Score 1 for clean air

Leading the NY Times home page (for the moment) is a win for clean air enthusiasts everywhere. Friday, the federal court of appeals wasn't buying the sham that the Clean Air Act really is - an opportunity for more pollution, not less - and ruled against GW and the EPA on the matter. This is a great victory for environmental regulation - for at least the next 45 days anyway, which is how long the govt has to decide whether or not they want to bring it up for review by the entire appeals court.

However - as I'm scanning the blogs it may not be good news after all... check out this post from the Environmental Economics blog. Here's a posting from David Roberts on Friday from Gristmill.

More climate change in the news: Weekends are usually a time when I can catch up on stuff I didn't have a chance to read during the week. So as I'm scanning the NY Times online environment section I spotted this article by climate change reporter, Andrew Revkin, "Ice Retreats in Arctic for 2nd Year; Some Fear Most of It Will Vanish", published March 15. This of course was the day before my climate change in the press rant, and according to Revkin's article, "The new findings on winter ice were first reported yesterday [March 14] in the British newspaper The Independent." The Independent also ran an article about the recent Prudhoe Bay spill that same day (as did the NY Times - guess they needed a few days after the AP story ran on 3/11 to check some facts and create a map showing where Prudhoe Bay is.) The LA Times ran a couple of short articles by staff reporter Robert Lee Holtz, about storms and surface warming temperatures March 16, and March 17.

So by that account seems like climate change is gaining a little ground on the press circuit - or maybe a few studies on the topic were released all in the same week... but hey, at least they warranted coverage.