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LEEDing Light

Green Building Is Booming Once a fringe movement, born of the 1970s energy crisis, green building is going mainstream with a vengeance. Through its four-year-old Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, the U.S. Green Building Council has certified 149 million square feet of commercial and high-rise residential space as green, up from 8 […]

Rubber Ducking

On Family Planning, the U.S. Faces International Isolation As if the rest of its international agenda weren’t unpopular enough, the Bush administration is further isolating itself from the global community with its positions on family planning and women’s reproductive rights in developing countries. To appease its socially conservative political base at home, the administration has […]

H2Glow

Nuclear Weapons Plants Threaten Water Sources, Says Report Radioactive and toxic byproducts from the 13 nuclear weapons facilities in the U.S. pose a grave danger to several major water sources and tens of thousands of people who rely on them. So says a report released Monday by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, based […]

So Far, Sow Good

Foundation Sells Businesses on Green Practices Across the U.S., businesses are being pressured to adopt more eco-friendly, sustainable practices — not by government regulation, but by their own shareholders. This ground-up movement is coordinated by organizations like As You Sow, a San Francisco-based consulting firm that helps grassroots shareholder groups find major-investor backing and put […]

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 […]