http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/environment/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Fri, 27 Feb 2004 16:06:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/710/who_owns_the_sky/ Former Interior Secretary Walter Hickel once explained: “If you steal $10 from a man’s wallet, you’re likely to get into a fight. But if you steal billions from the commons, co-owned by him and his descendants, he may not even notice.” Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has so much public wealth been shoveled into private hands with such brazen efficiency. Timber companies, corporate ranchers and foreign mining companies with cheap access to public lands are plundering our national patrimony. Congress obligingly turns a blind eye to the accompanying pollution, soil depletion and habitat destruction. Companies are rushing to patent our genes, privatize agricultural seeds and stake private claims on plots of the ocean. Broadcasters—who for decades enjoyed… activism economy environment politics social justice technology David Sirota Tue, 09 Mar 2004 09:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/402/hostile_takeover/ Members of the Sierra Club, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental group, will receive ballots this month to elect their board of directors, and with that vote will cast their views in the most contentious immigration battle of the year. Immigration is not a new debate for the Sierra Club. In 1998 the membership voted overwhelmingly to stay out of the issue, restating that the most effective way to deal with the impact of population on the planet is to reduce levels of American waste and to raise the global status of women. But for some, tackling immigration is a moral imperative, and their quest to bring the Sierra Club into the debate has resulted in a slate of… environment international affairs David Sirota Tue, 06 Apr 2004 23:17:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/410/meltdown_madness/ President Bush has always been a good friend to the nuclear industry, but his recent overtures should sound alarm bells. The White House has begun pushing to replace governmental safety standards at federal nuclear facilities with requirements penned by contractors. As Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) quipped, “It’s like the fox guarding the hen house.” What prompted the Bush administration’s move? Congress insisted the government start fining contractors for violations. The proposed weakening of safety standards would affect more than 100,000 nuclear plant workers and comes at an especially lousy time to lower their morale. A strike by 276 operations and maintenance workers was narrowly averted in January at the Indian Point 3 plant, 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan. When… environment government: administration regulation David Sirota Thu, 15 Apr 2004 08:02:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/413/the_task_at_hand/ The Bush administration has until June 1 to turn over secret documents involving Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force or provide the legal grounds to withhold them. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman instructed the departments of the Interior and Defense, as well as several other government agencies, to make public thousands of pages of documents on the day-to-day operations of the classified meetings and records of the task force’s executive director, Energy Department employee Andrew Lundquist. In his March 31 ruling, Friedman rejected arguments by the Bush administration that records from the meetings—including the names of those present—are protected by executive privilege. He found that the documents involve issues of public interest and importance and therefore fall under… environment government: administration politics David Sirota Fri, 04 Jun 2004 10:06:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/764/don_breathe_easy/ The recent discovery of record numbers of asthma sufferers in several Chicago neighborhoods has underscored what experts are calling a national asthma “epidemic.” Yet as the epidemic rages, the Bush administration has moved to relax air pollution standards for power plants, which experts have linked to the growing rates of the disease. Asthma afflicts at least 25 million Americans and kills 5,000 people each year. Ethnic minorities and the poor comprise the vast majority of those who die or are hospitalized. In response, researchers have developed better medications, and groups like WE ACT in Harlem and the American Lung Association (ALA) are working to understand and combat asthma. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control… environment medical and health race social justice David Sirota Mon, 19 Jul 2004 08:43:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/851/be_a_good_steward/ When John Kerry assumes the presidency in January, he’ll most likely face the same divided Congress George W. Bush did, and, like Bush he’ll need to rely on historic events and gullible senators from the opposite party to push through even a modest legislative agenda. Facing these challenges, Bush has achieved far more of his environmental agenda of self-regulation and under-enforcement through executive action than legislative proposals before Congress. It’s hard to imagine that Congress would vote to transfer billions of dollars from California consumers to energy companies—or stop enforcing the nation’s environmental laws and let corporate polluters off the hook for paying to clean up toxic waste—yet Bush has achieved all this and more through executive action. With acknowledgements… environment election 2004 David Sirota Wed, 06 Oct 2004 07:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1124/environmental_hogwash/ Chicken has taken on a whole new meaning for Faye Lear, of White Plains, in western Kentucky, who lives 300 feet from two giant barns containing thousands of birds laying eggs for Tyson Foods. There are the sickening wafts of ammonia and bird feather dust that chase her inside from