Latest Articles

The Windshield Beneath My Wings

Splatometers Reveal Possible Insect Decline in U.K. Many bird populations in the U.K. have declined precipitously in recent years — for instance, house sparrows have dropped by 65 percent since 1973 — and some scientists suspect that a cause is a possible corresponding decline in the insect populations upon which the birds depend. To test […]

Bush admin move may keep Kerry and other candidates from stumping on federal property

John Kerry at the Grand Canyon. Photo: Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc. from Sharon Farmer. The Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, NASA headquarters, and the Washington Monument are among the many federal properties that may be off-limits to presidential and congressional candidates for campaign photo ops this election season, thanks to a guidance recently released by the […]

Losing Our Marbleds

Bush Team Aims to Revoke Protections from Threatened Seabird The Bush administration took a big step yesterday toward removing the marbled murrelet, a Northwest seabird, from the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, a move enviros say will lead to further logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. The ruling from […]

He Said, She Said — Except He’s Right

Study Shows Systematic Deficiency in Climate-Change Reporting An analysis of climate-change coverage in four major U.S. newspapers from 1988 to 2002 confirms what many enviros have long charged: Media coverage of global warming is woefully deficient. A growing chorus of media critics says that the journalistic convention of “balance,” which dictates that in order to […]

I Hope You Like Dammin’, Too

Bush Administration Won’t Remove Northwest Dams to Save Salmon The Bush administration announced yesterday that it will not remove dams from the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest as part of its efforts to save endangered salmon runs. According to Bob Lohn of the National Marine Fisheries Service, “Our work shows that you can […]

That Smarts

Cute, Tiny Smart Cars to Come to U.S. and Get Big The tiny, fuel-efficient, two-seater Smart cars (named after their manufacturer) that are so popular in Europe are coming to the U.S. Sort of. Convinced that a tiny car — even one that gets 60 miles per gallon and has been repeatedly proven safe for […]

Malign Neglect

Republican Leaders at Odds Over Nuclear Worker Compensation Program The Bush administration is clashing with Republicans in Congress over a compensation program for workers at nuclear facilities sickened by exposure to radiation, asbestos, and other toxic substances. As of July, the Energy Department had paid out only $700,000 of the $95 million it has received […]

Good Vote Hunting

More Wildlife Refuges Opened to Hunting and Fishing Yesterday, just as the Republican National Convention was getting underway, the Bush administration announced that it will open an additional 243,500 acres of land in 17 national wildlife refuges and wetlands to recreational hunting and fishing. Much of the 95-million-acre national refuge system, with its 544 wildlife […]

Water Foul

Bush Administration Proposes Lower Standards for Toxic Metal Selenium Even while the Bush administration publicly courts hunters and fishers, it’s taking quiet steps that those outdoorsfolks likely wouldn’t approve of. Over the objections of many federal scientists, the U.S. EPA is poised to establish a more lax standard for selenium, a toxic metal that builds […]

Smells Like Ship

Concern Rises Over Air Pollution from Ships Tough regulations and technological advances have made power plants, cars, and other common sources of air pollution cleaner over past decades, and as they get cleaner another common source comes into sharper relief: ships. In some port cities like Los Angeles, ships — including oil tankers, container ships, […]