Climate Politics
All Stories
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Bed Head
An Interior Department appeals board has upheld its earlier ruling that three of the leases for a coal bed methane (CBM) drilling project in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin were issued without adequate environmental review. Environmentalists hope the decision will help block pending leases for such drilling on millions of acres throughout the Rocky Mountain region. […]
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Superfund Meets Kryptonite
Under the Bush administration, the Superfund program to clean up toxic-waste sites is seemingly becoming not-so-super. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the U.S. EPA completed cleanups at 42 toxic waste sites, down from 47 in the previous 12 months. This year’s total was unimpressive compared to the average of 76 sites cleaned […]
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Nevada Protest Site
Sixty-six environmental justice activists, hailing from a broad range of states, were arrested early this week in Nevada after demonstrating over the weekend against nuclear energy and weapons. The protesters, including individuals from South Carolina, Washington, and Mississippi, blamed nuclear facilities for high rates of cancer, birth defects, and skin disorders in black, Latino, and […]
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Come on In, the Water’s Fine
Ecologists and sport-fishing fans have succeeded in blocking a decree by the Mexican government that would have increased commercial shark fishing and threatened other fish stocks. Mexico currently requires shark vessels to stay 50 miles offshore; the new rule would have allowed them to come within a half-mile of the coast, dragging mile-wide nets and […]
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Wet Behind the Ears
In what it is calling a remedy to the excesses of the Clinton years, the Bush administration is paving the way for Western states to gain control over huge volumes of water previously claimed by the federal government. One prominent example of this new policy involves the Black Canyon National Park in Colorado; in 1978, […]
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Jeb and Flow
Environmentalists and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) are duking it out over the regulatory language of the colossal $7.8 billion Everglades restoration project — a battle that will work against Bush in the upcoming gubernatorial election. Critics say Bush is less interested in restoring the Everglades than in securing a water supply for South Florida […]
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Zero Down
Breaking with the federal government’s long history of supporting California’s clean-air efforts, the Bush administration is saying the Golden State went too far by revising its zero-emission-vehicle rule last year. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Justice Department, the White House sided with DaimlerChrysler and General Motors, which have taken California to court over […]
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Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have accused the Bush administration of stacking a government advisory panel on childhood lead poisoning with members sympathetic to lead-related industries. The 12-member panel advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on averting such poisoning, and in the past, the CDC has appointed the panel’s members. Now, […]
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The Seeds of Discontent
Despite a teeming black market for genetically modified seeds in Brazil, the country’s leading presidential candidate says he would not lift a four-year ban on biotechnology anytime soon. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers’ Party, who by all appearances was the victor in the first round of elections, held this weekend, opposes […]
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Smoky Signals
The superintendent of Yosemite National Park announced yesterday that he would retire rather than accept a transfer to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where he would have been called upon to oversee two controversial projects opposed by environmentalists and others. One project involves building a road across the largest undeveloped wilderness in the eastern U.S. […]
