Latest Articles

Virtuous Cycle

It’s Bike-to-Work Week! Put down the car keys and hop on the ten-speed: It’s national Bike to Work week! According to the Census Bureau, 99.7 percent of Americans burn gasoline on their way to work, so yes, we’re talking to you. As to the potential benefits, we turn over the mike to cycling enthusiast Julius […]

Readers sound off on capitalism, bottled water, and, yet again, the Sierra Club election

  From the Hawken’s Mouth Re: From Here to Economy Dear Editor: I think Stan Cox’s piece is wonderful and I am glad to see it published. Entropy and thermodynamics are consistently excised from mainstream economics and it is good to see them re-injected. Nevertheless, the author has made a rather odd and unusual error […]

Escape Notice

Demand for Hybrids Exceeds Expectations Demand for gas-electric hybrid vehicles has automakers scrambling to keep up. Ford’s new Escape hybrid SUV won’t go on sale until August, but already 30,000 people have expressed the desire to buy one via Ford’s website, whereas the company had planned to sell just 20,000 a year. Meanwhile, waiting lists […]

What Can Brown Do for You?

Cow Poop Powers California Dairy A well-fed dairy cow produces 120 pounds of poop a day — some 43,000 pounds a year. What to do with all that doo? Dairy farmer Albert Straus of Marin County, Calif., puts it in a big covered lagoon, where it decomposes and generates tons of methane gas, which he […]

X-mice

Genetic Damage from Air Pollution May Be Heritable Air pollution can cause genetic mutations, and those mutations can be passed along to offspring, according to a new report in the journal Science. A pair of Canadian researchers ran a study on two groups of mice, both located downwind from two steel mills in air containing […]

A behind-the-scenes look at the making of Bush’s much-praised new diesel rules

Yes, dear skeptics, you heard correctly: The Bush administration done good this week. Digging these new rules. Landmark controls on diesel emissions, finalized Tuesday by the U.S. EPA, are expected to prevent 12,000 premature deaths and 15,000 heart attacks each year. And these were no warmed-over regs from the Clinton era, passed off as the […]

Dim and Dimmer

Earth Getting Dimmer; Air Pollution Is Prime Suspect No, you’re not just depressed: The earth actually is getting darker. The amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface, researchers say, declined by as much as 10 percent between the late 1950s and early 1990s. In some regions the drop was steeper, including the U.S., Asia, and […]

The Thing of Small Cods

Cod May Be Headed for Extinction, Says WWF Worldwide cod stocks are declining rapidly and could be entirely wiped out by 2020, says enviro group World Wildlife Fund. The global cod catch has declined from 3.4 million tons in 1970 to 1 million tons in 2000, a trend WWF blames on overfishing, illegal catches, and […]

Fined and Dandy

Wal-Mart Fined $3.1 Million for Clean Water Act Violations Wal-Mart has agreed to pay a $3.1 million fine for storm-water runoff violations of the Clean Water Act, in a settlement with the U.S. EPA and the Justice Department — marking the second time it has paid such a fine, after a $1 million penalty in […]

Ay Charisma!

Conservation Efforts Need to Look Beyond Charismatic Species A new article in the journal Nature seeks to change the way conservation efforts are conceived. Rather than focusing on single “charismatic” species like tigers or gorillas, say researchers Anthony Ives and Bradley Cardinale, conservation programs should focus on whole ecosystems. They support their contention with an […]