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Salmon Chanted Evening

Historic Deal Will Help Atlantic Salmon in Maine In an unprecedented move intended to save plummeting populations of threatened Atlantic salmon, a coalition of environmental groups, government agencies, a Native American tribe, and a power company yesterday announced a plan to take down dams along the Penobscot River, Maine’s longest waterway. The project calls for […]

Clark Williams-Derry, Northwest Environment Watch

Clark Williams-Derry is research director at Northwest Environment Watch, a nonprofit research and communication center that promotes sustainability in the Pacific Northwest. Monday, 6 Oct 2003 SEATTLE, Wash. I am in a completely foul mood. What on God’s so-far-still-green earth was I thinking when I agreed to do this stupid diary? Oh, that’s right, here’s […]

Check Your Fluids

Testing for Pollution in People’s Bodies Is on the Rise A new “biomonitoring” movement is taking off with the aim of measuring pollution levels in people’s bodies. Scientists are increasingly testing people’s blood, urine, and breast milk for the presence of dangerous chemicals, such as dioxins, PCBs, and DDT. Breast cancer activists in particular are […]

Pack Your Trunks

California’s Timber Appetite Spells Trouble for World’s Forests As California strives to protect its own forests, rising demand for wood in the state is fueling logging far afield, in Oregon, the southeastern U.S., Canada, and even Europe. According to a new report by the state Department of Forestry, California imports about 75 percent of its […]

Caveat Farmer

Bush Insulates Pesticide Makers from Lawsuits The Bush administration is doing a big favor for pesticide manufacturers by instituting a new policy that will curb farmers’ ability to sue the companies if their products don’t work as promised. In a significant policy reversal, the U.S. EPA has reinterpreted a federal law and now claims that […]

Suit to Kill

California and Other States to Sue EPA over Greenhouse Gases California intends to sue the U.S. EPA over the Bush administration’s recent decision that the agency doesn’t have the authority to regulate emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, Gov. Gray Davis (D) announced on Friday. Nine other states, including Illinois, New York, […]

Detroit Yuck City

Illegal Dumping Pushes Up Toxic Contamination in Great Lakes Toxic pollution in Great Lakes waterways has jumped 25 percent over the past six years, thanks at least in part to rampant illegal discharges from large industrial facilities and sewer plants. Meanwhile, government enforcement efforts on both the national and state levels are stagnating, meaning that […]

Cheap Tricks I

Toyota Says Hybrids Can Be Inexpensive to Manufacture Defying conventional wisdom, Toyota unveiled its new hybrid-car production site in Toyota City, Japan, yesterday and sent a clear message to other automakers: Gas-electric hybrids can be manufactured inexpensively. Such cars have traditionally been thought of as too costly to be practical, and Toyota and Honda, the […]

I’ll Take Mongolia for $1,000, Alex

Increased Mining in Mongolia Could Threaten Environment Say “Mongolia” and most people think of yaks and yurts — that is, if they think of anything. But these days, mining companies have a very different image of Mongolia: an untapped source of gold, copper, and other natural resources that can be exploited on the cheap and […]

Cheap Tricks II

New Solar Panels Would Be Inefficient — and Inexpensive Usually, inefficient energy sources are an environmentalist’s worse nightmare — but the opposite might be the case for a new type of solar cell. True, the new cells would only capture about 10 percent of the sun’s energy (roughly half of what conventional solar cells capture), […]