Uncategorized

Regulatus Interruptus

Rule Helps Industry Weasel out of Regulations, Enviros Say Speaking of regulations: The Data Quality Act — written by an industry lobbyist and tacked onto a massive appropriations bill in 2000 — has become a tool used by industry to forestall regulation, critics charge. The DQA instructs the federal Office of Management and Budget to […]

Heaven Can’t Wait

Climate Stability Possible with Current Technology, Researchers Say Stabilizing global emissions of carbon dioxide and forestalling the worst consequences of global warming are possible with current technology, say Princeton researchers today in the journal Science. While the Bush administration has stressed the need for “revolutionary technologies … to transform the way we produce and consume […]

Killer Waves, Dude

Researchers Predict Hotter, Longer Heat Waves So, having learned that we can meliorate climate change, we flip a few pages over in the latest issue of Science to find out what will happen if we don’t — and it isn’t pretty. Scientists predict that heat waves in some parts of Europe and North America will […]

Tribes and Tribulations

Indigenous Tribe in Ecuador Resists Big Oil Ecuador is one of South America’s poorest countries, and like many poor countries, it is in considerable debt to developed nations. Fifty percent of its national budget comes from oil, and the International Monetary Fund is using its debt to pressure it to extract still more. Yet despite […]

Does a Bear Fit in the Woods?

Enviros Protest New Forest Service Grizzly Habitat Plan Grizzly bears in the six national forests around Yellowstone National Park — the largest grizzly ecosystem in the lower 48 states — are to be taken off the Endangered Species Act’s list of protected species. But the U.S. Forest Service plan to subsequently protect their habitat, revealed […]

Takin’ Care of Business

Business Starts to Get Real About Global Warming It’s no secret that a broad consensus exists in the scientific community: Climate change is a real, human-caused problem that needs to be dealt with, quickly. But it may come as a surprise that a similar consensus is steadily growing in the business community as well. Business […]

Who’ll Stop the Drain?

Bush Policies Leading to Wetlands Loss, Report Says Bush has trumpeted wetlands policy as the primary evidence of his environmental bona fides. But four national enviro groups beg to differ, releasing a report today claiming that thousands of acres of wetlands have been drained by developers under a policy adopted by the Bush administration. At […]

A for Initiative

Colorado Campaign for Renewable-Energy Initiative Kicks Off In November, Colorado citizens will vote on the first-ever statewide initiative on renewable energy. The Colorado Renewable Energy Initiative would require that the state’s major utility companies generate 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources — solar, biomass, wind, hydro, and geothermal — by 2015. A bipartisan […]

Filet Retardant

Farmed Salmon Contain Flame Retardants The same research team that found more PCBs in farmed salmon than in wild salmon has found similar results for another scarily acronymed family of chemicals: PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, flame retardants found in electronics and fabrics. PBDEs have not been conclusively proven to cause harm to human health, […]

If Not for You Meddling Kids …

Judge Spanks Commerce Secretary Over Dolphin-Safe Rules In a ruling made public yesterday, a federal judge resoundingly rejected the efforts of Bush administration officials to relax “dolphin-safe” standards for tuna. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson’s ruling was, to put it mildly, strongly worded. “The record is replete with evidence that [Commerce Secretary Donald Evans] was […]