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Six Billion Served
World population may hit 6 billion today, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, meaning human numbers have doubled in less than 40 years. The United Nations predicts the 6 billion mark will be hit on October 12. Either way, humanity is increasing by 78 million people a year, despite a decelerating growth rate, and scientists […]
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Hot and Bothered
The warming of ocean waters seems to be an early warning sign that humans may be threatened by an epidemic, a team of earth scientists and infectious disease experts reported last week in the journal Science. The researchers found that higher temperatures in the Indian and Pacific Oceans increased rain in parts of Africa, and […]
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Don't Blow These Horns
The Javan rhinoceros of Vietnam, long thought to be extinct, was captured in a photograph that was released last week by the World Wildlife Fund. Once plentiful throughout Asia, many rhinos were killed off for their horns by poachers and their habitat was heavily damaged during the Vietnam War by defoliants such as Agent Orange. […]
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Wails for Whales
Some 800 gray whales, about 3 percent of the gray whale population, died this year during their annual migration from the lagoons of Baja California to feeding grounds in the Bering Sea. This is the largest number in the 24 years records have been kept. The 150 or so whales which washed up dead on […]
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Birds of Pray
Israelis and Palestinians are teaming up to preserve the lesser kestral, a threatened raptor which finds ideal nesting spots in the dark crannies of aging buildings in Jerusalem’s Old City. Today only about 400 pairs nest in Israel, down from about 2,000 in the 1970s. The birds find fewer old buildings each year and fewer […]
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James Corless, Surface Transportation Policy Project
James Corless is the northern California campaign manager for the Surface Transportation Policy Project. STPP works to promote better transportation and land-use planning, walkable communities, public transportation, and citizen involvement in decision-making. Sunday, 18 Jul 1999 TRUCKEE, Calif. For countless immigrants, it’s been reinvented time and again as the ultimate promised land. One writer calls […]
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Grandfathers' Clock Running Out
The EPA has discovered that a number of old, coal-fired power plants, “grandfathered” under the Clean Air Act, seem to have flouted the law by making major renovations to produce more power without installing required pollution controls. The EPA is still investigating and no action has yet been taken against the power companies, but the […]
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A-Salt on Whales
A vigorous international campaign is mounting against plans by Mexico and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. to build the world’s largest salt plant on a Pacific lagoon that is a major breeding ground for gray whales. The proposed saltworks on the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California would pump 6,600 gallons of water out of the lagoon […]
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House Beautiful?
Enviros scored a number of victories in an Interior Department funding bill passed by the House last night. The House will now run up against the Senate, which has inserted a number of anti-environmental passages into its version of the bill. The House bill would bar the use of federal funds for building logging roads […]
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Green Eyeshades
A panel of the National Research Council is urging the federal government to resume development of a “green” accounting system that would calculate, in addition to standard economic measurements, the costs of such things as resource depletion and environmental and health damage from pollution. The Commerce Department had been working on just such a system, […]
