Wednesday, 03 Nov 2004

Irrelevance: The New Relevance

How did the environment play in the election? Funny you should ask ...

Remember all that earnest debate about whether environmental issues would play a significant role in the presidential election? Well, as it turns out ... not so much. And in the Senate races we'd been keeping an eye on, one would also be hard-pressed (that is to say, wrong) to say that green issues had much impact. The not-so-green candidate won in four of the six Senate contests where enviros had speculated that the environment might help tip the balance: Lisa Murkowski (R) successfully defended her Alaskan Senate seat, Arlen Specter (R) did the same in Pennsylvania, Mel Martinez (R) won in Florida, and Richard Burr (R) won in North Carolina. Enviros might take heart that Ken Salazar (D) will be heading to the Senate to represent Colorado, and, of course, Barack Obama (D) won in Illinois. All in all, you could say the environment got the shaft yesterday. Still, there is some encouraging news on the state level. Really. Keep reading ...

Array of Hope

Paul Hawken, Terry Tempest Williams, and others on what comes next

With the results of the election in, we wonder: Whither the environmental movement? What should environmentalists focus on over the next four years? Do greenies have the right intentions but wrong messages? Should they stay home and hone in on the local? Head for Canada? Arm to the teeth? We asked an array of environmental activists, leaders, and writers -- from Paul Hawken and David Orr to Peter Matthiessen and Terry Tempest Williams -- and their answers will shock you. (OK, not really, but they're thought-provoking nonetheless.) Check 'em out, today and through the rest of the week -- in Main Dish. And we don't care only about the bigwigs -- what do you think? Speak up, in the Gristmill.

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

Colorado passes renewable-energy initiative

Colorado voters approved Amendment 37 yesterday, marking the first statewide renewable-energy portfolio standard in the U.S. to come directly from a popular vote rather than through the legislature. The state's largest utilities will now be required to generate 3 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2007, and 10 percent by 2015. The ballot initiative got a thumbs-up from about 53 percent of the state's electorate. Sixteen other state legislatures have passed renewable-energy targets for utilities; Colorado's legislature had rejected such targets four times.

Sorry, No Vacancy

Washington initiative blocks further nuke-waste dumping at Hanford

By a more than a 2-to-1 margin, Washington state voters passed Initiative 297, which blocks the U.S. Department of Energy from sending more nuclear waste to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the southern part of the state until current waste at the former nuclear-weapons facility is fully cleaned up. The measure is scheduled to take effect in 30 days. Opponents say it will threaten the $2 billion in federal money earmarked for Hanford cleanup, and vow to challenge the initiative in court.

Cya-nara

State rejects attempt to repeal cyanide mining ban

Voters in Montana decisively rejected Initiative 147, which would have repealed the state's 1998 ban on open-pit cyanide leach mining, a highly destructive and polluting gold-mining technique that extracts small amounts of gold and silver diffused through large amounts of rock. Some 98 percent of the money behind the initiative, almost $3 million, came from Canyon Resources Corp., which wanted to build such a mine near Lincoln, Mont. The initiative was rejected by a wider margin than the one approving the original ban; still, it will be challenged in court.