Some years ago, well before many outside Denmark knew Bjorn Lomborg's name, a group of his fellow faculty members at the University of Aarhus took the unusual step of developing a website specifically to warn the scientific community and others about flaws in his work. Appalled by Lomborg's scientific pretensions and unfounded conclusions, these faculty members, including a former head of the Danish Academy of Sciences, actively disassociated themselves from him. These faculty members did not want to be associated with Lomborg's work because it is fundamentally flawed. The thesis of Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, is that the environmental …

"Awful" and "horrible" are just some of the epithets that have been hurled at U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman by farm-state lawmakers. What's drawn their ire is Veneman's effort to overhaul the $20 billion federal farm subsidies program, which she says threatens international trade agreements, supports the wealthiest farmers, and is bad for the environment. She is proud of her reform proposal, which helped double the amount of funding for conservation efforts in the bill being considered by the Senate, but her opponents call her ideas "drastic." Her predecessors in the position say the farm lobby is immensely powerful and …

Ever since the White House declared energy independence a matter of national security, some unlikely evangelists in the Bush administration have been belting out the clean energy gospel. Case in point: Last week, Gale Norton presided over the first national renewable energy summit in history, co-hosted by the Departments of Interior and Energy. Gale Norton. With its cathedral ceilings and filigreed moldings, the conference room in the Interior building seemed, at first, like an unusually stately setting for such an event. After all, the renewable energy revolution has generally been regarded -- not least by the two federal agencies throwing …

In a blow to environmentalists and unions, Republicans in the U.S. House pushed through a plan yesterday to give President Bush broad authority to negotiate trade agreements. The bill, which was approved by a single vote, would take away from Congress the power to amend trade deals brokered by the administration; lawmakers could merely vote yea or nay on the pacts. Enviro groups and unions fear their concerns would receive short shrift under such a system. Democrats also argued that the bill would enable foreign investors to challenge environmental regulations in the U.S.. To win the vote, the White House …

U.S. Senate Democrats unveiled an energy bill yesterday that would place more emphasis on conservation and efficiency than the GOP alternative, while keeping the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drill-free. Currently, about 2 percent of the country's electricity comes from renewable sources; the new bill would require the number to jump to 12 percent by 2020. Democrats also called for higher miles-per-gallon fuel standards for SUVs, but gave no details. Enviros said the bill was a vast improvement over the GOP one, though they worried that it was too light on specifics. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) is scheduled to …

Hopping aboard the post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism bandwagon, some Republicans have set their sights on so-called eco-terrorists. U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) and six other Republicans have asked mainstream environmental organizations to publicly disavow groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, which have claimed responsibility for many acts of vandalism and arson in recent years. In a letter to the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and their brethren, the seven congressmen say that although the acts of eco-terrorism haven't been as severe as the World Trade Center attack, they are "no less deplorable." Mainstream enviro leaders, …

Evidence continues to mount that the Bush administration is in bed with business groups. The latest proof is an email, provided to the Washington Post by a disenchanted lobbyist, that described a campaign to undermine environmental, health, and safety regulations. A Republican congressional aide to the House subcommittee overseeing federal regulations sent the email in late September to a dozen lobbyists (think U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Farm Bureau types) inviting them to a secret brainstorming session to discuss regulations they found too burdensome. The aide, Barbara Kahlow, explained that President Bush's controversial regulatory czar, John Graham, wanted to …

The latest attempt by U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling tanked yesterday when almost the entire Senate (including Murkowski!) voted against it. Working with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Murkowski had hoped to tag the GOP energy bill and a separate anti-human-cloning bill on to an unrelated railroad retirement bill. Lott and Murkowski needed to get 60 votes to force the Senate to consider adding the amendment. Apparently, they could only rustle up 54 or 55 votes, so they called the whole stratagem off, and the Senate voted 94-1 against the …

Republicans on a congressional conference committee killed legislation on Friday that sought to protect public school students and staff from pesticides. The School Environment Protection Act would have required schools to notify parents when pesticides were being sprayed, and directed states to develop pest-management plans that considered alternatives to toxic sprays. All Democrats on the conference committee supported the legislation, but House Republicans on the committee voted it down, claiming that implementing the act would have been a bureaucratic hassle. Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), who sponsored the legislation, said there was no explanation for the defeat "except the influence of …

In a move that frustrated environmentalists, the U.S. Forest Service said on Friday that it would delay revising management plans for most national forests in the Northwest until 2012. Under a timetable set by Congress, the multi-year plans had been slated to be revamped by 2005; enviro groups had hoped to use the scientific and public review process to gain more protection for old-growth forests and roadless areas. But the Forest Service said budget and staffing shortages had made it impossible to revise all forest management plans on schedule. It opted to postpone review of the Northwest plans, giving priority …