Climate Politics

Bush team pushes Clear Skies, but disagreement over CO2 could stymie the bill

Barely a week into the president’s second term, the emboldened Bush team — even whilst juggling plans for a Social Security overhaul and major new expenditures on the Iraq venture — has signaled that it’s bound and determined to pass its Clear Skies Act, the first major amendment to the Clean Air Act since 1990. […]

They met on the Prius showroom floor …

Environmentalists were there to lighten their ecological footprint. Neocons were there to lighten the fat Saudi pocketbook, full of petro dollars that fund terrorism. According to Robert Bryce, writing in Slate, the strange bedfellows have come together to advocate measures that would increase car fuel efficiency, lessen foreign oil dependence, and pump up renewables.

While Bryce pitches the "sleeping with the enemy" angle, the key point is there are multiple, compelling reasons to aggressively pursue (and for the government to subsidize) energy efficiency, renewables and alternatives to fossil fuels, and reduced dependence on overseas oil. Greens have often worked this issue with one hand tied behind their backs.

Give Peas a Chance

War-torn countries fight to protect genetic variability of crops Scientists and agricultural breeding specialists have developed a system to recover and restore rare but valuable crop varieties that might otherwise be lost forever to the ravages of war and heedless development. Called “smart aid,” the strategy involves searching out important genetic varieties — such as […]

The Clear Skies’ the Limit

Lawmakers defend states’ rights, introduce Clear Skies competition Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) and George Pataki (R-N.Y.), in a letter to a Senate committee that’s convening today to deliberate the Bush administration’s Clear Skies bill, emphasized the importance of protecting state environmental enforcement powers. Both California and New York have put in place environmental regulations stricter […]

The Lion, the Switch, and the … Oh, Forget It

Neoconservatives and greens find common cause on energy conservation And the lion shall lie down with the lamb indeed. A strange political alliance is taking shape in Washington, D.C., as neoconservatives anxious to sap political strength from their Middle Eastern nemeses form common cause with enviros anxious to slow global warming. What unites them? A […]

Two Degrees of Separation

Report warns of major climate catastrophe in as few as 10 years A task force of leading politicians, academics, and business leaders from around the world has quantified global warming’s so-called “point of no return.” And it’s bloody soon! In as little as 10 years, says a report by the task force, the global average […]

Bill McKibben sends dispatches from a conference on winning the climate-change fight

Tuesday, 25 Jan 2005 MIDDLEBURY, Vt. A crisp, cold, blue-sky New England day, fresh snow on the ground, and everything right with the world. Except that last night, as I was preparing to attend a three-day conference on climate change here in Middlebury, Vt., yet another disturbing report on global warming drifted across the net. […]

EPA offers air-pollution immunity to factory farms

On Friday, in the shadow of the splashy presidential inauguration jamboree, the Bush EPA offered factory farms a tempting tradeoff: more than two years of immunity from the Clean Air Act and certain toxic-discharge standards in exchange for participating in a data-collection program that would monitor air emissions from their facilities. Factory farms may be […]

Executive Disorder

Industry unhappy with Bush’s back-up air-pollution plan President Bush’s Clear Skies legislation has stalled out in Congress, unable to muster support even from a sufficient number of Republicans. To compensate, Bush is planning to implement some of the bill’s provisions by issuing executive orders — for instance, an order establishing a mercury-emissions trading program. But […]

Ex-FBI agent charges feds with radioactive coverup at Rocky Flats

The plotline sounds as absurd as a made-for-TV movie: An FBI agent exposes deadly contamination at an old nuclear-weapons plant, but the federal government conceals the findings. Years later, Congress votes to convert the tract into a wildlife refuge and open it to school field trips and public recreation. The site becomes a poster child […]