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Arsenic and Old Laws
Tens of millions of Americans are drinking water with unsafe levels of arsenic, a known toxin and carcinogen, according to a report released yesterday by the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC is threatening to sue the EPA unless it immediately strengthens its 58-year-old standard for arsenic levels in drinking water. EPA officials say a more […]
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Wilted Greens
The Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM) has become the nation’s fourth largest political party and recently increased its clout by forming an alliance with Mexico’s biggest opposition party, the pro-business National Action Party. Many Mexican enviros say the Greens have done little to fight the nation’s serious environmental problems, and they accuse the PVEM of […]
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But It Gives Strip-Mall Developers a Nice Head Start
Africa lost more than 9 million acres of forest each year between 1990 and 1995, primarily because of logging, overgrazing, conversion of land for agriculture, and civil unrest, according to a new study by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Africa had an annual deforestation rate of 0.7 percent between 1990 and 1995, more than […]
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Get Wind of This
Wind power is beginning to gain ground in Japan, and the public is paying more attention to clean energy in the wake of a series of nuclear accidents that have left many Japanese mistrustful of nuclear power. In October, Tomen Corp. opened Japan’s largest wind-power farm, and next month Tokyo Electric Power Co., the nation’s […]
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Or We Could Just Put Them All Up at the Hilton
More than a third of the planet’s plant and animal species exist on a mere 1.4 percent of its land surface, according to a new study published in today’s issue of the journal Nature. The British-American research team that produced the report said the findings indicate that saving a large share of the world’s species […]
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Cat on a Hot Radioactive Roof
An ingredient in kitty litter may be just the thing to help clean up a radioactive mess left in West Valley, N.Y., by an old recycling plant for spent nuclear fuel rods. Nearly 1,000 scientists and engineers have spent 18 years and $1.5 billion working to clean up the site, employing such high technology as […]
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GM to Heavily Promote New Off-Road SUV in Oregon
Dozens of enviro groups, businesses, and churches are banding together in Oregon to push for more federally protected wilderness in the state. The new “Oregon Wild” campaign, spearheaded by the Oregon Natural Resources Council, calls for the protection of 4.9 million acres of roadless national forest land, in addition to the 2.1 million acres in […]
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Make It $10 Billion and We'll Turn Niagara Falls Into a Water-Slide Park
The military commanders of the Army Corps of Engineers are waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to boost the agency’s $4 billion civil works budget by more than 50 percent, even as the Clinton administration is publicly questioning the agency’s traditional agenda of major water projects. Many of those projects have been criticized as wasteful and environmentally […]
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A Disappearing Act
137 species are estimated to go extinct each day 50,000 species are estimated to go extinct each year 78 species were on the original U.S. endangered species list 1,201 species were on the U.S. endangered species list as of October 1999 43 percent of endangered and threatened animals in the U.S. depend on wetlands […]
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We Got the Fever
A new analysis by government scientists indicates that the planet’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate, suggesting that the future impact of global warming may be more sudden and severe than previously predicted. The study, which will be published in the March 1 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that the very […]
