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The Powers That Won't Be
The German government and energy companies today reached an agreement to shut down the nation’s 19 nuclear power plants by about 2020. The deal, which comes after more than 18 months of contentious negotiations, fulfills a pledge made by the governing coalition of the Social Democratic and Green parties to phase out nuclear energy. Still, […]
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Micheal Phillips, Aquarius Underwater Laboratory
Michael Phillips is a scuba technician and archaeological diver for Tidewater Atlantic Research in Washington, N.C. He is the operations and communications specialist at Aquarius, where a team of six aquanauts will spend nine days in the underwater laboratory 63 feet below the ocean’s surface in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Thursday, 15 Jun 2000 […]
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Crime Me a River
It will soon be a crime to harm salmon or steelhead in some urban areas in the Northwest. The National Marine Fisheries Service is planning to announce rules to that effect next week, a follow-up to last year’s listing of fish runs in Washington’s Puget Sound and Oregon’s Willamette River under the Endangered Species Act. […]
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Many Happy Returns
Europeans would be able to return their outdated electrical goods to the products’ manufacturers under a new law proposed by the European Commission yesterday. The proposal aims to cut down on heavy metals and other pollutants in municipal waste by requiring manufacturers to take back electrical goods and recycle at least 60 to 80 percent […]
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Surplus With a Smile
Al Gore pledged yesterday that if he’s elected president, he will use some of the federal government’s surplus to create a National Energy Security and Environment Trust Fund, which would, among other things, help clean up old, dirty coal-fired power plants. He announced the plan as he kicked off a three-week “progress and prosperity tour,” […]
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Profit in the Wilderness
An Australian company, Earth Sanctuaries Ltd., is aiming to turn a profit by protecting land and wildlife. The company, one of the first of its kind in the world, operates three Australian conservation sanctuaries and plans to buy land to create new sanctuaries, likely near Sydney and Melbourne. It intends to make money by attracting […]
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Jim Leichter, Aquarius Underwater Laboratory
Jim Leichter is a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This is his fourth saturation diving mission at Aquarius, where a team of six aquanauts will spend nine days in the underwater laboratory 63 feet below the ocean’s surface in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Wednesday, 14 Jun 2000 CONCH REEF, Fla CONCH REEF, […]
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Mercury in Retrograde
The Clean Air Network, a coalition of nearly 1,000 enviro groups, called on the U.S. EPA yesterday to require some 600 old, coal-burning power plants to reduce their mercury emissions by 90 percent. The aging plants, which were exempted from most pollution controls under the 1970 Clean Air Act, emit as much as 51 tons […]
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A Clean Slade?
Conservative Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) has entered into an odd alliance with the Sierra Club to push for higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. At a press conference last Thursday, Gorton was joined by Sierra Club official Dan Becker and Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Richard Bryan (Nev.) in pushing a resolution […]
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Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise
The U.S. EPA and the Energy Department summoned executives from the nation’s biggest oil companies to Washington, D.C., yesterday to make them explain why gas prices are rising markedly in the Midwest, all but accusing the companies of price gouging. The EPA doesn’t buy the oil industry’s excuse that prices are as high as $2 […]
