Latest Articles

Delay O’ Fish

In welcome news for commercial fishing operations in New England, a federal judge has ordered an eight-month delay in implementing drastic cutbacks in fishing levels while scientists review federal estimates of the region’s fish population. In September, government scientists acknowledged that the accuracy of fish-count studies on which the original cutbacks were based might have […]

Changing Their Tuna

In other marine news, a new report released by the federal government has found that dolphin populations in the Pacific Ocean are failing to recover from years of tuna fishing, and that some 3,000 dolphins are still killed by tuna boats every year. The report, by the U.S. Commerce Department’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, contradicts […]

Dodge Bawl

Looking to minimize your impact on the environment? Don’t buy a car — and especially don’t buy anything made by DaimlerChrysler. The U.S.-based automaker ranked dead last on a survey, released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, of pollution levels in vehicle fleets. The survey looked at the environmental implications of the six largest […]

Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

The first day of a three-day, Bush administration-sponsored conference on global climate change convened yesterday, attracting more than 1,200 scientists and environmentalists but yielding very few surprises. Senior administration officials attending the conference said both the causes and effects of global warming remain uncertain and the country should therefore be cautious about committing to solutions. […]

Americans’ Waste Lines Expanding

One mantra of the environmental movement in the U.S. has been “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but consumption patterns in the country reveal a nearly opposite trend: buy, use, discard. Disposable culture is on the rise across the country, and has been ever since single-use razors and disposable diapers hit the shelves in the 1960s. Now disposable […]

Caspian’s Unfriendly Ghost

The discovery of what may be one of the world’s largest oil fields under the Caspian Sea near Atyrau, Kazakhstan, has western oil companies excited, but environmentalists deeply concerned. The field, estimated to contain about 40 billion barrels of oil, 10 billion of them recoverable, is being developed by a consortium including British Gas, ExxonMobil, […]

No Mobiles

Environmentalists took the National Park Service to court yesterday over ongoing delays in implementing a ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. In 2000, the agency approved a plan that would have limited the number of snowmobiles in the parks to under 500 by this winter and mandated that drivers be accompanied […]

Bright Lights on the Big City

Residents of New York, rejoice: Your city might be noisy, crowded, and crass, but it’s also the most compact megalopolis in the U.S. That’s right — the Big Apple ranked number one on Smart Growth America’s recently released list comparing urban sprawl in major metropolitan areas. Other cities that did well include, in order, Jersey […]

You’re Out of the Club?

A Utah chapter of the Sierra Club has been threatened with disbandment because of its decision to speak out against the possibility of a U.S. war against Iraq. The development may bring to a head a discussion that has been going on within the club throughout the fall. In October, 13 former national board members […]

Cell-ebrate

In what could be the first significant step toward mass-marketing fuel-cell vehicles, Toyota and Honda put the world’s first such cars on the road yesterday. The cars are being leased to the Japanese government and several public organizations in the U.S. — at the whopping price of between $6,500 and $9,800 per month, meaning the […]