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Kempthorne in Their Paws

Say goodbye for now to one enviro fad — more grizzly bears in the lower 48 states. Interior Secretary Gale Norton is preparing to drop the Clinton administration’s plan to reintroduce grizzlies into the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and Idaho. The bears have been removed from 98 percent of their historic range and only about […]

Fad Tuesday

President Bush said yesterday he supports a clean environment, but would “make decisions based upon sound science, not some environmental fad or what may sound good.” He defended his environmental record at an environmental awards ceremony for youths, and he continued to talk green in interviews aired this morning on network shows. Since becoming president, […]

The Race Goes to the Swift

Massachusetts Acting Gov. Jane Swift (R) unveiled regulations this week that will make the state the first to limit carbon-dioxide and mercury emissions from power plants. The rules, which will go into effect in June and apply to the six dirtiest plants in the state, will also require big cuts in nitrogen oxide and sulfur […]

Bee Bop

The environmental movement has become big business, concludes the Sacramento Bee in a five-part series this week. In 1999, the most recent year for which such figures are available, the heads of nine of the country’s 10 largest environmental groups earned at least $200,000 a year; one of the big wigs earned more than $300,000. […]

No, Mobiles

The Bush administration yesterday let stand a rule approved by former President Clinton to ban snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, but it said that it hoped to craft a compromise in the near future to amend the rule and allow some snowmobile use to continue. The rule, finalized on Clinton’s last day […]

Rainbow Worriers

Wearing surgical masks to draw media attention, Greenpeace activists sailed out of Russia yesterday on a month-long crusade to raise public awareness about the problems of chemical pollution in the Baltic Sea. They will visit Estonia and other spots along the sea before arriving in Stockholm, Sweden, where officials from countries around the world are […]

Well, at Least He Keeps Some of His Promises

White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said yesterday that U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman had spoken in “confusion” on Sunday when she announced that Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive energy task force would not recommend oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Fleischer went on to directly contradict Whitman, saying that the task force […]

Funereal Disease

Pyres of animals being burnt in the U.K. because of the foot-and-mouth disease are producing more dioxin than all of the country’s factories combined. The burning has put the country on pace to double its annual dioxin emissions. Meanwhile, the government has admitted that it hasn’t conducted an assessment of the health effects of the […]

Austin is losing the battle to protect the Barton Springs salamander

At first blush, it hardly seems fair to compare the plight of the Barton Springs salamander to that of endangered species such as the fierce grizzly of the Northern Rockies or the no-longer-so-resilient salmon of the Pacific Northwest, totemic animals that characterize whole regions and spark national debate. After all, the Barton Springs salamander is […]

Something in the Air

Almost all doubt has been removed that particulate pollution causes significant health problems, according to U.S. EPA scientists working on a draft review of the issue. The review takes into account 3,000 new health studies published since 1997, the year that the agency decided to move forward with a new standard for particulates. The pollution […]