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The U.S. takes the war against terrorism to the Amazon

United States military forces bombed the Amazon rainforest today, Pentagon officials said. The predawn assault targeted key habitats of several crucial wildlife species, thought to have been dug in for many years. “Parrots hate freedom,” President Bush said in a press conference shortly after the first squadron of B-2s left a base in San Paolo. […]

Brussels Sprouting

Environmental negotiations with 10 Eastern European countries hoping to join the European Union by 2004 will near completion by the end of the year, E.U. officials announced Thursday. Environmental protection is considered one of the biggest obstacles facing Eastern European nations interested in joining the E.U.; for the 10 countries — Cyprus, the Czech Republic, […]

I Wanna Be Like Myco

They’re good in salads, lovely with pasta … and great for the earth? The humble mushroom could help clean up everything from oil spills to pesticides, thanks to a new technology called mycoremediation. Mushroom expert Paul Stamets pioneered the technology against the bacteria E. coli and then partnered with scientists at the Pacific Northwest National […]

Drills and Chills

Redefining the "American way of life"Nonsense and Sensibility

It takes only the first raw scent of the smoldering piles of debris at Ground Zero and a quick glance at the guts of the blasted, black-charred remains of the World Trade Center to immediately agree with President Bush that the Sept. 11 attacks were a direct strike at what he called “the American way […]

Vitamin Sea

Could the answer to controlling global climate change lie in the ocean? Carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, is naturally absorbed into the ocean, where it does not affect atmospheric temperatures. Now some scientists and entrepreneurs want to artificially augment that process to increase carbon dioxide absorption and control global warming. In one plan, CO2 […]

Domestic oil and gas is not the ticket to U.S. energy security

America’s fragile domestic infrastructure threatens her energy security at least as much as dependence on oil from the Middle East. Replacing oil from that region with even more vulnerable domestic systems would therefore decrease energy security. Stranger than science fiction. Extraordinarily concentrated energy flows invite and reward devastating attack. In our 1982 Pentagon study Brittle […]

That's All, Folks!

Wood Picker

Eric Gellerman is making furniture out of old-growth Douglas fir, 150-year-old white oak, and Indonesian teak — and getting kudos from environmentalists for doing so. Gellerman is cofounder of The Wooden Duck, a furniture store in Berkeley, Calif., that salvages wood to craft its wares. The environmental benefits range from the obvious — the company […]

Worse for the Tern

Here’s another possible casualty of the war on terrorism: migrating birds. An Indian ornithologist announced today that more than 200 species of birds that migrate from central Asia to India every year could be adversely affected by chemicals in the bombs exploding in Afghanistan. Such birds, including the Siberian crane, the shoveller duck, the crested […]