The Navajo Nation has been in talks for nearly two years with Boston-based Citizens Energy Corp. to develop 500MW of wind energy on the Nation's lands in the Southwest, and it looks as if an agreement has been reached today.

After years of fighting to build a new coal-fired plant near Farmington, New Mexico, the tribe appears to have seen the green light and will install wind generation fields on the windy mesas north of Flagstaff, Arizona. Three hundred turbines will be installed, producing energy sufficient to power 100,000 homes. The wind farm would be the first in Arizona.

We can't help but find it appropriate that a people so affected by another form of energy development -- uranium mining on their reservation has caused public health issues among tribespeople for years -- has chosen to pursue another, greener, path. While the coal-burning plant is still on the table, we still congratulate the tribe on its pursuit of green energy, and encourage it to keep pushing for new green development.

The Navajo Nation is superbly located for solar, geothermal, and wind development, and developing these alternative energy sources could bring sorely needed funds into the Nation to support clean water, education, and environmental protection.

The oil and energy industry, accustomed to getting what it wants when it comes to untapped oil and gas fields to drill, has been repeatedly frustrated in its attempts to get its hands on the sweet, sweet petroleum lying under the ecologically sensitive tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But after years of failing to secure drilling rights, it looks like the industry might get a nice consolation prize from the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

DFW is considering a land swap with Doyon Corporation -- a Fairbanks-based concern owned by the Athabaskan tribe -- in which the agency would transfer outright 110,000 acres of oil-laden upland territory within the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge to the energy developer, plus mineral rights to another 97,000 acres. In exchange, the refuge would gain 150,000 acres of wetlands now controlled by Doyon, plus 56,500 acres that fall under pending land claims owned by the company.

We're of mixed feelings on the matter. On the one hand, wetland protection is a great and necessary thing, and Alaskan wetlands are summer migration destinations for birds from all over North America and Asia. Some birds migrate from as far as Yunnan Province, China to southern Alaska.

On the other hand, we have to point out that despite industry assurances to the contrary, the impact of oil development extends far past the footprint of the drill pads, roads, and pipelines that are constructed. Roads and development chop contiguous habitat into smaller chunks, and small chunks of territory tend to support lower biodiversity than larger ones.

What's green, brown, and powerful? Compost, at least in Boston.

Beantown is planning an urban composting facility that will collect yard waste and other compostable plant material, bring it to an indoor facility, and use the methane and heat that decomposition produces to create electricity and high-quality fertilizer. Planners forecast that enough electricity to light 1500 homes will be produced by the plant when it goes online, as well as enough heat to run on-site year-round greenhouses and sell excess fertilizer.

So, in exchange for something worthless -- leaves, banana peels, and apple cores -- Boston gets locally produced food, electricity to help offset the cost of the facility, and a decreased greenhouse footprint, merely by taking advantage of heat and methane that was once wasted.

This is really one of those "so smart, the rest of us feel dumb for not thinking of it" sorts of schemes that we EnviroWonks can only hope more cities begin to adopt. How much yard waste, veggie trimmings, spoiled leftovers, and past-expiration food do we all throw away? Perhaps more significantly, how much compostable waste do city parks, supermarkets, farms, packing facilities, restaurants, and the like produce?

It seems to us that there's a lot of energy-rich trash we're throwing away, and we can only applaud Boston for realizing its true value. And maybe, with a little push from the rest of us, we can convince our hometowns to see the wisdom in urban composting plants.

Yesterday we told you about the rather large chunk of ice that broke off of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Western Antarctica this month. The new ice cube now floating (and melting) in the South Pacific measures in at a healthy 160 square miles, or nearly three times the size of Liechtenstein.

But it turns out this collapse might be just the, uh, tip of the iceberg. Scientists say the entire Wilkins Ice Shelf is in danger of breaking off at any moment. Such an event would be quite a big deal, as the shelf has an area of 5,282 square miles. That number doesn't mean much to us by itself, so we went searching for some context.

