Of course, dumping nuclear waste in this Nevada outpost is a genuine concern for many -- particularly, say, Nevadans. But nationally speaking, even many enviros are ambivalent on the issue; as a whole, the green community has put forward no clear alternative plan of action. Enviros have far stronger and more unified objections to, say, Bush's failure to address global warming, or his sweeping rollbacks of protections for air quality, drinking water, forests and wetlands -- yet rarely are these issues discussed in the campaign context.

Yucca seems to have hogged more airtime and headline space in the last four months than in the last four years. In the last few weeks alone, the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC, MSNBC and various other national news outlets have run stories fueling the Yucca controversy. The Kerry and Bush campaigns have issued a number of press releases and statements bashing each other's positions on the issue; Kerry staunchly opposes the dumping, while Bush supports it. As of this week, both candidates will have made four visits each to Nevada -- which Bush took by four percentage points in the 2000 election -- to rally voters.

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Just days after Schwarzenegger's speech, more evidence emerged to indicate that this compassionate conservative may be borrowing not-so-compassionate tricks from the Bush-Cheney playbook: The Associated Press reported that a sweeping reform proposal for California state government commissioned by Schwarzenegger was "influenced significantly" by industry interests -- in particular, ChevronTexaco, the largest publicly traded company in California and the fifth-largest energy company in the world.

"Many corporations and interest groups participated in the governor's reform plan," wrote the AP's Tom Chorneau, "but state records and interviews with the participants show ChevronTexaco enjoyed immense success in influencing the report through its array of lobbyists, attorneys and trade organizations." The report repeatedly references ChevronTexaco input in footnotes, and its acknowledgments page names at least five lawyers and lobbyists associated with the company.

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Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, says the Bush campaign is responding to polls indicating that voters are taking the environment seriously in key battleground states. "The polling in Nevada is showing that people are voting on the Yucca Mountain issue. The polling out of Arizona says voters are very concerned about forests and water; Wisconsin polls have shown that the mercury issue could hurt [the GOP]," he told Muckraker.

Hence the Bush campaign's efforts to neutralize the environment as an election issue: "They know they can't persuade voters that Bush is good on the environment, so they're trying to create enough confusion about Kerry's record that people decide it can't be the issue that decides their vote."

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Last year, Bush signed off on legislation that exempts military training bases from cornerstone environmental protections mandated by the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, in the name of "military readiness." Despite howls of protest from the environmental community and government officials alike -- the unprecedented, sweeping wartime request was unaccompanied by any evidence that America's military strength is at odds with environmental protection -- the Department of Defense insisted on the rollbacks and got much of what it asked for.

Now the Bush administration may be only weeks away from implementing more environmental exemptions for the sake of "national security," a plan critics find equally preposterous. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a directive that would enable a raft of agencies under its domain -- including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coast Guard, Border Patrol and more than a dozen others -- to eschew environmental reviews and assessments required by the National Environmental Policy Act if agency officials feel such reviews are impinging on their efficacy. The directive, which does not require congressional approval, would also allow the agencies to conceal information they consider sensitive from a national-security standpoint.

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Beyond the unabashed idealism, stirring oratory skills, touching life story, and knee-buckling smile that have made this candidate for Illinois' open Senate seat the new beau ideal of progressive politics, it so happens that this guy is a bona fide, card-carrying, bleeding-heart greenie.

And it's not as though Muckraker didn't rifle through his environmental record going back more than a decade to try to find something off-kilter -- some skeleton in the closet, some flaw to make him a mere mortal. But all we found were accolades and evidence of true conviction.

Obama's comments at the League of Conservation Voters' pro-Kerry rally last week -- made only hours before he delivered the convention speech that catapulted him onto the national stage and elicited comparisons to Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy -- brought enviros to their feet.

"Environmentalism is not an upper-income issue, it's not a white issue, it's not a black issue, it's not a South or a North or an East or a West issue. It's an issue that all of us have a stake in," Obama shouted. "And if I can do anything to make sure that not just my daughter but every child in America has green pastures to run in and clean air to breathe and clean water to swim in, then that is something I'm going to work my hardest to make happen."

