Latest Articles

Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged

A coalition of more than 60 environmental, civil-rights, and Native American groups have sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing the confirmation of William G. Myers III to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Before serving as the Interior Department’s chief legal officer, Bush nominee Myers was a lobbyist for the cattle […]

Fish Stickers

Starting this fall, seafood sold in the U.S. will be labeled with information about where it was caught, the country where it was processed, and whether it was wild or farmed, thanks to a provision in a spending bill recently passed by Congress. Seafood will be the first food group subject to “country of origin” […]

Morose Code

In a move that should mean cleaner air for Washington, D.C., a federal appeals court yesterday rejected the U.S. EPA’s decision to accept a D.C.-area proposal to delay enforcement of Clean Air Act-mandated pollution levels for several years past the act’s 1999 deadline. The area was classified as being in “severe” violation of federal ozone […]

Oil Who Wander Are Not Lost

Last year, China became the world’s second-largest importer of oil (take a wild guess who’s No. 1), struggling to keep up with the energy demands of an economy expanding at a rate of 9.9 percent annually. Having recently concluded, like other oil-thirsty countries, that the volatile Middle East might not be a stable, long-term source […]

Global-warming activists can learn from the anti-smoking campaign

Twenty years ago, it seemed that virtually everyone smoked. You couldn’t sit in a restaurant for five minutes without stinking of cigarettes for hours. Now, in state after state, even biker bars are going smoke-free. Clearly, there’s been a dramatic shift in the public’s attitude toward smoking — but it hasn’t been an intellectual shift. […]

The New Office of Environmental Review

Let’s Get Fiscal

President Bush’s $2.4 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2005, released today, gives the environment the shaft. The budget does propose funding increases for a handful of high-profile enviro projects (mostly in electoral swing states), including Superfund cleanups, conservation grants to private landowners, maintenance and construction in national parks, and salmon restoration. In many cases, […]

And Now for Something Completely Different

In sharp contrast to the recently released Bush administration budget, Canada’s Liberal Party government on Monday promised to double spending on contaminated-site cleanups, promote green technologies to increase energy efficiency, and go beyond the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol in curtailing emissions. Over 10 years, $4 billion will be devoted to cleaning up polluted military […]

Smoke Signals

Activists fighting against climate change could learn much from the tactics of anti-smoking campaigners, argues Audrey Schulman in our Soapbox section. The tobacco war has been fought on many fronts, but perhaps the most important was the concerted publicity campaign that changed the images people associate with smoking. It’s no longer romantic, no longer “cool.” […]

Going South

The search for Antarctic organisms that can be used for pharmaceutical and other commercial purposes — called “extremophiles” for their ability to thrive in harshly cold, dry, and salty conditions — is pushing international patent law to the breaking point and threatening the fragile Antarctic environment, concludes a United Nations study released on Sunday. The […]