Climate Politics
All Stories
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Virginia Slims
One of America’s fastest-growing counties, Loudoun County in Virginia, voted last night to adopt rough development controls and try to keep two-thirds of the county as farmland. The vote by the county board of supervisors removed 83,000 potential homes from county plans and ended support for studying a proposed new highway to connect Dulles International […]
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Dude, Where's My Pipe?
Many problems with the U.S.’s vast network of oil and natural gas pipelines don’t get reported or are underreported to the federal Office of Pipeline Safety, and even if major mishaps are reported, the agency rarely fines companies for them, reports the Austin American-Statesman after a yearlong investigation. Past problems that didn’t show up in […]
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Schell Game
Even though U.S. President Bush has withdrawn the U.S. from the Kyoto treaty on climate change, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell (D) and four City Council members announced yesterday that Seattle would easily meet what would have been the greenhouse-gas-reduction target for the U.S. under Kyoto. The city promised to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 7 percent […]
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Your 15 Minutes Are Up!
Zed holds forth on the fleeting flame of fame and considers a sharp left turn into politics. Lend a shoulder to cry on to Zed, last of his species, in “Washing Down the Washed-up Blues.”
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I Could Have Had a G8!
One demonstrator has been killed and at least 46 demonstrators and 31 police officers have been hurt today in Genoa, Italy, where leaders of the Group of Eight nations have gathered for their annual summit. Barricades set up earlier this week have kept protesters far from the medieval palace in which the G8 leaders are […]
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A Bee in Their Bonnet
The chair of the current climate change conference, Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, said yesterday that his “hopes are growing day by day” that an international agreement would be reached. But others at the conference in Bonn, Germany, were far more pessimistic about a positive outcome. It’s not just environmental groups that are pulling for […]
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A Bonn in the Oven
It’s a fair bet that many in the diplomatic horde converging on Bonn, Germany, for the latest round of global warming talks would rather be somewhere else. In the past when they’ve gathered, negotiators charged with forging an international strategy against climate change could usually expect to produce enough forward movement, however incremental, to go […]
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Gallons of Gasp
A panel appointed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has drafted a report recommending that the U.S. require automakers to improve the fuel economy of new vehicles. The 13-member panel, made up mostly of engineers and consultants who have worked for auto and oil companies, contends that fuel economy for cars and SUVs could […]
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Fuel on the Hill
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, five cabinet secretaries, and 25 congressional Republicans fanned out across the country yesterday to try to bolster public support for the Bush administration’s drill-based energy plan. Now that fuel costs are falling and fuel supplies are rising, the administration has taken to describing the current energy situation in the country […]
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Kweisi for You
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said last week that it would sue companies that manufactured lead paint. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume described exposure to lead paint as a “civil rights issue.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that low-income children are eight times more likely to live […]
