Juszkiewicz photo: shannonpatrick17 This is the first story in a four-part series about how foreign timber companies, Tea Party groups, and Gibson Guitar have turned illegal logging into Republicans' new cause célèbre. Read part 2, part 3, and part 4. If you've tuned into any of the major jobs speeches recently or the conservative media's political coverage surrounding them, you've heard about newly minted Tea Party hero, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz. He was sitting in House Speaker John Boehner's box during President Obama's jobs speech. Boehner cited him in his own jobs speech a few days later. According to a …

Smog, schmog -- that's what gas masks are for.Photo: Alex CarmichalIn his latest attack on the environment, President Barack Obama today announced that he is directing the EPA to withdraw standards that would have cut smog pollution from automobiles, power plants, and refineries. Obama might want to consider that wheezing kids, no jobs, and caving to Big Oil do not a reelection make. The standards Obama blocked could have saved up to 12,000 lives by 2020, according to the EPA, and slashed tens of thousands of children's asthma attacks and other respiratory problems. The environmental justice organization Green for All …

If there’s a single idea that the oil industry has peddled to persuade the Obama administration to approve the controversial Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline, it’s this: Tar-sands oil might be more polluting than even dirty old regular oil, but it’s better to get our energy from our ally Canada than from unstable oil suppliers in the Middle East or elsewhere. In practice, the opposite is true: Drilling in North America is the single greatest threat to our nation’s energy security. Here’s the reality: Protecting the United States’ energy security means keeping our continent’s oil in the ground for when we …

Photo: Tom MaglieryAmerican Airlines just announced a huge $38 billion commitment to fuel efficient, climate-friendly airplanes with the purchase of 460 new aircraft. American hopes that this purchase will help get it out of its current financial troubles: In the second quarter, parent company AMR lost a whopping $286 million as increased fuel prices overwhelmed a boost in revenue. American is getting the majority of its new planes from European manufacturer Airbus, which has taken a commanding lead in production of the fuel efficient, climate-friendly aircraft the aviation industry is demanding. The move is a further blow to Boeing, the …

Most underplayed economic story of the week: European aircraft manufacturer Airbus "trounced" the traditional U.S. behemoth Boeing at the Paris Air Show, booking a record $50 billion more in orders for new planes. The reason: commercial plane buyers' demands for high fuel efficiency and low emissions. Here's the Associated Press report on how Airbus racked up a whopping 730 new plane orders compared to a measly 142 for Boeing: Airbus has cashed in on airlines' desire to reduce sky-high fuel costs and cut their carbon dioxide emissions. Airbus says the A320neo is 15 percent more fuel efficient than rival aircraft …

Al Gore's Rolling Stone critique of President Obama's failure to act on the climate crisis is further evidence of environmentalists' broad frustration with this administration. Gore now joins former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as yet another former Clinton administration official whose dismay at Obama's undermining of climate legislation, oil-industry cheerleading, enormous expansion of coal mining for export to China, and capitulations on public lands issues have overcome their innate reluctance to criticize a Democratic president and risk ostracism from the Beltway establishment. This increased boldness follows a major evolution in the environmental movement itself: Driven by grassroots frustration, major environmental …

As the Obama administration announced the latest in a series of delays on rules that would cut pollution from smokestacks and industrial facilities, the utility industry continues to tout a new study showing that planned EPA clean air regulations would cause the shutdown of several coal-fired power plants. Several politicians and the administration have responded by trying to deny the charge -- saying that most of the plants would have shut down anyway: Really, it's not our fault that these poison-spewing monsters are closing, they say. Rather than running away from the closure of a coal plant, the administration would …

During his major immigration speech this week in El Paso, Texas, President Obama mentioned the 640 mile long U.S.-Mexico border wall that has scarredthe Southwestern landscape and prevented migration of endangered species like jaguars, ocelots, and Sonoran pronghorn antelope. The speech is fascinating for two reasons: 1) it's pretty clear (as if it weren't already) that border region Texans pretty much hate the wall 2) Obama lays out his preemptive capitulation negotiating strategy in public, and seems genuinely surprised that Tea Party Republicans won't enact his agenda even after he's gone ahead and done every crazy thing they said they …

President Obama speaks today about immigration in El Paso, Texas, along the U.S. border with Mexico. Although the subject is immigration, the backdrop will be purely environmental: the 640 mile long border wall with Mexico. The wall has done nothing to reduce illegal immigration, but it has had enormous negative effects on the extraordinary wildlife of the border region. It's cut off America's dwindled population of Sonoran pronghorn antelope (U.S. population 100) from the slightly larger Mexican population, imperiling this already precarious species. It's keeping jaguars and ocelots from their native habitats in the United States. It's ruining habitat in …

Critter-killing cookies?Photo: Laura TaylorLooking for a lesson of how not to respond to green consumer demand in the internet age? Check out Girl Scouts USA. The Scouts' CEO Kathy Cloninger has for several years rebuffed polite requests from individual scouts, major environmental organizations, and others that they make their famous Girl Scout cookies rainforest friendly. The problem with the cookies is that they contain palm oil, which is responsible for the destruction of more than 30,000 square miles of primary rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia and which is grown and transported by major agriculture corporations such as Cargill. This deforestation …