Climate Politics

Take a Drink Every Time He Says “Nucular”

Bush will talk up nuclear, hydrogen, and ethanol in State of the Union “We’ve got to wean ourselves off hydrocarbons, oil,” said President Bush on Friday. Yup, you read that right. In an interview aired on CBS, the president said he would use this Tuesday’s State of the Union address to decry “foreign oil” and […]

Hush Hush, Keep It Down Now

Top NASA climate scientist says he’s being censored by Bush admin If Bush administration officials were trying to keep NASA’s chief climate scientist quiet, as he charges, they failed spectacularly. Instead they got a front-page story in The New York Times. In it, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, charges that […]

Re-Spent, Ye Sinners

Bush admin plans to fund new dawn for nuclear power Like an atomic Dr. Frankenstein determined to reanimate the corpse of the civilian nuclear-power industry, the Bush administration intends to allot $250 million in fiscal year 2007 to researching new ways to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — technology largely abandoned in the 1970s as too […]

Mass. lawmakers pushing to join climate pact, despite Romney’s objections

A handful of Massachusetts legislators are maneuvering to get their state into the most ambitious U.S. effort yet to fight global warming, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, launched in late December. If they succeed, it’ll be a smarting wallop for Gov. Mitt Romney (R), who is widely expected to run for a spot on the […]

What will a conservative Canada look like?

While we were busy fretting about eco-terrorists, Canada went and had itself an e-lection.

Newly elected Conservative PM Stephen Harper is a likely Bush ally, says CNN, and aims to "move beyond the Kyoto debate by establishing different environmental controls." Meanwhile, the BBC doesn't pussyfoot: "[he] is known to be hostile to gay marriage and the Kyoto Protocol on climate change."

Sigh. On the other hand, the CBC reports that Harper "believe[s] it's better to light one candle than to promise a million light bulbs." So maybe he's into conservation after all.

Johnson Left Hanging

Six former EPA chiefs tell Bush to cap and cut greenhouse gases Six former heads of the U.S. EPA — including five Republicans — have blasted the Bush administration for failing to act on global warming. In an unprecedented united front, the ex-chiefs, gathered yesterday to commemorate the agency’s 35th anniversary, agreed that debating the […]

The Sound of One Hand Tapping

Greenpeace joins lawsuit against Bush admin’s secret wiretap program On Tuesday, a diverse group of individuals and organizations filed suit against the National Security Agency, asking a federal court in Detroit to declare the agency’s clandestine domestic eavesdropping program unconstitutional. The plaintiffs — ranging from Greenpeace to stalwart Iraq war booster Christopher Hitchens — have […]

Montana’s landscape is changing — will America’s be next?

Montana's governor is a politician of such breathtaking dexterity, ability, and raw, hungry, political instinct that your first thought upon witnessing him -- no matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat -- is likely to be, "When does he explode, and in what manner?" For rarely in American politics has anyone this good been that way indefinitely.

Land-rich regions’ residents tell hungry politicians to back off

It is difficult to recognize change while living through it. However, two recent decisions involving the use of the public’s lands signal a historic political and policy transition, particularly here in the Rocky Mountain West. The first of those two is the almost unanimous rejection by Western governors of the Bush administration’s multiyear attempt to […]

Keeping Up With the Bushes

Conservative Canadian politico vows to back out of Kyoto agreement As Canada’s federal election looms — yes, Canada is having an election — Conservative leader Stephen Harper is campaigning on virtually abandoning the Kyoto accord on climate change. Harper, who proclaimed in 2004 that the treaty would never become international law (oops), says victorious Conservatives […]