Every year, the negative consequences of climate change become more evident. This year, volatility in the weather, with extreme heat followed by a normal cold snap, has devastated fruit orchards in the northern United States. This month, I’ve walked through peach orchards without a single fruit growing on any branch. In my back yard, an apple tree is barren, and my currant bushes are almost completely devoid of the little growing berries I expect at this time of year.

The economic harm is direct: There is less healthy food for us to eat. Fruit prices this autumn are going to be much higher than normal. The agricultural benefits of global warming that corporate polluters predicted years ago are not materializing.

Yesterday, the world received more reason to worry. The International Energy Agency reported that carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased by a gigaton last year, a 3.2 percent increase that made last year’s carbon emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas the highest ever in human history.

Five people boarded an immense coal barge and chained themselves to the ship, immobilizing it for 3 hours. At about the same time, a group of protesters stood on a road with signs protesting mountaintop removal coal mining. They blocked 9 coal trucks for the duration of their protest.

The road protesters were dispersed by police without arrest. The protesters on the barge are facing criminal charges.

My goodness, she was an easy target.

Four years later, the beluga population of the Cook Inlet has dropped. The latest survey found just 284 belugas living there. This group of belugas is genetically distinct from other populations, and are supposed to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The Obama Administration apparently doesn’t think that’s important. Sarah Palin’s out of office, and Barack Obama is the one who got into the White House. So, it’s Obama who had the opportunity to stop offshore oil drilling in the Cook Inlet.

Barack Obama did not stop offshore oil drilling in the Cook Inlet. Instead, Obama has pushed forward a plan for the radical expansion of offshore drilling all along the coastlines of the United States. The Obama Administration gave the green light a plan for oil and gas exploration by oil drilling companies in the Cook Inlet.

Now, environmental groups trying to protect the endangered whales of the Cook Inlet have been forced to sue the Obama Administration in a desperate attempt to stop the beginning of offshore drilling there.

Sarah Palin did not find victory in the 2008 presidential election, but her idea of whales-be-damned pursuit of oil drilling seems to have won the day anyhow.

The plight of the belugas was a campaign issue in 2008. Should we look the other way on this issue in 2012, just because a Democrat is on the wrong side of the issue?

Huge amounts of the toxic dispersant Corexit was sprayed over the oil slicks emanating from the Deepwater Horizon site. Corexit divided the crude oil into little tiny bits, but didn’t make the oil disappear. It just made the pollution problem invisible to the human eye.

Now, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that, in a colony of pelicans that have migrated from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota, almost 80 percent of the eggs sampled by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources have tested positive for Corexit. 90 percent of the eggs have tested positive for contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chemicals found in petroleum.

Of course, looking at the pelican eggs from the outside, nothing can be seen. Besides, what human beings, beside those working for the Department of Natural Resources, ever take the time to look at pelican eggs from the outside? Once again, the pollution is placed conveniently out of sight, and so rests out of mind as well.

Measured in these terms, the anti-fracking movement is a success. Investor and investment advisor David White is advising people that the price of natural gas stocks is too high and that investors should sell shares in natural gas stock:

There are many other reasons for RRC to fall. RRC is primarily a natural gas company. Its production is approximately 78% natural gas, 16% natural gas liquids, and 6% oil. Its great natural gas resources are primarily in the Marcellus Shale. Much of these are in Pennsylvania. This comes under Pennsylvania law, and Pennsylvania has recently passed the Unconventional Gas Well Impact Fee Act (Feb. 2012). This law imposes a new fee on every unconventional natural gas well drilled in the state. This is a non-negligible fee. RRC reported a $24 million (or -$0.15 per share charge due to this fee in Q1 2012). The fee will continue to be a problem for all new wells drilled in the state. On top of this new fee, the US Congress has recently introduced a new “Anti-Fracking” bill in both the House and the Senate. This could cause problems and expenses for RRC too.

The legislative action David White describes is a direct result of the political agitation engaged in by Marcellus Shale Protest and other anti-fracking movement groups. Their actions threaten natural gas stock prices. Consequently, it’s in natural gas corporations’ economic interest to address concerns about gas fracking pollution. The anti-fracking movement has succeeded.

Powell didn’t just restrict her protest to what she wore, either. She wore that dress to other protests as well, getting arrested at the protest outside the White House last summer that demanded that President Barack Obama stop the XL Pipeline designed to send dirty tar sands oil from Alberta down to Texas, so that the oil can be refined and sold.

