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The Latest by Tom Turner

Author & Historian

August 18, 2008

Roadless: No Mercy

By Tom Turner

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Judge Clarence Brimmer of the federal district court in Wyoming last week declared illegal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, adopted in the waning hours of the Clinton administration. The judge had blocked the rule five years ago, but a ruling from a federal judge in California two years …

August 12, 2008

The Return of the Wolves

By Tom Turner

The legal tussle over the wolves in the Northern Rockies, which took a turn for the better a week or so back, has overshadowed another uplifting wolf story: confirmation of a breeding pack of wolves in northeast Oregon for the first time since the animals were shot, trapped, and poisoned out of the state more …

August 5, 2008

Be Careful What You Ask For

By Tom Turner

Many of us, self included, have long lamented that environmental issues never play much of a role in presidential elections. I firmly believed that if Al Gore had stressed some of those issues in 2000 he’d be the one now winding up his second term. John Kerry likewise, maybe. Well, now we’ve got a campaign …

July 24, 2008

Shades of Nixon—A New Enemies List

By Tom Turner

Jamie Saul is a young lawyer, a graduate of Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland and one-time law clerk in the Seattle office of Earthjustice. As he entered his third year of law school, he applied for a position in the Department of Justice in order, as his application said, to “serve as part …

July 7, 2008

Some Good After All

By Tom Turner

There was a piece in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle that said that people are abandoning their cars in favor of buses and trains in unprecedented numbers and that the experts say the shift may be permanent. The reason is high gas prices, of course, and that corroborates what some of us have been saying for …

July 2, 2008

Supreme Court May Muddy Water Law

By Tom Turner

At the very end of the current term of the Supreme Court, the justices announced that they will review a Ninth Circuit decision that forbids Coeur Alaska, a mining company, from dumping mine tailings into Lower Slate Lake north of Juneau, Alaska. This is not the best news of the week. The company admits that …

June 24, 2008

The Return of Ecoporn

By Tom Turner

One of the first things I ever had published in a book was a chapter in The Environmental Handbook, a Friends of the Earth/Ballantine Books number, published for the first Earth Day, in 1970. It was called, "Ecopornography, or How to Spot an Ecological Phony." It’s time to dust it off and send it around …

June 18, 2008

New Report… Same Old Gloom

By Tom Turner

This is for people who are just in too good a mood and need to be brought down a little. Or a lot. We speak of a new report from the Heinz center, available here. John Heinz, for those who don’t remember, was a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, who died rich and young, heir to …

June 17, 2008

Read the Fine Print

By Tom Turner

I got a call the other day from a fellow in Alabama who is a keen student of The Washington Times and its influence on right-wing politics in the U.S., the paper being owned and operated by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, otherwise known as the Moonies. My caller was incensed by something …

June 10, 2008

Let the Debates Begin

By Tom Turner

One recurring theme among environmentalists, regularly confirmed by pollsters, is that concern over environmental issues seldom guides the way people vote, especially for president. People care, no doubt about that, but generally something else—crime, war, the economy, party loyalty—tips the balance one way or another. This time will be interesting to watch. There’s little question …