As Jonathan Stein reports over at Mother Jones, President Bush is going out on a (slightly) green note by designating three new "marine monuments" in the Pacific Ocean, placing some 190,000 miles of marine habitat under federal protection. And good for him. Among other things, this move will ease pressure on bluefin tuna stocks, which remain perilously close to collapse, by keeping fishermen away from the southern bluefin's Pacific spawning grounds.
Mind you, this hardly makes up for all the other environmental devastation Bush has wrought, such as—oh, picking at random—eight years of inaction on carbon emissions, seeing as how ocean acidification and global warming now threaten to wipe out every last coral reef on the planet. Still, credit where due.
--Bradford Plumer