Latest Articles
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Umbra on cell phones
Dear Umbra, After many years of idealistic holdout, I have finally decided to own a cell phone; changes in my lifestyle have made the benefits too heavy to be outweighed by the detrimental effects. However, I would like to minimize the impact of my decision (brain tumors notwithstanding), so I am searching for the most […]
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Back to the Yellowstone Age
The Bush administration has asked the United Nations to remove Yellowstone National Park from a list of endangered World Heritage sites. “Yellowstone is no longer in danger,” wrote the Interior Department’s Paul Hoffman in a letter to the World Heritage Committee. There’s just one snag: The park staff disagree with Hoffman, saying Yellowstone still faces […]
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What I Did With My Summer Vacation
Looking for a good summer camp? A weeklong environmental activist training camp being held this week in Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest might be for you. Sponsored by Greenpeace, the National Forest Protection Alliance, and other, like-minded environmental organizations, the camp is teaching some 70 participants the finer points of civil disobedience. The camp is designed […]
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Tainted Sludge, Whoa-oh
When the cows at Boyceland Dairy outside Augusta, Ga., began dying by the hundreds, the Boyce family thought they knew what was to blame: the fertilizer used on the farm’s hayfields. That fertilizer was made from reclaimed sewage sludge; the Boyce family sued the city, claiming the sludge was tainted by industrial waste from Augusta […]
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Channeling Evil
A controversial plan to deepen the main channel of the Columbia River by dredging has gotten the green light from key agencies in Oregon and Washington, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The $134 million project would deepen from 40 to 43 feet more than 100 miles of the Columbia, from Vancouver, Wash., […]
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Under the Wire
Electromagnetic fields from home wiring, appliances, and power lines do not appear to cause breast cancer, according to a $2.5 million study of more than 1,100 women living in Long Island, N.Y. The study, published today in the online edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology, was part of the much larger Long Island Breast […]
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The Maine Event
Meanwhile, Maine is several steps ahead of the federal government when it comes to combating climate change: Today, the state will become the first in the nation to enact a law establishing specific goals and deadlines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Other New England states have addressed carbon dioxide emissions through different means — such […]
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Classrooms Dismissed
Some California classrooms may be contaminated, and not with the cooties. According to a new state study, portable classrooms are more likely than their conventional counterparts to contain dangerous levels of toxic chemicals. Half of the portable classrooms studied exceeded air-quality guidelines for eight-hour indoor exposure to formaldehyde, and one-hour exposure levels were 10 times […]
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Stow It
The U.S. famously declined to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, but yesterday it jumped on the bandwagon of another effort to control global warming: a research program dedicated to exploring technologies for capturing and storing carbon dioxide. Such technologies, collectively known as carbon sequestration, seek to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere through […]
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Illegal gold mining in Ghana shafts locals’ health and the environment
At I Trust My Legs, an illegal mining camp along a gray stream in the West African nation of Ghana, trespassers have bored vertical shafts deep into the ground. On a recent morning, Maxwell Adzoka strapped a lamp to his head, pressed his bare back and shoeless feet against the slick clay walls of one […]
