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Against the Grain

GM Rice to Be Grown in California California is finding itself planted squarely in the center of an international debate over genetically modified crops. Yesterday, a California Rice Commission advisory panel voted 6-5 to allow the cultivation of a genetically modified form of rice designed to produce human proteins — and, eventually, pharmaceuticals — on […]

Where Have All the Big Fish Gone?

Valley of the Dolls

Silicon Valley Companies Unite to Fight Global Warming A group of major Silicon Valley businesses announced today that they will form a coalition devoted to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Santa Clara County to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010 — more than twice what would be required by the Kyoto Protocol. The companies […]

A Brand Nuke Day

25 Years After Three Mile Island, Nuclear Power on the Rise Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island’s nuclear facility, an event many observers predicted would be the beginning of the end of the U.S. nuclear industry. Turns out that was wishful thinking. While no new nuclear plants have […]

Nano No-No

Nanotechnology Can Harm Fish, Study Finds Nanotechnology — the development and application of microscopic particles measured in nanometers and, for some reason, always compared to the diameter of a human hair (they’re thousands of times smaller) — has had scientists and futurists buzzing for years about the possibilities for everything from stain-proof fabrics to tiny […]

Wet Cemetery

Dead Zones Pose Biggest Challenge for World’s Oceans Large swaths of ocean deprived of oxygen, and thus devoid of fish and plant life — known as “dead zones” — are the primary threat to the world’s oceans in the 21st century, surpassing even overfishing, claimed experts at a meeting this week put on by the […]

On a Wind and a Prayer

Colorado Weighs Renewable-Energy Bill With the Bush administration doing little at the federal level to encourage production of renewable energy, states are taking the lead on the issue. The latest front is in Colorado, where a bill to require that utilities get 8 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010 has passed the […]

Down the Hatcheries

Salmon Science Panel Claims Report Was Censored Another day, another batch of scientists ticked off at the Bush administration. This week, it’s the Recovery Science Review Panel, an independent board of biologists and ecologists charged by the National Marine Fisheries Service with studying the effect of hatchery salmon on wild salmon populations. The panel claims […]

Kerry on My Greenward Son

Kerry Pushes for High Fuel Economy As Americans face record-high gas prices, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is hawking his plan to raise automobile fuel-economy standards by as much as 50 percent by 2015. While few think Kerry could actually achieve this goal — most congressional Republicans and many Midwestern Democrats oppose the plan — […]

A Thousand Points of Green

Enviro Movement Becoming Decentralized and Diversified Environmentalism is going grassroots. While two-thirds of Americans identify themselves as environmentalists, membership in big, mainstream enviro organizations stayed flat throughout the 1990s. IRS data explains why, at least in part: The number of environmental groups with an annual income of $1 million or more fell by nearly half […]