John Paul, a regional air pollution officer from Dayton, Ohio, dared to argue in congressional testimony last month that the Clear Skies Act was "simply not protective enough" and "far too lenient" on polluters. For that sin, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chair of the Senate Environment Committee, is going to make Paul and his cohorts pay.   Paul was testifying as a representative of the literally (and unfortunately) named Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials and its sister group, State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators. (I always love seeing reporters squirm around mentioning this attached-at-the-hip duo. Even their …

"At the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of the debate likes to talk about: It is already too late to prevent global warming and the climate change it sets off," writes environmental author and advocate Mark Hertsgaard in the San Francisco Chronicle. Environmentalists won't say this for fear of sounding alarmist or defeatist. Politicians won't say it because then they'd have to do something about it. The world's top climate scientists have been sending this message, however, with increasing urgency for many years. ... Until now, most public discussion about global warming has focused …

Interior Secretary Gale Norton is reviled by many enviro activists for pushing energy development at the expense of environmental protection. But as Elizabeth R. Washburn argues in an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, she's to be commended for "helping women break through the glass ceiling in a federal bureaucracy known for its good old boy leanings." In her four years at the helm of the Interior Deparment, Norton has filled key management positions with women, including Lynn Scarlett, Rebecca Watson, Kathleen Clarke, Johnnie Burton, Fran Mainella, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, and Teresa Chambers (though things went a bit awry in Chambers' …

Michael Milstein of the Portland Oregonian delves into the sickly state of the environmental movement, focusing in on the Beaver State. It's the Death of Environmentalism quandary distilled down to the state level -- and it's a bummer. "The environmental community seems to be at a new low for the amount of influence it has," said Noah Greenwald, a biologist based in Portland for the Center for Biological Diversity. Not only is the strategy and messaging a mess ... [Environmental leaders] sense that some citizens who believe in environmental protection have come to see the groups advocating it as increasingly …

Our friends who like to butt heads over population might be interested to know that the global birth rate has fallen to its lowest point. The average woman in a developing country now gives birth 3.9 times over the course of her lifetime, compared with 5.9 in the 1970s, according to the U.N. That's not down to the replacement level of 2.1, of course, but consider it in conjunction with the far-below-replacement levels in some (over)developed countries like Spain (1.15), Italy (1.19), a handful of other European nations, and Japan, and it marks progress.   Still, in total we're at …

So say nearly 50 enviro, business, anti-nuclear, sustainable-energy, and energy-policy groups in response to Bush's recent claim that nuclear power is "a renewable source of energy." Here, a letter these groups sent today to the Nuke Lobbyist in Chief: January 26, 2005 President George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, you were quoted as saying that nuclear power "is a renewable source of energy." Please be advised that nuclear power is not a renewable source of energy. For that matter, oil, coal, …

Sir David King, the U.K.'s chief scientific adviser, says American fossil-fuel lobbyists are pestering and hectoring him as he goes around the world talking about the impending dangers of global warming. King ticked off some powerful folks last year when he said climate change poses more of a global threat than terrorism and blasted the U.S. for not taking the lead in addressing the problem. Reports The Independent: Since then, he has given many lectures to international audiences but found individuals among them who are there solely to create the impression that he is presenting biased information. "They'll be in …

Crusading environmental lawyer and Bush-basher Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering a run for state attorney general of New York, insiders say. He'd be a fitting successor to Eliot Spitzer, who's gone after pollution-spewing utilities with as much as gusto as he's gone after corporate malefactors on Wall Street.

Outgoing U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman (never beloved by enviros) has been tapped to head UNICEF. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced her nomination yesterday; she was reportedly the Bush admin's top pick for the post. Here's hoping she does a better job of protecting the world's children than she did of protecting America's forests!

Speaking of how and to what extent progressives should band together (a key theme in our ongoing "Is environmentalism dead" discussion), anti-tax zealot and right-wing power broker Grover Norquist provides yet another example of how the right is kicking the left's ass on the unity thing.  A New York Times Magazine article on Bush's plans to trash the tax code starts off like this: One afternoon late last month, I paid a visit to the offices of Americans for Tax Reform, the conservative lobbying outfit headed by Grover Norquist. ... Each Wednesday morning, more than a hundred leading conservative activists, …