Latest Articles
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TRI Harder
Finally, some vaguely proactive environmental action from the White House: In a letter sent to the U.S. EPA today, the White House budget office called for better reporting of toxic industrial discharges to reduce the “considerable lag” between the gathering of data and its public release. Such information is published in the EPA’s annual Toxics […]
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A River Doesn’t Run Through It
The Yellow River is China’s second-longest river and the cradle of a 4,000-year-old civilization; now, though, it’s drying up and life along its banks is changing forever. Much of the water in the Yellow River is diverted to arid inner provinces for agricultural purposes, leaving areas downstream without a stream at all. For example, in […]
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Michelle Smith, Groundwork Providence
Michelle Smith is an AmeriCorps volunteer with Groundwork Providence, asmall nonprofit urban environmental organization in Providence, R.I. Sheworks on integrating the arts into Groundwork’s environmentalprogramming. Monday, 4 Mar 2002 PROVIDENCE, R.I. Welcome to the final countdown to Runway Earth: Recycled Fashions for a Sustainable World, the fashion show that dares to ask: If you’re not […]
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Not Great, Danes
Meanwhile, look who’s got a new job: Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, has been appointed to head a new Danish institute of economics and the environment. Lomborg’s book outraged environmentalists in Denmark and abroad by claiming that virtually every environmental problem, from air pollution to deforestation to global warming, was exaggerated […]
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Tricky Dick
Critics have long suspected that the Bush administration’s energy policy was the result of very cozy relations with corporations, and now they’ve got the evidence to back it up: Eighteen of the energy industry’s top 25 financial contributors to the Republican Party advised Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, according to interviews and election […]
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Resigned to His Fate
In the most dramatic move yet relating to the Bush administration’s internal battle over federal clean air policy, a senior U.S. EPA official resigned this week to protest White House efforts to weaken tough emissions standards for power plants and oil refineries. Eric Schaeffer, head of the agency’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement, accused the Energy […]
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Read the resignation letter from Eric Schaeffer, former head of the U.S. EPA’s Office of Regulatory
The following letter of resignation was submitted on Feb. 27, 2002, by Eric Schaeffer, head of the U.S. EPA’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement, to protest White House and Energy Department attempts to weaken federal clean air policy. Schaeffer’s resignation has prompted Senate hearings into the Bush administration’s environmental record. Christine Whitman Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection […]
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Space Balls
The largest and most expensive satellite ever built by Europe blasted off today, beginning its mission to monitor the environmental health of Planet Earth. The environmental satellite, or Envisat, was launched from French Guiana into orbit about 500 miles above the surface of the Earth, where it will circle the planet every 100 minutes. Envisat’s […]
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Talkin’ Trash
What do you do with 11,000 tons of garbage per day? That’s the problem — well, one of the problems — plaguing New York City, whose trash disposal system is becoming a political, logistical, and financial headache for the beleaguered metropolis. A $6 billion long-term garbage-management plan devised by the Giuliani administration is stalled and […]
