Latest Articles

Right Tern

Barge traffic could grind to a halt on a 250-mile stretch of the Missouri River, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled last week that two endangered species of shorebirds cannot be moved to accommodate the release of water from two dams in South Dakota. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned to release […]

Unbridled LUST

Leaking underground storage tanks (LUST) of gasoline have contaminated at least 25,000 sites around Florida, giving rise to concerns that the state’s drinking water supplies could be tainted, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Scientists say the contamination is a result of Florida’s love affair with gas; the state ranks third, after California […]

Under Loch and Key

After 50 years of debate, Scotland will get its first-ever national park this month. The area around Loch Lomond, where the park will be established, attracts 5 million visitors annually but currently lacks an effective management structure to balance the area’s conflicting interests and protect the landscape and wildlife that are its main attraction. Establishment […]

Ken Norwick, electric vehicle advocate

Ken Norwick is a systems analyst and an electric vehicle advocate who converted his 1996 Saturn to electric power two years ago. Monday, 8 Jul 2002 CALGARY, Alberta, Canada I’m a programmer by way of occupation, but a “Curious George” by nature. I like to spend my free time out in my garage tinkering away. […]

Darwin’s Flinches

Just weeks after scientists found that an apparently harmless oil spill in the Galapagos Islands in January 2001 in fact led to a massive iguana die-off, another spill has tainted the pristine archipelago. Late last week, a small barge spilled close to 2,000 gallons of diesel near the island of Puerto Villamil, home to turtles, […]

Umbra on flushing medications

Dear Umbra, I work with a number of older women who try to be environmentally conscientious. When it comes to discarding outdated medications though, there seems to be conflicting advice. Medical doctors tell me that all such medicines should be flushed down the toilet. Water resource people say, don’t flush, because all those discarded medicines […]

Umbra on chlorinated swimming pools

Umbra, I recently managed to mangle my knee and am going through all the 4,673 steps necessary to unmangle it and make it happy and functional again. One of the things my doctor advised me to do was swim. Well, swimming pools are of course full of chlorine! Hey, I just bought an expensive filter […]

Umbra on recycling beer bottles with lime wedges

Most Honorable Umbra, Knower of All Green Things: Am I unwittingly hampering the recycling process by twisting that lime wedge into my bottle of beer? The dang things are tough to get back out! Humbly yours,Jill Brooks Dearest Jill, Please be assured that I thoroughly investigated your problem. I started with Personal Solutions. I have […]

The Name of the Haze

The U.S. National Weather Service has long maintained the tradition of giving names to hurricanes, but in Toronto, the environmental organization Greenpeace is taking matters one step further by naming excessively smoggy days after national politicians. The program is designed to call attention to the failure of the Canadian government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol […]

Sick ’em

Global climate change isn’t just going to make our planet hotter — it’s going to make it sicker. That was the finding of a wide-ranging study of world ecosystems, published in today’s issue of Science and showing that warmer temperatures have sparked a plague of epidemics in plants and animals. From oysters to oak trees, […]