Climate Politics

“And Now!” Grinned the Grinch, “I Will Stuff Up the Tree!”

Bush admin overhauls forest management policy The Bush administration unveiled sweeping changes to federal forest-management policy on Dec. 22, while Americans milled through malls and airports, minds dancing with visions of, well, everything but forest management. The changes will “streamline” approval of forest-management plans by eliminating a key provision, long despised by timber companies, that […]

Bushies gut national forest rules

Three days before Christmas, the Bush administration announced that it's making the biggest overhaul to forest-management rules in some three decades. The news made the front page of today's New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, etc. -- but ya gotta know it'll slip by unnoticed by a great many folks stuck in whited-out airports in the Midwest and teeming malls everywhere else.  

It's been a while since the Bushies pulled one of these announce-an-environmental-abomination-when-no-one's-looking stunts, but they returned to the tactic with a real doozy this time.  

"A key wildlife protection that has governed federal forest management for more than two decades will be dropped under new regulations announced Wednesday by the Bush administration, and requirements for public involvement in planning for the country's 192 million acres of national forest will be dramatically altered," write Bettina Boxall and Lisa Getter in the L.A. Times.  

With Leavitt on the way out, who’ll be next to head up the EPA?

Leavitt, left, accepts Bush’s nomination to head HHS and leave EPA behind. Photo: WhiteHouse.gov. There were plenty of “Leavitt or leave it” jokes when former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R) took the helm at the U.S. EPA just over a year ago. Many insiders didn’t expect him to stay long at the agency, figuring he […]

It Was a Dark and Stormy Year …

2004 sets records for heat and natural disasters 2004 may be the fourth warmest year on record and the most expensive to date for insurance companies stuck with the tab for cleaning up after natural disasters, according to new data released this week. Extreme weather conditions in many parts of the world, including a record […]

Hagelian Dialectic

Kyoto opponent Hagel may ally with Blair for new climate agreement U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s efforts to cajole the U.S. into doing something about climate change — and shake off his rep as a Bush “poodle” — may have found an ally in Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). Hagel met with Blair this week in […]

Dude, Where’s the After Party?

U.N. negotiators begin talking about post-Kyoto actions Two months before the Kyoto Protocol even takes effect, representatives meeting in Buenos Aires for the annual U.N. conference on climate change are already discussing plans for reducing emissions post-Kyoto. So far, says Eliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, participants have agreed that any […]

First, Do More Harm

Bush admin delays new air-quality rules, pushes “Clear Skies” The White House has told the U.S. EPA to hold off on issuing the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which would curtail emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, in deference to a renewed push in Congress to pass the Bush administration’s long-stalled “Clear Skies” legislation. Delaying […]

Leavitt to Leave It

Leavitt to move from EPA to HHS President Bush announced today that he intends to move U.S. EPA chief Mike Leavitt into a new position as secretary of health and human services, ending Leavitt’s tenure of just over a year at the agency. Leavitt, a rising star in the Republican Party and a fierce Bush […]

Clinton, late convert to climate-change cause, now preaching up a storm

He wasn’t known as the eco-warrior president. Nor was he a visionary on energy independence. But Bill Clinton is now using his legendary charisma and silver tongue to help mobilize the shift away from fossil fuels. Bill gets heated up over climate. Photo: Clinton Presidential Foundation. “[T]he decisions we make or fail to make in […]

Putting the “Pact” in “No Impact”

Tony Blair trying to entice U.S. into “Kyoto-lite” climate treaty With much of the industrialized world heaping scorn on the U.S. for spurning the recently ratified Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration may soon get a chance to regain a smidgeon of international cred on the climate-change issue. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an effort […]