skip to main content

Natural Resources Defense Council

Switchboard

Andrew Wetzler's Blog

Issues: Solving Global Warming

The Wonder of Polar Bears

July 29, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
bears, globalwarming, kektavik, mensjournal, polar, richardnelson, seaice

This month’s Men’s Journal has a nice profile by Jacques Leslie of Richard Nelson, a naturalist and radio personality, and a recent trip Nelson took to Kaktovik, Alaska, to narrate a monologue about the polar bear. Seeing an animal...

The Polar Bear Debate: Lots of Smoke, But Not Much Heat

July 6, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
armstrong, globalwarming, polarbears, snowgoose

Over at environment360, Ed Struzik has an excellent roundup of the very thin evidence behind the arguments of those who doubt the impact that climate change is having on the polar bear. I’ve touched on these issues here, here, and...

Environmentalism and Religion

June 30, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy

Tags:
consevation, environmentalism, globalwarming, policy, religion

  Jonathan Zasloff, an environmental law professor at UCLA, has an interesting post up at Legal Planet about the role of environmentalism and religion, a topic I’ve touched on here at Switchboard before.  Zasloff is taking a course on Jewish...

Moose Don’t Live in Texas (Or How Global Warming Will Change the Midwest)

June 17, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
adaptation, biogems, globalwarming, michigan, minnesota, moose, wildlife, wyomong

Yesterday’s NOAA Report on the impact of global warming is a humdinger.  What especially caught my eye was a graphic in the regional report on the impact a warming world will have on Illinois and Michigan.  As you can see,...

Don’t be Shy: Alternative Energy Projects Still Have to Protect Wildlife

June 12, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Green Enterprise , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
bats, endangeredspecies, endangeredspeciesact, solar, westvirginia, wind, windfarm

I saw an interesting article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune about an Endangered Species Act lawsuit challenging the construction of a wind farm in West Virginia.  The suit alleges that the project has violated the Act by failing to get a...

One of these things is not like the other…or is it?

May 8, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
4(d)rule, biogems, endangeredspeciesact, globalwarming, polarbears, seaice

In another disappointing turn of events, today Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar effectively endorsed the Bush Administration's policy of excluding the effects of global warming pollution on polar bears from consideration under the Endangered Species Act.  The Secretary decided...

Polar Bear News

May 7, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
arctic, armstrong, bears, biogems, endangeredspecies, globalwarming, polarbears, snowgoose, wildlife

Andrew Revkin just posted a nice link to a recent response by one of the world's foremost polar bear experts to an attack on global-warming based predictions of polar bear declines.  The original critique was written by J. Scott Armstrong,...

As go whitebark pine, so go grizzly bears?

April 17, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
biogems, endangeredspecies, endangeredspeciesact, globalwarming, grizzly, whitebarkpine, yellowstone

Ralph Maughan links to a very important article by the AP's Matthew Brown in today’s Casper-Star Tribune on the connection between increasing human-bear conflicts (guess what, the bear loses) and the decline of high alpine whitebark pine trees.   As...

Just because it’s conventional wisdom, doesn’t mean it’s wrong

March 25, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy

Tags:
endangeredspecies, globalwarming, polarbears, science

When I was in law school, it was very common for professors to begin a classroom discussion of some theoretical topic or another by saying: “The conventional wisdom is….”  This was always a sure sign that, whatever the conventional wisdom,...

Nothing to see here…move along, move along

March 18, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
globalwarming, internationallaw, norway, polarbears, tromso

Photo: Closed Door by jeco, Creative Commons 2.0 license One of the biggest frustrations about working in the international arena on environmental issues is the limited role that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like NRDC are often able to play in the...

When the Forests Fade

January 23, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
endangeredspecies, endangeredspeciesact, globalwarming, petition, whitebarkpine, yellowstone

Bettina Boxall has a great post in LA Times's Greenspace about a new study in the journal Science that finds the background mortality rate from unmanaged old forests in the United States has doubled in the last thirty years. The...

Global Warming Spreads Diseases That Threaten Wildlife--The Case of Black Abalone

January 14, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy

Tags:
blackabalone, disease, endangeredspecies, endangeredspeciesact, nmfs

Today the National Marine Fisheries Service officially classified black abalone as an "endangered species." (I discussed the proposed listing last year.) Rising sea levels and ocean acidification, both caused by global warming, are among the threats to black abalone....

Bush Administration Considers the Possibility of Future Climate Regulation—As an Excuse for Not Protecting Wildlife

January 6, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Curbing Pollution , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy

Tags:
arctic, endangeredspecies, endangeredspeciesact, globalwarming, ribbonseal, seaice

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) recently made an interesting, and little noted, move that speaks volumes about this Administration's attitude towards climate change legislation.  Last year the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list the ribbon seal, which like...

Unintended Consequences

December 27, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy

Tags:
cleanairact, coal, endangeredspeciesact, globalwarming, NEPA

When the Bush Administration decided that it absolutely positively was not going to use the Endangered Species Act to address global warming--and it damned sure wasn't going to let anyone else use it that way--someone in the bowels of...

Whitebark Pine and Global Warming

December 10, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy

Tags:
endangeredspecies, endangeredspeciesact, globalwarming, whitebarkpine

One thing I wanted to emphasize about NRDC’s Petition to protect whitebark pine under the Endangered Species Act is that, even putting aside the problems of blister rust, mountain pine beetles, and destructive fire management regimes, global warming itself will...

Andrew Wetzler
Andrew Wetzler
Director, Endangered Species Project
Chicago
I grew up in New York City but spent my summers canoeing and hiking in...
more

Switchboard Archives

Andrew Wetzler's archives