Climate Politics

Sorry, No Vacancy

Washington initiative blocks further nuke-waste dumping at Hanford By a more than a 2-to-1 margin, Washington state voters passed Initiative 297, which blocks the U.S. Department of Energy from sending more nuclear waste to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the southern part of the state until current waste at the former nuclear-weapons facility is fully […]

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

Colorado passes renewable-energy initiative Colorado voters approved Amendment 37 yesterday, marking the first statewide renewable-energy portfolio standard in the U.S. to come directly from a popular vote rather than through the legislature. The state’s largest utilities will now be required to generate 3 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2007, and 10 percent […]

Irrelevance: The New Relevance

How did the environment play in the election? Funny you should ask … Remember all that earnest debate about whether environmental issues would play a significant role in the presidential election? Well, as it turns out … not so much. And in the Senate races we’d been keeping an eye on, one would also be […]

Moral values

Perhaps the most galling thing about last night's catastrophe was the news that higher turnout ultimately benefited the right, and what drove the turnout, the top issue for a majority of Bush voters polled, was "moral values."

In this context, "moral values" is code for "being freaked out about gay people getting married," though most in the media don't have the balls to say it.  Nearly a dozen states had initiatives banning gay marriage on the ballot, and the social conservatives turned out in force.

In our current political world, "moral values" has come to mean homosexuality, abortion, and professions of religious faith.  In other words, when we talk about morality we talk almost exclusively about private behavior.  How did this happen?

Environmental leaders and thinkers on what comes next

What do we do now? That’s the question one early riser asked Grist in a letter to the editor right after the election results rolled in. Faced with another four years of the Bush administration — an administration that has been roundly denounced as the most environmentally destructive in the history of the nation — […]

Bush appointee charges that EPA tried to thwart lawsuits against polluting power plants

It scarcely raises an eyebrow nowadays when the Bush administration’s environmental record is characterized, yet again, as a relentless attack on decades of protections for air, water, and wildlife. But the latest such charges come from a loyal soldier of the GOP, appointed by the Bushies to head up the enforcement office of the U.S. […]

Her Majesty’s a Pretty Nice Girl — and She Does Have a Lot to Say

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth speaks out on global warming In a rare public intervention into politics, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II met with Prime Minister Tony Blair and either — depending which news reports you believe — strongly expressed her concern about global warming, or smacked him upside the head for not pushing the U.S. to join […]

Declaration of dependence

Factcheck.org, the website the vice president tried to make famous, has this to say about the two presidential candidates' energy plans:  "Kerry and Bush Mislead Voters With Promises of Energy Independence."

The website, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, writes:

Kerry focuses on conservation efforts, but most agree his plan is little more than an outline. Bush supports expanded drilling in Alaska to increase domestic oil supply, but the US has only about 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. At current rates of consumption that would only last 4.5 years.

Factcheck.org seems to hang its hat on a Rocky Mountain Institute study that found that the U.S. could end its reliance on foreign oil by 2040 -- "but that would require a ten-year investment of $180 billion, and such steps as taxing gas-guzzling vehicles and providing government subsidies for low-income buyers of fuel-efficient autos. Neither candidate is proposing anything close to that."

In many ways, the conclusions of Factcheck.org match those reached by New Yorker author John Cassidy in his recent piece "Pump Dreams; Is Energy Independence An Impossible Goal?"

Bhopal Lowball

Bhopal disaster victims seek to quadruple compensation Victims of the devastating 1984 industrial gas leak in Bhopal, India, have appealed to the country’s Supreme Court to quadruple the amount of compensation they will receive. They have long charged that the Indian government has been slow to distribute funds from a $470 million settlement paid by […]

Flipper Flop

Court rules that whales and dolphins can’t sue “…” Did you hear that? That was us breaking the bad news to the whale community: They can’t sue the U.S. government. Such was the unanimous ruling of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week, responding to a lawsuit against President Bush brought on behalf […]