Uncategorized

What a Heel

With President Bush still scoring stunningly high in public opinion polls, the environment is shaping up to be his Achilles’ heel — and Democrats aren’t hesitating to aim their arrows. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), both potential presidential candidates for 2004, have attacked Bush’s environmental policies, and former Vice President Al Gore […]

A Tale of Two Tribes

Two Inuit tribes — the Inupiat and the Gwich’in — live just 150 miles apart, but when it comes to the debate over oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a vast ideological gulf separates them. A few hundred Inupiat live in Kaktovic, the only town inside the borders of the refuge; […]

Wildlife Corridor Monitors

Scream of the Crop

Genetically modified crops should be subject to stricter and more public review prior to being approved for use, as well as more careful monitoring in the field afterward, a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences determined yesterday. The panel said its recommendations were intended to “improve an already functioning system” of monitoring GM […]

Gone With the Wind

Enron, the financially (and, some would say, morally) bankrupt energy trading firm, announced this week that it will sell its wind-turbine business to General Electric. If the transaction is approved by bankruptcy court and federal regulators, Enron will use the proceeds — a rumored $250 million — to repay creditors, while GE will use the […]

Green-chip Investment

One of the world’s largest financial organizations, HSBC, has earmarked nearly $50 million to create a five-year environmental program called Investing in Nature. The program will funnel money to three environmental nonprofits organizations — WWF, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and Earthwatch — to support projects that enhance access to safe drinking water and help preserve […]

There’s No Business Like Snow Business

Former President Clinton’s eleventh-hour ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks just received yet another blow from the Bush administration, when the Interior Department, acting on the request of the snowmobile industry, offered three alternatives to an outright ban. Option one: Delay the phase-out by one year. Option two: Limit the number […]

Send Me the Ivory Bill

Call it a wild goose chase: A 30-day search through a southern Louisiana swamp was called off yesterday after some of the world’s top ornithologists failed to find the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird, once the largest North American woodpecker with a wingspan of up to 33 inches, has not been seen for certain since […]

GE, We Bring Bad Things to Fish

The Bush administration asked a federal judge yesterday to dismiss a challenge by General Electric to the Superfund toxic waste cleanup law. Companies faced with multi-million dollar cleanup costs have repeatedly attacked the 1980 law, arguing that it leads to more legal tangles than environmental improvements. In the most recent sally, GE filed suit in […]

They’re All Ears

Farm states and the environment both stand to gain from a provision in a Democratic energy bill that would require gasoline refiners to triple their use of corn-based ethanol by 2012. The provision, written by Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), would also phase out the use of the petrochemical MTBE by 2006. Both ethanol […]