entrepreneurial opportunities, jobs for skilled workers and a more stable and secure non-carbon-based economy. 

The U. S. must step forward and demonstrate leadership on this urgent matter and to achieve that end, the people must lead so our elected leaders can follow.  The public must demand leadership with vision and rich understanding of global warming who can confidently lead us to a new energy future. 

We must plan for a carbon-constrained future. The key to any good plan is good leadership, everything else is secondary.

June 1963: A thirteen-year old boy stood stunned and disheartened on a Lake Erie beach. Once inviting beaches were blackened by slime and littered with decomposing fishes, broken bottles and cigarette butts. Flies swarmed over the washed-up remains. Stench from raw sewage invaded the boy’s nostrils as each churning breaker washed ashore releasing its anoxic cargo. Lake Erie was a dying lake, choked with sewage, over-fertilized with phosphorus and algae-ridden.

I know this story because I was that boy. I didn't realize it at the time, but as I was witnessing the near-death of one of the world's great fresh-water lakes. I also witnessed massive fishery die-offs that triggered the extinction of Lake Erie’s once-famed Blue Pike as they rotted in the surf. The loss of a single species still haunts me when I fish Lake Erie with my son-in-law Sheldon.

Remembering the loss of the blue Pike, I am deeply troubled by a recent study warning of a fast-approaching and grave threat to wildlife. A team of scientists led by Dr. Lee Malcolm of the University of Toronto looked at twenty-five areas of ecological richness where 44 percent of the plants and 35 percent of the vertebrates on the planet reside on 1 percent of the world’s landmass. Their goal was to determine the potential for global warming to impact the future of these species.

The key conclusion of this study, tens of thousands of species could go extinct in coming decades as a result of global warming.

This study reinforces a study published in Nature in January 2004 by another team of ecologists looking at six large eco-regions. A doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations will led to the extinction of 40 per cent of species in some of the hotspots - a potential loss of some 56,000 endemic plants and 3,700 endemic vertebrate species.

I fail to understand why the news media misses this terribly important story? Denial is a too-common human tendency especially around global warming. Failure to heed warnings will lead to major tragedies. When will we ever learn that barring a miracle, extinctions are forever?

As a young boy, my two brothers and I spent much of our free time playing in a forested area called Fox Ridge twelve miles north of Pittsburgh.

It was our world.  We knew every tree in the woods, every riffle in Girty’s Run and every brush pile where the rabbits and pheasants hid.

I remember the day when we learned that the ridge was slated for a housing development.  The surveyors worked by day staking the place for streets, sewers and houses.  By night, we pulled their stakes. 

We eventually lost the battle.  The Fox Ridge we know is gone. Earth-moving pans and bulldozers have obliterated it.   The top of the ridge was cut off and the valleys were filled.  Girty was channelized. We were wrong to pull the stakes but that incident and the subsequent loss of our childhood world was the beginning of a career in conservation for me.

I was reminded of my youthful protest when I learned about a proposed film called “HOOT.”  The National Wildlife Federation, Walden Media, and New Line Cinema have teamed up to connect kids and families with wildlife through the engaging film “HOOT,” based on the Newbery Honor-winning book by Carl Hiaasen. In this funny, fast-paced new movie, three Florida middle school students fight to save a group of endangered burrowing owls nesting on the property where a brand new Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House is about to be built.  It is a great film for the whole family and a reminder that we can make a difference for wildlife if we are willing to take a stand.