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The environmental case for integrated communities
The following passage is excerpted from The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream. (For more on this issue, read an interview with the author.) The growing concern with sprawl creates an interesting possibility for alignment of urban and suburban, white and minority, affluent and poor interests. Advocates for low-income […]
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The Humpty Dance
Bush attempts to weaken Clean Air Act are illegal, court rules Americans who breathe scored a big victory on Friday, when a federal appeals court declared illegal the Bush administration’s long-running effort to undermine pollution rules for coal-fired power plants and other pollution-belching industrial facilities. Judge Judith Rogers, writing for the court, castigated the U.S. […]
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Bush Sticks Dirk in Interior
Enviros decry Bush’s nomination of Kempthorne to lead Interior He’s a mountain-bike enthusiast, two-term governor, and object of fear and loathing among conservationists. And he just picked another one. Mere days after the resignation of Gale Norton as secretary of the interior, President Bush nominated as her replacement Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne (R), saying he […]
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Flame! I Wanna Log Forever
Congress debates measure that would speed up salvage logging We interrupt our ongoing coverage of global-warming doom and gloom to update you on logging doom and gloom. A bill in the U.S. House would force the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and other agencies to issue decisions on timber sales on public lands […]
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Kempthorne leads list of possible replacements for Norton at Interior
The rumor mill is churning fast as Interior Secretary Gale Norton prepares to bid adieu to the Bush administration, and two names on the short list of possible replacements are leading the pack: for an outside-the-Beltway pick, Dirk Kempthorne, Republican governor of Idaho; for an inside-the-agency pick, Lynn Scarlett, currently Norton’s No. 2, who will […]
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Umbra on politicians and the environment
Dear Umbra, I got into a long debate with a conservative friend recently about how President Bush has shown that he does not have environmental interests at heart. But I did not have any facts on hand about detrimental policies or budget cuts. On the other hand, my friend was able to go to the […]
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They’re Just Not That Into You
U.S. oil execs defend record profits — again — in Senate testimony ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the gang took another turn at the Senate’s cotillion yesterday, flirting with the Judiciary Committee and making coquettish demurrals about record profits and price gouging. Unlike November’s fete with the Senate Commerce Committee, this time oil executives were sworn in […]
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A plan to spruce up D.C.’s Anacostia River has some residents anxious
In the southeast corner of Washington, D.C., the capital of the most powerful nation in history, lies a polluted, neglected neighborhood known as Anacostia. Slated for a grand renewal project centered on the local river that gives it its name, the area stands at the juncture of poverty and opportunity. If plans move forward, it […]
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Meet Robert Bullard, the father of environmental justice
Robert Bullard says he was “drafted” into environmental justice while working as an environmental sociologist in Houston in the late 1970s. His work there on the siting of garbage dumps in black neighborhoods identified systematic patterns of injustice. The book that Bullard eventually wrote about that work, 1990’s Dumping in Dixie, is widely regarded as […]
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Lease and Desist
House reps blow taxpayer dough on pricey gas-guzzlers It’s almost April; do you know where your taxes are? Last year, at least $1.05 million in public money went to leasing SUVs, luxury cars, and other vehicles for members of Congress — just as the Founding Fathers intended. Members of the House are legally allowed to […]
