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Think Back Inside the Box, Please

Plan to Reorg California Government Has Greens Up in Arms Even prior to its official release tomorrow, California enviros are protesting the 2,500-page report from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R) California Performance Review Board, which will contain more than 1,000 recommendations on changing the way the state government is structured and how it works. Among them […]

Bye-Bye Birdie

Global Warming Brings Catastrophe to U.K. Seabirds Seabirds on the coast of Scotland are facing unprecedented catastrophe, and scientists attribute it directly to global warming. The hundreds of thousands of skuas, terns, and guillemots that populate the coastal cliffs are simply not breeding, and when they are, few offspring survive. They are starving, because the […]

Feet Don’t Fail Me Now

Kerry Delicately Attempts to Go Green and Sway Undecideds The environment rarely ranks high on lists of voters’ concerns, but in a close election, any advantage can be decisive. Thus Kerry’s delicate footwork on green issues. To court the eco-friendly Dem base, he has promised to push for 20 percent of U.S. electricity to come […]

Speech! Speech!

Environment Crops Up in Kerry’s Acceptance Speech John Kerry’s well-received speech at the Democratic National Convention last night saw the often-solemn senator rolling through impassioned lines quickly — some pundits said too quickly — and forcefully. Among those lines were several gems for the green-minded in the audience. The first substantive issue he mentioned was […]

Creative Problem Solving

Bush Administration Abandons EPA Pesticide Review Rule Say you’re a U.S. EPA official, and you’ve got a problem: Several enviro groups have accused your agency of skirting the rules that require you to have wildlife agencies review new pesticides to determine if they pose a threat to endangered species. One such group, the Center for […]

Particle Board

U.K. Nanotech Study Panel Urges Caution A publicly funded scientific panel in the U.K. convened to study the dangers and benefits of nanotechnology — the manipulation of particles less than 100 nanometers (0.0001 millimeters) in diameter — issued its report yesterday, and the results are, well, ambiguous. The scientists at Royal Society and Royal Academy […]

I Got Mine

Unprecedented Number of Drilling Permits Issued by Feds Last year, the Bureau of Land Management issued some 4,000 oil and natural-gas drilling permits; this federal fiscal year it’s on track to issue a record 6,000. This startling jump, which BLM geologist Richard Watson called “unprecedented in the history of the BLM,” is due almost entirely, […]

Bye Polar

Polar Bears Are in Peril The latest charismatic megafauna on the chopping block of the modern age is the polar bear. Despite the work of dedicated conservationists, polar-bear populations are declining and experts worry they may disappear entirely within decades. The problems are manifold. For one, toxic chemicals from industrial countries tend to settle in […]

The Methane Is the Message

Bush Unveils Methane Plan Yesterday, Bush administration officials unveiled a plan that would encourage the manufacture and export of technology to harvest methane emissions for use as a fuel. The administration pledged up to $53 million as seed money (expected to be matched by considerably more private investment) to help private companies develop the technology […]

Kerry, Kerry, Not Contrary

Kerry Set to Unveil Swing-State-Friendly Energy Proposals As Grist revealed yesterday, energy — or more specifically, the national-security and economic dangers of dependence on foreign oil — is to be one of John Kerry’s top four campaign issues. Kerry has traditionally sided with the conservation folks against the drill-drill-drill folks, and that has included support […]