Latest Articles

Out From the Cold

While average global temperatures are on the way up, Antarctica has cooled overall in the last few decades, a trend that has puzzled scientists. To make matters more baffling, a small peninsula of the continent has simultaneously been warming 10 times faster than the rest of the world. Now scientists are speculating that the region’s […]

Teed Time

Can you say, “Not in my backyard” with a British accent? That was the message villagers in southeastern England sent to the national government this week over a planned test site for genetically modified (GM) crops. In March, Environment Minister Michael Meacher announced that the government would test GM crops in Weeley Parish, Essex County, […]

Salmon Chanted Evening

The future of salmon in the Pacific Northwest is being jeopardized by foot-dragging on the part of the federal government, said Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) in a speech Tuesday evening. In December 2000, the National Marine Fisheries Service decided against aiding salmon populations by breaching dams on the lower Snake River; instead, the agency […]

Bill of Right Ons!

In a big victory for environmentalists and a blow to the auto industry, the California Senate yesterday handily passed the nation’s first bill to limit carbon dioxide emissions from the tailpipes of cars and light trucks. Enviros say the vehicles produce 40 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions; the bill (in stirring wording) would direct […]

The blue-green relationship hits the skids

The Washington, D.C., headquarters of the AFL-CIO, which represents 13 million workers in the United States, is on 16th Street just a couple of blocks north of the White House. On the morning of Sept. 11, some of the U.S. environmental movement’s most influential leaders — John Adams and Robert Kennedy, Jr., of the Natural […]

The Truck Stops Here

Speaking of the blue-green alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups, plus the trucking industry, filed suit yesterday to prevent the U.S. government from allowing some 30,000 Mexican trucks onto American roads. On Friday, the Bush administration is scheduled to sign regulations that would allow Mexican trucks to cross the border for the first […]

Abandon Ships

About 15 percent of the world’s nitrogen- and sulfur-based pollution is produced by ships — some 30,000 of them worldwide — yet the vessels are among the least controlled pollution sources on the planet. That wouldn’t change much under rules proposed by the U.S. EPA yesterday. The new regulations, modeled after a five-year-old international accord […]

Mr. Green Genes?

When you’ve skyrocketed into the public eye, become an overnight billionaire, and successfully mapped the human genome, what do you do next? Why, find the solution to global warming, of course. J. Craig Venter, the maverick scientist who gave the federal government’s Human Genome Project a run for its money and accelerated the pace of […]

Cells Sell

The internal combustion engine took one small step toward obsolescence yesterday, when General Motors announced the addition of an 80,000-square-foot research facility in upstate New York that will be wholly dedicated to the commercialization of fuel cells. Fuel cells generate electricity by mixing hydrogen and oxygen; the only byproduct of the process is water. The […]

Lies, Damn Lies, and Economic Analyses

In an unprecedented act, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced yesterday that it would suspend work on about 150 congressionally approved water projects to review the economics used to justify them. The move follows last week’s decision by the Corps to suspend its deepening of the Delaware River to review the economic analysis, one […]