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Showing 1,454 results

Holly Doremus | March 5, 2009

Bad Endangered Species Act Rules Not Yet Undone

The following is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.   The Bush administration’s last-minute ESA (non)consultation rule is getting almost as much attention now as it did during the comment period. Then, the administration reportedly received more than 300,000 comments, the vast majority of them negative. Those objections were, of course, quickly swept under the […]

Matthew Freeman | March 4, 2009

Change on the Way for Superfund

After suffering years of neglect at the hands of the Bush Administration and conservatives in Congress, Superfund may be on the verge of springing back to life. That at least is the objective of a new proposal from President Obama, included in his recent budget outline, calling for the reinstatement of a tax on polluting […]

Matt Shudtz | March 3, 2009

Oil Shale Update: Small Potatoes

Last Wednesday, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that the Bureau of Land Management is going to “review and reconsider” the oil shale leases proposed in the waning days of the Bush Administration.  The Bush proposal would have potentially opened 1.9 million acres of land in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming for oil shale development […]

Shana Campbell Jones | March 2, 2009

Industry Lobbyists Suiting Up for Climate Change Battle

The Center for Public Integrity released a report last week finding that the number of lobbyists seeking to influence federal policy on climate change has expanded more than 300 percent in five years. The report also finds that special interest industry lobbyists outnumber public interest environmental advocates 8-to-1.   That’s right. The most important environmental legislation […]

James Goodwin | February 26, 2009

Another Twist in the Mercury Air Pollution Saga

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would not be accepting an appeal of a case involving the Bush Administration’s regulatory plan for reducing air mercury emissions from power plants.  For the last two decades, the regulation of mercury air pollution has been caught up in a long and winding journey reminiscent of Homer’s […]

Yee Huang | February 24, 2009

Water Footprints – Silently Splashing Along

Walk into any grocery store and you’ll find a barrage of labels on every product that proudly and loudly proclaims its ecofriendly pedigree: Organic!  Fair trade and shade-grown!  Local!  An article last week in the Wall Street Journal posits two of the latest entries into the fray: virtual water and water footprint.      Relatively new […]

Matthew Freeman | February 23, 2009

Milwaukee Reporters Earn Journalism Award for BPA Reporting

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger are about to pick up some well deserved hardware for their series on bisphenol A (BPA) – a plastic hardener that leaches from plastic when microwaved. The substance causes neurological and developmental hazards, but it is ubiquitous in food storage containers, including water bottles and baby bottles. […]

Holly Doremus | February 19, 2009

CO2 and the Clean Air Act

This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet, “the Environment, Law and Policy Blog.”    New EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has granted the Sierra Club’s petition to reconsider a memorandum issued by outgoing Administrator Stephen Johnson in December.   Almost two years after the Supreme Court declared, in Massachusetts v. EPA, that CO2 is […]

Matthew Freeman | February 19, 2009

CPR’s Mendelson in NYT ‘Debate’ on CO2 Regulation

CPR Member Scholar Nina Mendelson has a piece today in The New York Times’s “Room for Debate” feature on the news that EPA is working its way toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act.  As The Times quite directly and correctly puts it, “Under orders from the Supreme Court, which the Bush […]