Climate Politics
All Stories
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Great Lakes Minds Think Alike
The U.S. government has pledged to spend billions of dollars to restore the Florida Everglades — and now the Great Lakes states are trying to figure out how they can get a piece of the federal pie, too. For more than a year, the governors of the eight states have been meeting to formulate a […]
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Staircase Closed
Former President Clinton acted within his authority when he created new national monuments during his final year in office, a federal court ruled Friday. The ruling was a victory for environmentalists and a blow for property-rights advocates and others who had challenged seven of the 15 monument designations in court. The Circuit Court of Appeals […]
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Security: Blank It
In the name of keeping sensitive information out of the hands of terrorists, the Bush administration has restricted access to a broad range of scientific research — removing Internet links, deleting information from websites, and even requiring federal librarians to destroy a CD-ROM about public water supplies. The information lockdown is making it tough for […]
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Boston Z-E-V Party
Massachusetts is preparing to adopt California’s ambitious zero-emission vehicle legislation, which would require 10 percent of cars and trucks sold within the state to produce no pollution. For the moment, though, the U.S. government is still bickering internally over whether California’s legislation is legal. Earlier this month, the Bush administration said California had overstepped its […]
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Bed Head
An Interior Department appeals board has upheld its earlier ruling that three of the leases for a coal bed methane (CBM) drilling project in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin were issued without adequate environmental review. Environmentalists hope the decision will help block pending leases for such drilling on millions of acres throughout the Rocky Mountain region. […]
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Superfund Meets Kryptonite
Under the Bush administration, the Superfund program to clean up toxic-waste sites is seemingly becoming not-so-super. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the U.S. EPA completed cleanups at 42 toxic waste sites, down from 47 in the previous 12 months. This year’s total was unimpressive compared to the average of 76 sites cleaned […]
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Nevada Protest Site
Sixty-six environmental justice activists, hailing from a broad range of states, were arrested early this week in Nevada after demonstrating over the weekend against nuclear energy and weapons. The protesters, including individuals from South Carolina, Washington, and Mississippi, blamed nuclear facilities for high rates of cancer, birth defects, and skin disorders in black, Latino, and […]
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Come on In, the Water’s Fine
Ecologists and sport-fishing fans have succeeded in blocking a decree by the Mexican government that would have increased commercial shark fishing and threatened other fish stocks. Mexico currently requires shark vessels to stay 50 miles offshore; the new rule would have allowed them to come within a half-mile of the coast, dragging mile-wide nets and […]
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Wet Behind the Ears
In what it is calling a remedy to the excesses of the Clinton years, the Bush administration is paving the way for Western states to gain control over huge volumes of water previously claimed by the federal government. One prominent example of this new policy involves the Black Canyon National Park in Colorado; in 1978, […]
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Jeb and Flow
Environmentalists and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) are duking it out over the regulatory language of the colossal $7.8 billion Everglades restoration project — a battle that will work against Bush in the upcoming gubernatorial election. Critics say Bush is less interested in restoring the Everglades than in securing a water supply for South Florida […]
