Environmental issues are yesterday's hot button and the progress on environmental issues that seemed to be forged by various coalitions during the Clinton administration is largely over.

That's the nature of politics and it's not yet time to throw our hands in the air and give up, to curl in front of the TV. The difficulty is that the things we do (and have done) are no more subject to quick changes in directions than a super-tanker. The fear, and it's a very real fear, is that by the time the oceans begin to rise and the high meadows disappear in Montana, we'll be relegated to the status of bystanders at our own undoing.

• Why Detroit Doesn’t Deserve to Survive in Automobile Manufacturing
  Fifteen years or so ago, General Motors talked enthusiastically about developing electric cars.
• Bio-Mass-Hysteria
  Anyone reading that prognostication by Professor Lave would think the Promised Land had been found in Iowa, behind a six-row picker. Meeting a congressional mandate is the smallest part of the misinformation—Congress has no idea what it has mandated or why or for what purpose, except that it sounded good in an election year when gas prices are driving politicians for cover.
• An Exciting Example of Assertive Action
  The Washington Post has just fallen all over itself, praising the most environmentally abusive administration since—since?—well, since no other, because none in our history has done so much to deface, destroy, defame and deregulate this nation’s ecological laws.
• Teddy Kennedy's Suicide Squeeze
  Backing up to Teddy’s ‘view’ of wind energy, back in February he got Rep Don Young from the neighboring state of Alaska (isn’t that close to Massachusetts?) to tie up the proposed energy project by--get this—claiming it screwed up shipboard radar.
• The Good Hands People Are Washing Their Hands
  That enormous sucking sound you hear down around the Gulf Coast, isn’t floodwater receding, it’s insurers heading for higher ground.
• Mowing Down a Marketing Bonanza
  When all else fails, haul out the China threat. Senator Christopher Bond, B&S’s Washington shill, argues that tightening small-engine standards nationally would take 1,750 jobs from his constituents and send them to China.
• 'Selective' Freedom of Speech
  Spin used to mean the way you told the story. Now, chapter and verse is spun clear out of it. If that’s not possible, a line-item touch up takes place with the black Magic Marker. A whole new meaning for line-item veto.
• A Possible 'Third Way' to Use Wild Lands
  There’s always been tension between those who are terrified to see any development at all in public lands, for fear of never-ending demands and decline. The other side of that issue finds it an entirely rational argument that deep wilderness, where no man sets his foot, is useless to society.
• A Whale Of a Controversy Over Sonar
  The Navy is looking for a site for their sailors to practice sonar in a shallow-water environment, which sounds logical enough and they’ve selected the waters off North Carolina, a dicey choice.
• If You Hold a Shell to Your Ear, You Can Hear Ted Kennedy
  The latest not-in-my-backyard brouhaha has been stewing longer than a Cape-Cod clambake and Teddy has found someone else to do the heavy lifting.
• The Bureau of Land Damagment
  T here’s an ebb and a flow to management integrity in this imperfect world. What constitutes even-handed and economic handling of those public resources is defined differently by Dick Cheney (resident of Wyoming) and Dave Freudenthal (its Governor).
• The Intellect Elects Not to Connect All the Dots
  One of the most amazing things to me about the human animal is its ability to compartmentalize. We are different from the other animals of the earth, because of our intellect.
• Small, It's Small Again, You Dummies
  I thought it was Lee Iacocca calling from the west coast, but the voice was a little hollow, so it might have been Jacob Marley, rattling his chains as the ghost of Christmas past.
• Nuclear Proliferation Has Its Place
  So, having cashed-in at least some of our cold-war prejudices, we can get to work on demystifying the old nuclear power bugaboos, one of which has always been what to do about the reprocessing of spent fuel rods.
• Taking a Bead on Bambi
  First Walt Disney and after that the outpouring of Saturday morning cartoon fare for children has raised us a generation of non-hunters.
• Don't Talk About Leaders, I Want to Hear From Lenders
