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Happy Earth Day! Anybody Got a Life Vest?

U.K. Report Warns of Rising Flood Dangers and Costs The U.K. government marked Earth Day with characteristic British cheer, releasing a report warning that much of the country is going to experience flooding in coming decades. According to an expert government panel, the cost of physical and psychological damage from floods in the U.K. is […]

Earth to Public: Come In, Public …

Earth Day Prompts Flurry of Electoral Rhetoric; Public Yawns Earth Day during a big election year inevitably prompts a flurry of earnest talk about the environment and which candidate is better for it, and today is no exception. President Bush touted his love of wetlands in Maine; John Kerry blasted Bush’s environmental record in Houston, […]

Action Heroes

How You Can Make a Difference for the Planet With today’s environmental problems so large, abstract, and intractable — see warming, global — you’re probably wondering what you, one individual, can do on Earth Day to help. (If you’re one of the people surveyed by Gallup — see above — perhaps you don’t care, but […]

Join the Club

Sierra Club Members Reject Immigration-Focused Candidates A record number of Sierra Club members voted in the group’s just-concluded board election and decisively rejected a controversial slate of candidates who had called for curbs on immigration as part of a population-control strategy. With nearly 23 percent of the club’s 757,000 members voting, candidates backed by the […]

The Sound of Science

“Sound Science” Movement Threatens Endangered Species Act Long-time opponents of the Endangered Species Act — perhaps the most efficacious, far-reaching environmental legislation in U.S. history — are back under a new guise. A movement to add “sound science” provisions to the act, while it sounds innocuous, actually threatens to paralyze enforcement. Inspired by a preliminary […]

King Mekong

Mekong Dams Could Wipe Out Some of Last Healthy Inland Fisheries Across the world, thirst for cheap electricity from hydroelectric dams has strained inland fisheries, and now one of the world’s last relatively wild rivers faces the same fate. The Mekong River flows some 2,800 miles from the Tibetan ice fields, through the mountains of […]

Rudolf Amenga-Etego beats back the privatization of Ghana’s water supply

Amenga-Etego. Photo: Dave Wendlinger. The western African nation of Ghana, tucked under the chin of the continent, is dominated by the enormous Lake Volta, a sprawling reservoir that arcs through the midsection of the country. Though there appears to be water, water everywhere, an estimated 70 percent of Ghana’s people lack access to clean, piped […]

No Campaign, No Gain

Kerry to Make Environment Central Campaign Issue As Earth Day approaches, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is publicizing his plan to make environmental protection a central campaign issue. This is a notable departure from Al Gore’s strategy in the 2000 election, wherein the Democratic candidate was muted on the issue, hoping to dodge the “environmental […]

General Discontent

State Attorneys General Object to Environmental Exemptions for Pentagon The Department of Defense’s attempt to exempt itself from several landmark environmental laws has kicked up a storm of resistance at the state level. Yesterday, 39 state attorneys general sent a letter to the chairs of four congressional committees, protesting draft legislation submitted by the Bush […]

Oh Say, Can You Sea?

U.S. Ocean Commission Calls for Action to Save Seas Our oceans are in trouble and we need to do something about it. This was the conclusion of the first comprehensive review of U.S. ocean policy in 35 years, released today by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. The presidential commission spent 2.5 years studying coastal […]