Schwarzenegger to Kill Machines, Again -- This Time, the Polluting Kind California officials seeking to ameliorate the state's persistent smog problems are focusing on a common group of culprits: old machines. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is meeting with business groups, enviros, and legislators to develop a plan to rid the state's roads of old cars, trucks, and buses by offering their owners financial incentives to trade them in. Five percent of California's vehicles -- primarily older models -- cause half the state's vehicle-related air pollution. No means of funding the proposal has been agreed upon yet, but ideas range from …

Great Apes Are Heading for Extinction Human beings' endless efforts to kill each other have not reduced their overall numbers, but they may yet wipe out humanity's closest genetic cousins, the great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans. Several of these charismatic -- but apparently not charismatic enough -- megafauna face extinction because of human wars, which destroy opportunities for fishing and agriculture, thereby leading hungry hunters to poach the apes for food. Between wars, humans cut down the forests where the great apes live. Particularly tragic is the story of the bonobos, devastated by civil war in the Congo. …

Group Petitions for Protection of Hundreds of Imperiled U.S. Species A coalition of enviro groups, scientists, and artists petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service yesterday to add 225 species to the official federal list of endangered and threatened species. The 225 are now on a candidate list that affords them no protection. It was, by a wide margin, the largest listing petition filed since such citizen requests were authorized under the Endangered Species Act in 1982 (the act itself passed in 1973). The move was designed in part to draw attention to the dysfunctional listing process that has plagued …

California Businesses Hop on the Fuel-Cell Bandwagon A number of California businesses -- rattled by the 2000 energy crisis, with its rolling black- and brown-outs, and the state's generally unreliable electricity grid -- are turning to hydrogen fuel cells to provide a reliable and self-generated source of power. The move is fueled (ahem) by the California Public Utilities Commission's increasingly popular Self Generation Incentive Program, which provides $66 million a year in incentive funding for green energy systems; more than 500 projects have been funded to date. Most of the fuel cells run, for the time being, on hydrogen converted …

British Columbia Mine Plan Has Montanans in an Uproar Coal-mining and natural-gas drilling projects could soon get underway in British Columbia's Flathead Valley, just north of the U.S. border and Glacier National Park, but a group of Montana enviros and politicians is bringing international pressure to bear in an attempt to stop them. The valley is one of North America's wildest places, home to endangered and threatened species and the North Fork of the Flathead River, which flows south to form Glacier's western border. Cline Mining Corp. wants to fast-track a massive open-pit coal mine and have it operating within …

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Two Environmental Cases Such is the power of the U.S. Supreme Court that its refusal to hear a case can carry as much weight as a ruling, and two such refusals this week have enviros buzzing. One case involved the U.S. EPA's authority to force the Tennessee Valley Authority -- the nation's largest public power producer, owner of 11 coal-fired power plants -- to comply with new-source review provisions of the Clean Air Act. By refusing to hear the case, the court in effect allowed the TVA to ignore the EPA's orders without penalty, a …

Journalist Covering Eco-Radicalism Gets Snared in Story A journalist covering attempts by Earth First! activists to thwart a cougar hunt on federal land has been arrested along with one of the activists and charged with trespassing and disabling mountain-lion traps. The case raises troubling and knotty questions about the First Amendment and the ability of the press to cover "eco-radicals" firsthand. John H. Richardson, writing for Esquire magazine, followed activist Rod Coronado into a restricted desert canyon near Tucson in March, where Coronado and another Earth First!er sprinkled cougar scent to confuse the dogs, filmed the hunters, and disabled cougar …

What work do you do? As the executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, I work to ensure the persistence of imperiled species and their habitats, with an emphasis on private land. More generally, I work to advance the science of restoration ecology and ensure that an increasing number of people live more simply, graciously, and with foresight. Restoration and imperiled species serve as very effective vehicles for arguing in favor of such a lifestyle. How does it relate to the environment? My work relates to the environment in a beneficial way since many of the imperiled species that …

New Hybrid Taxis Taking Off Once the sole province of eco-conscious consumers willing to pay a little extra to reduce their environmental footprint, gas-electric hybrid vehicles have found an eager new consumer demographic: taxi services. In urban areas from Vancouver to Boston to New York City, taxi operators are getting hep to the benefits of hybrids: The cars perform at their best in stop-and-go traffic, as both engines shut off entirely when stopped, and the gas engine tends to start up only in highway driving; regenerative braking systems capture energy normally lost to braking and convert it to electricity, which …

Harsh Western Drought May Be the Norm, Say Scientists The harsh drought that has been plaguing the American West in recent years is set to produce a raft of environmental, political, and social crises, but we'd better get used to it, say some scientists. Research into the drought cycles of the past 800 years increasingly suggests that the relatively wet weather in the West during the 20th century -- which led to an explosion of development -- was an aberration, and the current dry conditions are the norm. This would be, to put it mildly, bad news. Already, paltry snowfall …