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Larry Craig’s environmental legacy was dismal, but his successor’s might be better

In keeping with the classy GOP tradition -- out with the gay and in with the new -- Sen. Larry Craig is now history. But, expanding on Tom's post, it's worth keeping in mind that his brown legacy extends well past his much-lampooned arrest in an airport toilet.

The New West Network has a fairly encyclopedic rundown of the many ways in which Larry Craig obstructed legislation that was friendly to the environment and advanced measures detrimental to it. Some highlights: Craig supported offshore drilling, supported drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, obstructed appropriations to, among other programs, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, promoted the transportation of nuclear weapons to Yucca Mountain for storage therein, deappropriated funds intended to count the dwindling population of salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers, trounced efforts to raise public land grazing fees, and attempted to deregulate big timber. It's quite a record -- all the more worth mentioning because some of the names being tossed around as potential replacements present such an enormous opportunity for improvement.

Exploring the tubes so you don’t have to

Mo’ links! Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland Ohio recently passed a renewable portfolio standard that falls prey to the worst pitfalls of that particular policy mechanism: Gov. Ted Strickland wants to require that 25 percent of the electricity sold in Ohio by 2025 come from alternative energies, such as fuel cells, solar panels, windmills, nuclear and […]

Bush lies misleads on global warming, again

The Prez has a long history of misleading the nation on climate change. Not unlike his father, who promised on the stump to be the "environmental president," Bush promised on the campaign trail in 2000 to reduce CO2 emissions, then promptly reversed this position once he took office.

But that's in the history books. Last week, according to the Washington Post, he told an audience at a fundraiser in Washington state:

Do you realize that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that cut greenhouse gases last year?

One problem: that's, er, misleading at best. A spokesperson for the Council on Environmental Quality admitted so after the speech, saying that although the U.S. did slightly reduce energy consumption and thus emissions last year, it couldn't rule out the possibility that other nations did as well.

"We are making sure the President is aware of that," the spokesperson said.

Sen. Clinton will introduce eco-justice legislation

Senator Hillary Clinton — perhaps you’ve heard of her? — plans to introduce an Environmental Justice Renewal Act, providing federal funding to low-income communities that tend to house many of the nation’s polluting facilities. While it may be resisted in Congress, the idea behind the legislation has been growing in the grassroots for decades. Says […]

Voluntary actions didn’t get us civil rights, and they won’t fix the climate

Strange but true: Energy-efficient light bulbs and hybrid cars are hurting our nation’s budding efforts to fight global warming. More precisely, every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new bulb or spend extra on a Prius, ExxonMobil heaves a big sigh of relief. Scientists now scream the news […]

A gaggle of URLs

I’ve been off work since Wed., so a ton of stuff has accumulated in my browser. As I would prefer to start Autumn ’07 blogging with a clean slate, I hereby give you a Gargantuan Post-Labor Day Linkapalooza. Here we go! Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone A while back, the indispensable Jeff Goodell […]

Number of hunters and fishers in U.S. has declined since 1996

Wildlife agencies have been scrambling to make up funding shortfalls in the last few years due at least in part to a drop in the number of hunters and fishers and the revenue-generating licenses they buy. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, hunter numbers have declined about 10 percent between 1996 and 2006, […]

The disgraced senator’s real crimes go unpunished

In John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, a lowly cop finds himself assigned to lurk in a public bathroom, on the lookout for “suspicious characters.” Sen. Larry Craig bumbled into just that sort of trap, his tapping foot and now-infamously “wide” toilet stance dooming him to political infamy. There’s no justice in entrapment, but […]

Pope urges youth to care for the planet

Pope Benedict XVI preached the gospel of green to hundreds of thousands of young Catholics in Loreto, Italy, on Sunday, one day after the Italian church’s designated Save Creation Day. While the church gave out recycled-material backpacks filled with biodegradable plates, hand-cranked cell-phone chargers, and prayer books printed on recycled paper, the pontiff implored young […]

Unions are getting behind a green candidate

So as not to let Labor Day go by unacknowledged, let’s check in with the unions. Recently, John Edwards told the machinists union they’d have to give up their SUVs. They endorsed Hillary. Edwards has, however, gotten endorsements from the carpenters, steelworkers, and mineworkers unions. As Brad Plumer notes, the latter is a particular feat […]