Latest Articles

Who Ya Gonna Call? Coast Busters!

The California legislature has passed a bill to alter the structure of the California Coastal Commission, thereby enabling the powerful board to continue regulating development along the state’s coast. Seven weeks ago, a state appeals court ruled that allowing the legislature to remove commissioners at will violated the state constitution’s mandate to maintain separation of […]

Who will represent the voice of the world’s people?

Petitions have been arriving in a flurry in my email inbox lately. I have some doubts about the efficacy of all this petitioning and tend to be quick with the delete button, but one recent petition drew me in. The message itself — which stated that the United Nations was collecting signatures of people opposed […]

London Bridge Is Clearing Up

Traffic in central London fell by roughly 25 percent Monday, the first day of a congestion-mitigation plan that was the controversial brainchild of Mayor Ken Livingstone. Under the plan, it costs about $8 per car to enter central London from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with steep penalties for those who don’t pay. About 80,000 […]

Mr. Blackwell’s Worst Polluting List

No surprise: Pickup trucks and oversized SUVs scored the lowest on the U.S. EPA’s latest ranking of vehicles based on tailpipe emissions. The list graded vehicles on a scale of 0 to 10. Large SUVs like BMW’s X5 and General Motors’ Hummer H2 earned a 0 and a 2, respectively, while most small and medium […]

Rose-colorado Glasses

Colorado residents overwhelmingly support the use of renewable resources over fossil fuels, according to a new study by the Wells Fargo Public Opinion Research Program of the University of Colorado at Denver. Three out of every four of the survey’s respondents said the state should meet its energy demands through boosting efficiency rather than increasing […]

Brent Fenty, Oregon Natural Desert Association

Brent Fenty is the wildlands coordinator for the Oregon Natural Desert Association, an organization that has worked for over a decade to protect, defend, and restore Oregon’s native deserts. Monday, 17 Feb 2003 BEND, Ore. I am practicing my Monday morning ritual. After taking my dog, Kenai, out to run in a nearby field, I […]

Lewis This Is Clark, Clark This Is Lewis

Say goodbye to the bar scene. Rip up those personal ads. If you live in California and are looking for a sweetheart this Valentine’s Day, look no further than — the Sierra Club. Sierra Singles, a branch of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the national organization, is not just an environmental group; it’s also […]

When Nature Emails

Ah, wilderness — the chirping of birds, the burbling of creeks, the melodic chime announcing that new mail has just arrived in your inbox. Yep, that’s right — or it will be if the Colorado Department of Natural Resources has its way. In an effort to boost revenue in the middle of a massive budget […]

Above the Bar

Great Britain may soon use DNA bar codes to make it easy to spot genetically modified (GM) foods. The technology, developed by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge, would help regulators quickly spot foods or crops contaminated with GM organisms. The British government is weighing the possibility of requiring biotech companies to use […]

Terror Alert Level: Green

New York City is on high terrorist alert. The entire nation is on tenterhooks. And at California State University at Fresno, security was heavy — for an academic environmental conference. The reason? The conference addressed “revolutionary environmentalism” and participants included former members of militant environmental and animal-rights organizations that have been linked to fire-bombings, vandalism, […]