Openness is an American bedrock principle, with secrecy being disdained except where absolutely necessary. As former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said, "Secrecy is for losers." If information is the lifeblood of democracy, then public access to information would be the arteries that keep democracy healthy. Yet, despite the clear importance of transparency to an effective and accountable government, we continue to fall short of the openness we need and have often been promised.

Editors' Summary

Leslie Carothers: Donald Stever is an environmental lawyer with more than 30 years of civil and criminal environmental litigation and counseling experience. He is now a partner at the K&L Gates law firm in New York. In his earlier incarnations, he was chief of not one but two sections--enforcement and environmental defense--at the U.S. Department of Justice. And when he was even younger, in the 1970s, he was the primary, or perhaps the only, environmental lawyer in the Attorney General's Office in New Hampshire.

2009 was a dramatic year for the Clean Air Act (CAA). Under the Obama Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took significant steps on many fronts. As widely expected, it issued an endangerment finding with respect to greenhouse gases (GHGs) and granted California's waiver request. However, less expected, was the new national automobile GHG emissions standard that managed to garner the auto industry's support.

Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

I. Introduction

While we agree with Richard B. Stewart, in his Article, Solving the U.S. Nuclear Waste Dilemma, on some crucial issues--most notably that the national process for developing a geologic repository for disposal nuclear waste is currently a mess--we have a substantially different perspective on the reasons for the mess and the path forward.

I. Background on Geologic Repositories

Richard B. Stewart's article, U.S. Nuclear Waste Law and Policy: Fixing a Bankrupt System, provides a thoughtful discussion of some of the complex scientific, policy and legal issues involved with nuclear waste generation and disposal. It is packed with useful facts, information, and history, and just the recitation of the history and circumstances of nuclear waste disposal issues and decisions in a readable, understandable form makes a useful contribution.