Score one for the Dems. Stephen Johnson on Friday agreed not to poison infants and toddlers with pesticides in exchange for Senate confirmation of his appointment to head the EPA.   Johnson -- a generally unobjectionable nominee, especially by Bush admin standards -- was expected to glide on through the confirmation process, but Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) threw a wrench into matters on Wednesday, demanding that Johnson, who's now acting administrator of the EPA, permanently cancel the notorious CHEERS research. The Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study had, according to the New York Times, "offered $970, a …

Paying journalists to shill for Republican policies -- it's not just for Bushies anymore! The admin of Mitt Romney, Massachusetts' GOP governor, will fork over $10,000 to a Boston Herald op-ed columnist to promote its environmental policies, The Boston Globe (gleefully) reports.Charles D. Chieppo, who's been writing a weekly column for the Herald since January, will spend two days a week through June working for the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, writing op-ed pieces and internal documents ''to support the efforts of senior management to promote education, awareness, and acceptance of major policy initiatives" on the environment.   And …

You could probably guess that Prius drivers tend to be Democrats and Hummer drivers tend to be Republicans. But that's just the tip of the iceberg on car-and-driver political connections, writes John Tierney in The New York Times, summarizing new market research that I find both fascinating and hilarious.   Jaguars, Land Rovers, and Jeep Grand Cherokees are very "Republican" vehicles. Volvos are the most "Democratic" cars, followed by Subarus and Hyundais. (Funny comment from Slate columnist Mickey Kaus: "Subaru is the new Volvo --that is, it is what Volvos used to be: trusty, rugged, inexpensive, unpretentious, performs well, maybe …

Richard Cizik, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, is heavily hawking the notion of "creation care" these days.  (That would be God-flavored environmentalism, for those not in the know.) Three weeks ago, he talked up the concept with NPR's Scott Simon (whom I wholly adore, but that's a topic for another post). This past weekend, he got his mug and his pitch in The New York Times Magazine, via a Q&A with Deborah Solomon.  An excerpt:   Q: What is wrong with [the] term [environmentalism]? A: It's not the term. It's the environmentalists themselves. I was recently speaking with …

I'm an environmentalist, not an animal-rights activist. Sometimes the two labels go hand-in-hand; sometimes they clash. Personally, I place a priority on healthy ecosystems (including the survival of whole species in their native habitat) over an individual animal's right to exist no matter where it may find itself. So from that vantage point, the fracas over Canada's annual seal hunt doesn't seem to me to be an "environmental" issue, if we're pigeonholing. Seals, as I understand it, are not endangered. But, trust me, you don't have to attach any activist label to yourself at all to be revolted and horror-struck …

Two months ago, we mocked Ashton Kutcher for buying a behemoth, 10-mile-per-gallon (on a good day) International CXT, or commercial extreme truck. Now, Kutcher's mocking himself. "My semi? It's the most idiotic thing I've ever purchased," he's quoted as saying in, ahem, In Touch Weekly. (I was flipping through it in line at the co-op, OK?) ContactMusic.com reports that he may auction the beast off. "It's a weird boy's dream," he said by way of explaining his stupidity. "Growing up in Iowa, all these kids in my school who had money would go out and buy these Toyota pickup trucks …

Jerome Ringo will officially take the helm of the National Wildlife Federation board this week, making him "the first-ever African-American to hold such a leadership position with any national conservation organization," according to the group.   Congrats to Ringo and kudos to NWF, but damn, what does it say about the green movement that we're only just now marking this milestone? No wonder activists lament the lack of non-white faces in environmental circles. Ringo told Lester Graham of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium that times are changing: "We're not where we want to be with respect to minority involvement in …

While shilling for drilling during last week's Senate debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) claimed that oil development would have a negligible effect on the area: "When we talk about the roadless areas we have available for exploration, we mean it. We do mean that we are going to put down an ice road that will disappear when the summer comes." Bizarrely, as Felicity Barringer of The New York Times points out, roadless might not mean what you think it means.   "[T]he term 'roadless' does not mean an absence of roads," Interior Department officials wrote …

In her New York Times op-ed ballyhooing the Bushies' plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Gale Norton uses an interesting new tactic.   I'm not talking about arguing that the drilling footprint would be small. (Though she's quite crafty about making that claim, noting that "the world of Arctic energy exploration in the 21st century ... is as different from what oil exploration used to be as the compact supercomputers of today are different from the huge vacuum tube computers of the 1950s. Through the use of advanced technology, we have learned not only to get access …

Bush's Clear Skies Act is on life support after a vote today in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee failed to draw enough support to push the measure to the Senate floor. The committee had been deadlocked 9-9 on the bill for weeks, and James Inhofe (R-Okla.), committee chair, was unsuccessful in his arm-twisting attempts to sway at least one more senator to his side. (Barack Obama [D-Ill.] had been thought a potential swing vote, but he held his ground. Phew.) As AP's John Heilprin writes, "The committee vote doesn't preclude Republican leaders from bringing the bill to the …