Articles by Lisa Hymas

He’s ‘preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming,’ sources say

Today Britain's Independent amps up the rumors about a possible change of course from Bush on climate change, rumors that David first told us about last week. Reports Geoffrey Lean in the Independent:

President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming, senior Washington sources say.

After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources. ...

Over the past few days rumours swept the capital that the "Toxic Texan" would announce his conversion this week, in an attempt to reduce the impact of a major speech tomorrow by Al Gore on solutions to climate change.

The White House denied the timing, but did not deny that a change of policy was on its way. Sources say that the most likely moment is the President's State of the Union address in January.

British enviros worry Gordon Brown won’t be green

With British PM Tony Blair on his way out sometime in the next year -- though he won't be pinned down on a date -- Chancellor of the Exchequer (aka Finance Minister) Gordon Brown is poised to assume leadership of the Labour Party and hence the British government. What will this mean for the environment? The British press is starting to assess.

Sarah Mukherjee of BBC writes that greens haven't been impressed with Blair's follow-through on efforts to fight climate change, but they're "even more worried about Gordon Brown":

Initiatives on the ballot in six states could cripple government

A bang-up reporting job by Ray Ring in the most recent issue of High Country News on a menacing set of property-rights initiatives that will be on the ballot in six states this November: Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington. If you thought Oregon's Measure 37 was bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Oil is a feminist issue

So proclaims the cover of the latest issue of Ms., touting an article by Martha Burk: "Crude Awakening: U.S. Policies in Afghanistan and Iraq Sell Out Women in Favor of Oil." Alas, there's only a teaser online, not the full article.

In sum:

Whether supporting gender apartheid abroad, or sacrificing feeding programs for U.S. women and children so that ExxonMobil can get a tax break, or simply standing by while the company reaps record profits at the expense of women who must drive to work and heat their houses, U.S. priorities are consistent: Oil wins over women's rights hands down.

Appropriately, Burk focuses most of her attention abroad -- from pre-9/11 Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where the Clinton admin overlooked gross abuses of women's rights as it tried to grease the wheels for a Unocal pipeline, to oppressive Saudi Arabia, to increasingly woman-unfriendly Iraq, back to present-day Afghanistan, where things are looking nearly as grim for women and girls as they did when the Taliban reigned. (The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reports that more than 300 girls' schools have been burned or bombed in the country in recent years, Burk writes.)

Burk doesn't touch on any traditionally "environmental" threads in the piece, but it's an interesting, if cursory, look at how oil politics and gender politics collide.