Latest Articles

Yankee Doodle Dandies

Tired of waiting for the U.S. federal government to act, New England governors, including three Republicans, joined yesterday with Eastern Canadian premiers to vow to cut the region’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, and 10 percent below that by 2020. No regional or international agency exists to enforce the deal, but the […]

National Historic Landfill

In what must be a flub, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton yesterday named a toxic dump in Fresno, Calif., as a national historic landmark. Officials weren’t sure how the landfill was nominated for the prestigious designation. The 145-acre Fresno Municipal Sanitary Landfill is also listed as a Superfund site, with cleanup costs estimated at $38 […]

Dodge Bawl

Earlier this year, U.S. environmental groups and automakers met with congressional members to back a tax credit for fuel-efficient hybrid cars. Now enviros are saying the auto industry has violated the spirit of the agreement by pushing for tax credits for hybrid SUVs with low mileage ratings. Under a House bill, for example, a hybrid […]

Missile Offense

Enviros and arms-control groups are suing the Pentagon today over its plans for a new missile defense test range in the Pacific. The Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and a number of Alaska-based plaintiffs charge that the Defense Department must conduct an analysis of the environmental impact of missile testing on […]

Boxy but Good

Greenpeace and the small London-based group Families Against Bush are using consumer pressure to try to embarrass corporations into supporting the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Earlier this summer, the groups put the heat on Ford by highlighting a rift between the U.S. automaker and its Swedish subsidiary Volvo. Volvo publicly supports Kyoto; Ford does […]

North Duck-ota

Farmers in several North Dakota counties have stopped plowing under one-fourth of their cropland in exchange for dependable annual payments under the conservation reserve program. Farmer Patty Hofmann said, “Cropping wheat is just very risky and expensive, and we would have lost our farm if we hadn’t signed up for the conservation program.” How well […]

Paris-stroika

In his quest to make Paris greener, the city’s new Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, wants to add more than 25 miles of bus lanes and discourage more cars from coming into the city. “Today, private motorists, who make up a quarter of road users, use up 94 percent of Paris’s road surfaces. I have a […]

Label-minded

The Bush administration is pressuring the European Union to drop new restrictions on genetically engineered foods. Last month, the European Commission gave preliminary approval to require labeling on most biotech foods. Administration officials say the rules would discriminate against U.S. products and violate World Trade Organization requirements. They say that the rules could cost U.S. […]

A New Resource for Tire Recyclers?

In the Drink

The gasoline additive MTBE, a known carcinogen, has already leaked into 48 public wells that provide water to hundreds of thousands of Californians, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis of state data. The additive is leaking from 1,189 underground storage tanks within 1,000 feet of public wells or drinking water aquifers, threatening the water […]