Here, in no particular order, are 10 things smaller than the Wilkins Ice Shelf:

1. Delaware (2,489 square miles)
2. Everglades National Park (2,357 square miles)
3. Jamaica (4,243 square miles): They could probably use some of that ice.
4. Yellowstone National Park (3,468 square miles)
5. Rhode Island (1,545 square miles): Though to be fair, there are people in Alaska with backyards larger than the Ocean State.
6. Ghawar Oil Field (3,243 square miles): Yes, there is an oil field in Saudi Arabia that's larger than Delaware.
7. Puerto Rico (3,515 square miles)
8. The Falkland Islands (4,700 square miles)
9. 81 Districts of Columbia (68.3 square miles)
10. Los Angeles County (4,752 square miles): Which, with its population of 10 million people, answers the question, "How many people could live on the Wilkins Ice Shelf?"

As anyone who has taken an economics course knows, the laws of supply and demand are simple: When demand increases while supply decreases, the price goes up, and demand will eventually go down. Economists, for all our eagerness to forecast and predict people's behavior, recognize there is a lag time between the increased prices and decrease demand, but they'll be darned if they can tell you what that is.

Well, it looks like Americans may have finally reached their threshold for what they are willing to shell out for gas. The Federal Highway Administration said this week that Americans drove 0.4 percent less in 2007 than 2006, from 3.01 trillion miles to a mere 3 trillion miles. 0.01 trillion miles doesn't sound statistically significant, until you realize that's actually 10 billion miles.

Using the combined CAFE for cars and light trucks produced in 2007 of 22.2mpg, that's about 450 million gallons of oil not turned into greenhouse gases and other pollutants by vehicles last year. Not bad.

Will this translate into reduced CO2 emissions? Well, mass transit ridership is increasing, and this year's New York Car Show is exhibiting lots of fuel efficient rides. Considering the U.S. was recently admonished by the International Energy Agency for having some of the sorriest CAFE standards in the world, we'd like to think that larger changed are imminent.

Of course, this week's news could be due to the economic downturn and the fact Americans are too busy trying to keep their homes from foreclosure to be able to joyride around the mall. But beggars can't always be choosers when it comes to reducing emissions.

The Bush administration is appealing a recent legal defeat of an EPA decision that would allow power plants to emit more mercury, the Associated Press reported this afternoon.

A February ruling by a circuit court panel that found EPA in violation of the Clean Air Act for allowing plants to purchase emissions credits instead of forcing every plant to cut mercury emissions. So...now the president is appealing a court decision that said that the EPA is breaking its own law. Confusing enough for you?

As of 7:30 p.m. eastern time, neither agency had a statement on its website about the appeal. More on this story as it develops.

Via The AP

It shouldn't really come as a surprise, as scientists have been predicting it for 15 years now, but the Western Antarctic Wilkins ice shelf has just dropped a load of ice the size of Liechtenstein into the ocean. Scientists have been watching the ice shelf start to lose its integrity (not unlike our politicians) over the past month.

This one chunk of ice -- which according to scientists shattered like a piece of glass -- was one of the few sections of ice keeping the Wilkins ice sheet safely intact. Evidently, it's now only holding on by a thread, albeit a giant thread made of ice ... being held over an open flame of warm ocean waters.

The Antarctic you may remember is in the southern hemisphere, so while we are finally getting to experience an early spring up north, winter and its freezing temperatures are around the bend in the Antarctic. So start placing your bets now as to when the whole thing just gives up.

As it is, the ice breaking off Western Antarctica, no matter how big, isn't going to raise sea levels because this ice is actually floating on the ocean and not on land. Think of it like an ice cube melting in a glass of water -- it's not going to change the water level in the glass.

When you think of the USDA, what comes to mind? Beef, the Food Pyramid, and other items of a consumable nature, but we bet trees weren't on your list.

Unlike its sister agencies in the Department of Interior -- Fish and Wildlife, National Parks Service, Bureau of Land Management -- which all manage federal land, the Forest Service was placed under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture when it was created over a century ago.

But these days the Forest Service (don't let the name fool you, it handles grasslands as well), is more focused on conservation than logging. So this month, the House Appropriations committee -- which is responsible for approving the budgets of both departments -- asked the Government Accountability Office to see if it wouldn't be more efficient and economical to put all of the land management agencies under one roof.

Of course, nothing is ever that easy. There is concern that the move would send the message to logging companies that, "national forests are to be preserved and enjoyed, not harvested and developed." Gosh, yeah, that would be a horrible idea, we wouldn't want Weyerhaeuser to think they couldn't log endangered owl habitats anymore.

This isn't the first time such an idea has been proposed. Since the 1970s there have been calls to consolidate the Forest Service with other agencies throughout the government to create a Department of Natural Resources.