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At Whitman’s End?

Speculation is growing that U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman might resign now that the Bush administration has a GOP-controlled Congress in its holster and its sights set on further environmental rollbacks. Whitman has won favor neither from environmentalists, nor from industry lobbyists. Environmentalists say she has caved to others in the administration on important issues, […]

merlin matthews, Re~Cycle

merlin matthews is founder and president of Re~Cycle, a U.K.-based nonprofit that collects and ships second-hand bikes and bike parts to developing countries. Monday, 18 Nov 2002 WEST MERSEA, Essex, U.K. Today was a bit of a nonstarter, as I was up till some crazy hour, coming tantalizingly close to fixing the wretched computers. Who […]

A Snowball’s Chance

Perhaps the clearest and most visible sign of climate change in America won’t be around for much longer: The glaciers of Glacier National Park in Montana are melting and will be gone within 30 years, scientists say. Dan Fagre, the 49-year-old leader of the U.S. Geological Survey team studying the problem, says, “It’s not just […]

Landscape Goat

There’s no need to use big crews and machinery to control fires in the California hills — just add goats. A park district in the Bay Area is using goats to munch away the brush and low-level vegetation that fuel fires in parklands. Not only are the goats sometimes cheaper, gentler, and more environmentally sensible […]

Umbra on cushion planters

Dear Umbra, I have been cutting out old cushions, filling them with dirt, and planting them for some years now. I found the first two floating in the river (while canoeing). Since then, I’ve gotten them from the trash; I don’t pay anything for them. I use them to grow everything from herbs to prairie […]

Crop Busting

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is ordering the destruction of hundreds of thousands of bushels of soybeans in Nebraska after discovering that they were contaminated with genetically modified (GM) corn. The Texas-based company ProdiGene is attempting to grow GM corn impregnated with medications such as the hepatitis B vaccine. It plowed over a failed […]

You’re Living in Your Own Private Idaho

An increasingly common type of collaboration between a conservation group and a logging company will protect up to 600,000 acres of private forestland in northern Idaho from development. The Washington-based timber company Potlatch, which owns the land, will sell its development rights to the California-based Trust for Public Land, which in turn expects to raise […]

Staples Gunned

In a milestone victory for trees and forest advocates, the office-supply giant Staples announced yesterday that it would phase out paper goods made from threatened forests and increase the average amount of recycled material in its paper products to 30 percent, up from the current average of less than 10 percent. No timetable has been […]

On Thin Rice

Arkansas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are supporting a $200 million plan that would rescue rice growers in the state and divert water from the White River to 250,000 acres, representing about 5 percent of U.S. rice production. The proposed project would cost about $300,000 per farmer. Advocates for the plan say the […]

Elder Hostile

Older Americans living in the country’s most polluted cities are more likely to need medical treatment than those living elsewhere, according to the first large-scale study of the impact of pollution on medical care costs. The study by Stanford University economist Victor Fuchs, which was published today in the journal Health Affairs, found that pollution […]