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Raise Your Hand If You’re Insured

Insurance Industry Wants Action on Climate Change While the oil industry may be willfully blind to the dangers of fossil-fuel use and climate change, the insurance industry certainly is not. A new report from the Association of British Insurers warns that insurance costs are likely to climb in coming years as insurance companies are hit […]

Mr. Mercury Goes to Washington

Bush Foes Intend to Make Mercury a Campaign Issue Enviros and Bush adversaries are plotting to make mercury an issue in the presidential campaign. Controversy has been swirling around the Bush administration’s plan for reducing mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, a plan that critics say panders to industry with unambitious reduction targets, prolonged timetables, […]

Hair-Raising News

Shampoos and Other Personal Products May Pose Health Risks Do you know how toxic your shampoo is? Many personal-care products contain ingredients whose health effects are untested or, worse, ingredients known to pose health risks or even cause cancer, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group and other nonprofits. Only 11 percent […]

In for the Long Haul

Supreme Court Opens U.S. Roads to Mexican Trucks In a victory for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court yesterday unanimously ruled that Mexican trucks can haul their goods throughout the U.S. even if the government hasn’t studied how their emissions would affect air quality. Enviro and labor groups and nine states had sought to prevent […]

Life Intimidating Art

Feds Go After Artist Critical of Biotechnology The FBI is using the Patriot Act to go after an artist whose work calls into question the safety and morality of genetic modification of crops and other uses of biotechnology. Steve Kurtz — an art professor at the University at Buffalo and cofounder of an artists’ collective […]

My Big Fat Greek Olympics

Enviros Say Athens Olympics Will Fall Short of Green Mark The Olympic Games in Athens this summer will be anything but green, says a new report released by the World Wildlife Fund. The U.N. Environment Program has also chastised Greek officials for failing to meet a number of environmental pledges they made when bidding for […]

An urban advocate answers questions

With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m executive director of Urban Ecology, Inc. What does your organization do? The five-second elevator speech goes like this: “We offer pro-bono land-use planning and policy advocacy to help transform struggling, low-income neighborhoods into vibrant, healthy communities.” The longer explanation goes like this (and after you read this, […]

War in the Time of Cholera

Baghdad Residents Suffer from Polluted Water As if the chaos and violence weren’t enough to bear, millions of Baghdad residents also lack a reliable source of clean water. Some have no choice but to get supplies straight from the Tigris River, which is teeming with raw sewage, pesticides, oil, heavy metals, and, thanks to the […]

To the Manner Bjorn

Lomborg Meeting Downplays Importance of Climate Change Bjorn Lomborg is vexing enviros once again. The Danish contrarian — who generated heaps of controversy a few years ago with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which argued that many environmental concerns are overblown — is back in the headlines, this time for organizing a workshop of eight […]

Bonn Vivant

China Pledges to Get 10 Percent of Power from Renewables by 2010 China pleasantly surprised enviros and politicians alike on Friday with a vow that it will generate 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010. “This commitment was amazing,” said Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, German minister for economic cooperation and development, at an international […]