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Tapped Out

Drinking bottled water isn’t necessarily a good thing for your health or for the environment, since the plastic bottles take up space in landfills and their contents are not subject to strict regulations. But how safe is the tap water you drink? Getting better, but still not as good as it should be, according to […]

Home Is Where the Smart Is

Canada’s efforts to meet the terms of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions could have a positive outcome for homeowners: Under a plan approved by a federal cabinet committee this week, Canadians who take steps to make their homes more energy efficient could get an average rebate of about $740. […]

Shady Deals in the Sunshine State?

The Florida chapter of the Sierra Club is calling for the resignation of David Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, even as Struhs is reportedly being considered as a possible replacement for Christie Whitman, who last month stepped down as administrator of the U.S. EPA. The Sierra Club accuses Struhs of having […]

Smokey Vs. the Bear

National parks in the U.S., already beset by problems ranging from overcrowding to a huge maintenance backlog, now face a new crisis: illegal marijuana farming. “This is massive-scale agriculture that is threatening the very mission of the national parks, which is to preserve the natural environment in perpetuity and provide for safe public recreation,” says […]

The Great Wail of China

Millions of people in northern China can look ahead to water shortages this summer with the Yellow River at a 50-year low, and the nation as a whole is expected to face a shortfall of 53 trillion gallons of water by 2030 — more than the total amount the nation now uses in a year. […]

Hanging Chad

Developing countries whose economies rely on exports of oil, gas, or extracted minerals are likely to be poverty-stricken, corrupt, authoritarian, and beset by civil war, according to numerous scholarly studies conducted since the late 1980s. Environmentalists and human-rights advocates have often used these studies to argue that the World Bank should stop funding resource-extraction projects. […]

Mary Pearl, Wildlife Trust

Mary Pearl is the president of Wildlife Trust, cofounder of its Consortium for Conservation Medicine, and an adjunct research scientist at Columbia University. Wildlife Trust is a global organization dedicated to promoting innovative conservation science, linking ecology and health, and empowering lasting local conservation. Monday, 9 Jun 2003 PALISADES, N.Y. I never have typical weeks, […]

The Mahogany and the Ecstasy

Brazil clamped down on the logging of mahogany in the Amazon Rainforest last week, putting in place new rules that require loggers to present plans showing how harvesting will be done sustainably. Brazil produces about half of the world’s supply of mahogany, a highly prized — and highly endangered — wood sought for the making […]

Yakama Yack: Do Talk Back

The Yakama Nation has filed notice of its intent to sue the U.S. Department of Energy over its alleged failure to protect the Columbia River from contamination by the Hanford nuclear reservation. Thanks to four decades of plutonium production, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country; the tribe says radioactive pollution from […]

Owl Play

Logging in the Sierra Nevadas could nearly triple if the U.S. Forest Service manages the forests there according to the new plan it released yesterday. That plan would reduce habitat for the California spotted owl in favor of aggressive forest thinning in the name of wildfire prevention. The Forest Service says the plan, which would […]