From the Editor

By Martin Lasden
     
      Global warming deniers have had a tough time of it lately. First there was Al Gore and his Oscar?winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Then came Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in September signed into law a state cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, the first in the nation. And in April the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in, ruling in a 5?4 vote that under the federal Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
      One of the plaintiffs in the EPA case was the Center for Biological Diversity. A scrappy group of lawyers and environmental activists, the center already had amassed an impressive string of victories against big developers by invoking the Endangered Species Act. Now, as writer Ed Humes reports in this month's cover story ("Showdown at Tejon Ranch," page 20), center attorneys are challenging California developers in a novel way. Their strategy: to assert that under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), developers have a duty to avoid, diminish, or mitigate the harmful effects of greenhouse-gas emissions. If that argument succeeds, the courts could slow or even block the building of a new city north of Los Angeles.
      A long shot? Perhaps. But no more so, says Humes, than using the citizen-petition process written into the Endangered Species Act to limit development, an approach the center pioneered. And with the Supreme Court's ruling in the EPA case, Humes thinks the center's position has only been strengthened. "CEQA," he says, "is a broad, sweeping law that was meant to address environmental threats as they occur."
      Also in this issue, journalist Kelly Niknejad profiles ten former federal prosecutors who made the jump to the private sector ("When Opportunity Knock$," page 26). The revolving-door phenomenon is, of course, a serious problem at the Justice Department, in part because the private sector pays so much better than the government does. And all the accusations that surfaced last spring over the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys certainly won't make it any easier for the DOJ to keep talented attorneys. But as Niknejad explains, the revolving door started to spin noticeably faster as far back as Enron and other corporate scandals, when defense firms representing companies in trouble began courting experts from the other side in earnest. "Many of these lawyers came to the Justice Department with a sense of mission," Niknejad says. "But at a certain point they decided it was time to move on. And with so many headhunters calling, it was easy for them."
      As many awards as this magazine has won over the years, it is always nice to win more. This year we won two Maggie awards from the Western Publications Association-one for Best News Story ("The Pellicano Effect," October 2006); the other for Best Regularly Featured Department ("In Pro Per," March, May, and October 2006).
      Finally, it is my great pleasure to announce the addition of a new senior editor to our staff, Jeanette Borzo. A seasoned journalist, Borzo has worked as a freelance reporter in both Europe and the United States, contributing regularly to the Wall Street Journal and the Economist.
     

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