Uncategorized

Air Plan Crash

The administration of Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) is going to have to get tougher on air pollution if it wants a new plan to pass muster with the feds, according to an early review from the EPA. The agency hasn’t yet rejected Texas’s plan, which seeks to cut pollution from vehicles and industries […]

The ins and outs of matchmaking for cranes

Put that chocolate down, hold the wine and roses, and take yourself back to the dark side of Valentine’s Day. You remember, that day your sophomore year in high school that began with the discovery of a new 18-megawatt zit and ended in tragedy when [insert teen proto-love interest here] said they wouldn’t go out […]

Can't See the Forest for the Treaties

Despite fiery opposition from Canada, U.N. negotiators on Saturday created a new international body, the U.N. Forum on Forests, to implement existing international agreements and conventions on forest protection. Canada argues that existing conventions are not working and wants the U.N. to begin negotiations on a new, comprehensive treaty on forest protection. Enviros oppose launching […]

Impure As the Driven Snow

Snowmobiling is coming under increasing fire in the western U.S., not just from enviros but also from officials at a number of national forests and parks. Snowmobiles have been banned in recent years from some U.S. Forest Service land in Montana and northern Idaho, and they may soon be limited in Yellowstone National Park, the […]

Occidental Deaths?

Riot police clashed with members of Colombia’s indigenous U’wa tribe Friday, as the U’wa protested plans by Occidental Petroleum to drill for oil on traditional U’wa lands in northeastern Colombia. As many as five children may have fallen into a fast-flowing river and drowned in the aftermath of the clash, according to unconfirmed reports. About […]

Flipper Flop

Three Asian species of dolphins may go extinct by 2020 if governments fail to cut pollution and destruction of the species’ habitats, according to scientists at the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation in Hong Kong. The first dolphin species to go will likely be China’s baiji dolphin; there are only about 30 left in the Yangtze […]

Mississippi Crud

The Army Corps of Engineers discarded the work of economists who found that the costs of an extensive lock and dam project on the Upper Mississippi River would far outweigh the benefits, a senior Corps economist is charging in a legal affidavit. Donald Sweeney led an economics team in producing a study of the project, […]

Dead in the Water

Here’s a story of the global economy at its worst and maybe also at its best. Early this month a cry of alarm came over email from my friend Zoltan Lontay in Hungary. The Hungarian news had just announced an enormous fish kill in the Szamos river on that country’s eastern border. A wave of […]

It's the Pits

A Turner for the Better

Billionaire and media magnate Ted Turner, already the largest individual landholder in the U.S., has bought a big chunk of land in Florida’s panhandle that he says he’ll leave undisturbed as habitat for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. The 3,620 acres, which Turner purchased for $11.6 million from a homebuilder and developer, abuts another large Turner […]