her front porch. Clouds of well-fed flies swarm her car windows. Once a year, when the barns are emptied for cleaning, mass infestations of mice overrun the neighborhood. “It’s like an open sewer for a big city,” says Lear, who works as a nurse. “It’s nauseating, it burns your eyes. I wouldn’t call them a farm—they’re like an industry.” Across the country, thousands of these “factory farms”—each warehousing thousands of… corporations economy environment regulation David Sirota Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1408/a_dangerous_legacy/ It would be difficult for a president to express more disregard for the environment than George W. Bush. Bush refused to act on global warming, declaring the Kyoto treaty dead. He refused to continue the Superfund program, sticking Americans with a multi-billion-dollar tab for cleaning up corporate toxic waste. He refused to enforce the Clean Air Act and shelved years worth of legal work by the Environmental Protection Agency to hold power plants accountable for breaking pollution laws. From the downright absence of discussion of the environment in his State of the Union address to his decision to appoint anti-regulation oil and gas industry lobbyist J. Steven Griles as Deputy Secretary of the Interior, his consistent hostility has sent shivers… environment government: administration election 2004 David Sirota Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:59:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1746/green_red_blue/ As a key faction of the Republican base, hunters and anglers, often hailing from rural, culturally conservative areas, are seemingly the last people on earth who would call themselves environmentalists or progressives. The GOP has for years courted this demographic by stressing an unwavering support for gun ownership rights, and by vilifying urban Democrats who have pushed for modest gun control. But now the GOP is increasingly trying to erode other protections for outdoorsmen. As the old saying goes, “That dog won’t hunt.” In states and localities throughout America, more and more Republican lawmakers are taking orders from wealthy landowners, developers and energy companies. These fat cats want to weaken laws that mandate hunting and fishing access rights, sell off… environment politics election 2004 David Sirota Tue, 21 Jun 2005 07:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2171/environmentalism_is_dead_what_next/ When the U.S. Senate voted to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this past March, a casual observer might have expected the leaders of the environmental movement to curl up into the fetal position and start making plans to build their own personal arks. Instead, within hours, e-mails from the leaders of the nation's environmental groups quickly spread out to their members, announcing their defeat. "I am not going to soft-pedal today's defeat," wrote John Adams to the Natural Resource Defense Council's mailing list. "It is distressing that pro-oil forces, significantly strengthened by last November's election, were able to pass this terrible bill in the Senate, where we've blocked them before." Similar sentiment was echoed by John Flicker,… Environment David Sirota Wed, 22 Jun 2005 07:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2172/no_more_of_the_same/ "The Death of Environmentalism--Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World," by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, excerpted on the left, was released at the October 2004 Environmental Grantmakers Association conference in Hawaii. It has been discussed in publications ranging from the New York Times to The Economist. The two are founding partners of American Environics, a research and strategy company. Their book, The Death of Environmentalism and the Birth of a New Aspirational Politics, will be published by Houghton Mifflin in Fall 2006. In early June, I interviewed Nordhaus and Shellenberger via e-mail about what has happened since its release. Our discussion follows: Let's start with the generational politics that seem to be just below the surface of much of… environment David Sirota Mon, 15 Aug 2005 16:13:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2281/addressing_the_state_of_the_movement/ In These Times' July 11 issue, "Environmentalism is Dead. What's Next?" generated a number of passionate replies from a variety of different perspectives. To expand the debate, we've highlighted three responses, below. The first, "Where's the Race?" from a set of environmental justice activists, argues that the "ecomorticians" ignore both the relationship of environmental issues to race and the contribution that groups devoted to addressing this issue have made to expanding environmental initiatives. The second, "Youthful Hubris," by In These Times contributor and freelance writer Kelly Kleiman, suggests that progressives are ill-served by generational politics. And the third, by feminist writer and activist Amy Richards, "Show us the Solutions," suggests that younger activists are more motivated by tangible problem-solving than… Environment David Sirota Fri, 02 Sep 2005 08:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2302/shooting_down_the_breeze/ Faced with news that its wind turbines were killing thousands of bats at two wind farms on Appalachian mountain ridgelines, the nation's largest wind power company reacted quickly. The company, FPL Energy, barred scientists from pursuing follow-up work, pulled their $75,000 contribution from the research cooperative studying bat mortality and ended the doctoral work of a graduate student who had produced two years of data showing unusually high rates of bat death at the sites. The move stunned bat biologists and conservationists who had joined a cooperative scientific effort with the company. Known as the Bat and Wind Energy Cooperative, it is made up of industry members, government agencies and bat researchers. The group released a peer-reviewed study in June… environment David Sirota Fri, 02 Sep 2005 17:42:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2310/unnatural_disaster/ White House Press Spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters in response to questions about the devastating havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, "This is not a time for politics." But with New Orleans now underwater, hundreds--if not thousands--dead and tens of thousands in desperate need of food, shelter and water, the natural question is: What could the federal government have done to lessen this catastrophe? The answer is all about politics. The Bush administration, having done its best to realize Grover Norquist's dream of cutting government "to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub," for days watched impotently as citizens of New Orleans were drowned. It is a disaster that is largely the consequence of the policy decisions that… environment politics David Sirota Wed, 07 Sep 2005 12:11:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2314/katrina_racial_wake/ Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous aftermath have stripped away the Mardi Gras veneer and casino gloss of the Gulf Coast region, and disclosed the stark disparities of class and race that persist in 21st century America. The growing gap between the rich and the poor in this country is old but underreported news--perhaps in part because so many of the poor also are black. Accordingly, many Americans were surprised that most of the victims of the New Orleans flood were black: Their image of the Crescent City had been one of jazz, tasty cuisine and the good-natured excesses of its lively festivals.  Where did all those black people come from, they wondered; and where were the white victims? African Americans… environment government: administration race David Sirota Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:23:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2315/will_history_repeat_itself/ In the great flood of 1927, the upper crust of New Orleans tried to save the city by breaking the levees and flooding the land of poor farmers who lived farther up the Mississippi River. But even among those poor victims, blacks were treated worse than whites. John Barry, author of Rising Tide, an account of that flood, argues that the political reaction to that flood and its aftermath boosted the populist politics of Huey Long. Barry writes that the flood made clear the value of the federal government, even in disasters that had been treated purely as a local responsibility, and thus helped build popular support for the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt. Will the 2005 flood of… environment David Sirota Mon, 26 Sep 2005 08:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2330/disasters_natural_and_social/ Hurricane Katrina, which was both a natural and governmental disaster, has put Eric Klinenberg and his 2002 book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago in the media spotlight. Heat Wave recounts how racial inequality and political neglect contributed to the deaths of more than 700 Chicago residents during the heat wave of July 1995, one of America's most important and ignored catastrophes. In These Times Editor Joel Bleifuss talked with Klinenberg, an associate professor of sociology at New York University, about the parallels between the Chicago heat wave and Hurricane Katrina. You have examined how police forces in cities like Chicago have usurped functions that were once the responsibility of public social service agencies. Do you see… economy environment David Sirota Tue, 27 Sep 2005 08:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2329/hurricanes_rain_on_bush_tax_cut_parade/ When President Bush kicked off his bid for re-election in the spring of 2004, he launched what was another in a long line of cookie-cutter conservative campaigns. There was the predictable pander to cultural conservatives with his high-profile introduction of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Then, there was the well-worn chest-thumping on national security and the War on Terror (sans any mention of the still-at-large Osama bin Laden). And then, finally, there was the most familiar theme of all: right-wing economics. Bush proudly promoted the trillions in tax cuts he had passed as supposedly helping the economy, and then went on the attack. "The tired, old policies of tax and spend," Bush said, referring to Democrats, "are a proven… environment politics David Sirota Thu, 22 Dec 2005 06:01:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2446/christmas_in_new_orleans/ Picture Santa's sled with a rolling kitchenette attached and you have some idea about the size of a FEMA trailer. I came across a yard of them when I got lost on the highway near Baton Rouge, where most of my family evacuated out of New Orleans. The trailers are not the double-wides I imagined--but some are festooned with lights and an artificial Christmas tree outside the door as in a Bobbie Ann Mason short story. A FEMA trailer is more like a camper that you'd attach with a hitch to your four-wheeler when you want to get out of the city for the weekend. Tiny, but nonetheless a gift. As the rest of the country, children and adults alike,… criminal justice environment David Sirota Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:18:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2465/when_red_goes_green/ In November, much of China watched in horror as work crews struggled to contain a benzene spill that polluted the northeastern Songhua River and disrupted drinking water supplies to about 12 million people in the region for more than a week. But even those watching the event unfold on TV from the comfort of their homes in Beijing weren't entirely safe from the effects of China's increasing environmental decay. China's capital is one of the most polluted in the world and lung cancer is now the number one cause of death here, according to China's own State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). A thick cloud of sulfur envelops the city most evenings and a recent picture taken from NASA's Terra satellite… environment asia David Sirota