Latest Articles

Organophos-fate

To the dismay of pesticide-makers, a federal judge on Wednesday approved a settlement between enviros and the U.S. EPA that will speed up a review of the safety of pesticides in the food supply. The agency now has until next August to assess the risks of 39 commonly used organophosphates, a class of highly toxic […]

Hello, Newmont!

Hundreds of demonstrators blocked a major highway in northern Peru this week, demanding that the largest gold mine in Latin America be shut down because it was contaminating local water supplies with mercury. Peru’s energy and mines minister, Jaime Quijandria, said it was “simply and totally impossible” for the water to have been contaminated by […]

Momentum grows for greener ways of farming

Rice as rice can be. In the humid hills of China’s Yunnan province, rice farmers make their living from plots of land smaller than many American yards. High, cool, and wet, the country here is rich, yielding almost a thousand pounds of rice per acre. But farmers face a perennial scourge: rice blast. Rice blast […]

The Bus Stops Here

India’s Supreme Court today postponed a Sunday deadline for all buses in Delhi to convert from diesel fuel to compressed natural gas, saying that commuters would be inconvenienced if diesel buses were taken off the road because the city has done little to comply with a court order to improve air quality. About 9,000 of […]

Chilly Con Carnage

As an alternative to traditional funerals, Swedish ecologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak is recommending a greener way to go — freeze-dried cadavers that work well as fertilizer. She recommends plunging dead bodies into liquid nitrogen, blasting them with ultrasound waves, and then turning them into dust with the tap of a hammer. The remains would then be […]

Catch a Poacher By the Toe

f tigers at the Panna Tiger Reserve in India has more than doubled, and enviros are calling on the government to expand the reserve’s successful conservation practices to other areas. The Panna population has grown from two to three tigers per 40 square miles to seven to eight tigers — a number high enough for […]

Ma-hog-any

Loggers are illegally cutting the mahogany forests of the Kayapo Indians in the Amazon, according to evidence presented yesterday to the Brazilian government by Greenpeace. Most mahogany logging was banned in Brazil in 1996, and logging of any kind is not permitted on Indian lands. Of the 13 companies that hold permits for sustainable mahogany […]

Cemental Case

A cement plant in Camden, N.J., shouldn’t be allowed to operate because it may be imposing an unfair pollution burden on a poor, minority neighborhood, a South Camden citizens group argued before a federal appeals court on Tuesday. A lawyer for the group told a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals […]

Truck Start

The U.S. Energy Department this week lifted a moratorium on the shipment of low-level nuclear waste that was imposed on the day of the terrorist attacks. The waste is usually transported along highways by truck to storage sites like the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. A spokesperson for the department, Joe Davis, wouldn’t […]

NMFS-o-maniacs

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service has been hurting salmon recovery more than it has been helping it, according to a scathing draft report completed in August 2000 but not made public until Monday. Officials from Okanogan County, Wash., released copies of the document after it had been leaked to them. The report by the […]