I started out in the news business when I was ten years old, delivering my hometown paper, the "Richmond Times-Dispatch." I spent nearly 30 years as a newspaper reporter. That included a four-year stint as the chief Asia correspondent, based in Tokyo, for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other Cox newspapers, and eight years covering the White House. I'm a former president of the White House Correspondents' Association and author of the 2007 book, "The River Where America Began: A Journey Along the James."
Posted September 22, 2011 by Bob Deans in Solving Global Warming, The Media and the Environment, U.S. Law and Policy
Poor Darrell Issa. Just nine months after his fellow House Republicans became captives of the tea party gang, he seems to have forgotten the difference between propaganda and progress. Fortunately, the American people have not. In a hearing today before...continued→
Posted September 20, 2011 by Bob Deans in Green Enterprise, Living Sustainably, Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
House Republicans are using the failure of Solyndra, the solar panel maker, to launch a political broadside, attacking President Obama and his visionary program to promote energy efficiency, renewable power and American jobs. Solyndra’s bankruptcy has raised important questions. The...continued→
Posted April 14, 2011 by Bob Deans in Environmental Justice, Health and the Environment, Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, U.S. Law and Policy
April 20 marks a year since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded over a BP well, killing 11 workers and opening a gusher that spewed some 170 million gallons of toxic crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. One year...continued→
Posted October 19, 2010 by Bob Deans in Curbing Pollution, Health and the Environment, Moving Beyond Oil
We Americans expect our presidents to fix big problems. The BP oil disaster was too big to fix. Six months after the blow out, though, President Obama has grasped three important lessons and taken action on each. That's leadership too. Lesson...continued→
Posted September 28, 2010 by Bob Deans in Curbing Pollution, Environmental Justice, Health and the Environment, Moving Beyond Oil, Reviving the World's Oceans
After traveling 14,000 miles and hosting 34 town hall meetings in the five Gulf Coast states, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus released his 126-page Gulf restoration plan on Tuesday, putting meat on the bones of President Obama's promise to stand by...continued→
Posted June 18, 2010 by Bob Deans in Reviving the World's Oceans
One of the world's top surfers, Laird Hamilton is at home in the ocean. He routinely rides waves three stories tall and has surfed some twice that high. On Thursday, though, looking down on the Gulf of Mexico from the...continued→
Posted June 12, 2010 by Bob Deans in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gazed at the giant twin-rotor helicopters working the skies above Buras, a low-lying delta town several miles from where the Mississippi River begins to give itself up to the Gulf of Mexico. One after another the...continued→
Posted May 20, 2010 by Bob Deans in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil
Morning broke bold and bright over the broad wetlands of Louisiana's Grand Bayou, where Byron Encalade stood on a 24-foot flatboat gliding over narrow channels of brackish water, past plywood cabins with clapboard siding, corrugated tin roofs and names like...continued→
Posted March 22, 2010 by Bob Deans in Solving Global Warming
Clean energy and climate legislation should get a boost from a letter 22 senators have sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging swift action on the legislation this year. The senators, including many key swing moderates who have...continued→
Posted March 11, 2010 by Bob Deans in Solving Global Warming
Forty years ago this spring, we were a nation divided by war in Vietnam. The Chevrolet Monte Carlo got 11 miles to the gallon. Simon and Garfunkel were making their way up the charts with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” And...continued→
Posted February 1, 2010 by Bob Deans in Solving Global Warming
The Pentagon has singled out global climate change as a potential enemy of the state. The environmental havoc it stirs is making the world a more dangerous place by increasing the stress on millions of people living on the front...continued→
Posted January 28, 2010 by Bob Deans in Green Enterprise, Solving Global Warming, U.S. Law and Policy
President Obama has laid to rest any doubt about his determination to push for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation, placing it near the center of his jobs agenda and casting it as essential to American competitiveness. "The nation that...continued→
Posted December 19, 2009 by Bob Deans in Solving Global Warming
Denmark has given us The Little Mermaid, the world's greatest pastry and the most famous literary question of all time. "To be, or not to be," Hamlet, prince of Denmark, asks in what may be Shakespeare's greatest soliloquy. The grand...continued→
Posted December 11, 2009 by Bob Deans in Solving Global Warming, The Media and the Environment
Newspapers have a simple business model: buy paper by the ton, sell it to advertisers for $30,000 a page, then get it on the front porch each day before breakfast. It's worked pretty well for five centuries or so. Suddenly,...continued→
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