Latest Articles
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Putting Their Lives on the Lime
Hoping to halt a limestone mining plan that would destroy 15,000 acres of wetlands in the Florida Everglades, environmentalists sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers yesterday. The Corps has issued permits to mine 1.7 billion tons of limestone from Everglades wetlands for roads in southern Florida, despite its own findings that the mining would […]
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Animal Crackers
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s highest scientific authority, has issued a long-awaited report cautioning that genetic manipulation of animals could pose a serious threat to the environment and human health. The report identifies a series of concerns about cloning and other genetic alteration of animals, ranging from fears that such animals could […]
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Unable Was I, Ere I Saw Elbe
As if being battered by severe storms wasn’t enough, Central and Eastern Europe now face another threat: pollution unleashed by heavy flooding. In addition to concerns about contamination and disease from animal carcasses swept along by the floods, fears are now growing that toxic chemicals could be seeping from an inundated Czech chemical plant and […]
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Shell Game?
In addition to the environmentalists, politicians, and scientists who will gather next week in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, another constituency will be amply represented — business interests. Many high-profile companies plan to use the summit to burnish their environmental images and make the case that principles and profits can […]
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News Fit to Print
And speaking of the World Summit on Sustainable Development — in preparation for the commencement of the event, the New York Times devoted today’s Science section to coverage of international environmental issues. From the impact of human behavior on the global ecosystem to the economics of renewable energy; from reassessing international population growth to our […]
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Laughy Tafty
The U.S. EPA has warned Ohio that it could soon be stripped of federal highway funds for failing to enforce national clean air standards. The move would be a major blow to the state, which receives more than $900 million in federal road funds every year. The EPA could also stiffen the pollution levels allowed […]
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Nature Not Nurturing?
The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s wealthiest environmental organizations, is drawing fire from other enviros for venturing into particularly unlikely territory: oil refining. In 1995, Mobil Oil gave the Conservancy a 2,263-acre Texas oil field that is one of the world’s last-known breeding grounds for the highly endangered Attwater’s prairie chicken. Rather than shutting […]
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Billy Clubbed
Speaking of the whims of a chief executive: Ford Motor Company is currently struggling to strike a balance between the company’s financial woes and the eco-friendly inclinations of CEO and Chair William Clay Ford, Jr. So far, the former seem to be winning out: In its latest corporate citizenship report, released this week, the company […]
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Sh*tting By the Dock of the Bay
Ten years ago, delegates attending the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro wrinkled their noses upon encountering the putrid smells emanating from the heavily polluted Guanabara Bay. The summit cast a spotlight on the plight of Rio’s bay and led to the creation of an internationally funded cleanup project. Now, with the follow-up Earth […]
