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I Glum From the Land Down Under

Meanwhile, in other news from the Southern Hemisphere, a committee composed of more than 100 representatives from Australia’s government agencies and the private sector has issued the country a damning environmental report card. The committee, which reports on the state of the Australian environment every five years, said there had been little progress since its […]

Wham, Bam, No Thank You, Graham

The Bush administration has announced plans to hire more scientists for its regulatory review office, seek more input from citizens and businesses, and adopt cost-benefit analyses for rulemaking. The White House’s point person on regulatory reform, John Graham, said the plan reflected the administration’s “commitment to science-based quality regulation.” Industry reps, who know they have […]

Scarey Larsen

An enormous section of Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf collapsed and splintered into thousands of icebergs this week after one of the region’s warmest recorded summers. The section, designated Larsen B, was 650 feet thick and about the size of Rhode Island. Although scientists stopped short of attributing the collapse to global warming, they did say […]

Mind the Gap

Environmentalists and public-health advocates in California are upset over a new state regulation that allows low-level radioactive waste to be dumped in municipal landfills instead of federally regulated nuclear waste storage facilities. Citing the possibility of increased cancer risks, the Sierra Club and a nuclear policy group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, are backing […]

Really Endangered Species

In a sweeping policy shift that has environmentalists deeply worried, the Bush administration is urging federal judges to roll back legal protections for almost two dozen populations of endangered species. Government officials say the rollbacks are necessary because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which both enforce the Endangered […]

Barns and Ignoble

“Factory farms” — huge, mechanized corporate operations — are a far cry from the American pastoral image (that little red barn on the hill). But such farms are becoming ever more common, and not just in the Midwest. In Pennsylvania, for example, large-scale hog farms have doubled in the last decade, provoking environmental, agricultural, and […]

Trawl in a Day’s Work

Bottom trawling, or dragging nets along the ocean floor to catch fish, is so devastating to the marine environment that the practice should be banned from fragile areas, according to a U.S. National Academy of Sciences report released yesterday. The report, which was requested by the National Marine Fisheries Service, recommended protecting areas along the […]

I’ll Tell You What I Want, What I Really Really Want

Jennifer Ferenstein, president of the Sierra Club, has got a new plan for one of the nation’s oldest and most politically influential environmental groups. Ferenstein wants the Sierra Club to emphasize not just what it’s against (e.g, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, air pollution, global warming) but also what it supports (restoring wild […]

Land O’ Flakes

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has got a blueprint for implementing the Bush administration’s energy plan, and it involves speeding up approval for petitions to drill for oil and gas, creating easier access to petroleum deposits, reducing royalty payments by industry to the government, and easing environmental restrictions. All that, without harming the environment, […]

Graze Under Pressure

Erosion, salinization, urbanization, and unsustainable agricultural practices are causing desertification in many parts of the planet, according to delegates at a weekend conference in Egypt. Desertification is the process by which the water and nutrients needed to sustain diverse plant and animal life are drained from the soil. British scientist Brian Johnson blamed the problem […]