Latest Articles
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Point. Click. Ignore.
One-click activism has been a one-click failure with the Bush administration thus far. The Interior Department, for example, received 360,000 public comments (the huge majority of them sent by email) about the future of snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks; 80 percent of the writers asked that the government ban the snowmobiles. Last […]
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Prairie Dogged
Faced with drought and plunging profits, Colorado farmers are under growing financial pressure to hawk their land to developers. Between 1993 and 2001, about 1.5 million acres of farmland in the state were put on the market and developed; 300,000 of the acres were sold in 2001 as a drought began to take hold. State […]
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The Rain in Spain Caused an Awful Lot of Pain
Thousands of tons of oil have begun to wash up on seaports and the beaches of Galicia, Spain, after the hull of a rusty oil tanker at sea cracked last week during a storm. The country has suspended fishing on parts of its northwestern coast and workers are trying desperately to limit any further damage […]
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Random Acts of Unkindness
The Earth Liberation Front is back in the news, after vandals went about their business and then etched the group’s initials on the windows of two McDonald’s and one Burger King in the Richmond, Va., area, as well as on the windows of 25 SUVs at a local dealership. Those incidents occurred this fall; earlier […]
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A Snowball’s Chance
Perhaps the clearest and most visible sign of climate change in America won’t be around for much longer: The glaciers of Glacier National Park in Montana are melting and will be gone within 30 years, scientists say. Dan Fagre, the 49-year-old leader of the U.S. Geological Survey team studying the problem, says, “It’s not just […]
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The Pardners’ Tale
Cowboys and environmentalists unite! The unlikely amigos are banding together to try to keep natural gas drillers away from ranches on public land in the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado. Yesterday morning, they blocked drilling crews from entering four ranches, arguing that drilling leads to erosion, water contamination, and livestock […]
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Landscape Goat
There’s no need to use big crews and machinery to control fires in the California hills — just add goats. A park district in the Bay Area is using goats to munch away the brush and low-level vegetation that fuel fires in parklands. Not only are the goats sometimes cheaper, gentler, and more environmentally sensible […]
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The Roof Is on Fire
By passing regulations to encourage developers to install green roofs, Portland, Ore., has become a pioneer in the growing worldwide ecoroof movement (what, you aren’t a part of it yet?). Rooftops planted with vegetation such as ferns and wildflowers can reduce runoff after rainstorms by up to 90 percent and diminish a building’s energy costs […]
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Umbra on sustainable bunk beds
Dear Umbra, I’ve been looking for a sustainably harvested bunk bed for my five-year-old son for quite some time now. I have found only one company, Pacific Rim, that makes such an item. It seems like a great company, but it doesn’t have exactly what I’m looking for. When I search online, all I read […]
