Latest Articles
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Santi-ugho
The city of Santiago, Chile, located in the shadow of the snow-capped Andes Mountains, is blessed with one of the most breathtaking natural surroundings of any urban area on Earth. But from May to September, you wouldn’t know it; heavy smog obscures the Andes entirely and lends the word “breathtaking” a different meaning. A poll […]
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Bottleneck
Evian, Perrier, Poland Spring — bottled water has become ubiquitous in the U.S., and the resultant plastic containers are posing an increasingly serious problem by clogging landfills and contributing to air pollution. In California, where bottled water is particularly popular, the state Department of Conservation is unveiling a campaign this week to convince consumers to […]
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Mobil-ized
Gas and oil giant ExxonMobil has increased its donations to organizations that oppose government regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions and question the notion that humans cause global climate change. Although the company has pledged $10 million a year for 10 years to climate research at Stanford University, it is also giving generously to the […]
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Lisa Goodman, River Alliance of Wisconsin
Lisa Goodman is the northern coordinator for local group assistance at the River Alliance of Wisconsin, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for the protection, enhancement, and restoration of Wisconsin’s rivers and watersheds. Tuesday, 27 May 2003 MADISON, Wis. Today began with a paddle. It is a short portage from house to river. Crossing a street […]
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Community and sustainability go hand in hand
Some years ago, I was part of a group that set out to create a community where we could work toward living with less impact on the environment. One of the first steps we took was to write down a list of principles to guide us as we worked to turn our vision into reality. […]
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Go, West, Young Man
Jason West, a 26-year-old member of the Green Party, is shaking things up in New Paltz, N.Y., where he was elected mayor earlier this month — an outcome that has the local political establishment in a tizzy. West ran on an ambitious environmental platform that rallied support from many students at the State University of […]
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Into Thin Air, and Thick Refuse
In the 50 years since Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary first scaled Mt. Everest, so much refuse piled up on the world’s highest mountain that some took to calling it the world’s highest garbage dump. By the early 1990s, an estimated 50 tons of metal, glass, and plastic, including many hundreds of abandoned oxygen […]
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Data Dumping
Think the U.S. EPA is keeping tabs on water pollution around the country? Think again. The agency’s computer system for tracking and controlling water pollution is outmoded, riddled with bad data, and lacks information on thousands of sources of serious pollution, according to a report released last week by the EPA’s inspector general. Efforts to […]
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Double Trouble
The number of animal species in Brazil known to be endangered has nearly doubled since 1989, reaching 398, according to a three-year study conducted by the Brazilian government and released last week. Tropical wolves, rare parrots, and exotic frogs and turtles are among the many threatened creatures. The comprehensive survey of animal and plant life […]
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Self-Destructive Behavior
It sounds like a bad movie. Wait, it IS a bad movie. A bad DVD, to be precise — at least from an environmental standpoint. A division of Walt Disney this August will begin selling DVDs that self-destruct after 48 hours, dubbed EZ-Ds. After an EZ-D’s plastic packaging is opened and it’s exposed to oxygen, […]
