Bush's EPA and Interior stocked with industry lawyers and lobbyists New York Newsday is running a series called "Erasing the Rules" about the Bush administration's coordinated efforts to remove or weaken regulations on industry. Of particular interest to Gristians will be the third installment, about the administration's staffing of the U.S. EPA, Interior Department, and Agriculture Department with lawyers and lobbyists drawn directly from industries those agencies regulate. While Bush has had little luck persuading Congress to weaken the Clean Air Act or allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- perhaps because open debate on these unpopular measures …

Ford develops ambitious, private plan to reduce emissions Top executives at Ford Motor Co. have set an aggressive goal to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions -- a goal that would require a roughly 80 percent improvement in the fuel economy of the company's cars and trucks by 2030. The motives behind the goal, which the company has not announced publicly, are complex. It's a business opportunity: Toyota, which has moved aggressively into the hybrid market, is seeing profits that put American car companies to shame. It's a matter of strategy: According to Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa, "we are entering a world …

Joel Makower. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I've got several affiliations, all of my own creation. I'm editor of The Green Business Letter, which I founded in 1991; founder of the nonprofit Green Business Network, which produces GreenBiz.com, ClimateBiz.com, GreenerBuildings.com, and GreenBizLeaders.com; and cofounder of Clean Edge, Inc., a research and consulting firm on clean technology. I also consult directly with companies, nonprofits, and others. What do your organizations do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute "mission accomplished"? Much of what I do centers around how to help companies of all sizes and sectors integrate environmental thinking …

Cell towers and phones are invading national parks The swish of a breeze through the trees. The twittering of birds. The burbling of a brook. The ... opening notes of "U Can't Touch This"? Get used to it: Bleeping (and by that we mean fricking) cell phones are becoming more common in national parks, in part because cell companies are pushing to build towers there. For instance, you may recently have had your view of the majestic Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone enhanced by the looming cell tower nearby. A proposal to build three towers along a scenic road in …

Dear Umbra, Every week I scan the gasoline signs looking for the cheapest deal, while knowing that what I pay in rock-bottom prices may come at the expense of environmental integrity and social justice. I'd like to choose my brand of gas with more conscience. Would you help? I'd love to see a ranking or rating system of the major gasoline brands. It could let us know which ones are meaningfully pursuing renewable energy sources, protecting indigenous political and property rights at the source, and making efforts to minimize the environmental impact of their oil extraction and refinement. Are any …

Investing in renewable energy can pose ethical dilemmas Over the past two years, the value of fossil-fuel companies has soared while the worldwide stock-market value of renewable-energy companies has declined from $13 billion to $10.7 billion. This, despite ever-renewing hope that a major energy transition will spark a boom in the renewables arena. Many Wall Street investors are reluctant to go for renewables because there's so much insecurity around energy markets. The U.S. and other key nations have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and there's a patchwork of national standards for carbon-dioxide emissions. Many socially and environmentally conscious investors continue …

Exotic South American forest set aside as wilderness by ... bankers? When New York investment banking and management firm Goldman Sachs acquired a logging operation in Tierra del Fuego, on an island off the southernmost tip of Chile, it did something unusual: Rather than "seek to maximize its economic value, which is what we would have done if this were a shopping mall or an apartment building," says the firm's Larry Linden, "we decided to do what we thought was the right thing" -- dedicate the land, more than 1,000 square miles, as a wilderness reserve. The U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation …

Slave labor used to clear Brazilian rainforest The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at a precipitous pace, and as is too often the case, this environmental catastrophe is connected to equally dire human-rights abuses. To wit: Thousands of poor, illiterate Brazilian peasants work every year chopping down the forest in conditions Brazil's Labor Ministry delicately refers to as "analogous to slavery.'' Promised $3 to $4 a day, peasants are lured to southeastern Brazil to clear forests with machetes, tractors, and chain saws. They often find themselves working from sunup to sundown in the tropical heat, seven days a week, only to …

Arnold Schwarzenegger's exuberant speech last Tuesday at the Republican National Convention suggested that the Governator may be less the moderate Republican than advertised. Hailed by some during the convention as the Obama of the right, the California governor came across as a devout, rock-ribbed Bush lover. Just days after Schwarzenegger's speech, more evidence emerged to indicate that this compassionate conservative may be borrowing not-so-compassionate tricks from the Bush-Cheney playbook: An Associated Press story last Friday revealed that a sweeping reform proposal for California state government commissioned by Schwarzenegger was "influenced significantly" by industry interests -- in particular, ChevronTexaco, the largest …

ChevronTexaco Heavily Influenced California Restructuring California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) recently announced plan to comprehensively reorganize state government brought grumbles from some enviros, who were piqued by the proposed consolidation of various boards and commissions from which many of the state's groundbreaking environmental initiatives have emerged. This latest news isn't going to mollify them. The proposed reorganization contains several provisions that would directly benefit oil and gas behemoth ChevronTexaco by revising the process for permitting and siting refineries and streamlining the activities of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which oversees many of the company's interests in the …