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Peter Sinkamba, Citizens for a Better Environment

Peter Sinkamba is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Citizens for a Better Environment in Zambia. A mining engineer and environmental auditor, Sinkamba helped write the 1996 Zambian Republican Constitution and currently sits on several national environmental committees. Monday, 1 Apr 2002 KITWE, Zambia Woke up at 5:00 a.m — far too early, especially […]

World CERES

Could this be the end of greenwashing? After five years of work, an innovative coalition of businesses, advocacy groups, unions, accountants, academics, and government representatives is preparing to unveil standardized guidelines for how businesses report their impact on society and the environment. The Global Reporting Initiative standards, which are the brainchild of the Coalition for […]

Right in the Solar Plexus

From the believe-it-or-not department: To cover the costs of printing its 170-page energy plan last May, the Bush administration tapped into the Department of Energy’s solar and renewable energy and energy conservation budgets. Documents released under court order by the DOE on Monday night indicate that $135,615 of the renewables and conservation budget was spent […]

Mustard Greens

In a hard-won triumph for environmentalists, the Pentagon announced yesterday that it will use a water-neutralization process, rather than incineration, to destroy 2,600 tons of mustard gas stored at Colorado’s Pueblo Chemical Depot and other sites. The Chemical Weapons Working Group, a watchdog organization, applauded the decision, calling neutralization safe and effective. But in Oregon, […]

Foot-in-mouth Disease?

Dealing a blow to advocates of natural resource extraction in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, biologists working for the U.S. Geological Survey have produced a report finding that oil and gas drilling in the refuge could substantially threaten caribou, musk oxen, polar bears, migrating birds, and other wildlife. Although the report acknowledges that the risk […]

Dune Bugging

Almost 50,000 acres of dunes in California’s Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area would be re-opened to off-road vehicles (ORVs) under a Bureau of Land Management proposal. The area has been off-limits to the vehicles since November of 2000, when the BLM, ORV groups, and environmentalists negotiated a settlement that closed the area to protect endangered […]

Deep Du Du

Three years after NATO’s 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia, depleted uranium (DU) has been found at five of six sites investigated by scientists from the U.N. Environment Programme. The sites, in Serbia and Montenegro, had “widespread but low-level” contamination. Although the scientists did not report any current direct threat to humans or the environment, they […]

Is the U.S. nuclear industry writing its own ticket on security?

Over the last 15 years, the nuclear power industry has lobbied the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Congress to weaken security requirements at atomic plants, even as the threat of terrorism has grown. But in reality, as Shelley Smithson shows in Part I of this series, nuclear energy security is already poor. In drills conducted by […]

Warm Air Gives Us Cold Hands

Relatively minor increases in global temperatures are already dramatically affecting plants and animals, according to an article appearing in the current issue of Nature. The Earth has warmed by just 0.6 degrees in the past century (mostly in the last 30 years), but scientists from Europe, the U.S., and Australia have found serious consequences — […]

Ford: Tight Turning Radius

Henry Ford might be proud, but enviros are disappointed: William Clay Ford, Jr., great-grandson of the automobile pioneer, used to be known as the greenest person in the auto industry. But since taking the reins of Ford Motor Company last October, Ford has muted — and sometimes changed — his tune. The man who once […]