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True, environmentalists had every right to call it a major win for their side. "We're thrilled," said Glenn Sugameli, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice. "Myers became the seventh lifetime Bush judicial nominee to be officially blocked by Senate Democrats -- and the first blocked chiefly for environmental reasons."

Myers is, after all, the former mining and cattle industry lobbyist who compared the government's management of public lands to the "tyrannical actions of King George"; who said federal migratory-bird protections lead to "despotic intrusion by the federal government over every brook, creek, cattle tank, mud puddle, slough, or damp spot in every landowner's backyard"; and who called the Clinton-era roadless rule "a narrow path toward economic and environmental destruction." A report by Earthjustice [PDF] shows that he continued to promote an industry agenda in legal opinions he wrote as the Interior Department's chief attorney, a post to which he was appointed by Bush. [For more on Myers' record, check out this past Muckraker column.]

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"An excellent choice that sends a clear message about the need for change and renewed optimism in our nation's leadership for conservation, public health, and other issues important to the American people," said the League of Conservation Voters.

"Yet another strong environmental leader [on] the Democratic presidential ticket," said Environment2004.

"Sen. Edwards consistently stands up to preserve and strengthen the laws that keep Americans' air, water, and public land clean and safe," said Debbie Sease, the Sierra Club's legislative director.

So it may come as a surprise that Edwards' lifetime voting record on the environment, determined by the League of Conservation Voters' scorecard, is 63 percent (that would be a D-) -- quite a bit lower than Kerry's 92 percent, one of the highest records in Senate history.

But Betsy Loyless, the LCV's political director, insists that one shouldn't jump to the wrong conclusion about what appears to be a near-flunking grade: "Anything above 60 percent is considered a very solid rating. Keep in mind that the average score among senators in 2003 was 41; and if you look at records of senators from his region, the Southeast, Edwards is definitely one of the highest scorers."

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"I'd hardly call it coincidence," said Beth Viola, a leading environmental strategist for the Kerry campaign, "that after the EPA spends nearly four years pandering to industry, all of a sudden Leavitt is waltzing around battleground states in a green mantle -- doling out grant money, announcing new initiatives, threatening industry with enforcement actions, making amends to swing voters like hunters and anglers disgruntled about rollbacks. It's quite a show."

Leavitt's recent wave of swing-state politicking has won his agency the moniker "Election Protection Agency" in Beltway circles, according to Aimee Christensen, director of Environment2004, an organization committed to motivating voters on environmental issues. And many campaign analysts expect Bush's greenwashing efforts to intensify. Republicans still remember pollster Frank Luntz's 2003 memo declaring, "The environment is probably the single issue on which the Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular -- are most vulnerable," a sentiment supported by subsequent Luntz polls. And in early June, Yale University released a comprehensive nationwide report in which 84 percent of respondents said the environment would be a factor in their presidential vote and 35 percent called it a "major factor."

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That's how GOP leaders in the House are reinterpreting the old elementary-school bromide as they attempt to create the illusion of hope for the doomed, pork-laden energy bill -- and to deflect the political heat over high gas prices away from the White House and onto the Democrats.

For more than a month, the Republican House leadership has been planning a much-touted "energy week" centered on legislation (PDF) that mimics nearly verbatim the Energy Policy Act -- that same old bill that sailed through the House last fall with avid support from the White House, but was then defeated twice by filibusters in the Senate.

Energy week, which was scheduled for last week but sputtered in the face of memorial services for Ronald Reagan, has now been condensed into a two-day event starting today, during which the House will vote on the revived energy bill and a series of other bills designed to boost energy production in the United States -- and ostensibly reduce gas prices.

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"I think we're on the verge of a major climate shift! You need to start thinking about large-scale evacuations! If we don't act now it's going to be too late!" implores Hall. To which the veep responds coolly, "That is not amusing, professor. Have you lost your mind?"

