Climate Politics
All Stories
-
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 […]
-
You’re Fired Up
Former Berkeley professor fights biotech industry Former University of California at Berkeley professor and one-time biotech supporter Ignacio Chapela is fighting against what he alleges are huge sums of money being used by the biotech industry to influence research at U.S. universities. After what he says was a coordinated PR push by the industry, the […]
-
Bush judicial nominees could shake the foundations of environmental law
William G. Myers III is George W. Bush’s choice for a lifetime position on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. That court’s jurisdiction covers three-quarters of all federal lands, in nine Western states where contentious battles rage over energy, mining, timber, and grazing. Which way will the scales of justice tip? Unlike most judicial […]
-
Ford: “Tough”
Two California drivers fight Ford to keep their electric vehicles An around-the-clock protest began Friday in Sacramento, Calif., to save two electric vehicles from being repossessed and scrapped by their maker. The electricity-powered Ford Ranger pickup trucks were two of many produced by Ford Motor Co. during a new-vehicle pilot program in 1999 and then […]
-
The Axis of Intransigence
U.S. pushes to remove global-warming references from disaster talks The U.S. delegation to an upcoming global conference on natural disasters is pushing to have references to global warming removed from the U.N. action plan to be ratified there. The document cites global warming as one factor among many leading to “a future where disasters could […]