Latest Articles

Time to Get ExxonMobilized

ExxonMobil, long a target of progressive activists for its appalling environmental and human rights record, is now catching flak from more mainstream critics as well. In an unusual move, shareholder advisor Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., recommended that ExxonMobil’s shareholders vote for two controversial proposals, one to outline plans to promote renewable energy use, and the […]

A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

Does access to information protect us, or put us at risk? That question is at the heart of an environmental debate that’s taken on a different shape — and different stakes — since Sept. 11. At issue is the public’s right to know about chemical plants and other factories manufacturing hazardous materials. Environmentalists maintain that […]

Dead Bird Flying

Upon hearing reports of his own demise, Mark Twain famously retorted that rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. The same could be said of the golden-crowned manakin, a small Brazilian bird thought to have gone extinct almost a half-century ago but recently rediscovered in the Amazon rainforest. The bird was found by German […]

Dreading Water

Industrial pollution in U.S. and Canadian lakes, rivers, and streams rose 26 percent from 1995 to 1999, according to a report released yesterday by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the environmental watchdog agency of the North American Free Trade Association. The report, entitled “Taking Stock,” examined data on 210 chemicals from 21,500 facilities […]

Brotherhood Has Its Priviliges

Some of Florida’s natural wonders will be protected from oil and gas drilling, thanks to two major deals announced yesterday by President Bush. The first, a completed $115 million buy-back of drilling leases off the shores of Pensacola, will protect the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, while the second, which offers companies a total […]

The Little Solar Station That Could

The Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant at Washington state’s Hanford nuclear reservation, sits just one mile from the White Bluffs Solar Station. For the past three weeks, Energy Northwest, the Pacific Northwest’s nuclear power producer, has been generating a tiny amount of electricity from solar panels at White Bluffs and selling it to […]

Is This the Place?

Tooele County, Utah, is already the hazardous heartland of the United States — the place where the Army tests anthrax and other chemical, nerve, and biological agents, and incinerates half of the nation’s chemical weapons; where the Air Force has its largest bombing and cruise missile ranges; where a private company buries low-level nuclear waste; […]

Marsh-a-Marsh-a-Marsh-a

An agricultural company has agreed to sell 16,500 acres of salt ponds around the San Francisco Bay, paving the way for what could be the nation’s biggest wetlands restoration project outside of the Florida Everglades. Cargill Inc., an international agriculture and food company, signed a preliminary agreement yesterday with state and federal governments and private […]

They’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Gold

What if the environmental movement could do to gold what the animal-rights movement did to fur — convince the public that far from being a badge of success, it is a symbol of cruelty and vanity? Some environmentalists would like to do just that, and they’ve got the facts to back them up: Gold mining […]

He’s Madsen and He’s Not Going to Take It Anymore

In yesterday’s edition of the Daily Grist, we reported on the problem of international environmental crime. Today we’re reporting on a guy who thinks he’s got the solution. Frank Madsen, an advisor to the European Union on illegal logging, a former Interpol detective, and a former head of security for U.S. drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb, […]