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Rock the House

In a series of votes that weren’t even close, the Republican-controlled House took steps yesterday to block the Bush administration’s plans for oil and gas drilling on natural monuments, delay the sale of oil-drilling leases off the coast of Florida, and prevent the rollback of tougher regulations for hard-rock mining on federal land. The House […]

Enemy Mine

Hundreds of local residents of a fishing village blocked Peru’s main north-south highway with boulders this week to protest a major new copper and zinc mine. Juan Pacifico, the mayor of Huarmey, which is about 90 miles north of Lima, says the villagers aren’t convinced that adequate environmental protections are in place for the Antamina […]

Ethanol for Naught

The Bush administration has prepared a report for Congress that recommends continuing federal incentives for ethanol-fuel vehicles — even though the report also found that the program has failed to meet either of its goals of reducing gasoline consumption and increasing the use of alternative fuels. Under the program, automakers that produce vehicles that can […]

Dork Kempthorne

Ceding to the concerns of the state of Idaho, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton moved yesterday to abandon plans to reintroduce grizzly bears into the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and Idaho. Grizzlies have been removed from 98 percent of their historic range and only 1,000 or so remain south of Canada. The Clinton administration’s reintroduction […]

Standards and Poor Sports

Republicans are privately warning the auto industry that tougher fuel-economy standards may be inevitable this year unless it puts the pedal to the metal and significantly ramps up lobbying efforts. Democrats and environmentalists think an increase of three miles per gallon or more for light trucks and SUVs would force automakers to stop producing some […]

Bush Gets Polled Over

More than 70 percent of respondents to a New York Times/CBS News poll thought that producing energy was more important to President Bush than protecting the environment, while 55 percent of the respondents themselves thought it was more important to protect the environment. Only 12 percent (what were they smoking?) thought the environment was more […]

Patton Down the Hatches

Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton (D) this week declared a six-month moratorium on additional applications for building power plants. He questioned whether the environment and power grid could cope with new plants already under way. Environmentalists, who have been asking since April for a moratorium, were disappointed that Patton’s order did not also apply to 24 […]

Here Squirty, Squirty, Squirty …

The population of killer whales between Canada and the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. continues to decline, and researchers aren’t sure why. They are particularly concerned about six of the orca whales (Oskar, Squirty, Orcan, Cetus, Luna, and an unnamed juvenile) that have not returned to their summer range in the San Juan Islands. Kelley […]

Cold Comfort

California, New York, and Connecticut sued the Bush administration yesterday for weakening the energy-efficiency standard for central air conditioners. The states say the difference between the standard set by the Clinton administration and the one adopted by the Bush administration could eventually be more than 1 percent of peak energy demand in the U.S, and […]

The Lights Are Off, but Everybody's Home

The word has spread on the Internet that those who oppose the energy plan developed by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney should turn off all their lights and electrical devices for the summer solstice tomorrow from 7 to 10 p.m., regardless of the time zone. Fans of the “Roll Your Own Blackout” campaign say they […]