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Tehran Their Hair Out

Iran yesterday adopted a 10-year plan to tackle dismal air quality in its capital, Tehran, after weeks of nasty pollution problems that forced kids and elderly people to stay indoors and prodded others to don gas masks when venturing outside. The plan, which went into immediate effect, aims to improve the city’s public transportation system […]

Merry Christmas, From an Angry Elf

The Earth Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for a Christmas Day fire that destroyed the Oregon regional headquarters of paper manufacturer Boise Cascade. In a communique sent to news agencies, the group contended that Boise Cascade has ravaged the forests of the Pacific Northwest and that it is now teaming up with a Chilean company […]

Krilling Me Softly

The hole in the ozone layer may be responsible for a dramatic decline in krill numbers in the Antarctic Ocean, according to U.S. and German scientists working on a Japanese Fisheries Agency ship. The krill population off the Antarctic Peninsula south of Tierra del Fuego has dropped by about 75 percent since the mid-1980s, according […]

Consuming Desires

Consumer demand for organic food is soaring in Europe, leading to a jump in the number of organic farms from 6,300 in 1985 to more than 100,000 in 1998, according to a report prepared last year for the European Union by Nicholas Lampkin of the University of Wales in Aberystwyth. Lampkin predicted that 10 percent […]

Tanks for Nothing

Up to 170,000 sea birds have been killed by a large oil spill off France’s western coast, which began on Dec. 12 when a tanker hired by the oil giant TotalFina spilt in two during stormy weather and sank in the waves, pouring 3 million gallons of oil into the Atlantic. Some of the oil […]

Alexander and the Wonderful, Beautiful, No Bad, Very Good Day

Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian naval captain, was acquitted last week of treason and espionage charges, which were brought against him after he disclosed information about nuclear safety hazards aboard Russian submarines. The court decision, which came nearly four years after Nikitin was arrested and after a second trial, was hailed as a big victory […]

Catch a WWF of This!

Bye 2K

Sure, that Butterfly lady, Julia, has decided to come down from her tree after Pacific Lumber agreed to stay its chainsaws for the grove; it looks like the planet really is melting, with scary numbers released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continuing to get prominent play in the press; and the EPA is […]

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Dioxin-free Packaging

Earlier this year, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s began using new packaging made from unbleached, chlorine-free paper produced without generating dioxin. Ben & Jerry’s materials state that the only safe level of exposure to dioxin, which has been associated with cancer risk in some studies, “is no exposure at all.” Now the Competitive Enterprise […]

I Wish They All Could Be California Goals

Hundreds of California cities and counties are falling short of a goal to reduce by 50 percent the amount of garbage they dump in landfills by 2000, much to the chagrin of enviros who have backed the state’s 1989 recycling law, which is the most comprehensive in the nation. Of 451 jurisdictions that reported their […]