This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.
It’s easy for environmentalists to get depressed, given the amount of bad news about climate change, species losses, and the like. But sometimes there is unexpectedly good news. This morning’s New York Times has one of those stories. The Atlantic right whale, which not long ago was thought by many to be a lost cause, appears to be rebounding. Last year brought a record number of calves, and “probably for the first time since the 1600s, not one North Atlantic right whale died at human hands.”
Scientists working on whale recovery credit recent changes in shipping lanes and speed restrictions in coastal waters, which have reduced whale strikes. An expensive but effective monitoring program has made those shipping changes possible by providing new information about key locations for whales. Scientists are optimistic that new restrictions on fishing gear will reduce entanglements, another major problem for right whales.
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Holly Doremus | March 17, 2009
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. It’s easy for environmentalists to get depressed, given the amount of bad news about climate change, species losses, and the like. But sometimes there is unexpectedly good news. This morning’s New York Times has one of those stories. The Atlantic right whale, which not long […]
Rena Steinzor | March 17, 2009
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) invited public comments on the design of its new Executive Order on regulatory review, and CPR has now submitted our recommendations. We urged the Obama Administration to make fundamental changes in how OMB and prospective “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein operate. We're hopeful that the new Administration will convert […]
Dan Rohlf | March 16, 2009
The Associated Press reported last week that the Commerce Department’s inspector general is looking into who leaked a draft of the Bush Administration’s plans to prevent federal agencies from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, expressing concern over what he termed […]
Matt Shudtz | March 13, 2009
Last week’s Supreme Court decision in Wyeth v. Levine protected consumers’ longstanding right to take pharmaceutical companies to court for failing to properly warn patients and their doctors about the risks posed by the drugs they market. Unfortunately, people injured by faulty medical devices don’t have the same right following last year’s Riegel v. Medtronic […]
Shana Campbell Jones | March 12, 2009
The truth hurts. Some of us accept the truth; some of us ignore it. All too often, industry-sponsored scientists take another approach to the truth: attack. A recent spat over a study finding that perchlorate blocks iodine in breast milk is an object lesson in what CPR Member Scholar Tom McGarity calls “attack science.” […]
Matt Shudtz | March 11, 2009
Monday was a good day for our nation’s science policy. At the same time he announced that the federal government will abandon misguided restrictions on stem cell research, President Obama unveiled an effort to promote a sea change in the way political appointees will treat the science that informs so many federal policies. In […]
William Buzbee | March 10, 2009
On March 3rd, the Supreme Court issued its much awaited decision in Summers v. Earth Island Institute. This was the latest in a series of cases dating to the early 1990s where the central question has concerned citizen standing: will the courts allow a citizen to stand before a court to argue that government or […]
Robert L. Glicksman | March 10, 2009
(CPR Member Scholar Robert L. Glicksman replies below to CPR Member Scholar William Buzbee’s post on the Summers vs. Earth Island Institute decision.) The decision in Summers represents the latest salvo in a continuing battle between those Supreme Court Justices who view the function of standing doctrine as ensuring that litigation before the federal […]
Matthew Freeman | March 9, 2009
CPR Member Scholar Thomas McGarity had op-eds over the weekend in three Texas newspapers — the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman. His topic is Wyeth vs. Levine, last week’s blockbuster case from the Supreme Court, in which the Court rejected the Bush Administration’s multi-year effort to use the federal regulatory process as […]