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I Like Mike

New York City mayor signs long-term recycling contract The debate over whether recycling is economically “worth it” continues, but one famously tight-fisted municipal leader has made up his mind. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) announced that the city will sign a 20-year contract with one of the nation’s largest recycling companies, Hugo Neu […]

Labor Pains

Slave labor used to clear Brazilian rainforest The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at a precipitous pace, and as is too often the case, this environmental catastrophe is connected to equally dire human-rights abuses. To wit: Thousands of poor, illiterate Brazilian peasants work every year chopping down the forest in conditions Brazil’s Labor Ministry delicately refers […]

Vanity Blair

Tony Blair calls for action on global warming, critics heap scorn U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair made a major speech yesterday that referred to global warming as the earth’s “greatest environmental challenge,” and though he never mentioned U.S. President Bush by name, he pointedly called on the world’s wealthiest countries to take the lead in […]

Err Jordan

Middle East Conflict Decimates Jordan River The Jordan River, a holy waterway for Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, is a desiccated shadow of its once robust self, thanks to unceasing conflict and competition for water in the Middle East. Fifty years ago, the river’s flow was more than 264 billion gallons a year; today, it […]

Hard of Huron

Great Lakes Face Continuing Environmental Threats While overall water quality in the Great Lakes has improved over the past 30 years, the lakes still face dire threats from chemical pollution, pathogens, and invasive species, according to the biennial report on the lakes’ water quality from the U.S.-Canadian International Joint Commission. The report hailed the reduction […]

The Ghost of Mining Past

Abandoned Mines Continue to Pollute the West There are some 500,000 abandoned mines in the U.S., 20 percent of which are severely polluting nearby rivers and groundwater. Most of the mines are in the West, and the U.S. EPA estimates that 40 percent of all Western headwater streams are now polluted by abandoned hard-rock mines. […]

Coming Soon to a Rap Video Near You

Navistar Introduces the Commercial Extreme Truck For the driver who enjoys his or her Hummer H2 pickup but just wishes it were a little bigger, a little less fuel-efficient, and a little more obnoxious, the answer has arrived: This week Navistar International introduces the CXT, short for commercial extreme truck. The CXT is 21.5 feet […]

Class Action Figures

9/11 Workers File Class Action Lawsuit More than 800 workers involved in cleanup and rescue operations at the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers have filed a class action lawsuit against Silverstein Properties, the leaser of the towers, and the four construction firms that oversaw the cleanup operation. Filed […]

Mustang Silly

Herd of Wild Horses Gets in Way of Bush Admin’s Drilling Plans It may come as a surprise to some that the U.S. is still home to about 27,000 wild, free-roaming mustangs, not yet driven from their open ranges by human development. But just wait. The Bureau of Land Management is set to round up […]

Schoolhouse Rocks

Public Schools Starting to Offer Organic Lunches Healthy, organic food is increasingly popping up in, of all strange places, school lunches. The Seattle school district recently banned junk food and exclusive soda contracts (despite the big dollars dangled by soda companies) and started urging schools to offer “fresh, local, organic, non-genetically-modified, non-irradiated, unprocessed food, whenever […]