Latest Articles

Executive Carte Blanche

Chalk one up for Big Energy and its boosters in the White House. On Friday, the General Accounting Office abandoned its efforts to force Vice President Dick Cheney to turn over information about which people he met with while heading up the administration’s secretive energy task force. The GAO, Congress’s investigative arm, had been fighting […]

Smart Attack

Smart-growth policies, designed to put a damper on runaway development and preserve local character, have recently come under attack in a handful of U.S. communities. In Loudon County, Va., on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., nearly 200 lawsuits were filed last week against the county’s growth-control policies. Also last week, the mayor of Erie, Colo., […]

When You Dish Upon a Star

Minnesota would become the first state in the U.S. to effectively ban phosphorus in automatic-dishwashing detergent if a bill working its way through the state legislature gets the eventual thumbs-up. Phosphorus, which helps to remove those oh-so-unsightly spots from glasses and dishware, ultimately gets flushed out of homes and into lakes and streams, where it […]

Af-gone

Afghanistan’s most significant wetland area is now almost as dry as a bone, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Satellite imagery shows that 99 percent of the Sistan wetlands, which stretch into Iran, have dried out since 1998. The main source of water to the wetlands, the Helmand River, has been flowing at far […]

Hydra-gen

President Bush yesterday tried out several neat-o gadgets powered by hydrogen fuel cells (a video camera and cell phone, among others) and reinforced the lofty language of his State of the Union speech, saying that he would ask Congress to spend $1.2 billion on “a new national commitment to take fuel-cell cars from the laboratory […]

Umbra on jet streams

Dear Umbra, Why does the jet stream move from west to east? Joe Pittsburgh, Penn. Dearest Joe, To get a decent bagel? Image: NASA. There are actually two main global jet streams, the “polar” in the Northern Hemisphere and the “subtropical” in the Southern Hemisphere. The ridiculously simple answer to your question is that jet […]

Umbra on cruises

Dear Umbra, My husband, though a very warmhearted man, does not follow the environmental tides quite as much as I do. He would desperately like to take a cruise for our second honeymoon. I know cruise ships dump waste in the oceans and are not good for the ecosystem in general, but could you tell […]

Umbra on Styrofoam

Dear Umbra, I continue to avoid buying Styrofoam, but I don’t really know why. In middle school, I remember being told not to chew on Styrofoam cups because the action of breaking the Styrofoam would deplete the ozone and ingesting it would make me ill. This information, given to me by the lunchroom woman, is […]

Salem Switch Trials

Massachusetts is sticking to its guns on clean air, Gov. Mitt Romney (R) announced this morning. The state refused to extend a deadline for heavily polluting power plants to reduce their emissions, meaning they’ll have to clean up their acts by 2004. In 2001, then-acting Gov. Jane Swift (R) imposed the deadline on the state’s […]

Military Might What?

After failing last year to wrest from Congress a wholesale exemption from many environmental laws, the Pentagon is trying to rally public support for its campaign this year. The Defense Department says that laws such as the Endangered Species Act have interfered with training and other programs in the past. It’s a hassle to have […]