With a short memo on Inauguration Day, President Barack Obama [2] blocked plans to loosen some air quality standards and to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list. But he did not stop several other controversial, late-term environmental regulations issued by the Bush administration, including a weakening of the Endangered Species Act, a first step in opening Western lands to oil shale development, leases for oil and gas drilling near some national parks, and the start of a process to allow new oil rigs off the Atlantic, Gulf, Alaska and California coasts. (LAT [3], Jan. 22)
See our last post on the struggle for global oil [4] and North America's public lands [5].
