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Jacques Be Nimble

French President Jacques Chirac was expected to woo green voters today and propose that the public be granted a constitutional right to a clean environment. In a speech released ahead of time, Chirac was planning to call on parliament to draft language for the French Constitution that would put environmental protections “on a par with […]

Green Berets

After spending 12 million dollars, the U.S. Army has come up with a nifty new something — a more eco-friendly bullet (rad!) that is just as effective at killing as past lead-based ones. The “green ammunition” uses a less toxic tungsten composite that the Army says will significantly reduce the soil contamination caused each year […]

The Political Climate Is Changing, Too

The coal and utility industries are lobbying Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive energy task force to ease a clean-air rule so that major upgrades can be made at power plants without setting in motion tough pollution-control requirements. The Clinton-era U.S. EPA sued eight big utilities for upgrading power plants without also improving pollution controls. But […]

Log Rolling

Twenty Republicans in the U.S House, led by Reps. Sherwood Boehlert (N.Y.) and Constance Morella (Md.), joined with more than 100 Democrats yesterday in asking President Bush not to roll back the plan approved by the Clinton administration to ban road-building and logging on 58.5 million acres of national forestland. Boehlert said, “I believe our […]

Puget Sound Science

Environmentalists petitioned the feds yesterday to protect Puget Sound orca whales under the Endangered Species Act. The National Marine Fisheries Service has 90 days to review the request. If it thinks the petition is warranted, the agency will then have one year to decide whether to list the killer whales as threatened or endangered under […]

McCain Is Able

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized the Bush administration yesterday for rejecting the Kyoto treaty on climate change. McCain said, “I don’t agree with everything in the Kyoto Protocol, but I think it is a framework we could have continued to work with. We could have fixed it.” In other climate news, Ford is expected to […]

Dutch Oven

Royal Dutch/Shell said yesterday that a significant oil spill had occurred in Ogoniland, Nigeria, where the company has volatile relations with local residents. The company said it did not yet know the volume of the spill, but suggested the cause was arson near one of its facilities. Ledum Mittee, president of the Movement for the […]

Note to Self: Don't Feed Lead to Kids

Children with levels of lead in their blood that are now considered safe scored significantly lower on intelligence tests than children with almost no lead in their blood, according to a study presented yesterday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting. Lead author Bruce Lanphear said the research suggested that one in every 30 children […]

First 100 Daze

About 200 protesters from at least 22 environmental groups marched at the White House yesterday, claiming that President Bush had the worst environmental record of any president at the 100-day mark of an administration. In front of the White House gates, they lifted a big sign decorated with a spewing oil well; smaller signs read […]

The Lung and Short of It

More than 140 million Americans live in areas that flunk air-quality tests for ozone pollution, according to a report by the American Lung Association. The number rose 9 million since the group issued a similar report last year, in part due to hot summer conditions that could become par-for-the-course because of global warming. The group […]