Compare Powell’s actions on sustainability and climate to those taken by President Barack Obama. In his State Of The Union address this year, Obama announced that he wouldn’t even try to get climate legislation passed through Congress. Then, Obama said there was nothing he could do to stop the tar sands pipeline proposed for construction across the U.S. Midwest, because, “Canada is going to be moving forward with tar sands, regardless of what we do. That’s their national policy, they’re pursuing it.” In line with this comment, Obama hasn’t stopped the XL Pipeline. He’s merely delayed its construction until after the 2012 presidential election.

Of course, there’s a great deal that can be done by the U.S government to slow Canada’s development of the Alberta tar sands. The U.S. government can decide not to give a special exception to environmental regulations for the XL pipeline, and thus cut off the tar sands oil from easy access to American markets, cutting the profitability of the tar sands development.

Barack Obama isn’t willing to commit to take that action, however. He’s just throwing his hands up in the air and saying that nothing can be done. While Barack Obama may be the Chief Executive in name, activists like Kristy Powell are demonstrating a great deal more genuine executive leadership.

When people stand up, declare they’ve had enough and demand the attention of the powerful, the national conversation can change. It’s happened before. It can happen again. Will it happen this time? That’s up to us.

The Obama Administration’s response was to partner with BP, and to work to tamp down public outrage by lying about the extent of the oil spill. Today, we’re learning that the Obama White House had in its possession large numbers of photographs of endangered marine animals covered in oil – including photographs of huge piles of garbage bags filled with dead sea turtles. Barack Obama refused to share these images with the public at the time, however. In fact, journalists who went down to the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico were told that they would not be allowed to take photographs of what they saw there.

These photographs are now available only because Greenpeace won a fight against Barack Obama and his aides to obtain photographs of animals sickened and killed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Obama Administration has been forced to release these photographs – President Obama still wanted them to remain a secret, more than two years after the oil spill began.

Why? Why was Barack Obama working harder to protect BP and the oil industry from negative public opinion than to protect American shores from the dangers of risky offshore drilling? Why didn’t Obama allow the American public to see what was really happening to the Gulf of Mexico?

Why, for that matter, is Barack Obama now pushing for an expansion of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Arctic, and all along the eastern and western coasts of the USA?

Most importantly, why should any environmentalist support the re-election of Barack Obama to become President of the United States?

“Forward” sounds positive. It sounds hopeful. It seems to represent change, so that things tomorrow will be different from today.

The odd thing about this Forward campaign advertisement for Barack Obama is that it celebrates fossil fuels, the energy technology of last century.

Obama brags that oil production in the U.S. is at an 8-year high. Obama forgets to remind us that that high oil production came at the cost of the people killed in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the largest oil spill in American history. President Obama is pushing forward riskier, deeper drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico now, and expanded offshore drilling in the Arctic and up and down the East Coast and West Coast, putting our shores in even more danger of environmental disaster.

Obama claps his hands for himself because natural gas production is now at an all time high. Obama doesn’t mention that this natural gas production is coming with the cost of contamination of groundwater in huge areas across the United States, a result of the risky fracking techniques that have been used to expand natural gas production.

Barack Obama also fails to explain what happened to the climate change legislation that he promised he would move forward with after being elected President in 2008. Obama had strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, but he failed to push the climate legislation forward. He just walked away from it, and let the country slide backward into Cold Earther denial propaganda paid for by polluting corporations.

On energy and the environment, Barack Obama isn’t looking forward. He’s just bringing us more of the same.

It’s been generations since wolves were hunted into near extinction in the United States. Yet, after all this time, people still haven’t come to grips with the idea of the wolf as a ravening, terrifying predator. The wolf still stands as an evil character in our imaginations, even though far more violence is inflicted upon human beings and livestock from domesticated dogs. Wolves, being wild, mostly steer clear of human territory.

This week, the state of Wyoming announced that it’s going to join the growing list of states that encourages the hunting of wolves. In some areas of the state of Wyoming, there won’t be any limit at all to the number of wolves that can be killed.

As hatred of wolves is growing, level headed Americans have a responsibility to encourage a more balanced view. We don’t need to deny that wolves kill and eat other animals to survive, but neither do we need to deny our own similar nature. Wolves may seem frightening, but if we can come to peace with that fear, we can become better masters of our own minds.

It’s with this idea in mind that I created this peace wolf tshirt design: A collection of wolves, captured in silhouette, gathered into the shape of a peace symbol. Rather than attempting to control every aspect of the natural world that disturbs our civilized sensibilities, we can allow some space for another kind of intelligence to roam free.