Latest Articles

Tribal Thumping

Tribe Sues Canadian Company Under U.S. Superfund Law Washington state’s Colville Confederated Tribes announced a lawsuit this week against Teck Cominco Metals Ltd., seeking to force the smelter to comply with a U.S. EPA order to pay for environmental study of the pollution it has discharged into the Columbia River over the decades. Now, normally […]

Royal Blush

Greenpeace Charged With Violating Alaskan Environmental Law Greenpeace had an embarrassing moment yesterday: Alaskan officials slapped the eco-activist group with criminal charges for sending a ship into state waters without submitting the required oil-spill prevention documents. The vessel, the Arctic Sunrise, is carting 27 activists around Southeast Alaska to protest logging in the Tongass National […]

Umbra on swamp coolers and their coolness

Dear Umbra, I recently visited Moab, Utah, and found that many people there use “swamp coolers” rather than conventional air-conditioning systems. Moab is in a near-desert environment and has frequent water-shortage problems. I’m wondering whether this swamp-cooler method of air-conditioning is really greener than the systems most of the rest of us use, and whether […]

Species Reasoning

House Committee Passes Two Bills Weakening Endangered Species Act The House Resources Committee voted yesterday to pass two bills that could make listing species under the Endangered Species Act considerably more difficult. Both were shepherded through by the committee’s chair, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). The first bill, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), would stipulate […]

Forward, Marsh!

Big Wetlands Restoration Effort Begins in San Francisco Bay This week saw the kickoff of the third-largest wetlands restoration project in the U.S., and the largest in the West, in San Francisco Bay, where tidal flows will be returned to 16,500 acres of salt ponds over the course of 30 years. The South Bay Salt […]

Dems block anti-enviro Bush judicial nominee, and the conservatives are lovin’ it

When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) fell seven votes short on Tuesday of forcing a confirmation vote on Bush judicial nominee William G. Myers III — widely considered the most anti-environment judicial candidate Bush has ever put forward — it might have seemed like a big blow to the GOP. But Frist and his […]

Anne of Green Fables

Former EPA Chief Anne Gorsuch Burford Dies at 62 Anne Gorsuch Burford’s tenure at the U.S. EPA is a fascinating slice of history. Elected to the Colorado legislature at 34, she was part of a group dubbed the “House Crazies” for their drive to reduce government size and regulation. Her intelligence, combativeness, and striking looks […]

An excerpt from Boiling Point by Ross Gelbspan

Under the administration of George W. Bush, the White House has become the East Coast branch office of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal, and climate change has become the preeminent case study of the contamination of our political system by money.

Carbon Stink

States Sue Power Companies Over Carbon Dioxide Emissions Eight states and New York City filed suit today against five of the largest power companies in the U.S., which they say are responsible for roughly 10 percent of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. The suit is filed under a relatively obscure federal common law of public […]

Pombo and Pombo-er

Anti-Enviro California Rep Blocks Wilderness Designation For years, citizens, enviro groups, and Washington state lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have worked together to craft compromise legislation to create the Wild Sky Wilderness Area, a 106,000-acre swath of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. The resulting bill has passed the U.S. Senate twice, unanimously. It now appears, […]