Climate Politics
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Not Shafted Yet
Controversial mining-law revisions dropped from budget bill You might think we could take it for granted that millions of acres of national parks, forests, and other federal lands won’t be sold off to developers, but these days, it’s worthy of celebration: Late yesterday, struggling to pass a big budget bill before the holiday break, Republicans […]
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Bipartisan plan aims to revamp U.S. fisheries law
Congress is plotting its first revamp of fisheries law in nearly a decade — and it’s about time. Every boat counts. Photo: iStockphoto. Scores of fish stocks are dwindling in U.S. waters (as they are around the world), and only one of the eight federal fishing zones in the United States is widely considered to […]
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Great Expectations
Big Great Lakes cleanup plan gets an OK, but no federal funds U.S. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson and a bipartisan coalition of Midwestern lawmakers and officials approved a 15-year strategy to restore the Great Lakes on Monday. But the Bush administration says it won’t fund the plan, which may cost up to $20 billion. The […]
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Haul Out the Folly
White House makes last-ditch effort to open Arctic Refuge to drilling The Bush administration is mounting a last-ditch effort to persuade Congress to approve drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before lawmakers break for the holidays. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao are out furiously shopping talking points: It would supply […]
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Why the Montreal climate summit was too painful to watch
I’ve been to climate meetings in locales that stretch from Kyoto to The Hague, Mexico City to the Maldives. It would have been awfully easy to get in the old hybrid and drive two hours north to Montreal for the big climate-change confab that wrapped up this weekend — if nothing else, it’s a city […]
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Painting the Town Red-Green
Red-green political party makes headway in Montreal city elections Not everything going on in Montreal is as depressing as the climate summit. In recent citywide elections, Projet Montreal — a municipal political party devoted to dense urban development, public transit, and social justice — picked up two city-council seats and took a big step toward […]
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Bush accentuates nuke positives, inspires malefactors everywhere
George W. Bush developed an interesting habit this year when he talked about energy. In his speeches, words like “oil,” “coal,” and “natural gas” shivered in the dark with no adjectives, while “nuclear power” consistently got two. Bush used this spiffy phrase in, among other places, his State of the Union address and a spring […]
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There’s Nothing to Fear But Clear Itself
Bush administration gamed analysis of competing air-pollution plans Now, we know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but … it seems the Bush administration has been less than truthful about its industry-friendly air-pollution proposal. In late October, the U.S. EPA released a report purporting to demonstrate that its “Clear Skies” legislation delivered the […]
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With a CAFE boost looking out of reach, enviros check out other options
Is CAFE kaput? Since 1975, CAFE — or corporate average fuel economy — standards have stood as America’s defining energy-efficiency strategy. Yet, despite much wailing and gnashing of teeth by activists and a handful of politicians, the standards for passenger cars haven’t been raised since 1985 — they still call for automakers’ car fleets to […]
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Steamroll on Columbia
Idaho senator axes funding for agency that studies endangered salmon Well, that’s one way to deal with scientific findings you don’t like! Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has wiped out funding for the Fish Passage Center, a 12-person, $1.3 million agency widely respected by salmon-conservation experts. The center has documented shrinking fish numbers in the Columbia […]
