Latest Articles

Orange You Glad?

Orange County, Calif., is generally associated with urban sprawl, not magnificent parklands — but a massive new land deal could help change that. The 4,738-acre “County Great Park” will be bigger than New York’s Central Park and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park put together, and will include riparian corridors, botanical gardens, sports and educational facilities, […]

Chipping Dale

U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth spoke in San Francisco yesterday in honor of Earth Day, but audience members might not have been very thrilled by what he had to say on behalf of the planet. Bosworth criticized environmentalists for trying to protect forests from logging and road-building projects, claiming that in fact the real […]

Spilling Over

The city of Los Angeles accepted legal responsibility yesterday for a decade’s worth of sewage spills, numbering 3,668 in all. The spills polluted streets and water bodies, in violation of both state and federal clean-water laws. After a four-year legal battle with government officials, environmental organizations, and community members, the city has finally owned up […]

John Connor, It Is Time

Australia is famous for its unusual animals (think koalas and kangaroos), but according to a new government report, thousands of the nation’s mammal, reptile, and bird species could go extinct if the pace of land-clearing continues unabated. The report, known as the “Biodiversity Audit” and leaked to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation yesterday, found that 2,891 […]

Umbra on anti-environmentalists

Dear Sequin-Wearing Award Ceremony Audience, Folks, we have a winnah! That’s right: The results are in from the first annual and perhaps only “Cheer Us Up the Weather Is Godawful and We’re at War” contest. We know the weather is beyond our control, but let us all work fervently to limit the possibility that we […]

Kerry on

Massachusetts Democratic Senator and 2004 presidential contender John Kerry is honoring Earth Day today by calling on the federal government to protect the human and ecological health of poor and minority communities through strengthening its commitment to environmental justice. In a speech this afternoon, Kerry demanded the creation of a new environmental justice position at […]

May the Source Be With You

A newly released, two-year study of the federal Clean Air Act’s New Source Review rules criticizes the Bush administration for taking steps to weaken clean air protections and calls for tighter regulations for older coal-fired power plants. New Source Review requires owners of power plants and other polluting facilities to install state-of-the-art emissions-control devices when […]

On the Scrap Heap of History

Improving gas mileage for cars and trucks is a goal shared by virtually all environmentalists — but it turns out that efforts to do so have a hidden downside. As vehicle manufactures seek to improve fuel efficiency by making their products ever-lighter, an increasing percentage of cars and trucks are made from plastic. Unlike the […]

Looting is as American as apple pie

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Two centuries later, the explorers rediscover the Columbia River

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