Climate Politics
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Don’t gamble with your vote in 2004
Is Ralph ready to run? Photo: Nader 2000. Activists have plenty of good reasons to challenge the Democratic Party operatives who focus on election strategy while routinely betraying progressive ideals. Unfortunately, the national Green Party now shows appreciable signs of the reverse problem — focusing on admirable ideals without plausible strategy. If Ralph Nader runs […]
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Fun facts on voters’ environmental values and more
73 — percentage of Americans who think political candidates’ positions on the environment are “very important” or “somewhat important”1 61 — percentage who say they are either active participants in or sympathizers with the environmental movement2 30 — percentage who list the environment as an “extremely important” factor in deciding for whom to vote3 49 […]
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A special edition on elections and the environment
“Information is the currency of democracy,” said Thomas Jefferson, who, as the oft-cited father of democracy, presumably knew whereof he spoke. Alas, a couple of hundred years later, it seems more accurate to say that currency is the currency of democracy. Here at the height of the Information Age, information about the workings of our […]
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Dump Struck
Bush Lets Mining Companies Dump on More Public Land The Bush administration announced yet another environmental rollback on Friday, following a pattern of releasing such news right before a holiday weekend, presumably in hopes that it will slip past the public’s notice. This time the beneficiaries are mining companies, which, thanks to a reinterpretation of […]
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Creature Discomforts
Endangered Species May Soon Be Imported to U.S., Under Bush Proposal The Bush administration wants to radically alter conservation policies to allow hunters, circuses, the pet industry, and leather importers to bring endangered animals into the U.S. from other nations — dead or alive. Since its adoption in 1973, the Endangered Species Act has been […]
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No Heir Apparent Until Air’s Apparent
Documents Show Sharp Dispute Took Place Over 9/11 Air Quality Information Newly released government documents are finally providing Congressional Democrats with what they’ve been looking for: information about who was responsible for censoring data about Manhattan’s air quality following the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Those documents reveal “screaming telephone […]
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Holmstead Act
EPA Official Gave Misleading Testimony on Clean Air, Say Whistleblowers Meanwhile, all isn’t well inside the U.S. EPA, either. Last year, Assistant Administrator for Air Policy Jeffrey Holmstead testified before Congress that Bush administration efforts to ease clean air enforcement rules wouldn’t interfere with pending lawsuits against dirty power plants — but two former agency […]
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Will a softer McCain-Lieberman bill prove to be harder-hitting?
Even though Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) decided to soften the terms of their climate bill last week, the document may go down in history as one of the hardest-hitting gambits in the U.S. fight against global warming. In fact, easing the demands of the bill — which proposes a mandatory cap […]
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Live MTBE-Free or Die
New Hampshire Sues 22 Oil Companies Over MTBE Pollution In a first-of-its-kind move by a state, New Hampshire filed suit against 22 oil companies yesterday, blaming them for contaminating drinking water with the fuel additive MTBE. The companies added the chemical to their gasoline to make it burn more cleanly, but it has leached into […]
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A Monumental Decision
Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Challenge to National Monuments The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a pillar of former President Clinton’s environmental legacy yesterday when it refused to hear challenges to the creation of seven national monuments in five Western states. The Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm, argued that Clinton overstepped the bounds […]
