Dear Umbra, Please help; my friend Kathryn Schulz, Grist's managing editor, is sick of hearing about my guilt. I own an SUV. In my defense, I got it almost six years ago, when I was moving to the mountains and needed a big car with four-wheel drive to support my rugged, transient lifestyle, and it's a littler model, not a Navigator. Life is funny, though, because now I live in New York, and the only thing I use my SUV for is commuting from my home in northern Manhattan to my job in Westchester. (My job, not just the commute, …

Clean up the bus, gus. Photo: NREL. The Bush administration has taken to singing the clean-car gospel lately, but it's not quite hitting all the notes. Last month, U.S. EPA chief Mike Leavitt joined Detroit kingpins in a splashy D.C. conference to trumpet the arrival of new vehicles and fuels that reduce sulfur emissions -- a notable achievement, but what Leavitt was passing off as a Bush administration success was in fact an initiative launched under President Clinton. Days later, Leavitt announced additional funding for the Clean School Bus USA program -- some $60 million to replace pre-1991 school buses …

Sierra Club and Auto Workers Unite Against Bush Fuel-Economy Plan Bush's new fuel-economy plan is even ticking off the United Auto Workers union. The UAW has often been at odds with enviros over auto efficiency standards, but now it's teaming up with the Sierra Club to fight the administration's proposal. In a joint op-ed published in The New York Times this week, the heads of both groups make the case that the plan would threaten the livelihoods of thousands of Americans working in plants that manufacture small cars and would increase pollution and worsen the nation's dependence on foreign oil. …

Bush Administration Extends Contentious "Dual-Fuel" Rules In a move that will make it easier for automakers to meet fuel-efficiency standards without actually improving the fuel efficiency of their vehicles, the Bush administration announced yesterday that it will extend for four years a system that gives auto manufacturers credits for producing "dual-fuel" vehicles that can run on either gasoline or an ethanol blend. Environmentalists criticized the move, pointing out that only 1 percent of dual-fuel vehicles actually do run on an ethanol blend, in part because fewer than 200 of the 176,000 gas stations in the country offer it. Enviros also …

The past few days have brought two more odd legal twists and turns to the Yellowstone snowmobile saga, which is becoming more litigiously complex and far-flung than a John Grisham novel. She's got a ticket to ride. Photo: NPS. The story is essentially a protracted game of legal Ping-Pong: The Clinton administration served the ball when it ordered a phaseout of snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks back in January 2001, just before Clinton left office. The Bush administration returned the serve in the early days of its term by freezing that decision, then reversing it in March …

Hybrid SUVs to Hit U.S. Market This Year While a "green SUV" may sound like an oxymoron, Toyota and Ford plan to roll out new gas-electric hybrid SUVs later this year that warrant the label "greener" -- or, at least, less egregiously wasteful. Ford's hybrid Escape will hit U.S. showrooms this summer, while Toyota will start selling a hybrid version of its luxury Lexus RX330 in November or December. These newfangled hybrid SUVs are expected to get 27 to 40 miles per gallon -- comparable to standard cars. Enviros don't love 'em, but say they're a definite improvement over current …

Pollution a Likely Contributor to Rising Asthma Rates Asthma rates are climbing around the world, and though scientists can't say precisely what's causing the increase, pollution is thought to be a serious contributor. The respiratory disease has become a particular problem in Asia, where terrible air quality, rapid urbanization, and poor medical treatment have contributed to a troublingly high asthma death rate. Wealthier countries are afflicted too: More than 18 percent of the population of Scotland suffers from asthma, making it the nation with the highest asthma rate in the world. In the U.S., the number of asthma sufferers grew …

Google Bans Ads from Environmental Group The popular search engine Google is facing accusations of censorship after it refused to carry ads from an environmental group that is protesting a major cruise line's sewage-treatment methods. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Oceana paid Google to run an ad that read "Help us protect the world's oceans" when people entered search terms such as "cruise vacation" and "cruise ship." The ad itself didn't mention the cruise line by name, but it pointed web surfers to a site that criticized Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines for dumping pollutants at sea. Google ran the ad …

Texas Ship-Inspection Company Implicated in Prestige Tanker Disaster Negligence on the part of the Texas-based American Bureau of Shipping -- a company that conducts safety inspections of ships -- could be to blame for the notorious Prestige tanker disaster, which spilled millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Spain 15 months ago and affected or destroyed the livelihoods of some 100,000 fishers and other Spaniards. So say two lawsuits pending against ABS, which seek a combined total of $1 billion in damages from the company. Though numerous problems had been found with the ship over the years and …

Native Peoples Speak Up for Their Lands Indigenous peoples are rallying for their lands and their rights this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where a major U.N. convention on biodiversity is taking place. Representatives of native peoples are demanding the right to reject development projects on their ancestral lands, saying that multinational companies should not be able to plunder these areas for profit. Indigenous groups are also speaking out against governments that force natives off their homelands in order to create national parks and nature preserves, and criticizing pharmaceutical companies that try to patent generations-old medicinal and agricultural practices. An …