Latest Articles
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Hill’s Tree Blues
Just as some butterfly species head south every year, so apparently did Julia Butterfly Hill, the environmental activist who became an international cause celebre after she lived in a redwood tree in California for two years to protest planned logging in the area. Most butterflies don’t wind up in prison, but that’s precisely where the […]
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Read the letter sent by 11 state attorneys general
On July 17, 2002, 11 state attorneys general (all of them Democrats) sent the following letter to President Bush, criticizing him for failing to impose strong federal measures to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and control global warming. (You may also download a PDF copy of the letter by clicking here.) The Honorable George W. […]
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Around the Underworld in …
If Don Delillo and Jules Verne had ever collaborated on a novel, they might have written the story that’s currently reaching its denouement in Pennsylvania: “Around the World with 14,855 Tons of Trash.” That’s how much garbage left Pennsylvania 16 years ago, destined to earn a reputation as the best-traveled and least-wanted waste in the […]
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Zap Dingbats?
The Montes Azules jungle in Mexico, near the Guatemala border, is one of the largest remaining pockets of tropical rainforest in North America — and the battle to save it has created unusual political bedfellows, to say the least. The Lacandon people, who have lived in Montes Azules for centuries and legally own much of […]
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I’ll Have to Speak With My Attorney
In a letter being sent today to President Bush, 11 state attorneys general criticize the president for his failure to impose strong federal measures to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and control global warming. In addition to condemning the “regulatory void” created by the absence of federal action, the letter contends that environmental policies proposed […]
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Re-tired
In other news about trash, the U.S. is making significant strides in the reuse and recycling of rubber tires. Last year, Americans got rid of about 281 million tires — some 5.7 million tons worth. In 1990, just one out of every 10 discarded tires was reused; now, that number has risen to nearly eight […]
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Whistleblow While You Work
Citing laws designed to protect institutional whistleblowers, the Labor Department has ordered the U.S. EPA to reinstate a former investigator to “ombudsman-related duties.” The department concluded that EPA policy analyst Hugh Kaufman was removed from those duties in retaliation for complaining about the agency — in other words, for doing his job too well. As […]
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Jonna Higgins-Freese reviews Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver
Several friends of mine, all of them environmentalists, have told me they picked up Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver's most recent collection of essays, but speedily put it down because the book just didn't pull them in. At first, I had the same reaction. And then I realized: small wonder. This book wasn't written for environmentalists. Yet because of Kingsolver's fame and her ability to talk about complex issues in a compelling way, Small Wonder may be more successful at communicating an environmental message to a lay audience than any other book published in recent years.
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What About Tupperware?
Now that the U.S. Senate has given the go-ahead to store the nation’s most highly radioactive nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, new questions loom: What kind of containers can protect the waste for 10,000 years, and who will provide them? Those are high-stakes issues, given that the Department of Energy plans to buy about […]
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Sound Science
In a triumph of the military over the environment, the U.S. Navy yesterday won approval to deploy two ships that use low-frequency sonar to detect distant submarines, despite ongoing fears that the system could injure whales and other marine mammals. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration granted the Navy an exemption from federal rules protecting […]
