Latest Articles

Cod Is Dead

In a development that scientists have predicted for years, cod have virtually vanished from the North Sea due to overfishing, according to a report by the U.K.-based Wildlife Trusts. The species is now commercially extinct, meaning it no longer makes economic sense to try to catch it. The report also chronicles the decline of other […]

Alcoa Can Wait

And now, some news from a place you seldom hear about: Iceland, which is forming the backdrop for the latest skirmish in the battle between conservationists and power companies. The country’s Vatnajokull Glacier is Europe’s second-largest wilderness, and is graced with mountains, lakes, canyons, rivers, and abundant wildlife. Iceland’s national power company wants to harness […]

Elizabeth Chin, anthropologist

Elizabeth Chin is associate professor of anthropology at Occidental College, where she also is director of the Multicultural Summer Institute. Her recently published book, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture, has been named a finalist for the 2002 C. Wright Mills Award. My work as an anthropologist is aimed at enlarging our understanding […]

The Fund Formerly Known as the Superfund

Teaching Our Children Well

The three Rs could soon include “renewable” if Massachusetts has its way. Concerned about rising energy costs and student health, the state is offering financial incentives to districts to build environmentally friendly, health-conscious “green schools.” Through a partnership with the Renewable Energy Trust, districts are being encouraged to make use of technologies, such as solar […]

Bangladeath

Arsenic has a long and glorious history in the annals of crime fiction, but for the people of Bangladesh, poisoning by arsenic is all too real. With 35 million people drinking arsenic-tainted water, the country is in the midst of what the World Health Organization is calling the “largest mass poisoning of a population in […]

The Daily Load

The Bush administration could slash a key program of the Clean Water Act requiring federal oversight of states’ efforts to restore polluted bodies of water. About 300,000 miles of rivers and shorelines and 5 million acres of lakes in the U.S. are categorized as “impaired water bodies” in need of remediation, but for decades, some […]

Whoa, Mexico

A standoff between farmers and the Mexican government over the construction of a new international airport is threatening to become a national crisis. The $2.5 billion, six-runway project has irked environmentalists since it was first proposed, because the airport is slated to be built on a former lake bed that is an important nesting ground […]

I’ll Do the Thinning Around Here, Baba Looey

Fanning a different kind of flame, Republican lawmakers are blaming environmental groups for contributing to the fires that destroyed more than 3.1 million acres of U.S. forests this year by blocking federal projects to thin undergrowth. Thinning removes brush and dead trees from the forest understory, thereby eliminating some of the dry matter and reducing […]

Balkan Death Grip

Fleeing extreme poverty, thousands of Albanians are squatting in and near the abandoned Porto Romano chemical plant — one of the most severely contaminated sites in the Balkans, with soil and groundwater pollutants at 4,000 times the levels considered acceptable by the European Union. Despite admonitions from United Nations experts, the Albanian government has failed […]