Latest Articles

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 […]

Walking on Blair

Conservatives Accuse Blair of Being Weak on Climate Change In a depressing illustration of just how far global consensus on climate change has left the U.S. behind, this week British Prime Minister Tony Blair was criticized for doing too little on global warming by Michael Howard, the leader of the conservative Tory party. Howard attacked […]

Chad Pregracke, barge dweller and cleaner of rivers, answers questions

Chad Pregracke. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I am founder and president of Living Lands & Waters. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute “mission accomplished”? Our main objective is to clean up trash from America’s river shorelines, one piece of garbage, one river at a time. We […]