Our Stories

The Latest by Tom Turner

Author & Historian

October 24, 2008

Three Months that Shook the World

By Tom Turner

So the fate of the Roadless Rule is now in the hands of three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, at least its immediate fate, following a hearing this week in San Francisco. The Forest Service, represented by the Justice Department, wants the three judges to overturn a Sept. 2006 decision that found …

October 16, 2008

Crisis and Opportunity

By Tom Turner

The late Dan Luten was sneakily brilliant, somewhat iconoclastic, and possibly a maverick had that word not been so debased lately. In his fifties, he left a job as a chemist with Shell Oil to teach geography at Cal and became deeply involved in conservation. He served on the board of Friends of the Earth, …

October 14, 2008

People Do

By Tom Turner

Chevron has long been a leader in image advertising, spending an immense amount of money on print and television ads explaining to the public just how utterly wonderful the company is. Years ago, their tag line was "People Do," in answer to rhetorical questions like, "Do people really care what happens to our precious wetlands? …

October 9, 2008

Damned If You Do

By Tom Turner

Another story the other day, this time from the San Jose Mercury News, showing the perils of importing predators to control pests. This time it’s the mosquitofish, a guppy-sized fellow, brought into California from the East Coast in the 1920s to control, you guessed it, mosquitoes. The fish are voracious—can eat 500 mosquito larvae in …

October 7, 2008

To the Streets

By Tom Turner

It’s not all that often that front-rank political leaders call for civil disobedience, but that’s just what Al Gore did in New York on September 24 at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. "I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal …

September 24, 2008

Put That Shirt Back On

By Tom Turner

Earthjustice has been accused of being many things, including preferring birds over people (which reminds me of a fine old quote. Charles Callison, a stalwart of the Audubon Society, was once asked whether he liked people or birds better. He said, "I like the people who like birds."). We’ve been called elitist. We’ve been accused …

September 22, 2008

How About Bailing Out the Atmosphere?

By Tom Turner

I heard Al Gore on "NPR Science Friday" a few weeks back talking about what it would take to get us out of the climate catastrophe that’s bearing down on us. The biggest single step, he said, would be to convert the entire U.S. vehicle fleet to electricity. He said that is possible within 10 …

September 17, 2008

A Comity of Errors

By Tom Turner

Judge Clarence Brimmer of the federal district court in Wyoming must feel a bit under siege. He’s doing battle with two other federal district court judges, one in San Francisco, the other in Washington, DC. Judges are encouraged to respect each other’s opinions—it’s called comity, otherwise known as courtesy or deference—and comity is taking a …

September 3, 2008

Enemies List Revisited

By Tom Turner

A few weeks ago we wrote of a former Earthjustic law clerk, Jamie Saul, who was blackballed out of a job at the Department of Justice because he favored vigorous enforcement of environmental laws. Maybe blackballed is the wrong word—he applied for a job and didn’t get it for reasons that were certainly improper and …

August 27, 2008

A New Run at Endangered Species

By Tom Turner

Congressional Republicans, led by former congressman Richard Pombo, tried in vain for years to gut the Endangered Species Act. They were thwarted largely because the law is so popular with the public. Now the Bush crowd is trying to do by fiat what it couldn’t accomplish in the legislative arena: rewrite the rules. Specifically, a …