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Curse D’ Alene

In a precedent-setting move, U.S. federal officials signed an agreement yesterday ceding control of the cleanup of Idaho’s highly polluted Coeur d’Alene Basin to state, local, and tribal officials. For more than a century, mining waste from the Silver Valley washed down the Coeur d’Alene River into Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River, and […]

Everybody Must Get Estonia-ed

Like the rest of the former Soviet Union, the Baltic states were once ecological disasters. But while Russia continues to be an environmental nightmare, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are investing serious resources into cleaning up their environments — in the interest, government officials say, of gaining entry into the European Union. To do so, they […]

Arresting Development

U.S. federal authorities arrested two Portland State University students yesterday and are seeking two others in conjunction with the firebombing of logging trucks during last year’s protest of the Eagle Creek timber sale in Oregon. Environmentalists spent years protesting the timber sale, and some resorted to tree-sitting and other forms of civil disobedience. The sale […]

And other words from readers

Responding to “Power Shift,” our special edition on local initiatives to combat global warming in the absence of federal leadership, Grist readers waxed pretty warm, themselves. Ross Gelbspan’s piece on the failure of big-name national environmental groups to take the lead on climate change drew praise from local activists — and criticism from some of […]

Froggy Went A-Courtin’

Scrambled Eggs

If you were looking for good news about endocrine disputers, you’re out of luck. A global report by the World Health Organization has found extensive damage to wildlife from endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and could not rule out possible risks for humans as well. EDCs — which lurk in pesticide residues on food, plastics, household products, […]

Paul Sabin, Environmental Leadership Program

Paul Sabin is executive director of the Environmental Leadership Program and a lecturer in American history at Yale University. He is presently completing a book on California oil politics for the University of California Press. Monday, 12 Aug 2002 NEW HAVEN, Conn. I am off to Seattle today for a five-day retreat, and I’m tingling […]

How Now, Brown Cloud

A dense blanket of pollution that is hovering over South Asia could cause millions of deaths in the region and pose a threat to the world at large, a group of 200 scientists announced today. Known as the “Asian Brown Cloud,” the smog is an estimated two miles thick and covers the entire Indian subcontinent, […]

Signs, Seals Not Delivered

Thirteen years after the Exxon Valdez spill sent 11 million gallons of crude oil pouring into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, some species still show no sign of recovery, according to the government panel overseeing the area’s restoration. The long-suffering species include herring, ducks, harbor seals, and loons; others, such as some seabird and salmon species, […]

Rock Me Like a Hurricane

The healing of the Florida Everglades is the largest environmental restoration project in U.S. history — and its got some of the nation’s highest hopes pinned on it. Some of those hopes involve the Florida Bay, a once-pristine angler’s paradise that all but collapsed in the late 1980s, when its clear waters became clouded and […]