Subtle is not how you'd characterize Roland Emmerich's cinematic portrait of a fierce struggle between warrior scientists from NOAA and the oppressive powers that be -- powers personified by a vice president who happens to be the spitting image of his real-life counterpart, Dick Cheney.

In an amusing case of life imitating art (we use the term loosely here), Bush administration officials stalled the release of a Web site on abrupt climate change that had been developed by a team at NOAA's paleoclimate program to coincide with the release of the film, according to insiders who worked on the project. The site had been developed to make years of paleoclimate research on abrupt climate shifts accessible to "The Day After Tomorrow" viewers to help them make sense of the fact and fiction behind the movie's misleading science.

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Now the Sierra Club is working to relegate Bush's most recent federal judicial appointee to the dugout as well, albeit after he's had a few at bats. William Pryor, former Alabama attorney general, has already made it onto the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, much to the chagrin of enviros, who point to his past efforts to weaken the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and environmental-justice protections.

Senate Democrats successfully stymied Pryor's appointment for some 10 months, until Bush pushed it through via a recess appointment in February -- a move critics say was underhanded, if not illegal. Under the Constitution's "recess clause," the president is given the authority to fill judicial vacancies without Senate approval when Congress is in recess. In this case, however, the "recess" was a weeklong holiday in February, not one of the longer breaks typically dubbed recesses. Bush's move set off a firestorm of criticism from public-interest groups and Senate Dems, including Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who questioned the constitutionality of the appointment.

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The USDA insists that the changes are innocuous: "The directives have not changed anything. They are just clarifications of what is in the regulations that were written by the National Organic Standards Board," USDA spokesperson Joan Shaffer told Muckraker. "They just explain what's enforceable. There is no difference [between the clarifications and the original regulations] -- it's just another way of explaining it."

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Landmark controls on diesel emissions, finalized Tuesday by the U.S. EPA, are expected to prevent 12,000 premature deaths and 15,000 heart attacks each year. And these were no warmed-over regs from the Clinton era, passed off as the Bushies' own, as was the case with the Highway Diesel Rule, a tough new standard that will dramatically reduce diesel pollution from trucks and buses starting in 2007. The Bush EPA can claim all the credit for this initiative, which regulates "non-road" diesel-powered equipment such as bulldozers, forklifts, tractors, and generators -- sources responsible for a surprising 60 percent of all diesel particulate matter, which is suspected of causing cancer.

The regulations require manufacturers to build 90 percent cleaner diesel engines for these nonroad machines, and call for a whopping 99 percent reduction of the sulfur content in the diesel fuel that will power the updated engines.

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But lately the grumble has risen to a growl. In late April, Time magazine ran a feature by Margot Roosevelt titled "The Tragedy of Tar Creek," which exposed what it called "eco-assault on an epic scale." The article looked at a neglected Superfund site that has led to widespread lead poisoning, among other scourges, in a nearby Oklahoma community -- where "Little League fields have been built over an immense underground cavity that could collapse at any time. Acid mine waste flushes into drinking wells ... [and] neon-orange scum oozes onto the roadside. Wild onions, a regional delicacy tossed into scrambled eggs, are saturated with cadmium."

It's one thing to lament this particularly egregious case; it's another to accept that the Tar Creek tragedy is just one of many Superfund screw-ups. As Roosevelt's article pointed out, Tar Creek can be counted among 29 other cleanup projects in 17 states that stalled out because they were underfunded by the U.S. EPA last year, according to the agency's inspector general's office.

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"I'm leaving at this time in order to spend more quality time with my family ... I realize that I need to devote more time and energy to being [a] wife and mom."

Yep, another beleaguered Bush appointee at the U.S. EPA bites the dust. Christine Todd Whitman flew the coop last spring, and this week one of her right-hand women -- Marianne Lamont Horinko, the assistant EPA administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response -- announced that she will follow suit on June 1.

