Climate Politics
All Stories
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A travel club provides a greener alternative to AAA
It’s not easy to knock AAA. The venerable organization has 45 million members who count on it for trip insurance, travel advice, and, most of all, emergency services. It’s no wonder that many members have sworn lifetime loyalty to Triple A: Rescuing drivers marooned on dark, lonely highways can do wonders for membership renewal rates. […]
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Coal Play
It would seem that preemptive measures are all the rage among anti-environmentalists these days. In Alaska, Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) is awaiting the Interior Department’s response to a request he made last year (while still a senator) to prohibit the establishment of new wilderness areas in the state. “Congress set aside all this wilderness, all […]
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Smart Attack
Smart-growth policies, designed to put a damper on runaway development and preserve local character, have recently come under attack in a handful of U.S. communities. In Loudon County, Va., on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., nearly 200 lawsuits were filed last week against the county’s growth-control policies. Also last week, the mayor of Erie, Colo., […]
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When You Dish Upon a Star
Minnesota would become the first state in the U.S. to effectively ban phosphorus in automatic-dishwashing detergent if a bill working its way through the state legislature gets the eventual thumbs-up. Phosphorus, which helps to remove those oh-so-unsightly spots from glasses and dishware, ultimately gets flushed out of homes and into lakes and streams, where it […]
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Hydra-gen
President Bush yesterday tried out several neat-o gadgets powered by hydrogen fuel cells (a video camera and cell phone, among others) and reinforced the lofty language of his State of the Union speech, saying that he would ask Congress to spend $1.2 billion on “a new national commitment to take fuel-cell cars from the laboratory […]
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Military Might What?
After failing last year to wrest from Congress a wholesale exemption from many environmental laws, the Pentagon is trying to rally public support for its campaign this year. The Defense Department says that laws such as the Endangered Species Act have interfered with training and other programs in the past. It’s a hassle to have […]
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Test Ban Treat
Here’s one unintended consequence of the impending U.S. war against Iraq: The Bush administration has delayed a formal challenge to the European Union’s ban on genetically modified food. Recently, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick blamed the ban for widespread starvation in the developing world and said the administration was considering taking a case against Europe […]
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First Down
The parent company of a power plant in eastern Ohio has become the first of 36 energy utilities to be tried for causing smog and health problems in the Northeast. In a lawsuit that began yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department accused FirstEnergy Corporation of significantly upgrading its W.H. Sammis plant without installing new pollution controls, […]
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Refuge-nix
Six GOP senators are throwing a wrench in the Bush administration’s plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. The six — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, John McCain of Arizona, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, and Mike DeWine of Ohio — announced last […]
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An INS project threatens Southern California lands
On a sunny afternoon in Southern California, a Border Patrol agent watched as a man climbed the metal fence that divides the beach between the U.S. and Mexico. When the man dropped onto U.S. sand, the agent yelled, and the man’s friends hauled him back over to the other side of the fence. The fence […]
