Latest Articles

I Want to Ride My Bicycle

You don’t need rock-hard calves, shaved legs, or a dresser full of unitards to love cycling: According to the U.S. bicycle industry, bikes designed for commuters rather than racers are the next big thing. Of the estimated 17 million bikes sold in the nation last year, over 20 percent were “comfort bikes” — up from […]

Just Deserts

A controversial plan to transform a tract of the Mojave Desert into a giant water-storage facility was killed yesterday by California’s Metropolitan Water District. First presented in 1997 by Keith Brackpool, an advisor and leading financial backer to Gov. Gray Davis (D), the $150 million project would have entailed the construction of a 35-mile pipeline […]

Nuke of Earl

The nuclear industry was “bubbling with new hopes and plans” during a recent conference-cum-pep-rally in Lille, France, according to Pascal Colombani, chair of the E.U’s Atomic Energy Commission. Heartened by Finland’s recent decision to build western Europe’s first nuclear power plant in more than a decade, the nuclear industry is trying to position itself as […]

Us Against DEM

A coalition of environmental and health advocacy groups in Alabama wants to reform the state’s Department of Environmental Management — starting with its name. Saying the agency is too concerned with management and insufficiently concerned with protection, the coalition called yesterday for a new “Department of Environmental Protection” characterized by a different leadership structure, stricter […]

Carb(on) Loading

Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could increase production of crops but reduce their nutritional value, according to scientists at Ohio State University. Peter Curtis, a professor of evolution, ecology, and biology, worked with researchers to analyze the effects of climate change on plant reproduction and collated data from 159 studies conducted over […]

Oh My Cod!

Cape Wind Associates has been given the green light on a project to build a data-collection tower that could lead to the largest renewable-energy plant in the United States — 170 windmills off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass. The collection tower, opposed by locals for its possible harm to tourism and the environment, will […]

Plugging developing nations into renewable energy

The groaning has largely subsided over last month’s World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, but one of the biggest disappointments of the event still deserves scrutiny: the failure to create a strategy to disseminate renewable energy throughout the developing world. “The Johannesburg summit’s plan for renewable energy has two fundamental flaws — […]

The Dead Phone

If you’re thinking about chucking your cell phone, think twice: Most of the 128 million mobile phones currently in use in the U.S. will end up incinerated or at the bottom of a landfill, according to a report released by the environmental organization Inform and partly funded by the U.S. EPA. By 2005, 130 million […]

Measure for Measure

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has added its voice to those of the agriculture, biotechnology, and food-processing industries in opposing Oregon’s ballot measure 27, which would require labeling of genetically modified foods sold in the state. In a letter sent Friday to Gov. John Kitzhaber (D), FDA Deputy Commissioner Lester Crawford said that GM […]

Monkey in the Middle

The number of primate species or sub-species classified as endangered or critically endangered has risen 63 percent since 2000, according to “Primates in Peril: The World’s Top 25 Most Endangered Primates,” a report issued recently by Conservation International and the World Conservation Union. The report found that one-third of all primate species are at risk […]