Currents: Latest Environmental News, Science & Policy Updates

The head of Britain’s Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) last week issued a report stating that the Blair government is not changing fast enough to keep pace with the environmental problems facing that country and the world at large. Sir Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the SDC, said that Blair’s central objective remains conventional economic growth rather than the well-being of society and the planet as a whole.

The federal government is underwriting the largest study of U.S. children ever performed. The National Children’s Study will track 100,000 individuals from mothers’ wombs to age 21 in order to increase understanding of how the environment affects the health of America"s youth.

Ann Klee, currently general counsel to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, has been nominated by the Bush Administration to become general counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Rejecting the Bush administration’s latest effort to hide Cheney energy task force deliberations from the public, U.S. District Court Judge Paul F. Friedman issued a ruling last week forcing the administration to make public the records of the task force’s executive director and other federal agency employees responsible for the task force’s day-to-day operations.

In response to soaring gas prices and increasing pressure to shore up all potential domestic petroleum reserves, environmentalists are re-launching campaigns to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from development. And several branches of the federal government are making environmentalists" case a little easier, despite the wishes of the Commander in Chief.

The government of Kenya is lobbying the U.N.’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to give the African lion its most protected status. Kenya’s Wildlife Services estimates that the overall population of the king of beasts—now numbering about 23,000—has been cut in half over the past decade due to habitat loss, a decline in prey, and unsustainable trophy hunting.

Last week California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) called on automakers to build cars and trucks that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent within the next 12 years. As a state that is by itself the sixth-largest economy in the world, California plays a vital regulatory role in efforts to reduce pollution. The decision by the Air Resources Board ups the ante against global warming, as automakers will most likely comply with the new regulations on all vehicles intended for sale in the U.S.

When is the American auto industry going to "get it" and start producing gas-electric hybrid vehicles to compete with the Japanese models already here from Toyota and Honda? From the looks of the New York International Auto Show, which runs from April 9 to April 18, the environment is still not coming into focus in Detroit.

Last week the Bush Administration took the controversial survey-and-manage provision–which required the review of potential timber sales for the presence of endangered species–out of the Northwest Forest Plan.