Currents

In an effort to help commuters traveling short distances while reducing smog in urban areas, China is ushering in a new generation of plug-in electric vehicles powered by cutting edge batteries. Long ago abandoned by U.S. automakers due to short ranges and difficult cold starts, plug-in electric vehicles are all the rage in China today, especially for those formerly reliant on bicycles to get around or unable to afford gasoline for internal combustion cars.

An international task force of business leaders, scientists and politicians has released a report predicting dire environmental consequences if the leading industrial nations of the world don’t work quickly to combat global warming.

Trust the chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, to seize upon consumer anxiety and twist it to his own anti-environmental ends. There are countless examples of this, but in the most recent incident he’s capitalizing shamelessly on the growing natural gas shortage.

According to environmentalists, the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people last December also wreaked havoc on the natural environment across all affected areas.

According to a recently released report by the National Academy of Sciences, implementation of the Bush administration’s proposed "Clear Skies" initiative would actually weaken air quality standards for some large coal-fired utilities across the country, putting millions of Americans at greater risk from air pollution.

Is there anything we can do to stop the Bush administration from issuing the same fraudulent energy bill year after year? The House of Representatives has twice passed this bouquet to big fossil-fuel companies, in 2003 and 2004, only to have it fail in the Senate.

The influential president of a leading electric utilities industry group told Reuters last week that he is skeptical about passage of the much-vaunted energy plan likely to be reintroduced to Congress this year by the White House.

According to a new report by a trio of environmental groups, expanding urban sprawl is putting a third of America’s endangered species at risk of extinction within the next two decades as a result of habitat loss.

According to Friends of the Earth, the amount of devastation from late December’s Indian Ocean tsunami was significantly lower in those coastal areas protected by natural barriers such as mangrove forests and coral reefs.

Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton announced last week that state wildlife agencies in Idaho and Montana have been approved to take over management of gray wolf populations in their states from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.