Here's one unintended consequence of the impending U.S. war against Iraq: The Bush administration has delayed a formal challenge to the European Union's ban on genetically modified food. Recently, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick blamed the ban for widespread starvation in the developing world and said the administration was considering taking a case against Europe to the World Trade Organization. Now, though, the U.S. has backed off, apparently in an attempt not to alienate the E.U. at a moment of critical international importance. As a senior White House official who asked not to be identified put it, "There is no …

The parent company of a power plant in eastern Ohio has become the first of 36 energy utilities to be tried for causing smog and health problems in the Northeast. In a lawsuit that began yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department accused FirstEnergy Corporation of significantly upgrading its W.H. Sammis plant without installing new pollution controls, as required by the New Source Review rules of the federal Clean Air Act. FirstEnergy and the other utilities that stand accused by the feds say they only conducted routine maintenance on their plants, not major improvements, and therefore were not required to update pollution-control …

President Bush's proposed budget for the government's 2004 fiscal year doesn't contain much good news for renewable energy advocates: Total research funding for the Energy Department's energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would increase just 0.1 percent. Last summer, though, the feds apparently had enough money to purchase a solar-energy system to heat the presidential pool and spa, among other uses. With little public notice, the government bought 167 solar panels and installed them on the roof of a maintenance building next to the White House. The administration declined to say how much power the panels are generating or how …

Six GOP senators are throwing a wrench in the Bush administration's plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. The six -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, John McCain of Arizona, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, and Mike DeWine of Ohio -- announced last week that they will oppose plans to attach to a massive budget bill a provision that would open the refuge to oil and gas exploration. The senators seem to be on the same side of the issue as most Americans. A new poll by the …

On a sunny afternoon in Southern California, a Border Patrol agent watched as a man climbed the metal fence that divides the beach between the U.S. and Mexico. When the man dropped onto U.S. sand, the agent yelled, and the man's friends hauled him back over to the other side of the fence. The fence at Border Field State Park. Photo: Deborah Knight. Such is the daily -- and nightly -- cat-and-mouse game that goes on here at Border Field State Park, the southwestern-most point in the continental United States. A grassy picnic area overlooks an empty stretch of U.S. …

The management of California's public forests will change radically if U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Jack Blackwell gets his way. This week, Blackwell proposed allowing timber companies to cut more medium-sized trees from 11 million acres of forestlands in the Sierra Nevadas. The Sierras were heavily logged throughout the 1980s, destroying crucial habitat for species. Echoing the Bush administration's party line, Blackwell claims the revenue from additional logging will enable foresters to clear brush and small saplings that fuel massive wildfires. But environmentalists say Blackwell and others are just using fear of fire as a smokescreen to permit more logging. …

Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut will sue the U.S. EPA for violating clean air laws and imperiling the health of citizens by failing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, the states' attorneys general announced yesterday. In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, the attorneys general will argue that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels should be regulated under the Clean Air Act because such emissions are the leading cause of global climate change. The states have a pressing interest in such regulation because climate change "will likely cause or contribute to wide-ranging, adverse changes to just about every aspect of the environment, public health, and …

Polluting industries are getting off easy under the Bush administration, according to U.S. EPA data released yesterday by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.). In the two years since President Bush took office, civil penalties for breaking environmental laws dropped by almost 50 percent, to $55 million, while criminal penalties dropped by more than one-third, to $62 million. During that same time, the EPA has also gotten rid of 210 positions, or about 7 percent of the enforcement staff, and on-site inspections have declined as well. Dingell said the numbers represented "an extremely disturbing trend toward weaker enforcement," but the EPA countered …

A federal appeals court has ruled that Alabama is failing to adequately enforce water-pollution laws, thereby paving the way for citizens of the state to sue under the national Clean Water Act. Under the terms of that act, citizens may go to court to enforce the law only if the state has failed to prosecute polluters and only after filing 60-day notice of intent to sue. But because Alabama is doing a poor job of enforcing the law, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that residents of the state may sue to enforce the law even if the …

The Montreal Protocol, the international treaty to protect the ozone layer, has been hailed as the most effective environmental agreement ever signed. Now, though, it's efficacy could be jeopardized, because the Bush administration is calling for some exemptions to a part of the treaty that calls for a global ban on the pesticide methyl bromide by 2005. Administration officials say prohibiting use of the pesticide would cause economic harm for some users, such as farmers and golf-course owners, because there are no effective substitutes. The Bush administration has received 56 requests for exemptions, totaling 26 million pounds of methyl bromide; …