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The Mahogany and the Ecstasy

Brazil clamped down on the logging of mahogany in the Amazon Rainforest last week, putting in place new rules that require loggers to present plans showing how harvesting will be done sustainably. Brazil produces about half of the world’s supply of mahogany, a highly prized — and highly endangered — wood sought for the making […]

Muggles Get It Right, for Once

The Canadian edition of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” — to be released later this month as the fifth book in J.K. Rowlings’ phenomenally popular series — has been printed on chlorine-free, 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. With a first print run of 935,000 copies, this is by far the largest recycled […]

Tilling Me Softly

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is encouraging farmers and ranchers to fight climate change with techniques that reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Speaking in Kansas on Friday, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced new incentives and technical support programs to help farmers increase carbon sequestration, though her speech was notably short on specifics. Farmers are being […]

Green Collar Jobs

In an unusually strong gesture of blue-green solidarity, 10 major labor unions called on presidential candidates yesterday to back a decade-long, $300 billion research plan to boost energy efficiency, reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and preserve jobs. Known as the Apollo Project, the plan calls for the promotion of hybrid and hydrogen cars, energy-efficient […]

Yakama Yack: Do Talk Back

The Yakama Nation has filed notice of its intent to sue the U.S. Department of Energy over its alleged failure to protect the Columbia River from contamination by the Hanford nuclear reservation. Thanks to four decades of plutonium production, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country; the tribe says radioactive pollution from […]

Owl Play

Logging in the Sierra Nevadas could nearly triple if the U.S. Forest Service manages the forests there according to the new plan it released yesterday. That plan would reduce habitat for the California spotted owl in favor of aggressive forest thinning in the name of wildfire prevention. The Forest Service says the plan, which would […]

A Fine Kettle of Fish

The federal Clean Water Act might be a great thing in theory, but how’s it doing in practice? Not so well, it turns out, due to the failure of the U.S. EPA to adequately enforce it. At any given moment, roughly 25 percent of all large industrial plants and water-treatment facilities are in violation of […]

Gag Me With a Rule

There was good news and bad news for U.S. forests yesterday. In the former department, the Bush administration announced that it would not renew a temporary rule that permitted some road-building in national forests. That decision effectively restores the “roadless rule,” a Clinton-era policy prohibiting development on almost one-third of the nation’s forests, or 58 […]

From Russia With Sludge

Fifteen percent of Russia is facing disastrous environmental conditions, President Vladimir Putin said yesterday. Putin identified environmental devastation as one of the most serious problems facing the country and affecting the livelihood of its people, and said many areas of the country were in a “critical or near-critical state.” The most industrialized regions of the […]

Ali Macalady reviews Safe Food by Marion Nestle and The Pleasures of Slow Food by Corby Kummer

In 2001, Eric Schlosser published Fast Food Nation -- an expose of America's increasingly consolidated and industrialized food system, and how that system contributes to a whole range of societal ills, from obesity and resistance to antibiotics to urban sprawl, habitat destruction, and poor labor conditions. The book was a smashing success -- 66 weeks and running on the New York Times bestseller list -- and it captured the nation's attention in a way no book about food has since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the 1906 classic about the Chicago meatpacking industry.