Environmental disappointments under Obama

While the President has been bogged down for the last couple months in an increasingly histrionic health-care debate—which has devolved so far into ridiculousness that one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry—environmental decisions, mostly from the President's appointees have still been coming fast and furious. However, while the administration started out pouring sunshine on the environment (after years of obfuscated drudgery under the Bush administration), they soon began to move away from truly progressive decisions on the environment and into the recognizable territory of playing it safe—and sometimes even stupid. Since taking power this January, the Obama administration has made very few decisions that are completely illogical—one might even say simply stupid—but a recent decision by the new Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, to allow the clear-cutting of 381 acres of primary rainforest in Alaska falls under this heading. It’s as though Vilsack has not come up to date both on Obama's pledge for green jobs—which clear-cutting isn’t—and on the direct link between deforestation and climate change. Everything about this decision goes directly against Obama’s speeches and pledges to date...Mongabay