Top 10 Green Stories of 2008
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As the 110th Congress was getting started, John Dingell (D-Auto) -- then chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- sounded tepid about pursuing climate-change legislation. The new speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), noticed. First she created the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, with Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at the helm. Dingell scoffed that without subpoena power or legislative jurisdiction, the committee was as useful as "feathers on a fish." Mm hmm. Said committee spent the next two years putting the nation's experts on record, publicizing climate change impacts and solutions, and building consensus for serious action in the House. That consensus propelled climate champion and Pelosi ally Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to victory in his November coup to replace Dingell as chair. Final score: Pelosi, two committees; Dingell, zero. (Coda: As a grace note, Waxman subsequently offered Dingell leadership on all health-care initiatives before the committee.)
Apparently eight years of kicking the planet in the tender bits wasn't enough for the Bush administration, so they're using their last month in office to punch it in the face. How? Regulations in the dead of night! [Evil Cheney cackle.] Fun stuff like removing independent scientific reviews from the Endangered Species Act, easing restrictions on mountaintop-removal mining, pushing to weaken clean-air rules near national parks (though they gave up on that one), opening public lands in Utah to drilling, allowing guns in national parks, exempting factory farms from air-pollution rules, recommending an expansion of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, and pardoning a guy who killed three bald eagles (hey, what the hell) -- and that's just the stuff we know about. In his capacity as head of the Parody Defense Department Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson recently issued a press release hailing the outgoing chief's "constructive steps" on energy and climate.
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