Latest Articles

True Grit

For the third year in a row, massive dust storms from China have blown into South Korea, closing schools, canceling flights, and creating a run on facemasks and respiratory medication. The storms are the result of severe desertification in China, where the Gobi Desert grew by 20,000 square miles from 1994 to 1999; the desertification […]

Parking Is Expensive

Today is tax day in the U.S. (need we remind you?), but not many of your tax dollars will go to support the national park system — and certainly not enough, conservationists say. The system is suffering from a $4.9 billion backlog in maintenance and improvement projects, a 40 percent shortfall for interpretive and educational […]

Eight Bawl

Environment ministers from the Group of Eight — the world’s industrialized powers — met over the weekend for a round of talks in preparation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held later this year in Johannesburg, South Africa. Although the issue of climate change was not on the agenda (much to the […]

Science Fry Day

A $10 million annual fellowship program that provides money to graduate students in environmental science, policy, and engineering has been eliminated by the Bush administration, officials announced late last week. The fellowships, which were part of the U.S. EPA’s Science to Achieve Results program, were the only federal monies specifically earmarked to fund environmental studies […]

Penny Reyes-Velasco, Happy Earth

Penny Reyes-Velasco is a children’s book author and collage artist, as well as executive director of Happy Earth Organization, a nonprofit that produces literature-based eco-educational materials in the Philippines. Monday, 15 Apr 2002 QUEZON CITY, Philippines At the end of every day, I ask myself the same questions — and for the last year, I […]

Al Gore Rhythm

Speaking at the Florida Democratic Party Convention — widely regarded as the first stop on the 2004 campaign trail — former Vice President Al Gore attacked the Bush administration on Saturday for favoring corporate America and trashing environmental protections. In his most outspoken speech since the 2000 presidential campaign, Gore decried the return to “the […]

Lies, Lies, and Videotape

A picture is worth a thousand words: So reasoned Interior Secretary Gale Norton when she mailed copies of a videotape of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to major television stations and encouraged news producers to use the footage in their coverage of the debate over drilling. (In contrast to videos of the Arctic Refuge produced […]

Supremely Bad Judgement

The Florida Supreme Court dealt a blow to environmentalists and landowners yesterday by ruling that property owners in the state must continue to foot most of the bill for Everglades restoration, despite overwhelming support for a 1996 amendment to the state constitution that would have made polluters pay instead. The court determined that the amendment, […]

Boxer Takes Off Her Gloves

Senate Democrats accused the Bush administration yesterday of slowing the pace of toxic waste cleanups under the Superfund program as a favor to industry, which historically has picked up most of the tab for the costly cleanups. A Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee asked Superfund officials to explain why the administration dropped 25 sites […]

Logan’s Heroes

Here’s a stellar example of your tax dollars at work: Last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers published an Anna Karenina-sized draft study of a proposal by Arch Coal to strip mine 3,100 acres of West Virginia. The strip mine would be the largest ever in the state, and the company has been seeking […]