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The Hypocritical Oath
The American Hospital Association is backing out of an agreement with the U.S. EPA that would have cut hospital waste in half by the end of the decade. The agreement was signed to much fanfare in 1998, and then-Vice President Al Gore called attention to it in an award ceremony the following year. Under the […]
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Yucca Mountain, Yuck Accounting
The U.S EPA yesterday set a standard for how much radiation would be allowed to leak into groundwater, air, and soil at the proposed storage facility for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The standard is similar to the one proposed by the Clinton administration, capping radiation leaks during the facility’s first 10,000 years to […]
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No Green Medal
The International Olympic Committee claims that environmental protection is a fundamental part of the Olympic Games, along with sports and culture. But only one-tenth of 1 percent of the budget for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics will be spent on the environment, says Diane Conrad, who is overseeing environmental programs for the Salt […]
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Gloom and Duma
Despite polls that suggest that 80 to 90 percent of Russians oppose the plan, the lower house of the country’s parliament, the Duma, voted yesterday to allow the import of nuclear waste, which would either be stored in perpetuity in Siberia or reprocessed into nuclear fuel and exported. The upper house is expected to approve […]
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Scientific Americans
A week before President Bush travels overseas to meet with European leaders already frustrated with his stance on global warming, a report released yesterday by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences states that global warming is real and getting worse and that human activity is largely responsible for the problem. The report — an evaluation […]
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Judge Dreadful
In a blow to environmentalists, a federal judge chose yesterday not to issue an emergency stay on road-building in metro Atlanta. U.S. District Judge Beverly Martin said she would give her final ruling this summer on a lawsuit filed by environmental groups opposed to Georgia’s three-year, $1.9 billion transportation plan for the area. The groups […]
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Wet T-shirts — No Contest
Wet cleaners are opening up around the country as an alternative to environmentally nasty dry cleaners. Traditional cleaners use a cleaning solvent, perchlorethylene, that has been linked to health and environmental hazards. A recent study, for example, found that dry-cleaning workers were more prone to certain types of cancer than the general population. In 1996, […]
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Cheney Takes Us for Fuels
The same day that a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed public support for President Bush’s energy policy at 37 percent, Vice President Dick Cheney held his first serious meeting with environmental groups. During the session yesterday, leaders from four green groups asked the Bush administration to work to boost fuel-economy standards to 40 miles per […]
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Grill a Gorilla
Rwandan soldiers spread out across Virunga National Park yesterday to protect endangered mountain gorillas after the Hutu militia apparently grilled two male gorillas and ate their meat on Friday. Killing apes for their meat is relatively common in Congo and other parts of Central Africa, but not in Rwanda and Uganda. Only 355 members of […]
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South of the Bolder
Petroleos Mexicanos, the world’s fifth-largest oil company, said this week that it would start a six-month internal effort to cut carbon dioxide emissions 1 percent below 1999 levels, as the first step in a 10-year emissions reduction program. The state-owned Mexican company is the first Latin American firm to say publicly that it would reduce […]
