Latest Articles

War and Peas

War is hell — and not just for human beings. A team of researchers from the U.N. Environment Programme is headed to Afghanistan to measure the ecological damage of decades of war, drought, famine, and more war. The study, which is part of a relatively new trend of analyzing the effects of human conflict on […]

Rhode Island Lead

A Superior Court judge in Rhode Island paved the way for a landmark lawsuit earlier this week when he gave state Attorney Gen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) permission to sue manufacturers of lead-based paint. The paint industry had attempted to derail the trial by calling for every one of an estimated 300,000 owners of lead-painted homes […]

Kenya Opener

Even though Kenya is a major food exporter, it hasn’t reaped much benefit from the $20 billion-per-year global market in organic foods. Now some farmers and nonprofits in the African nation are trying to change that. Many Kenyans already grow their crops without chemical inputs, but up till now, not a single one has been […]

Taking on the erosive cycle of contemporary politics

Every day I try to protect my children from problems I didn’t create and cannot solve alone. I spread cream on their skin to shield them from the ultraviolet radiation that sneaks through our thinning ozone layer. I try to feed them food free of pesticides and hormones, but I know their bodies are exposed […]

If It Weren’t for Those Medal-ing Kids

The 2002 Winter Olympics open tomorrow in Salt Lake City, and not everybody’s thrilled about it. Environmentalists say developers took advantage of the games to permanently damage the pristine Rocky Mountain environment, even though protecting the natural world is now the third precept — after sports and culture — of the Olympics. The Salt Lake […]

Bada Bing!

In a potentially significant breakthrough for the environmental justice movement, New Jersey has become the first state to propose environmental-equity regulations for companies looking to move into minority or low-income communities. The rules, which were drafted by the state Department of Environmental Protection, would feed companies’ plans into a computer model comparing census information and […]

Cano Worms

The Bush administration has asked for $98 million to help protect Colombia’s Cano Limon oil pipeline from attacks by leftist guerrillas. The pipeline, which is owned by Occidental Petroleum, supplies crude oil to the U.S. and has the capacity to pump 240,000 barrels a day. But constant attacks — 13 so far this year — […]

Manta Rey

Following the blueprint for charter schools, which seek to bypass the bureaucracy of public schools and enhance local control, the Bush administration will ask Congress to approve a new system of “charter forests.” The forests would be federally owned, but managed by a local trust. In other words, certain parts of existing national forests would […]

A Bunch of Hot Air?

In an apparent effort to patch its shabby environmental reputation at home and abroad, the Bush administration is preparing a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The final version won’t be available until next week, but proposals include scrapping fixed emissions targets in favor of “emission intensity” targets, which would fluctuate in tandem with economic […]

Memolition Derby

A draft report of the Bush administration’s energy policy was heavily criticized last year by a senior U.S. EPA official for blaming energy shortages on environmental regulations, according to a confidential memo released today by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). In a note to the Energy Task Force, which was chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney, […]