Horinko served as the agency's acting administrator for four months after Whitman's departure from the top EPA spot and before Mike Leavitt's appointment as her replacement. During Horinko's tenure, she quietly -- and by all accounts deferentially -- took a beating in what is known to be one of the most thankless jobs inside the Beltway. In an e-mail announcing her resignation to EPA staff, she wrote of the "strength and courage" needed to withstand the "slings and arrows" that came along with the job.

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"The Bush administration tried to assure us that in the snowmobile issue, like so many others, technology is the answer -- that simply upgrading engine technology was the answer to the snowmobile problem rather than prohibiting them altogether," said Abigail Dillen, an attorney with Earthjustice. Dillen's organization represents the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and other environmental groups in their lawsuit against the Bush administration for reversing a Clinton-era ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone.

Bush's call for use of the "best available technology" has yet to result in the Prius of snowmobiles. Despite claims by the Interior Department that new four-stroke snowmobiles are far less noisy than older two-stroke models, critics charge that the new generation of machines has proven considerably more polluting -- both in terms of emissions and noise -- than promised.

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The trucking industry has long been a leading opponent of federal clean-air regulations, and since 1993 it has had a relentless advocate in Rep. Mac Collins, R-Ga., former owner of Collins Trucking Co. -- a business that is now run by the representative's family and that continues to pay him $21,600 a year as an advisor. U.S. EPA regulations will require truck fleets to switch to cleaner-burning diesel engines by 2007, and Collins, who's running for the Senate this year, wants tax breaks to help companies like his defray the cost.

Claiming that the diesel regulations would financially hamstring the industry, 19 GOP members of the House, including Collins, recently asked the General Accounting Office -- the watchdog arm of Congress responsible for scrutinizing the activities of federal agencies -- to examine the diesel regulations.

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Rey and his department have been dragging their feet in response to requests for public release of documents regarding the Bush administration's proposed overhaul of forest-management practices. Critics suspect the documents might confirm that logging-industry executives wielded undue influence over the process.

The current tussle began in October 2002, when Defenders of Wildlife and the Endangered Species Coalition slapped the USDA with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. They wanted documentation of the Bush administration's motivation for suspending Clinton-era rule updates under the National Forest Management Act, which governs America's nearly 200 million acres of national forest -- parcels of land that make up 8 percent of the country. NFMA was passed in 1976 and implemented under the Reagan administration to better manage national forests and protect wildlife.

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A revealing article published in the Los Angeles Times two weeks ago contributed markedly to the commotion. According to reporters Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller, five career U.S. EPA employees charge that President Bush's political appointees railroaded the administration's much-criticized mercury plan through by neglecting technical studies and ignoring the advice of a federal advisory panel. The plan would regulate mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants, but critics say it's far too lax and would take far too long to achieve significant results.

More embarrassing to the Bushies was the article's revelation that the EPA lifted some of the proposal's language directly out of lobbyist memos from the law firm Latham and Watkins (the former employer of the EPA's assistant administrator for air and radiation, Jeffrey Holmstead) and from the advocacy group West Associates, both of which represent large utility companies.

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Last year, they sued him for metaphorically bedding the energy executives whom critics charge all but wrote the Bush administration's energy policy. Now they say he's been romancing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who will be hearing Cheney's appeal of the Sierra Club case next month.

The high court agreed in December to consider the appeal from Cheney, who had been ducking a federal judge's order to disclose documents about his infamous 2001 energy task force for more than a year. A month later, the veep was caught with Scalia at a chummy duck-hunting getaway in Louisiana. This development has been the butt of many a late-night-comedy joke, but the Sierra Club isn't laughing -- last month, the organization asked that Scalia recuse himself from the case involving his hunting buddy.

"The request is simple," said David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club's senior attorney on the Cheney case. "Scalia must redress the appearance of impropriety that has caused so much public outcry. He must restore public confidence in the integrity of our nation's highest court."

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