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The Wisdom of Chairman Wow
A Democratic U.S. Senate will pose a big challenge to President Bush’s energy plan. When Sen. James Jeffords (R-Vt.) formally leaves the GOP in a week or so, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who opposes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and wants more money spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, […]
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Peru-stroika
Peru this week created a national park that will protect one of its last big tracts of undeveloped rainforest, an area that loggers had hoped to open up soon. The 5,225-square-mile park is larger than the state of Connecticut, and scientists from Peru and the U.S. said they had already identified at least 28 previously […]
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The Hunger Strikes Back
Canada’s Health Minister Allan Rock last week said the country would take a closer look at hazardous-waste concerns in Sydney, Canada, 17 days after the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, Elizabeth May, went on a hunger strike to call attention to the problem. May, who ended her strike by taking a bite […]
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Trees Don't Suck
After all that talk, it seems that forests might not do such a great job sucking carbon dioxide emissions out of the air, according to two studies published today in the journal Nature. During negotiations over a climate change treaty, the U.S. and Canada have made a big to-do about the potential for forests to […]
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Greased Lightning
The first gas station in a major city to sell vegetable fuel for diesel cars and trucks opened yesterday in San Francisco. A similar station also opened in Sparks, Nev. The biodiesel fuel is made from recycled vegetable oil from restaurants or from soybean oil. The fuel doesn’t cut back on nitrogen oxide emissions, but […]
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Giving Climate Change the Byrd
Very rarely do the words “climate change” or “greenhouse gases” appear in President Bush’s energy plan. A group of 250 scientists is circulating a letter to the public arguing that it is wrong to shape an energy policy around coal, oil, and nuclear energy and that “conservation must be front and center in our energy […]
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Vermonty Haul
Explaining his motivation to leave the Republican Party and become an Independent, U.S. Sen. James Jeffords (Vt.) this morning listed “energy and the environment” as two of the “fundamental issues” where he disagreed most strongly with President Bush. Jeffords is known as an environmentalist and was one of six founders of the Congressional Solar Energy […]
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Rats.
Officials are conducting tests off the northern coast of New Zealand’s South Island — one of the world’s most well-known feeding grounds for whales, dolphins, and seals — after a trailer filled with 18 tons of deadly rat poison crashed and fell into the sea. Dead fish and eels have already washed up along the […]
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They've Got Balls
Vice President Dick Cheney was greeted by two standing ovations from the crowd yesterday at the annual conference sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute. Cheney is the architect of the Bush administration energy plan, which calls for increased use of nuclear power in the U.S. In celebration of the change of heart in Washington, D.C., […]
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Pop the Corks
Delegates from 127 countries yesterday formally moved to adopt a treaty to ban or reduce the use of 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs), chemicals such as PCBs and pesticides that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and genetic abnormalities in humans and wildlife. The treaty will be signed by delegates in Stockholm, Sweden, today, […]
