Climate Politics
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Get the Bali Rolling
The fate of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August, could rest on a meeting that opened yesterday on the Indonesian island of Bali. The U.N.-sponsored meeting, which runs for two weeks, aims to smooth out differences among nations on how to achieve the twin and rather […]
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It’s a Criming Shame
Environmental crimes are the train robberies of the 21st century: High-profit and low-risk, they are generally carried out by perpetrators that are better informed, better organized, and better funded than law enforcement agencies. That was the message delivered by the Environmental Investigation Agency at a Royal Institute of International Affairs seminar held yesterday in London, […]
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Unkempt
We’re not sure whose job it is to go through all the thousands of pages of documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney’s formerly secretive energy task force, but they sure are having a grand old time. This week, the needle in the haystack was a memo sent to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham by Jane […]
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Miner Threat
The Bush administration canceled yesterday a two-year ban on new mining claims in roughly 1.2 million acres in and around southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest. The ban was imposed by the Clinton administration in response to lobbying efforts by conservationists, who wanted the area declared a national monument. Instead, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt imposed […]
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Something Not Wild
The U.S. Forest Service yesterday came out against adding any new wilderness areas to southeastern Alaska’s 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest. The recommendation was a response to a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Singleton, who sided with environmentalists last year in ordering the Forest Service to determine if there were parts of the temperate […]
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Nuclear Power As Fossil Fuel
The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public power producer, decided yesterday to restart a troubled nuclear reactor at its Browns Ferry plant in northern Alabama. The reactor has been out of use since 1985, when all three of the plant’s reactors were shut down after engineers discovered that the reactors did not match their […]
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Yuck A-Mounting
In more nuclear news, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham acknowledged yesterday that a proposed nuclear waste depository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., could only handle a portion of the waste that will be generated by commercial power plants and the government in the coming decade. The acknowledgement undercut President Bush’s pro-Yucca argument that radioactive waste should be […]
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Slim Pickins, Whitman
In an apparent effort to diffuse criticism from environmentalists, the Bush administration is considering stepping up legal action against some polluting utility companies. U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman has ordered the agency’s regional enforcement officials to look for companies that have violated the Clean Air Act by upgrading power plants without installing state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment, […]
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Blowing His Top
The Bush administration appealed a federal court decision yesterday that would limit mountaintop-removal mining and asked the judge to clarify that the ruling “should be read as not applying nationwide or to activities other than coal mining.” On May 8, U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II of West Virginia ruled that coal mining valley […]
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Buying the Farm
There might be a severe drought facing much of the nation, but billions of dollars in subsidies is soon to rain down on the bread-basket states, thanks to a farm bill signed by President Bush yesterday. Notwithstanding a White House pledge to wean farmers off of government funding, the bill is expected to cost $190 […]
