Climate Politics
All Stories
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Week Links
The first week of the World Summit on Sustainable Development has seen a mix of surprising twists and predictable problems. On the surprising end: Two very different organizations, Greenpeace International and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, have agreed to join forces to combat climate change. The two groups plan to work together to […]
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Gambling on the Courts
Armed with $4 million, the state of Nevada is preparing for the legal battle of a lifetime: the effort to keep the federal government from establishing a high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Charles Cooper, one member of the high-profile legal team retained by the state, said yesterday that he was “very encouraged” about […]
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Fish Out of Water
The White House has declined to appeal a U.S. federal court ruling that would provide water to the agriculture industry in California’s Central Valley potentially at the expense of Northern California’s fish and wildlife — a move that has provoked anger among environmentalists. In the earlier court case, the Westlands Water District, a 600,000-acre irrigation […]
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Compassionate Conservation?
In the first of what the Bush administration hopes will be a series of public-private partnerships to create national wildlife refuges without using taxpayer dollars, the utility company Entergy is donating 600 acres of land along Louisiana’s Red River to the government. The Entergy donation could be the first parcel of a 50,000-acre Red River […]
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Knowing the Cost of Every Thin and the Value of Nothing
The plan unveiled by President Bush earlier this week to make it easier to thin forests in the name of fire prevention has touched off a firestorm of its own, enraging environmentalists who see it as a giveaway for the timber industry and a backdoor out of environmental protection measures. Moreover, environmentalists see the Bush […]
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Spoilers-r-us
If there had been any doubt that the U.S. would play the role of pariah at the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development, it was banished yesterday when White House officials announced their goals and strategies for the meeting, which begins next week in Johannesburg, South Africa. The U.S. delegation’s plan is, essentially, to stonewall: […]
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Backdraft
Citing the need to reduce fire danger after a season of devastating wildfires, President Bush is planning to propose more extensive thinning of Western forests and support legislation to streamline environmental rules that have slowed down some logging projects in the region. Most Western governors back the plan to thin forests, but environmental groups say […]
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Down Underachievers?
The environmental situation is not looking up in the land down under, according to a new report commissioned by a consortium of conservation organizations. Noting such environmental problems as loss of species and their habitats, degradation of inland waters, and high pollution levels from the burning of fossil fuels, the report calls Australia “a continent […]
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No Island Is an Island
Climate change was the leading concern at the annual Pacific Island Forum this week, where leaders of small island nations chastised the United States for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The islands have an unusually vested interest in the protocol because they face a high risk of being swallowed up by seas swollen […]
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Burned
In addition to scorching millions of acres of habitat and killing wildlife, the fires that have raged throughout the western U.S. this summer have taken another toll on the environment — a financial one. The federal government expects to spend more than $1.5 billion battling wildfires this year, and millions of those dollars will come […]
