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U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman faced tough questioning from Congress members yesterday as she tried to defend her agency’s decision to cut the number of Superfund toxic waste cleanups in half, from more than 80 per year during the Clinton administration to about 40 under President Bush. Whitman blamed the cuts on lack of funding; […]

Green-goes

Giving the lie to the myth that lower income and minority Americans don’t care about the environment, Latino voters are proving to be some of the most dedicated environmentalists in California. For example, 74 percent of Latino voters approved a recent $2.6 billion parks and open space measure that was supported by just 56 percent […]

Jonna Higgins-Freese

Jonna Higgins-Freese is environmental outreach coordinator at Prairiewoods: Franciscan Spirituality Center in Hiawatha, Iowa. She is a fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. Monday, 11 Mar 2002 HIAWATHA, Iowa Just for the record, I am not a nun. I do work for nuns, so folks often want to know if I’m one of them. I […]

Price tags don’t tell the full story

I have a young friend who, I think, will never eat another banana without thinking a great deal about its history. Going bananas. On a trip to Belize, Hannah and other home-schooled teenagers saw monkeys, the rainforest, and Mayan villages. But the memory that seems to stand out most vividly is of a banana plantation. […]

Doo Process

Salem Switch Trial

Thumbing its nose at a reputation for endless rain, Oregon is poised to become the first state to boast solar panels on its capitol building. Next month, about 850 square feet of photovoltaic (PV) panels will be installed on the west wing of the capitol, generating an average of 7.8 kilowatts — sufficient electricity to […]

Girl, You’re Gonna Carry That Wait

In a statement that shed light on internal and external frustrations with the U.S. EPA, Agency chief Christie Whitman predicted yesterday that power companies being sued by the government for polluting would wait to settle those cases until one of the biggest ones — against the Tennessee Valley Authority — was resolved. Environmental organizations and […]

Radio-inactive?

An agreement struck this week between the U.S. Department of Energy and Washington state will restore the original timeline and budget for the cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Following technological delays under former President Clinton and proposed budget cuts by the Bush administration, the cleanup date was pushed back from between 2025 and 2035 […]

Wheels in the Sky Keep on Turning

Solar power might be popular in Salem, Ore., but wind is the world’s fastest growing energy source, powering 10 million homes around the globe, according to a report issued yesterday by European, American, and Indian wind energy associations. Last year, wind turbine installations increased by 45 percent, or some 6,500 megawatts. Europe, long the leader […]

Don’t Lose Hope

For marine life, Mt. Hope Bay might be the most inappropriately named place on Earth. In the 13-square-mile stretch of water straddling Rhode Island and Massachusetts, 15 fish species have all but disappeared over the last decade, leading some fishers to describe the area as a dead zone. Some scientists blame the deaths on Brayton […]