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Banks for the Memories
Prince Charles yesterday opened the Millennium Seed Bank, which is intended to protect more than 24,000 plant species around the world from extinction. The $114 million seed bank in southern England — the largest such effort so far — will store millions of seeds in underground bomb-proof, flood-proof vaults, and house specimens of more than […]
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If They Could Just Harness All That Hot Air …
While government representatives in The Hague quibble over ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Germans are making some real progress in adopting clean energy. In the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, home to 2.8 million people and numerous heavy industries, about 19 percent of the electricity is generated by wind, and in some areas of the […]
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Bye, Buy!
Sit out the shopping frenzy this Friday and celebrate Buy Nothing Day, an inspired idea from the Adbusters Media Foundation in Vancouver, B.C. The day after Thanksgiving marks the start of an annual consumer rampage, but you’ll have more fun, create less waste, and save moola if you stay home and finish off the pumpkin […]
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Reds Seeing Green
Even as tourism has begun to boom in Cuba, attention to environmental concerns is also increasing. In 1970, Cuban President Fidel Castro said, “Unless we conquer nature, nature will conquer us,” and for years he encouraged farming and manufacturing to expand with little regard to the environment. But now Cuba’s communist government is limiting some […]
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Will the rest of the world bend to U.S. pressure to weaken Kyoto?
THE HAGUE, Netherlands Bill McKibben reports from The Hague: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five An hour’s drive from the crowded convention hall where international negotiators are toiling to reach some agreement on fighting climate change, you can visit one of the enormous storm surge barriers the Dutch have built to […]
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Turtles in the Soup
Environmentalists are outraged after Mexican authorities gave approval earlier this month to five hotel chains to build a tourist center in a sea turtle sanctuary in southeastern Mexico near Cancun. Enviros say the project, intended to span nearly 400 acres, would disturb a beach area frequented by endangered sea turtles and destroy endangered chit palms. […]
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How Slow Can You Go?
Italians have launched a worldwide “eco-gastronomic” movement to save what they say are the latest endangered species — foods that are produced locally and organically, in contrast to mass-produced fast food and industrialized agriculture. The growing Slow Food movement, which has attracted more than 60,000 participants in dozens of countries, has as its symbol a […]
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Every Which Way But Loose Standards
Dissatisfied with the federal government’s efforts to control dirty emissions from buses and big trucks, 13 states have decided to join with California in trying to impose tighter controls on diesel engines. Nearly every Northeastern state, as well as Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Texas, is preparing to adopt strict clean-air rules that are being […]
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Gym Dandy
To increase its chances of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing has ordered some of its biggest polluters to clean up their acts. A $1.25 billion cleanup project is aimed at helping Beijing, notorious for having some of the dirtiest air in the world, approach World Health Organization air standards by 2006. A visit to […]
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Climate negotiators in The Hague have their work cut out for them
THE HAGUE, Netherlands Bill McKibben reports from The Hague: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five This month’s international climate negotiations in The Hague, though full of sound and fury, are about one thing and one thing only: using policy in an attempt to bridge the wide gap between science and politics. […]
