Latest Articles

Mass-ive Attack

Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut will sue the U.S. EPA for violating clean air laws and imperiling the health of citizens by failing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, the states’ attorneys general announced yesterday. In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, the attorneys general will argue that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels should be regulated under the Clean […]

Taking a Smaller Bite Out of Grime

Polluting industries are getting off easy under the Bush administration, according to U.S. EPA data released yesterday by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.). In the two years since President Bush took office, civil penalties for breaking environmental laws dropped by almost 50 percent, to $55 million, while criminal penalties dropped by more than one-third, to $62 […]

Sweet Home, Alabama

A federal appeals court has ruled that Alabama is failing to adequately enforce water-pollution laws, thereby paving the way for citizens of the state to sue under the national Clean Water Act. Under the terms of that act, citizens may go to court to enforce the law only if the state has failed to prosecute […]

Montreal Expose

The Montreal Protocol, the international treaty to protect the ozone layer, has been hailed as the most effective environmental agreement ever signed. Now, though, it’s efficacy could be jeopardized, because the Bush administration is calling for some exemptions to a part of the treaty that calls for a global ban on the pesticide methyl bromide […]

Haden Go Seek

In a blow to environmentalists, a federal appeals court has overturned a ruling preventing the U.S. government from issuing permits to mountaintop-mining operations. The operations access coal seams by shearing off huge slabs of mountains; the increasingly common process has resulted in tons of rock and dirt being dumped into valleys and streams. Last year, […]

Where Raindrops Fall Like Lemon Drops

Lakes and streams in New England have been slow to recover from the ill effects of acid rain, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA. The regional reduction in acid rain lagged 10 percent behind the national rate of 40 percent in the 1990s; more worrisome, the number of “acidic systems” in […]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydrogen

In his State of the Union address, President Bush outlined a vision of nonpolluting, hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars and promised to pony up $1.5 billion over five years to make that vision a reality. Almost everyone, from environmentalists to automakers, agrees that the transition toward hydrogen is a good thing, at least in theory: It is […]

And other words from readers

  Re: Always a Big Turn-off Dear Editor: I just read Umbra’s responses to the lighting questions and must tell you that I have heard significantly different answers. I was informed that it does indeed take more energy to turn on a florescent light and that if you were going to be returning to a […]

Sweet Carolina

For the first time, residents of North Carolina will be able to buy their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and biomass. Under “NC Greenpower,” a new plan approved by the state earlier this week, industrial electricity customers can choose to pay about 2.5 extra cents per kilowatt hour for green power; residential […]

Raging Kabul

Twenty years of war in Afghanistan have not only taken an appalling human toll; they’ve laid waste to the nation’s environment, according to a survey just completed by the United Nations Environment Programme. The survey found that more than 50 percent of the forests in three Afghan provinces have been destroyed in the last quarter-century, […]