Latest Articles

Umbra on dealing with lead paint

Wise One, We have a conundrum. Our house is covered with cedar shingles, which some dope painted, presumably with toxic or lead-laden paint. The paint is flaking, and we need to either get rid of it completely or treat the flakes and paint over them. What is the least toxic (to our family and home […]

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

It was the ultimate in pork-barrel politics, except it happened to concern chickens. Earlier this month, the U.S. Congress passed its omnibus spending bill — which included a provision wedged in by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) on behalf of Fieldale Farms, a Georgia chicken-processing company that contributed $4,000 toward Deal’s election. The provision allows farmers […]

F Is for Fish

The Bush administration received an “F” from the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition for failing to make progress on protecting endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest. The coalition, which is comprised of regional environmental and conservation organizations, said the administration has not implemented three-quarters of the measures mandated under a salmon-recovery plan adopted in 2000. […]

Hamster Dance

Eight environmental organizations sued the U.S. Forest Service yesterday for failing to increase the fees paid by ranchers to graze livestock on public lands. The groups say that the dramatically below-market rates charged by the USFS cost taxpayers money and lead to damage from overgrazing on 95 million acres of federally owned land. On average, […]

First in Fright

A bankrupt paper mill in North Carolina is refusing to take responsibility for millions of gallons of wastewater, polluted landfills, and toxic chemicals it produced, leaving state environmental regulators stymied and alarmed. “We’ve just never dealt with anybody who said, ‘We’re going to walk out the door and leave it,'” said Forrest Westall, the regional […]

Overdrive

214,000,000 — number of vehicles in the U.S.1 290,000,000 — number of people in the U.S.2 2 — number of American cars on the Top 20 list in “The Greenest Vehicles of 2003,” produced by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (the other 18 are Japanese)3 22,802 — miles per year driven by the […]

What can we learn from Bush’s FreedomCar Plan?

Following the State of the Union address in which President Bush laid out his new FreedomCAR and Fuel Initiative, which was cheered by automakers and jeered by environmentalists, hydrogen fever swept from the Beltway into the printing presses and airwaves of mainstream media. CNN, Business Week, the New York Times, and U.S. News and World […]

The Rootworm of All Evil

In a major win for the biotech industry, the U.S. government yesterday gave Monsanto the green light to sell corn that has been genetically modified to resist rootworm disease, the most significant threat to the crop. The effort to combat rootworm has been the single biggest reason farmers use pesticides, so the decision will be […]

Withering Heights

The Bush administration’s proposal for addressing climate change was subjected to withering criticism by 17 experts in a report released yesterday. The experts, who were convened by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences at the request of the administration, said that the proposal lacked “a guiding vision, executable goals, [and] clear timetables” and that its […]

Spirited Away

In a move that could set a precedent for a new kind of conservation effort, communal landowners in Mexico turned over an unspoiled island to the federal government. The $3.3 million deal was designed to protect the island, Espiritu Santo, from tourist development. The Manhattan-sized island, which is located 20 miles off the coast of […]