Financial Post.  Companies backing a $16.2-billion Canadian Arctic gas pipeline continue to pursue the long-delayed project despite a report that a federal cabinet committee has balked at providing a financial support package, company executives said Friday.  The senior officials at Imperial Oil Ltd , the project’s lead partner, and Exxon Mobil Corp offered no details on the status of talks with Ottawa, however, or on exactly what the committee may have rejected.  "We’re continuing to work with the federal government of Canada to set up an appropriate fiscal regime to ensure this project is economically viable and can be developed, and those discussions are continuing," Paul Smith, senior vice-president of finance at Imperial, said in an interview with Business News Network.     *     Greenwire (10/30, subs. req’d) reports, “Environmental organizations poured money into lobbying this summer, increasing their efforts to push transformational climate legislation through the Senate and into law. Green-group lobbying expenditures for July through September ballooned 33 percent to $6.1 million, compared with $4.6 million in the same period a year earlier. The third quarter saw the Environmental Defense Fund increase lobbying spending 185 percent from a year earlier. The Nature Conservancy upped its total 46 percent. The World Wildlife Fund launched a major campaign and spent $1 million versus the $45,000 paid in summer 2008.     *      The Hill(10/30) reports, “A cap-and-trade bill to address climate change cannot pass the Congress this session, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) claimed Friday.    *     The Arizona Republic (11/2) reports, “Shirley said his priority is to help the Navajo people, who suffer from an unemployment rate over 50 percent, with average annual incomes under $15,000. Environmentalists have exacerbated the financial woes, he added, forcing the closure of a tribal sawmill and helping to shut down another power plant – the Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin, Nev. – that received coal from Black Mesa. "They came onto our land," Shirley said. "They didn’t tell me, ‘Here, Mr. President. Here are other green jobs.’ They just shut us down, put more people into impoverishment. You want me to accept that?    *     ClimateWire (10/20, subs. req’d) reports, “Chinese companies announced plans yesterday to jointly build one of the United States’ largest wind farms in West Texas. The project will use Chinese turbines and will be financed primarily with Chinese capital. Mark Bolinger, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who is not involved with the project, said it will be the first time Chinese wind turbines power an American wind farm. "Obviously, we import a lot of stuff from China," Bolinger said. "But up until now, the list has not included wind turbines." Company officials, speaking at a press conference at the National Press Club, said they expect the 600-megawatt facility to be producing power in 2011.     *      Colorado Springs Gazette (10/31) reports, “Cap-and-trade:” Polls show few Americans know what it means, even though it would be the most significant environmental legislation to come out of Congress in recent history. Colorado Springs Utilities officials say they know what the proposed climate change legislation means: much higher utility bills for customers. Utilities officials are waging a battle, from YouTube to the halls of Congress, against cap-and-trade. “The current bills have real winners and losers and unfortunately Colorado and Colorado Springs are net losers,” said Utilities CEO Jerry Forte, who last week went to Washington, D.C. to urge Colorado’s U.S. senators to back a different approach to climate change.     *     Ralph R. Reiland writes in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (11/2), “The sky-is-falling greenies are getting progressively batty. It’s not enough that we shut down our oil, gas and coal industries, bike to work, switch our light bulbs, take cloth bags to the supermarket, smash our clunkers, take low-water showers, and turn our thermostats down and sit in our mittens and tassel caps. Now they want us to cook our dogs. Not hot dogs. Real dogs — the furry ones that live in our houses. According to authors of a new book, "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," it takes 0.84 hectares of land to keep a medium-sized dog fed. A hectare is 2.471 acres, so they ‘re saying it takes more than two acres of the planet’s limited surface just to keep one midsized dog supplied in food at any one time.