Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen is blogging from Washington, D.C., where he is attending the inauguration of Barack Obama and events surrounding the inauguration.

During the inaugural opening ceremony, among the many themes of American greatness that were touched was the American invention of preserving wilderness and majestic places for all of the people, not just for royalty or the wealthy. Lincoln's proclamation protecting Yosemite Valley, Teddy Roosevelt's monumental land and forest conservation were highlighted.

Not mentioned: the last eight years of policies to remove such protections and turn national treasures over to the oil and coal industries. How fitting and marvelous that on Saturday, as the Inaugural began to unfold, a federal judge in Washington blocked the Bush administration's last such attempt, ordering that gas leases in the red rock canyon country of Utah not be awarded and putting the issue into the hands of the new President.

Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen is blogging from Washington, D.C., where he is attending the inauguration of Barack Obama and events surrounding the inauguration.

This inauguration coincides with the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King's 80th birthday, and the connections between his work and vision and the election of Obama are everywhere: an opening ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial where the "I Have a Dream" speech was given in 1963; the "We are One" theme of the opening ceremony, people of all kinds from all over the country.

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal wrote:

A long-oppressed people have raised up a president. It is moving and beautiful and speaks to the unending magic and sense of justice of our country.

Magic ... there is no better word for what is going on.

As we said in our last missive, the emerging Obama team, cabinet and otherwise, is looking very promising with a few question marks. The president-elect is said to enjoy having people of differing views around him and listening as they discuss their differences, which is a healthy attitude. The truth will out and all that.

But today I want to say a word or two about the only one of these worthies that I know personally. I'm talking about John Holdren, just named scientific advisor to the president. I don't think Mr. Obama could have made a better pick from all 300 million Americans, though I confess I don't know them all.

Maybe it's a good thing that Bush has kept Earthjustice so busy these last eight years, fending off unrelenting assaults on the environment. The experience is proving invaluable as we face, in these final weeks of the administration, a frantic effort to roll back some of the nation's most significant protections. We also are encountering a barrage of last-minute attempts to convert America's wild, public treasures into private, commercial commodities.

Any day now, we expect Bush's Fish and Wildlife Service to once again remove endangered species protections from the northern gray wolf—protections we secured this year after Bush first de-listed the wolf.