Latest Articles

Just Stick to Tofu

Farmed Salmon Contaminated With PCBs, Other Nasties Consumers, still struggling with the news that bovine spongiform encephalopathy-laden beef will make your brain melt and mercury-laden tuna will make your children stupid, were met today with more bad news: A new study in the journal Science claims that fish-farmed salmon contain enough contaminants (primarily PCBs and […]

Homeocidal

Herbal Medicine Trade Threatens Thousands of Plant Species The booming worldwide market for herbal medicines threatens between 8 and 20 percent of the 50,000 known wild medicinal plant species with extinction, according to a forthcoming study by the World Wildlife Fund. Having risen by10 percent per year for the past decade, the herbal medicine trade […]

Terror Error

Top British Scientist Calls Global Warming Bigger Threat Than Terrorism Which menacing global problem should be keeping you up at night: terrorism or climate change? Britain’s top government scientist is creating a bit of a stir by arguing that it’s the latter, and lambasting President Bush for having his priorities all out of whack. In […]

Down, Down, and Away — It’s Superfund

Superfund Sites to Remain Toxic Due to Lack of Funding According to the U.S. EPA’s inspector general, the Superfund program faces a $175 million shortfall this year; as a result, cleanup will not begin on 11 of the nation’s worst toxic waste sites. Superfund was established in 1980 as an attempt to force polluting industries […]

To Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

Energy Execs Pay to Create Environmental “To-Do” List with GOP Reps Business execs from power, coal, and mining companies are powwowing with more than a dozen GOP lawmakers from Western states this week in Phoenix, Ariz., at a conference focused on energy and environmental issues that boasts, among other activities, a session during which attendees […]

Which ‘cide Are You On?

GM Crops Linked to Rise in Herbicide and Pesticide Use Pesticide and herbicide use on genetically modified (GM) crops in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past eight years, surpassing the concentration of agrochemicals sprayed on conventional crops, according to an analysis of U.S. government data. This research appears to blow a hole in […]

Mine Every Mountain, Fill Every Stream

Bush Admin. Rule Change Would Give a Boost to Mountaintop Mining Mountaintop-removal mining is poised to get even easier thanks to a rule change proposed by the Bush administration yesterday. Significant chunks of Appalachia have already been devastated by this mining technique, which involves blasting off the tops of mountains to get at coal beneath […]

Michelle Nijhuhis reviews Power to the People by Vijay Vaitheeswaran

Just before Thanksgiving, Senate Democrats (with the aid of a few Republicans) stymied the massive national energy bill, guaranteeing that debate on the measure would drag into an election year -- and significantly reducing its chance of passing. The setback surprised some observers because the bill, which currently weighs in at just under 1,200 pages, was carefully designed by congressional leaders for maximum political appeal: Its ethanol subsidies tempted farm-state Democrats, while renewable-energy perks drew endorsements from advocates of wind and solar power.

The National Wink-Wink Convention

Environmental enforcers get out while the getting’s good (and everything else is bad)

When John Suarez, the U.S. EPA’s top enforcement official, resigned on Monday to take a job at a Wal-Mart division, he assured his colleagues and President Bush that the EPA has “been able to provide more compliance assistance to industry than ever before.” The operative wording here, of course, is “assistance to industry,” seeing as […]