Climate Politics
All Stories
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Deaf Charges
In better news for environmentalists, a federal judge has rejected an effort by the White House and the U.S. Navy to exempt underwater military testing and other deep-sea activities from environmental review. Judge Christina Snyder ruled yesterday that the National Environmental Policy Act applies to such activities even if they are conducted beyond U.S. territorial […]
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Speed Limit
President Bush issued an executive order yesterday directing federal agencies to speed environmental reviews of important transportation projects, arguing that highways, airports, and other such projects are critical to the nation’s economy and need to be freed of red tape. Environmentalists immediately denounced the move, calling it part of a systemic effort to restrict public […]
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Borderline Insane
Two new power plants being built just south of the U.S. border will generate billions of watts of electricity for Californians, a handful of jobs for Mexicans, and plenty of pollution for everyone. The plants, which are the first to be built in Mexico specifically to provide power to the U.S., mark a new era […]
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Stuffed Sacs
Unhappy with some of the findings of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy, the Bush administration has begun to stack the deck in its favor, eliminating some committees entirely and reshuffling membership in others. Fifteen of the 18 members of a committee assessing the effects of environmental chemicals on human health have been […]
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Warm Globally, Don’t Warn Locally
For the first time since 1995, the U.S. EPA’s annual report on air pollution trends, released earlier this month, has no section on global warming. The EPA, which deleted the chapter with White House approval, said the decision was made because the agency had released two other reports on global warming earlier in the year […]
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Snow News Is Mixed News
Beating a court-ordered deadline by only a few hours, the Bush administration imposed new air-pollution regulations last Friday that will limit emissions from snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) for the first time. When the rules are in full force after 2012, they will eliminate more than 2 million tons of pollution per year, the equivalent […]
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Green Davis
California Gov. Gray Davis (D) kept the green ink flowing yesterday by signing several more environmental measures into law. Perhaps the most significant of the laws — what Davis termed “the most ambitious” renewable energy standard in the country — requires that 20 percent of the electricity produced by private utilities in the state come […]
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Don’t Gag Me With a Heavy Metal Spoon
Despite taking an oath of secrecy regarding their jobs, employees at a nuclear weapons plant in Iowa will be allowed to talk to doctors and scientists about hazardous chemicals to which they may have been exposed, the Pentagon determined in a report issued yesterday. The oaths have posed problems for thousands of current or former […]
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Sayonara, Sonora
Environmental organizations have petitioned the Bush administration to increase protection for wildlife in its proposed management plan for California’s Sonoran Desert, saying the plan favors commerce and recreation at the expense of conservation. The enviros say the proposal violates a host of federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Wilderness Act, by cutting […]
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Can’t See the Trees for the Forest Service
Two House Democrats have accused the U.S. Forest Service of cooking its books in order to blame environmentalists for the fires that raged across much of the West this summer. Reps. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) spoke out yesterday against a recent USFS report in which the agency claimed that environmental appeals delayed […]
