A group of the nation’s leading environmental scientists is calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop issuing new mountaintop mining permits, arguing that the ecological and human health costs of the controversial mining practice are “pervasive and irreversible.” 

The group of scientists published the first comprehensive assessment of the ecological and health impacts of mountaintop removal mining today in the journal Science, describing how the impacts of current and former mountaintop removal operations will be felt for centuries, with major implications for water quality, biodiversity, and human health.  Shockingly, there’s never been a comprehensive assessment of MTR impacts until now.

Published only a few days after the Obama EPA misguidedly approved the expansion of Hobet 45, part of the largest mountaintop removal coal mine in West Virginia, the paper concludes that mountaintop removal’s impacts are much too steep to justify.  The authors’ analysis of peer-reviewed research unequivocally confirms irreversible environmental impacts from mountaintop removal, a practice that also exposes local residents to a greater risk of serious health problems.

Reports of the president’s lame duck status – his impotence, if you will – have been vastly exaggerated. Even as he has all but given up on rescuing the faltering economy (which, given his track record, isn’t necessarily a bad thing), he and his advisers have been redoubling their efforts to squash what is left of his predecessors’ environmental legacy.

Given the massive public outcry over gas prices, the public will no doubt be furious to find out that a plan to save energy and money has been kept under wraps by their own government.

The U.S. Interior Department last week proposed new regulations aimed at permanently legalizing high-altitude strip mining of coal, a ruthless process that has thus far ruined 1,200 miles of streams and hundreds of square miles of forests. Due to the financial might of the coal industry, neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have made a serious effort to curb this serial decapitation of Appalachian coal seams, but the Bush people have been especially resourceful in perpetuating it.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently endorsed California's strategy to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles, validating the state's claim emissions should be classified as air pollutants over the objections of the Bush administration.

At least a dozen other states are expected to follow should the Environmental Protection Agency give California the right to limit auto emissions. A final decision is expected, coveniently, after Bush leaves the White House next year.

The Republican and California governor accused the U.S. government in general and President Bush in particular of “inaction and denial” by blocking state efforts to take action on climate change.