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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]