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Showing 1,454 results

Matthew Freeman | February 18, 2009

Doremus on Pending Decision on Chesapeake Bay Oysters

Over on Legal Planet, CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. She writes: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a draft EIS last fall considering the impacts of […]

Shana Campbell Jones | February 17, 2009

Cap-and-Evade: Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and the Clean Air Act

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: climate change is different from traditional environmental problems. It’s global, for one thing. Carbon dioxide isn’t a traditional pollutant, for another. It doesn’t cause cancer. It doesn’t kill fish. Plants use it in photosynthesis; every human and animal emits it. The problem is that combustion creates […]

Yee Huang | February 12, 2009

A Modern Day Midas

From the airspace over the Indonesian gold mine Batu Hijau, it might seem as though the mythical King Midas has been resurrected in a modern, and twisted, form.  Where King Midas of Greek lore was granted the touch of gold, the modern King Midas assumes the form of a global mining company that, in a […]

Margaret Clune Giblin | February 11, 2009

Parks Funding in Stimulus Bill: Good for Parks and for the Economy

Both versions of the economic stimulus package – that passed by the House and by the Senate – include funding for the National Park Service.  The bill the House passed last month would allocate $1.7 billion to the National Park Service for “projects to address critical deferred maintenance needs within the National Park System, including […]

Robert Verchick | February 9, 2009

Mr. Go is Gone (Almost)

About thirty miles from my front door, heavy barges are dumping rocks into Louisiana’s Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO), hoping to permanently plug the de-commissioned shipping channel before the end of the next hurricane season. It’s a big plug. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that the structure will weigh 430,000 tons, “with a base 450 feet […]

Margaret Clune Giblin | February 6, 2009

The Scalpel or the Hatchet? Applying Common-Sense Planning to Water Management

One logical response to the constant news of the economic recession is cutting back on discretionary purchases and developing a household budget.  That is, if we know that times are tough and that we may encounter difficulties sustaining the lifestyle we’ve grown accustomed to, we take stock of our circumstances and plan for the future.  […]

Matt Shudtz | February 5, 2009

Out of Hibernation

More evidence that EPA is starting to find its bearings after eight years of hibernation: in an interim report on the year-old Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program, EPA admits that asking companies who work on nanomaterials to voluntarily conduct and disclose research on health and environmental hazards isn’t producing much useful information. As a result, the […]

A. Dan Tarlock, Holly Doremus | February 3, 2009

Takings Claims in the Klamath Basin

Tarlock and Doremus are co-authors of Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics, published by Island Press in 2008. Last week, the Oregon Supreme Court agreed to decide whether irrigators in the Klamath Basin "own" water delivered by the federal Klamath Reclamation Project. This latest development is one more […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | February 2, 2009

President Obama’s FOIA Order

On January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum that I’m hopeful will be the start of undoing much of the excessive secrecy practiced by the previous administration. The memorandum, established that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” A recent […]