Unless you spent last week celebrating Apollo 11’s fortieth anniversary cut off from the world in your backyard model of the lunar module, you are no doubt familiar with the story of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s arrest two weeks ago, the “race in America” sturm and drang that surrounded the story last week, and the headline-grabbing role President Obama stumbled into at the end of his prime time presser.
Energy didn’t get a sniff in last night’s Obama press conference. That wasn’t really a surprise given the way that health care has elbowed its way into the political spotlight. You can count climate change among the “priorities” now in the shadows.
The Department of the Interior is proposing to cut the number of snowmobiles allowed per day into Yellowstone National Park by more than half.
During his first trip to the plateau continent, Obama has been greeted with much fanfare and love, but some are calling into question his motivation for visiting Ghana. Perhaps it is from eight years of the Bush Administration that have made us suspicious of our president’s oil motivations, but Ghana’s new offshore oil boom may give good cause for doubt.
This week, US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev are meeting in Moscow to negotiate a treaty to succeed START. President Obama seems to understand that if the US expects Iran and North Korea to give up their intentions to develop nuclear weapons, we can’t act as hypocrites hoarding our own nuclear arsenal. Russia and the United States currently own “90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons”.
The Environmental Protection Agency has granted California’s waiver request that will allow the state to enforce strict greenhouse gas emissions standards on cars beginning with the present model year. California first applied for the waiver in 2005, but was denied several years later. Now, the EPA grants the waiver based on the need for California to improve its air pollution conditions.
Invoking the now-familiar messages heard throughout both his campaign and much of his presidency, President Obama implored the U.S. Senate to move forward with a climate bill.
The League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club launched a new television ad “amplifying President Obama’s call” for Congress to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
Many rumors have been circulating regarding President Obama’s stance on illegal drug use. Some advocates project the president will legalize marijuana; some critics think he will continue the failed policies of the Bush administration in Latin America. The President’s actual stance on drug policy falls somewhere in between.
Politico.com is reporting that Obama plans to announce a national Fuel-Economy and Greenhouse Gas standard for automobiles that will finally get everyone on the same page.
May 9 is National Train Day, one of my favorite holidays. (Well, since it was created last year, at least.) I find trains to be a particularly great way to travel, for both short and long trips.
In what feels like an extension of Earth Day (Month), the Environmental Protection Agency has declared May to be Sustainability Month. EPA scientists and administrators will engage the public through in-person events and online communication, all aimed at teaching people how to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Although much of the controversy around HR 1388 has been around mandatory service requirements for American youth, the larger issue is tying federal dollars into public service. The act will actually create government funded jobs making participating states and organizations permanently dependent on federal funding for their service activities.
Coal River Vally, WV, has become home to a civil disobedience campaign against Massy Energy company in an attempt to halt their destructive mountaintop renewal coal mining practices.
Kay Sexton, with her regular run down of environmental protests, has been examining the “imperatives and complexities” of protests that are unique to the environmentalist movement. Here’s another data point to add into the discussion.
On Monday, President Barack Obama reiterated his administration’s focus on science by promising a new level of commitment—one with the same intensity and urgency as that which put Americans on the moon—and stressing that “the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.”