Uncategorized

No Art-ic Refuge

Sometimes art gets political — and sometimes it’s the artist who suffers. Just ask Subhankar Banerjee, who spent his life savings to photograph Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For a while, things were going swimmingly for Banerjee; he found a publisher for his photo collection and earned an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of […]

Dry Idea Rolls on

The U.S. Interior Department has identified areas around the county that are likely to face conflicts over water shortages in the next 25 years, including the usual suspects (Los Angeles, Calif., Denver, Colo., and Phoenix, Ariz.) as well as some new hotspots: the Gulf Coast of Texas, North Dakota’s Red River Valley, and Western cities […]

And other words from readers

  Re: Fishy Business Dear Editor: I’m shocked that you would choose to criticize Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) for tacking a measure onto the recently passed $79 million war-spending bill that directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to come up with a plan for certifying and labeling wild seafood as organic. This measure will do […]

Why-oming

In a much-anticipated decision, the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management announced yesterday that it would approve the development of as many as 51,000 coalbed methane wells in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin. Although the BLM also called for a team of government representatives to monitor the air- and water-quality effects of the wells, environmentalists […]

Golden Brown

California is home to six of the 10 most polluted metropolitan areas in the U.S., according to national smog rankings released today by the American Lung Association. In fact, the top four areas were all in the Golden(Brown) State: Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, Fresno, Bakersfield, and Visalia-Tulare-Porterfield. Those rankings mask the fact that California’s air quality […]

Umbra on peeing al fresco

Dear Umbra, If I am going to pee outside, is it more environmentally sound to squat in the back yard where the pee salinates the soil, or next to the road where the liquid runoff can enter sewers, or in the woods where there are no ornamental plantings to disturb, but there might be snakes? […]

Gone With the Flow

The Khasi Hills of northeastern India are one of the wettest places on Earth, typically experiencing torrential rains throughout the monsoon season and laying claim to the world record of 1,000 inches of rainfall in just one year. Now, though, the Khasi Hills are drying up due to environmental changes wrought by pollution, deforestation, the […]

Urinetown

Speaking of water conservation, a waterless urinal designed by a Los Angeles company could save some 40,000 gallons per year for each model installed — but plans for expanding use of the urinals are plugged up in the L.A. bureaucracy. The device resembles a conventional urinal except that atop the drain is a plastic cartridge […]

Tribe-ulations

Oil and gas development on Indian lands in the U.S. could move forward unimpeded by environmental concerns if Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) gets his way. The only Native American in the Senate, Campbell wants to exempt energy projects on Indian lands from federal environmental regulation — and as chair of the Senate Indian Affairs […]

Caffeine Buzz Kill

Wild tigers, orangutans, and other megafauna in Sumatra, Indonesia, are being pushed out of their native habitat as lowland forests are clear-cut to make room for coffee plantations. The cheap robusta beans grown in this region end up in instant coffee. From 1996 to 2001, land cleared for coffee production in the Lampung region of […]