  President George has awakened to the reality of New Orleans once again.
• A Snake River-Columbia River Fish Story
  In 1980, Congress passed a law ordering that salmon in the Columbia hydro-system receive "equitable treatment," along with electricity generation, irrigation and barge transport.
• It's Not Where You Are, It's What You See
  In a stunning victory for panoramic views, New Hampshire has made it legal for townships to adjust assessed property values according to the view.
• A Fisherman's (possible) Dream Fish
  What fishermen like is catching fish, and if that fish strikes artificial baits aggressively, grows to be a whopper in a relatively short time and is excellent to eat, then what’s not to like?
• The Wet Spot in the Back Yard
  The Supreme Court is set to shake all this out, in case you thought wet spots were trifling matters.
• Flushing Our Gulf Toilet
  Blaming Katrina for turning your favorite hiking trail into a toxic wasteland is sort of like blaming your toilet for the human waste that it’s designed to get rid of.
• Hurricane Dissemble Makes Landfall at 9
  Part Two, The Golden Handshake
  An epiphany, reflecting the twelve days after Katrina and the visit of the three wise-men, Bush the unconcerned, Bush the contrite and Bush the budget-buster to the rescue.
• Hurricane Dissemble Makes Landfall at 9
  The presidential speech from historic Jackson Square Thursday night was dripping with metaphor as George W. Bush faced his nation alone.
• Sitting On Trent Lott's Porch
  Selling off the gulf views without assessing the gulf storms is profitable business and enough pale northerners show up between and betwixt major hurricanes to sign on the dotted lines.
• New Jersey in the Driver's Seat
  Liberty and Prosperity is the Garden State’s motto, but there’s not much garden left in a state that celebrates the most miles of highway and the most heavily traveled highways in the nation.
• An Open Letter to Tony Blair
  You’ve just been re-elected to a history-making third term as Prime Minister of Britain and you really don’t have to lick George Bush’s boots any longer.
• Wild Horses Couldn't Drag Me . . .
  i stood at the head of kind of quiet looking wild Mustang my friend Angie had brought from Montana and I talked to it gently while she adjusted stirrup leathers on the saddle
• Spring Plowing on the Fish Farm
  Been a long, long time since the head of the household walked into nearby woods to shoot something for dinner.
• Say What?
  It’s economic to drill for oil a half a world away, transport that oil great distances by pipeline to ports, load it on to gigantic tankers to move across thousands of miles of ocean, then offload to refineries, crack the crude into a myriad of products, truck those various fuel products to retail outlets in a vast commercial network to sell to Uncle Charlie for his SUV.
• Arctic Horse That's Long Left the Barn
  Today's lead Washington Post editorial, Arctic Thaw, reaffirms a point of view that has been meaningless for three decades.
• Our Lemming Side
  Becoming as a species ever better-informed and lesser-educated, our increasing similarity to those furry-footed rodents is apparent and Darwin be damned.
• The Environment as Commodity
  Not letting Big Business get away continually with the excuse that they can't afford to be environmentally sensitive
• Goodbye Elk, Hello Exxon
  We're going to 'lose our high Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes.' Lose, we're supposed to assume, as in misplace or perhaps having left them somewhere behind the couch
• Thirsting For Missile Defense
  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee more than fresh water, more than alternative fuels that would break our addiction, more than fast, efficient ground transportation
• Farmers are Farmers, In Poland or Peoria
  The small, family farm is just as much in doubt here in Eastern Europe as it is in America
• The Environment
  There are a thousand points at which our support of the whole turns to narrow self-interest
• The Hanging Gardens of Chicago
  The idea is to grow vegetables close to the people who eat them. Breakthrough Idea, huh?
• Damtrak
  Rail transport is America's idea that just won't fly
• Concentrations
  When I was a young man, a city of three to five million was enormous and we all caught our breath at the size of Calcutta and wondered how such squalor could exist

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