Climate Politics
All Stories
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An interview with Interior’s Lynn Scarlett, one of the architects of Bush’s “new environmentalism”
The people who make policy don’t always make headlines. The Bush administration boasts more than a few strong-minded, behind-the-scenes strategists with almost as much influence as cabinet members. Lynn Scarlett is one of them. As assistant secretary of the Department of Interior’s Office of Policy, Management, and Budget, Scarlett helps determine the budgets for all […]
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Interior Design
Interior’s Lynn Scarlett Defends Bush’s “New Environmentalism” When it comes to the environment, Lynn Scarlett may be the most influential Bush administration member you’ve never heard of. As an assistant secretary in the Interior Department, charged with analyzing rules and determining budgets throughout the agency, she has significant say over everything from mining to wildlife […]
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Down, Down, and Away — It’s Superfund
Superfund Sites to Remain Toxic Due to Lack of Funding According to the U.S. EPA’s inspector general, the Superfund program faces a $175 million shortfall this year; as a result, cleanup will not begin on 11 of the nation’s worst toxic waste sites. Superfund was established in 1980 as an attempt to force polluting industries […]
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Mine Every Mountain, Fill Every Stream
Bush Admin. Rule Change Would Give a Boost to Mountaintop Mining Mountaintop-removal mining is poised to get even easier thanks to a rule change proposed by the Bush administration yesterday. Significant chunks of Appalachia have already been devastated by this mining technique, which involves blasting off the tops of mountains to get at coal beneath […]
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Environmental enforcers get out while the getting’s good (and everything else is bad)
When John Suarez, the U.S. EPA’s top enforcement official, resigned on Monday to take a job at a Wal-Mart division, he assured his colleagues and President Bush that the EPA has “been able to provide more compliance assistance to industry than ever before.” The operative wording here, of course, is “assistance to industry,” seeing as […]
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The Grinch Who Stole Tongass
Bush Reverses Logging Ban in Alaska’s Tongass Forest Doing their part for holiday spirit, the Bush administration announced just two days before Christmas that it is exempting Alaska’s Tongass National Forest — America’s largest, and a longtime environmental battleground — from a controversial Clinton-era ban on development in roadless areas of national forests. The administration […]
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On climate change, other nations get cracking while the U.S. is slacking
The recent Milan conference on the Kyoto Protocol started out with a bang — a commotion of rumors about Russia’s ratification of the treaty — and went out with a whimper, offering no clear signal that the landmark accord on climate change would ever become international law. But one important development became clear amidst the […]
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Willy Wonks
Judge Orders Feds to Reconsider Protections for Puget Sound Orcas The Bush administration’s environmental policies are taking a beating from the judicial branch this week. Not only did a federal court yesterday reject a plan to allow snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Glacier national parks; today, a different federal judge struck down the administration’s decision not […]
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A Smog-and-Pony Show
Bush Team Unveils Plan to Cut Smog-Forming Pollution A new rule proposed yesterday by the Bush administration would cut emissions of smog- and soot-causing pollutants from power plants in the Midwest and East — but not deeply or quickly enough, say enviros. The plan would reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution by implementing a […]
