Climate Politics
All Stories
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Murky Outcome
In a decision that could have serious implications for the environment, U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced this week that he will run for governor of his home state next year. Murkowski, a former banker, has been a senator for 21 years and is the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. […]
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Story of the Morrill
A consumer activist and political organizer hopes to be Pennsylvania’s next governor — and its first Green one. Michael Morrill of West Reading announced yesterday that he will run for the state’s top office in 2002 as the Green Party candidate, on a platform that includes tougher protections for the environment, an $11 per hour […]
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Illegal Eagles
Federal species protection laws and the religious rights of Native Americans are clashing in a U.S. District Court in Seattle this week, where a 47-year-old man is on trial for violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Terry Antoine, a member of the Cowichan band of the Salish Tribe in British Columbia, is charged […]
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L.A. Confidential
Environmental injustice appears to be alive and well in Los Angeles County, according to a study released today by the University of California at Los Angeles, which found that neighborhoods near major pollution sources are disproportionately low-income and Latino. Latinos make up 44 percent of the county population but 60 percent of residents living near […]
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Ninth Circuit of Hell
Environmentalists asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday to lift an injunction against a rule that seeks to ban logging and road-building on one-third of national forest lands. The rule, which was enacted by former President Clinton and would apply to 58.5 million acres of federal forests, was appealed by the state of […]
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Golden State Warrior
It was a sunny weekend for environmentalists in California, where Gov. Gray Davis (D) signed into law a measure closing a loophole that developers have exploited to avoid development restrictions and jack up property values. The loophole enabled developers to subdivide properties based on out-of-date land maps. Conservationists often wound up paying inflated prices to […]
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Almost Heaving, West Virginia
Lawyers representing the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and residents of Coalfield, W. Va., asked the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday to consider limiting mountaintop-removal coal mining. Instead of taking coal from mountains, mountaintop removal take the mountain from the coal by blasting away entire hilltops, which scars landscapes and fills streams with debris. A U.S. district […]
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With national attention elsewhere, what will happen to the hinterland?
It turns out that this “new economy” of ours may be just as subject to boom and bust as was the economy based on cattle, oil, and lumber. Last month’s terrorist attacks emptied Las Vegas, caused hunters to cancel trips to Idaho and Montana and silenced the phones for ski-resort reservations in Colorado. The West’s […]
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The political reshuffling in the U.S. could help the environment
It is impossible to conceive of human acts as wholly devoid of humanity as last month’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The nation is reeling, emotionally stranded by confusion, shared suffering, and a stunningly new sense of danger. But if something good has come out of this paroxysm of grief and alarm it […]
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What's changed, what hasn't, and what should for the environmental movement
I was in New York City on Sept. 11, so recently I’ve seen a lot of things go up in smoke. First there were the airplanes, careening nose-first into the World Trade Center towers and — it seemed almost uncanny at the time — failing to emerge on the other side. Then there were the […]
