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The Bonneville Horror

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) on Wednesday said the Bonneville Power Administration and other federal agencies were not fulfilling their obligations to help salmon in the midst of a drought that has caused electricity prices to soar. In recent weeks, the BPA has twice declared power emergencies that allow the agency and the U.S. Army […]

The Fool on Capitol Hill

Some Labor Party members in the U.K. are publicly deriding U.S. President Bush as the “toxic Texan” and “the fool on Capitol Hill” for his stance on climate change. In fact, the Bush administration, by all reports, has been astonished by the intense reaction around the world to its decision to withdraw from the Kyoto […]

Their Side of the Mountain

A federal appeals panel earlier this week dismissed a lower court’s ruling that mountaintop-removal mining in West Virginia violates environmental law by burying hundreds of miles of streams under tons of rock and earth. The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found unanimously that the plaintiffs in the citizens suit against […]

Um. Haven't We Learned Anything?

People across the former Soviet Union offered their prayers yesterday to victims of the Chernobyl disaster, 15 years after the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government says that more than 70,000 people were fully disabled by the accident and more than 4,000 who took part in the clean-up have died. At […]

Credit Cars

Ford, Toyota, and Honda are working with environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists to urge Congress to pass tax credits for people who buy vehicles that are better for the environment. Legislation introduced in the Senate would create tax credits that range from $1,000 for gas-electric hybrids to […]

Reserve Judgment

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and the state cabinet unanimously approved a plan yesterday to create the largest no-fishing zone in the U.S. The Tortugas Ecological Reserve, which lies 70 miles west of Key West and 140 miles from the mainland, came about after enviros, fishers, and scientists met for 10 years to discuss ways […]

Double, Double for Soil and Trouble

Laying the groundwork for what may become the first environmental law signed by President Bush, the U.S. Senate yesterday voted 99-0 to more than double spending to clean up of hundreds of thousands of moderately contaminated and abandoned industrial sites around the country. In the past, developers have often steered clear of the sites, known […]

Caught With Their Briefs Down

The White House has told the Justice Department to figure out a legal way to cast aside former President Clinton’s plan to ban road-building and logging on 58.5 million acres of national forestland, reports the Washington Post. The Bush administration has until the end of next week to file a brief in an Idaho federal […]

Smells Like Clean Spirit

Environmentalists in Kuwait — indeed a rare breed — celebrated scent-free, fresh air on Earth Day in the town of al-Qurain, nine miles south of Kuwait City. Thirty years ago, before the town was developed, officials began dumping the nation’s trash in an abandoned quarry in al-Qurain. Fifteen years later, housing went up, and residents […]

Nappy Stir Up

Environmental groups in the U.K. want the country’s National Health Service to spearhead a campaign to use cloth nappies (that’s Brit for “diapers”) instead of disposable ones. The Women’s Environmental Network says parents attending pre-natal classes in the U.K. are shown only how to put a disposable nappy on an infant — and that’s wrong, […]