Latest Articles

Block Party

Edwards Will Block Bush’s Choice to Head EPA North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D), a presidential contender, is now the third senator threatening to hold up the nomination of President Bush’s choice to head the U.S. EPA, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R). “The nomination will not go forward until this administration commits to giving us […]

A Nice Piece of Tailpipe

New Low-Polluting Cars to Hit U.S. Showrooms Next Month There are low-emission vehicles (LEVs), ultra-low-emission vehicles (ULEVs), super-ultra-low-emission vehicles (SULEVs), and the holy grail of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). As if the clean-car world weren’t baffling enough, now there’s a new acronym to add to this alphabet soup — partial zero-emission vehicles (PZEVs), which Ford and […]

Put It in Park

Megapark Will Protect Vast Stretch of Pristine Amazon Rainforest Brazil has announced the creation of a new “conservation corridor” that will link 12 separate protected areas in the Amazon rainforest to create a 25 million-acre megapark. It will be the world’s largest protected stretch of tropical rainforest, encompassing about 70 percent of Brazil’s northern state […]

Twisting Their Farms

California Bills Would Crack Down on Air Pollution from Farms For the first time, California farmers would have to do their part to curb air pollution, under a series of controversial bills approved last week by the state legislature. The state’s agriculture industry has long enjoyed an exemption from the federal Clean Air Act, even […]

A Boy Named “Sue”

Four States Sue EPA for Failing to Protect Kids from Pesticides Four state attorneys general filed suit against the U.S. EPA yesterday, charging that the agency is endangering kids by failing to carry out a 1996 law intended to protect children from the risks of eating pesticide-laden food. “Parents reasonably expect that every effort has […]

Allen Hershkowitz, Natural Resources Defense Council

Allen Hershkowitz, PhD, is a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council and author of Bronx Ecology: Blueprint for a New Environmentalism. Monday, 15 Sep 2003 ASHEVILLE, N.C. Having just returned last week from four days hiking in, driving through, and flying above the forests of eastern Tennessee, on the Cumberland Plateau, today I […]

Eco-friendly supplies and clothes for back to school and beyond

The beginning of the school year — already a stressful time for kids and parents — is often made even more difficult by all the purchasing pressure, from long lists of school supplies sent home by teachers to ads promoting fashionable new wardrobes for children. In 2003, Americans will spend $14.1 billion on back-to-school items, […]

The Coast in the Machine

Bush Pushes for Offshore Oil Drilling in Alaska The Bush administration is moving aggressively to open Alaska’s coastal waters to oil exploration — a campaign that is not getting nearly as much public scrutiny as efforts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The administration plans to offer eight oil and gas lease sales […]

Soilant Green

U.S. Fails to Inspect Farmed Fish Imports for Dangerous Chemicals If the orange foam caused by Canadian aquaculture isn’t enough to scare you away from farmed fish, how about the presence of malachite green, a fabric dye suspected to cause cancer, in Chilean farmed salmon? This year, European countries seized dozens of tons of farmed […]

Foam Call

Canadian Tribes Fight Big Fish Farms in Court Fish farms off Canada’s west coast are under fire from native tribes that claim the big aquaculture operations are devastating the natural environment. Four tribes living in the Broughton Archipelago, off the coast of British Columbia north of Vancouver Island, are going to court to curb the […]