Latest Articles

The Finnish Line

From the department of creative activism: You’ve heard of hunger strikes, but what about baby strikes? Hundreds of Finnish women have signed a petition declaring that they will not bear children for the next four years unless the country’s Parliament scraps plans to build a fifth nuclear reactor in their homeland. The protest has a […]

Information Underload

So much for the information age: Some U.S. lawmakers are trying to limit access to data on the federal government’s farm subsidy program. Last fall, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group touched off a political firestorm by posting on the Internet a database of farm subsidy recipients from 1996 to 2000. Information on the site was […]

Dirty Duncing

The majority of the nation’s dirtiest power plants are getting even dirtier, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The report was based on U.S. EPA data on smog, soot, and global warming emissions from power plants from 1995 to 2000. It found that greenhouse gas emissions increased 8 […]

Seam Stress

After Sept. 11, the folks in the White House found a favorite tune — the need to decrease U.S. reliance on foreign oil any which way but through conservation — and it seems they just can’t stop singing it. First it was used to promote drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; now, in a […]

Sitting By the Docket of the Bay

A five-year-old legal battle between San Francisco Baykeeper, a conservation organization, and Dow Chemical ended yesterday when the Contra Costa County Superior Court approved a settlement. Dow stood accused of unlawfully discharging contaminated water into the New York Slough, which empties into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers and from there into the San Francisco Bay. Under […]

Nature Not Nurturing

In a move being described as unprecedented in recent history, the highly respected scientific journal Nature has said that it should not have published a controversial article last year about the discovery of genetically engineered corn growing in Mexico. The journal’s editors concluded that the article, which was welcomed by opponents of genetic modification, did […]

The improbable story of how Bogota, Colombia, became somewhere you might actually want to live

“We had to build a city not for businesses or automobiles, but for children and thus for people,” said a man in a speech last year. “Instead of building highways, we restricted car use. … We invested in high-quality sidewalks, pedestrian streets, parks, bicycle paths, libraries; we got rid of thousands of cluttering commercial signs […]

The Left Wing

Ah, the ever-elusive boundary between art and life. Who knows where it lies, but by all indications, somewhere right down the middle of the NBC drama “The West Wing.” Here’s the proof: This week, New Mexico’s Department of Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources felt the need to issue a press release explaining that Wednesday’s episode […]

Sushi and the Banshees

Japan’s languishing organic food market could get a major boost from a string of recent food scandals that have rocked the nation. The scandals include an outbreak of mad cow disease and allegations of government mishandling of the crisis; the discovery of traces of prohibited biotech corn in domestic food and animal feed; and a […]

Furious George

A two-and-a-half year escalation of acts of so-called eco-terrorism began to slow down last summer — but inquiries into the acts have sped up, as federal lawmakers have used Sept. 11 as a reason to go after eco-terrorists with unprecedented energy. Last month, you could have been forgiven for confusing a congressional hearing on eco-terrorism […]