When it comes to controversy over his environmental analyses, writer Gregg Easterbrook knows the drill pretty well by now: He writes and environmental activists complain. Cause and effect.

Easterbrook's standing was secured with his 746-page "A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism" tome in 1995.

The brushfires were fanned again, and most recently, with an October 14, 2003, column that has led some to call him an apologist for the Bush Administration and, by extension, one of the Administration's deep-pocket polluter buddies.

"It's a disaster, it's a nightmare, the world is ending," Easterbrook wrote in that column, summarizing assorted "worse than Genghis Khan!" barbs hoisted toward the incumbent.

Easterbrook allows that the Administration's approach has "some major defects" when it comes to global warming and opposition to improved fuel economy for SUVs. Beyond those two issues, he writes, "most of the charges made against the White House are baloney ... deep-fried with cheese for purposes of partisan political bashing and fund-raising."

Easterbrook's 1,108-word column takes the approach of his "Moment on the Earth" book: Things generally have been, are, and will continue getting better when it comes to pollution. Save for greenhouse gases and vehicle fuel economy standards, "all environmental trends have been positive for years or decades," he writes, citing figures -- selective figures, critics contend.

Easterbrook wrote of logging as "one of the few endlessly sustainable industries." He put the blame on the American car-buying public, not on the administration, for increased pressures for domestic oil drilling, and he gave the Bush administration credit (undeservedly, critics howl) for tougher truck diesel emission standards.

Bush "has received zero credit," he wrote, for three decisions which, he maintains, "should lead to the biggest pollution reduction since the 1991 Clean Air Act amendments." The reason? Easterbrook finds a simple, if not original, explanation: "Environmental lobbies raise money better in an atmosphere of panic."

He points to coverage by both New York Times and Los Angeles Times as illustrating how "the media haven't helped."

Easterbrook's oft-repeated personal concern -- the "phony pessimism can backfire." All the Bush bashing might discourage the President from doing right by climate change and vehicle mileage standards, he frets: "After all, Bush has already made substantial positive improvements in several environmental categories and has only been bashed as his thanks."

Along with several critical letters to the editor that followed Easterbrook's remarks came activist online magazine Grist, in a commentary by writer Amanda Griscom.

Let's just say that Griscom was having none of it, not from this particular "widely known environmental gadfly." Relying on environmental activists for her sources, Griscom credits Easterbrook for scoring points with some "entertaining analogies." But for losing the game with a "polemic."

"He ignores the primary reason these improvements came about in the first place: the very 'command and control' regulations that President Bush is trying to eliminate, and that Easterbrook claims are unnecessary."

She finds "too many transparently preposterous statements to eviscerate them all here," but takes particular aim at crediting Bush, for instance, for the diesel rules, which in reality were put forward by the Clinton administration and which the Bush administration allowed to go in to effect as planned.

"Those were our rules, and [the Bush administration] has repeatedly claimed them as theirs. That's hardly an environmental victory," she quotes Clinton administration EPA chief Carol Browner as saying.

In a month when Easterbrook was facing more headline-attracting controversy for his clumsy writing about Hollywood filmmakers and their religious beliefs, controversy for which Easterbrook apologized in print for terminology some interpreted as being anti-Semitic, the environmental brouhaha over his L.A. Times column may pale by comparison. It's unlikely to be the last time that the often-provocative and prolific Easterbrook, a senior fellow at the New Republic and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, raises hackles with environmentalists.