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Heard It Through the Pipeline

With wholesale prices for natural gas doubling in the last year, environmental concerns are taking a back seat as energy companies make plans to build one, maybe two, pipelines to carry gas from beneath the Arctic Ocean to population centers. Native groups that once opposed development are now seeing economic opportunities. Greenpeace opposes the idea […]

The Nitro of the Living Dead

In the past few decades, industrialization, population growth, and the heavy use of chemical fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen in circulation, contributing to environmental problems worldwide and possibly human health problems like cancer and memory failure, reports the Baltimore Sun in a five-day series. Hardest hit are coastal bays and oceans — deadly […]

Cape Crusaders

South Africa outlined a sweeping conservation plan yesterday to protect biodiversity and estuaries across 35,000 square miles of the Cape Floral Kingdom, a region in the southwestern part of the nation. The ambitious plan, which is being hailed by enviros, aims by 2020 to set up a network of terrestrial and marine conservation areas, including […]

Beachy Keen

Congress passed a bill yesterday to expand the testing of coastal waters for pathogens and encourage states to warn beach goers when water is contaminated, and President Clinton is expected to sign it into law. The bill would offer states about $150 million over five years as an incentive to establish beach monitoring and public […]

Good Ideas in Short Supply

Believing that Al Gore is vulnerable on the issue of high oil prices, George W. Bush is planning to unveil an energy policy on Friday. It will include steps to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and boost domestic supply, said Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s senior economic advisor. While Gore has proposed tax breaks and other […]

A New Lease on Life

Washington, D.C.-based Conservation International is trying a new approach to saving natural areas in developing countries: leasing trees. CI is working on a deal to buy the logging rights for up to 25 years for 200,000 acres of pristine rainforest in southern Guyana in South America, planning to spend several million dollars to protect the […]

MTVP

In an MTV town meeting yesterday in Ann Arbor, Mich., Al Gore said that after long deliberation he had sided with paper bags over plastic, more out of personal preference than solid scientific evidence that plastic was worse for the environment. On a more serious note, one student tempted to vote for Ralph Nader in […]

Cruise Controls

The U.S. Justice Department has joined Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles (D) and environmentalists in criticizing proposed cruise ship legislation sponsored by Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), saying it would legalize the dumping at sea of toxic chemicals like the dry-cleaning solvent PERC. Department officials said the new legislation would make prosecutions difficult or impossible by contradicting […]

Time for a Czech Up

Thousands of Austrian environmental activists blocked border crossings between their country and the Czech Republic on Friday to protest a new Czech nuclear power plant just 40 miles from the Austrian border that is scheduled to start up soon. Austria, which decided to be nuke-free in 1978, is also threatening to try to block the […]

Swamp Thing

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favor of a $7.8 billion plan to restore the Florida Everglades over the next 30 to 40 years, the largest environmental restoration undertaking in history. The bill calls for a massive construction project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to restore the water flow through the 300-mile-long […]