Individual, community and corporate efforts to better the environment are necessary and effective, but solutions for our environmental and energy crises have to come from systematic changes in our political system too. Want to know what’s going on behind the closed doors of those mysterious white buildings? Check out the week in green politics, and see for yourself:

**Worried about water safety? You should be. Billions of gallons of water for drinking can be moved without discharge permits under the Clean Water Act, says the EPA, even though the Bush administration says the water could contain pollutants.

**A global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases has bit the dust, thanks to Senate Republicans. Democratic leaders were short only 12 votes to get the 60 required to end the Republican filibuster on the measure.

**President Bush threatened to veto a bill that would extend payments to rural counties once dependent upon federal timber sales to fund schools and libraries before federal cutbacks in logging. The money would come from collecting back royalties from oil companies that were lost due to a government error on drilling leases in the late 1990s. Um, yeah ’cause those oil companies are definitely not making enough money right now

**More good news for oil companies and bad news for us. The Senate voted on two bills Tuesday that would have revoked tax breaks for Big Oil and extended tax credits to renewable energy. As you might have guessed, both votes fell largely along party lines and fell short of cloture.

**On a more hopeful note, Former French President Jacques Chirac has launched a new foundation to preserve biodiversity, fight deforestation, and improve access to water and medicine in developing countries.

I know it ain’t all great news, but knowledge is power. takepart and contact your representatives to let them know that environmental preservation and clean energy are important issues to you.