When I started looking into how climate change already has affected the everyday lives of Idahoans I didn’t even think about the growing wine industry in Idaho.

The gloom and doom predictions that climate change skeptics hate so much dominate our discussion of this issue for obvious reasons. The threat to species, people landscapes and civilization is bigger news than changes people like.

Long time Idaho conservationist Mike Medberry says the environmental community is wrong to oppose wolf hunting.

Medberry was one of the people in the 1980s and 1990s who were bucking the trend in advocating for more wilderness, better wildlife protection and strong water quality laws. His message wasn’t popular in the offices of Idaho’s Congressional delegation nor in the halls of the Capitol.

Idaho Power Co. announced plans earlier this month to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 to 15 percent from 2005 levels.

The announcement comes as President Obama meets with world leaders to discuss a global strategy to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It also comes as Idaho water scientists are measuring gradual temperature increases and earlier runoff on the Boise River and its tributaries.

Canyon County residents and leaders looking for an easy way out of the valley’s air quality problems just got another major setback this week.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday it is reconsidering the Bush administration’s 2008 air quality standards for ozone or smog pollution. It’s all but certain they will make the rules tougher.

Rep. Doc Hastings of Eastern Washington has become the main voice for protecting the four dams on the Snake River that a wide group of fisheries scientists say must be removed to recover Idaho four stocks of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.

In this video watch him grill NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco about the Obama Administration decision to put dam breaching on the table, at least barely. Hastings asked her if the administration added the dam breaching study contingency because they though it was required legally.

The fate of two fish presents the biggest problem to the Obama Administration’s efforts to convince a federal judge to back its Columbia-Snake biological opinions.

The first is the Snake River sockeye salmon, the fish that started it all when it was listed as endangered in 1991. Despite an extraordinarily successful captive breeding program the fish that spawn in Redfish Lake are not self sustainable.

Overview:
FCRPS Adaptive Management Implementation Plan (AMIP)
September 15, 2009

Later today the Pacific Northwest will hear what the Obama administration has to say about Columbia River Salmon and dams.

Whatever they say it will mark a new chapter in a legal fight that foes back to the beginning of the 1990s. It started when the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe petitioned the federal government to protect Snake River sockeye salmon as an endangered species.

If you think your water isn’t as clean as you think it should be it could be because some polluter is breaking the law and the federal government is letting them.

The New York Times ran a series this weekend about the poor record of enforcement of national water quality laws and Idaho didn’t come out looking very good. Of the 214 facilities regulated for water pollution in the state, 126 were found to have violated clean water laws.

The University of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Water Resources have developed an eye-in-the-sky system that helps farmers and the state measure how much water is used by crops. It got national attention Monday in a story in the Washington Post.