Climate Politics
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No Comment
Here’s the latest bit of unconscionable news from the U.S. Department of the Interior: Interior Secretary Gale Norton failed to submit comments from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service blasting a proposed Army Corps of Engineers plan to relax wetlands protection rules. As a result, the Army Corps will announce its final version of the […]
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Once There Were Brownfields
President Bush headed to Pennsylvania on Friday to sign into a law a five-year plan to revitalize brownfield sites around the country. Under the plan, which was approved by Congress last month, the feds will allocate up to $250 million per year to states, local governments, and Native American tribes, with the goal of cleaning […]
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David Brower leaves a legacy for dolphins
The one-year anniversary of the death of environmental legend David Brower has come and gone, just a week after the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to appeal a dolphin protection lawsuit the Earth Island Institute filed with Dave back in 1999. Dolphins on the run. Photo: NOAA. For reasons that are still unknown, a […]
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Taking Liberties?
The U.S. Supreme Court will begin today to consider a lawsuit over private property development in Lake Tahoe that has had lot owners and land-use planners squared off for more than two decades. At issue is a 1981 moratorium on the development of certain lots where runoff from rain and snowmelt would pollute the lake. […]
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Running a Groundfish
The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service is breaking the law by failing to sufficiently protect groundfish in New England, a federal judge ruled last Friday. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said she would issue an order with specific directions for how the agency should stop overfishing, because the NMFS can’t be trusted to enforce the […]
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Victor: Victoria
These days, press coverage of the Middle East is all bombs and burkhas, but Victoria Jamali is fighting a very different battle. The Iranian woman cofounded one of her country’s most active nonprofits, the Women’s Society Against Environmental Pollution. Now, along with colleagues at the University of Tehran, she is launching Iran’s first environmental law […]
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Physics Lab Tests Tensile Strength of Senator
And from the other side of the aisle … U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), normally thought of as environmentally friendly, is championing legislation to protect a mining company from any liability for environmental damage done in its 125 years of operating in the senator’s home state. The company, Homestake Mining, plans to close […]
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Anniston Get Your Gun
For almost four decades, the Monsanto Company discharged toxic waste, including millions of pounds of PCBs, into creeks and landfills in Anniston, Ala. For most of that time, the company knew PCBs were highly toxic: Monsanto consultants placed fish in the contaminated creeks and watched them die within 10 seconds, and confidential internal reports acknowledged […]
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‘Tis the Treason
It was a grim holiday season for Grigory Pasko, a Russian journalist who was sentenced on Dec. 25 to four years in prison on charges of high treason. A military reporter with an interest in environmental issues, Pasko documented the Russian Navy’s practice of dumping old weapons and nuclear waste into the ocean. The treason […]
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Are higher temperatures the price of saving the ozone layer?
After 15 years as the poster child for international environmental agreements, the Montreal Protocol has slipped into the relative anonymity of a well-functioning accord. As Kyoto Protocol negotiations grab headlines before even yielding a ratified deal, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are quietly on their way to oblivion, through unprecedented, concerted efforts worldwide. That was some of the […]
