Latest Articles
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Norton Hears a Hoot
The Bush administration will ask Congress for $100 million to fund a program to encourage joint conservation efforts between private and public landowners. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who is announcing the program today in Pennsylvania, called the “Cooperative Conservation Initiative” an effort to “empower a new generation of citizen-conservationists.” Under the initiative, the government will […]
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Jonna Higgins-Freese reviews Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber
I am an environmental activist, and for almost a year, my husband and I have struggled to understand how our environmental commitments bear on our decision about whether to have children. So when I picked up Sandra Steingraber's new book Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood,, I was immediately drawn in by the opening sentence: "Every woman who becomes pregnant brings to the experience her various identities."
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At Least Their Breasts Won’t Catch Fire
But mothers have something else to worry about. Scientists and environmentalists are calling for a ban on a chemical flame retardant that has been shown to accumulate in breast milk. The chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ether, or PBDE, is commonly used in foam furniture and plastics to reduce risk of fire by up to 45 percent, […]
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Girls Will Be Boys
Environmental toxins are disrupting human biology at the most basic level: reproduction. That was the conclusion of researchers at Michigan State University, who found that men with higher levels of exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were more like to father boys than girls. PCBs are known to cause sex-related defects in animals (although the researchers […]
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Shark Skin Suit
Last summer, they were are our worst enemy; now they need a best friend. We’re talking about sharks, of course. The much-maligned beach marauders are now the subject of a lawsuit filed earlier this week against the U.S. government by environmental organizations. The National Audubon Society, Earthjustice, and the Ocean Conservancy claim the National Marine […]
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I Didn’t Realize That England Had Food
England’s food production and farming needs to take a radical turn for the greener, according to a new report by the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food. The commission, which was convened following devastating outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in the U.K., calls for some farm subsidies to be based on conserving the […]
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Frisco Ain’t Kidding
San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown proposed yesterday that his city pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Brown said the goal “is as much about protecting our national security as it is about protecting our environmental quality of life.” If the city’s Board of Supervisors passes Brown’s […]
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No Doubt Aboot It
Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal said yesterday that his country would continue to back the Kyoto treaty on climate change. He said the same thing last Thursday. What’s the fuss? Canada has come under increasing pressure from the Bush administration to abandon the treaty. With only the best interests of our northern neighbors in […]
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Leavitt, Eager Beaver
After kvetching for years about the national monuments set aside by former President Clinton across the West, Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt (R) called yesterday for President Bush to designate a 620,000-acre national monument protecting a red canyons area in the central part of the state. Enviros have long fought to protect the San Rafael Swell […]
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Italian Nice
The president of northern Italy’s Lombardy region, Roberto Formigoni, proposed on Sunday that only eco-friendly vehicles be sold in the region by as early as 2005. He hopes gas-electric hybrid vehicles and, later, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles can help eliminate the region’s pollution woes. Smog levels in Lombardy have recently surged to five times the legally […]
