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Bush Takes Issue With Mentality

President Bush said this week that he’s all for allowing drilling rigs to enter parts of America’s national monuments, “where we can explore without affecting the overall environment.” Bush took issue with the “mentality that says you can’t explore and protect land,” explaining that “it all depends upon the cost-benefit ratio.” Environmentalists, needless to say, […]

Sherry, Sherry Quite Contrary

A group of Republican moderates stuck with Democratic lawmakers yesterday and submitted bills in the U.S. House and Senate to cap carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, only two days after President Bush broke a campaign promise and said he wouldn’t support such legislation. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Me.) and James Jeffords (R-Vt.) and Rep. Sherwood […]

A Sony Disposition

A new law requiring manufacturers to recycle used refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, and air conditioners goes into effect next month in Japan. Most firms appear to be ready to take on some of the additional costs of recycling the appliances. In some cases, consumers may have to pay $20 to $40 to recycle their appliances. […]

Huge Grant

In what would be its largest grant to date, Ted Turner’s U.N. Foundation is proposing to give $10 million to preserve the world’s coral reefs. The foundation’s board is meeting tomorrow to vote on the grant, which would go to the International Coral Reef Action Network, a coalition of academic, private, and intergovernmental groups led […]

Onus on Us

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked world leaders yesterday to pick up the pace on protecting the environment. “We may be moving in the right direction, but we are moving too slowly. We are failing in our responsibility to future generations and even this one,” said Annan, speaking at a conference in Bangladesh. He said that […]

The Fin-al Countdown

Environmentalists launched a yearlong campaign this week to persuade Singapore diners to stop eating shark’s fin soup, a popular delicacy in the country. To meet market demand, fishers slice fins off live sharks and then toss the helpless creatures back into the sea to die. As a result, shark populations are being devastated and traders […]

Undermined By the Under Mind

The European Union yesterday expressed disappointment with President Bush’s decision not to regulate carbon dioxide, and Japan said the decision could undermine the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Germany went so far as to say the rest of the world might have to leave the U.S. behind and begin implementing the treaty alone. E.U. Environment […]

Whoah, Corn Doggy

A vegetarian-foods subsidiary of Kellogg’s announced a recall in the U.S. on Tuesday of all its meatless corn dogs after tests confirmed that some of them contained a genetically engineered corn variety not approved for human consumption. Greenpeace first spotted that the corn variety, StarLink, was showing up in the dogs, and went public with […]

One Big Happy Nuclear Family

The U.S. nuclear power industry said yesterday that it produced more power in the year 2000 than ever before. The announcement came just one week after Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) introduced a bill to spur more use of nuclear energy in the U.S., celebrating what he termed a “safe and environmentally clean fuel.” In other […]

Butter Fly-cicles

The deaths of millions of monarch butterflies this month in Mexico may have been caused by a winter freeze, not pesticide-spraying by loggers, as one environmental group alleged last week. Mexico’s environmental agency said on Monday that it had tested 300 butterfly corpses and found no traces of toxic substances from pesticides, leading it to […]