Latest Articles

Electric Avenues?

What do Detroit billionaires do with their cash after they retire from the upper echelons of the auto industry? The answer, in the cases of Lee Iacocca and Robert Stempel, may surprise you: They start electric-car companies. Stempel, the former head of General Motors, helped create the emissions-reducing catalytic converter in 1966 and has always […]

Hot Pea Soup

Fog and rain are as much a part of London as bobbies and Buckingham Palace — but global warming will change all that over the next half-century, according to a newly released report on the anticipated impacts of climate change on the U.K. capital. The London of the future will likely be sunnier, but don’t […]

Fly the Unfriendly Skies

One-fourth of all North American bird species are at risk, according to a new study released by the National Audubon Society. The report blames increased urbanization and the resulting loss of open spaces for the decline; as cities grow, farmlands are converted to urban areas and grasslands are converted to farmlands, leaving birds with insufficient […]

And other words from readers

  Re: Old MacDonald Had an Idea Dear Editor: Elizabeth Sawin’s article on sustainable agriculture was excellent, but it left out a key piece of the efficiency equation. Today’s farmers not only compete against other farmers in the United States who are subject to U.S. policy, but against all farmers worldwide. Even without expanded definitions […]

Fight the Power

African Americans are more likely than white Americans to live near power plants and suffer negative health consequences as a result, according to a report released yesterday by civil and environmental rights activists. The report found that 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, as opposed to 56 […]

The Personal Is Political

Never mind corporate responsibility, or government responsibility; let’s talk about personal responsibility. That’s the gist of Canada’s new plan for fighting global warming. The proposal, which is being released today, entails convincing every last Canuck to reduce her or his own contribution to greenhouse gas emissions by one metric ton annually (or about 20 percent). […]

Fantasy Islands

California has permanently banned fishing in 175 square miles of ocean around the Channel Islands, creating a network of marine reserves that will enable a wide range of species to recover from decades of overfishing. In the next year or two, the U.S. government will decide whether to expand the network of reserves into federal […]

Michigan residents fight for control of the state’s water

Until two years ago, the 40,550 generally well-behaved Midwesterners of Mecosta County, Mich., regularly attended church, sent their children off to school on yellow buses, and never for a moment worried that their clean, freshwater supply would ever run dry. Mecosta County, after all, sits near the center of Michigan’s lower peninsula, which itself sits […]

The Eagle Has Landed — With a Thump

The U.S. Department of Defense would be permanently exempted from an international law protecting more than 850 species of migratory birds, under a tentative agreement reached between negotiators from the House and Senate and disclosed by environmental groups yesterday. The negotiations began after the Bush administration complained that the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act interfered […]

A Dehli-cate Balance

Delegates from around the world are meeting in New Delhi, India, today for the latest round of international talks on climate change. In part because the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions — the United States — has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the meeting is focusing on ways to adapt to climate change rather […]