In what analysts are reporting as a conscious effort to eschew the politics of current events in Iraq, the Nobel committee has chosen Kenyan Green Belt Movement founder Wangari Maathai as the 2004 recipient of its annual $1.3 million peace prize.
If Ralph Nader retains even a fraction of the perception that once made him the nation’s foremost consumer advocate—and a very effective environmentalist as well—he would drop out of the Presidential race right now. With a breathtaking display of ego and an outright denial of reality, he is preparing to once again propel George W. Bush to victory in swing states where the balloting promises to be very close.
Congress was hard at work last week passing a tax reform bill meant to close off the loophole that has allowed small business owners to deduct up to $100,000 from their tax returns to offset the purchase of large SUVs.
Dear EarthTalk: What is the “Roadless Rule” and why are environmentalists in favor of it? —Eliza Carmody, Marysville, WA The U.S. Forest Service manages America”s national forests for “multiple uses,” not just recreation and preservation. And over the past 50 years, one of those primary “uses” has been resource extraction, whereby taxpayer-subsidized leases have been […]
For now, environmentalists have declared victory in a campaign to prevent natural gas drilling along a hotly contested 100-mile stretch of Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front south of Glacier National Park. Last week, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) suspended work on an environmental impact study for the Front’s Blackleaf region, where a Canadian company has applied for a gas-drilling lease.
With the Russian government finally agreeing to sign on, the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming will likely go into effect next year, despite lack of participation by the United States. The as-yet unimplemented 1997 United Nations treaty regulates the emissions of greenhouse gases by signatory nations.
It hasn’t been an easy road for the <a href="http://www.capewind.org/"> Cape Wind Project</a>, an ambitious privately funded (with public subsidies) attempt to build a large, 130-turbine wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, in Nantucket Sound. But the latest attempt to scuttle the project—an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act introduced by Senator John Warner (R-VA) has been <A HREF="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/10/08/tough_language_dropped_in_cape_wind_farm_plan/">withdrawn</A>.
When the Bush administration issued an important change in policy recently, virtually acknowledging that global warming is real, it was news to President George W. Bush, who was unaware that any new program had been announced. Earlier, he had dismissed another global warming report from his own administration as "from the bureaucracy."
September 29, 2004—<I>Nature</I>, a leading international science periodical, has published written responses from President Bush and challenger John Kerry to questions regarding their respective stands on various scientific issues, including stem cell research, global warming, genetically modified crops and nuclear weapons development. As might be expected, the candidates rarely agreed on what should be done regarding federal policy on most matters of science.
September 29, 2004—Rana Foroohar of <I>Newsweek</I> reports that over the past two years, despite lots of recent media coverage about how hot the alternative energy sector is, the worldwide stock-market value of companies developing renewable energy fell from $13 billion to $10.7 billion, while the value of fossil-fuel companies surged to record highs of more than $1.2 trillion.
