Our Stories

The Latest by Tom Turner

Author & Historian

December 16, 2008

Final Postcard From Poznan

By Tom Turner

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 …

December 9, 2008

And What About the Land?

By Tom Turner

Yes, one knows that the economy and the climate are jobs one through ten, but I can’t help but be a tiny bit concerned that the new Obama administration still lacks a Secretary of the Interior, a Secretary of Agriculture, a Secretary of Energy, an Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and a Chairman of …

December 3, 2008

Roadless Setback

By Tom Turner

As faithful readers will recall, we’ve been reporting on the saga of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule for a very long time. Put in place at the end of the Clinton administration and immediately hamstrung by Bush operatives, the rule, which bans most roadbuilding and logging on roadless areas of the national forests, has bounced …

December 1, 2008

Encouraging Words

By Tom Turner

The Guardian, over there across the pond, has just published a splendid piece that should help put to rest some misconceptions about the ease, expense, and possibility of converting the world to a sustanable/green/you name it energy system. The writer is Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet. He lays it all out …

November 26, 2008

Pardon Me

By Tom Turner

It appears that Compassionate Conservatism, the muddled sound bite that was supposed to guide activities early in the reign of George II, has made a comeback, at least insofar as it applies to killers of wildlife. On November 24, right before Thanksgiving and right after Sarah Palin pardoned a holiday turkey and then proceeded to …

November 19, 2008

The Obama Dawning

By Tom Turner

This blog posting by Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen appeared this week in Celsias. For all Americans who care about our environment, which is most of us, a hopeful dawn broke with the election of Barack Obama. During the last eight years the administration did everything it could to privatize the great natural areas in …

November 18, 2008

There's No Bailing Out Nature

By Tom Turner

Mathis Wackernagel of the Global Footprint Network had an important (and scary) piece in the San Francisco Chronicle the other day that one hopes the new administration and the new Congress will take note of. Using data from the United Nations and elsewhere, Wackernagel reports that we’ve been overdrawing nature ever since about 1970. That …

November 14, 2008

Voodoo Economics?

By Tom Turner

Now let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Thanks to two very expensive wars, tax cuts for people who don’t need them, and assorted combinations of malfeasance and corruption, the federal budget deficit is at an all-time high and growing like kudzu. So what’s the response to the financial and monetary crisis? Why bailouts, of …

November 5, 2008

Ecobama?

By Tom Turner

So what will this incredible development mean for the earth? Time will tell, of course, but we here at Tom’s Turn are quite optimistic, both because of and in spite of what was said in the campaign. The first thing to watch, as always, is the appointments—Interior, Energy, EPA, climate czar if there is to …

October 29, 2008

Nail Down the Furniture

By Tom Turner

Have they no shame? (Hint: No.) We speak of the current band of varlets and scoundrels just ending their eight-year reign of terror in our nation’s capital. With both presidential candidates lambasting Mr. Bush and his henchmen daily, the lame ducks are hell-bent on wreaking as much havoc as they can in these last not-quite-three-months …