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Tiger Balm
The tiger may be making a comeback, after many biologists predicted that it would be all but extinct by the year 2000. Conservationists warn against complacency and stress that the tiger is still endangered, but they are optimistic about rebounding populations in some areas, including eastern Siberia, Nepal, and parts of India. The good news […]
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WTO Calls Kettle Black
While enviros prepare to raise Cain during the World Trade Organization talks starting in Seattle on November 30, the WTO yesterday came out with a report saying that ending government subsidies to energy, fishing, and farming industries could give a big boost to environmental protection. In a set of recommendations for the WTO’s 134 member […]
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Courting Disaster
The Supreme Court today will hear arguments in a case that could whittle down the power of citizens to file lawsuits against polluters. In 1992, Friends of the Earth sued a South Carolina hazardous-waste-incineration company, Laidlaw Environmental Services, for dumping excessive amounts of mercury in a nearby river. The company stopped polluting after the suit […]
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Mark Ritchie, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Mark Ritchie is president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, based in Minneapolis, Minn., which works to keep family farmers on the land. He also serves as national co-chair of Sustainable America and director of the International Forum on Food and Agriculture, and is on the boards of Mothers and Others, Libraries for […]
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Forest Gumption
Ever eager to leave a green legacy, Pres. Clinton will announce an initiative next week to protect up to 40 million acres of national forest land in 35 states from commercial development. The directive will ask the U.S. Forest Service to analyze how best to protect forest land that is still undeveloped and roadless, much […]
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Forest Gunk
Europe’s forests are sick and getting sicker, according to a new report released yesterday by the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe and the European Commission. The comprehensive analysis found that only 35 percent of the continent’s trees are “healthy,” about 40 percent are in a “warning stage,” and about 25 percent are “damaged,” meaning they […]
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Bush Whacked
Vice Pres. Al Gore accused GOP presidential frontrunner Gov. George W. Bush yesterday of letting Texas become the most polluted state in the nation, number one in toxic releases into the air, water, and soil, according to EPA numbers, and home to Houston, the city with the worst smog in the country. A Bush spokesperson […]
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Poly Wants a Cleanup
General Electric will cough up more than $250 million to clean the Housatonic River near its plant in Pittsfield, Mass., to settle government charges that the company polluted the river with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances from the 1930s until 1977. But the company’s not off the hook yet. New York’s attorney general […]
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Bummin' Range
Much to the chagrin of enviros, Congress has given the military primary responsibility for managing more than 1.6 million acres of the Sonoran desert in southwestern Arizona, encompassing most of the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range. Although a law signed Wednesday requires the military to work with the Interior Department on a management plan, enviros […]
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No More Sing Sing for Ling Ling
China yesterday announced plans to release giant pandas born and raised in captivity into the wild in an effort to boost the population of the endangered species. Under a pilot program to be launched in 2005, two to three giant pandas are expected to be released each year, the first such releases ever attempted. Only […]
