Latest Articles

Nothing New

In what was billed as her first major environmental speech of the year, Interior Secretary Gale Norton called Wednesday for “a new environmentalism” in which local residents and landowners, not just the government, would take responsibility for protecting the Earth. Norton also called for an environmentalism that did not threaten jobs. The Interior secretary said […]

Mickey Mao’s

It might be the Magic Kingdom, but sometimes it has to face reality: That’s the message of an environmental study released today on a future Disney theme park in Hong Kong. Environmentalists have attacked the $1.8 billion project as an ecological nightmare, and now the report seconds the opinion. The park is slated to be […]

Bay Watch

If three environmental groups have their way, California’s mammoth agriculture industry will be subject to state water-pollution laws for the first time in history. The three groups (San Francisco BayKeeper, DeltaKeeper, and the California Public Interest Research Group) filed suit yesterday against the Central Valley Regional Water Control Board to close a loophole that allows […]

Green-chip Investment

One of the world’s largest financial organizations, HSBC, has earmarked nearly $50 million to create a five-year environmental program called Investing in Nature. The program will funnel money to three environmental nonprofits organizations — WWF, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and Earthwatch — to support projects that enhance access to safe drinking water and help preserve […]

There’s No Business Like Snow Business

Former President Clinton’s eleventh-hour ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks just received yet another blow from the Bush administration, when the Interior Department, acting on the request of the snowmobile industry, offered three alternatives to an outright ban. Option one: Delay the phase-out by one year. Option two: Limit the number […]

Joltin’ Joe

In the most scathing attack on George W. Bush since the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) blasted the president’s environmental record in a speech made yesterday in California. Lieberman, a possible presidential candidate in 2004 and one of 15 senators to be recognized by the League of Conservation Voters for a […]

Pax With the Devil

Enron is seldom called “socially conscious” these days — but that’s how some investment companies routinely described the company in the not-too-distant past. The Pax World Balanced Fund, which promotes investing in good corporate citizens, and the Domini 400 Social Index and Calvert Social Index, which screen stocks based on social and environmental criteria, all […]

Send Me the Ivory Bill

Call it a wild goose chase: A 30-day search through a southern Louisiana swamp was called off yesterday after some of the world’s top ornithologists failed to find the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird, once the largest North American woodpecker with a wingspan of up to 33 inches, has not been seen for certain since […]

GE, We Bring Bad Things to Fish

The Bush administration asked a federal judge yesterday to dismiss a challenge by General Electric to the Superfund toxic waste cleanup law. Companies faced with multi-million dollar cleanup costs have repeatedly attacked the 1980 law, arguing that it leads to more legal tangles than environmental improvements. In the most recent sally, GE filed suit in […]

They’re All Ears

Farm states and the environment both stand to gain from a provision in a Democratic energy bill that would require gasoline refiners to triple their use of corn-based ethanol by 2012. The provision, written by Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), would also phase out the use of the petrochemical MTBE by 2006. Both ethanol […]