Critterthink

If you haven’t yet seen the Competitive Enterprise Group’s television spots attacking Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (which opened in Denver last week) it might be worth your time. As Pat Joseph wrote in the Sierra Club's Compass blog, “You really have to watch the ads for yourself to appreciate just how farcical they are. It’s hard to believe they’re not meant as self-parody.”

You can view the two ads from the Competitive Enterprise Group’s website, and you might also check out Global Warming Watch’s counter-ad.

Incidentally, "An Inconvenient Truth" was the 11th highest-grossing film last weekend (nearly $1.5 million), up 9% from the week before as it expanded its run to 122 theaters. Its per theater average blew the socks off of everything out there except the brand new animated release Cars. It's now showing in Denver at the Mayan.

British Columbia is a bit out of our region but we love spreading good news so here goes: The Vancouver Sun last week reported on the addition of 45 species to British Columbia's list of protected at-risk plants and wildlife. The new additions include bull trout, bighorn sheep, and prairie falcon, and in sum comprise 18 species of birds, 19 plant communities, four invertebrates, two fish species and two species of mammals. Canadian conservationists are appropriately skeptical about the on-the-ground impact of the new list since neither Canada nor British Columbia have anything quite like our own Endangered Species Act, but acknowledging species that are in trouble is always a critical first step to effective conservation and our congrats go to the folks that made this happen.