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Catastrophe and Hope
The San Francisco Chronicle (and many other papers) carries a weekly feature at the bottom of the weather page called Earthweek — a Diary of the Planet. It’s often fascinating, with tiny snippets about oddments of weather, earthquakes, animals, and other events and phenomena. On Jan. 3, it was more like Earthyear, with a litany…
Read MoreFoundation Honors Ed Lewis
We congratulate Ed Lewis, chairman of our Board of Trustees, for being honored with the prestigious Wilburforce Foundation Leadership Award. We all know how well-deserved this award is, recognizing Ed’s conservation leadership not only with Earthjustice, but as board chair of TREC, as a key player in land conservation in the Northern Rockies, and as…
Read MoreHere's to Holdren
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.…
Read MoreGot Clean Drinking Water?
In the arid West, water is life. And life may get a lot more difficult for the Colorado River – a major source of water for Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California – over the next few decades. First, there’s the double whammy of population growth and climate change, the first demanding more water from…
Read MoreThe New Green Dream Team?
Reaction from environmental groups to almost-president Obama’s cabinet choices has been interesting. Most of the choices have been welcomed by most organizations (Carl Pope made incoming labor secretary Hilda Solis sound like a green Mother Theresa). Reservations I’ve heard have been voiced about the National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones, who is said by some…
Read MoreAir Polluter 'Malfunction,' or Business as Usual?
Even when fully complying with federal clean-air laws, refineries are nasty operations, spewing tons of hazardous pollutants into the air of neighboring communities. But under a regulatory loophole, refineries, chemical plants and other industrial facilities have been allowed to pollute even more during an equipment malfunction, or when shutting down and starting back up following…
Read MoreStopping the Exit Wounds
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…
Read MoreTrouble in Paradise
We tend to think of ships as an environmentally friendly way to travel and transport goods. Measured by miles per gallon per a given amount of weight, they can’t be beat. There’s the not-so-little problem of air pollution from ships docked at various ports, of course, and Earthjustice is working with Friends of the Earth…
Read MoreGreening Your Gadgets
It’s a conundrum: how can you reduce your carbon footprint without giving up all of your nifty electronic gadgets? And, if this isn’t your conundrum, it’s surely your spouse’s, or your kid’s or your cousin’s, right? Cell phones, iPods, PCs, laptops, TVs, DVDs, VCRs, DVRs, GPSs, radios, stereos, and home entertainment systems are just a…
Read MoreFinal Postcard From Poznan
At the just-concluded U.N. climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland, Earthjustice attorneys Martin Wagner and Erika Rosenthal advocated for rapid action to reduce emissions of black carbon, now considered one of the most effective strategies to slow near-term global and Arctic warming. This could prevent catastrophic, irreversible tipping points such as the melting of Arctic sea…
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