Latest Articles

Shell Shock

A California condor reintroduced into the wild has laid an egg, suggesting that the great birds may be able to recover from the brink of extinction. The condor, the largest bird of prey in North America, numbered only 27 when wildlife officials began a captive breeding program in 1987. Despite successes in captive breeding, scientists […]

Bus-ted!

India’s Supreme Court this week stuck by its 1998 decision to force buses in Delhi to convert from diesel to natural gas, but extended the deadline for the switchover by six months, until the end of September. The court added a caveat, however: Bus operators can only take advantage of the extension if they can […]

Resign Yourself

U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck resigned yesterday, expressing concerns that the Bush administration was shifting the agency’s priorities back toward logging and away from conservation. Chris Wood, a former top aide, said Dombeck decided to resign after administration officials told him they wanted to move “in a different direction.” In his resignation letter, Dombeck […]

De Train, De Train

Activists eluded thousands of police last night and halted a train carrying nuclear waste in northern Germany by cementing themselves to the tracks. The incident was one of many protests against the transport of the waste, which originated from German nuclear reactors and was sent to a French reprocessing center in the 1990s. Officials from […]

While You're at It, Could You Repeal the Geneva Convention?

U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said yesterday that the Kyoto treaty on climate change was dead and that the European Union and Japan would have to take a new approach if they wanted to reach an agreement on the issue. She said, “No, we have no interest in implementing that treaty.” The White House […]

And other words from readers

  Re: The Noble Citizen Dear Editor: This is the first time in my life that I’ve felt moved to cry upon hearing that someone I didn’t know personally had died. I feel that I’ve come to know Donella Meadows in the past couple of years. Many times I have praised her writing, her clear […]

A Trading Block

Environmental and labor groups are gearing up for a new battle over trade next month in Buenos Aires and Quebec City, where countries are meeting to discuss the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The pact, which would create a 34-nation trading bloc in the Western Hemisphere, is a priority for the Bush administration. The […]

Label Me Badd

Three-fourths of Americans want to know if their food contains genetically engineered ingredients, according to a poll released yesterday by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents did not want such ingredients in the food supply, period. However, when they were told that the ingredients were already in many food […]

Axe-a-dunce

Yesterday brought news of another rollback on environmental protections by the Bush administration. The U.S. EPA announced that it would rescind a proposal by the Clinton administration to increase public access to information about the potential consequences of chemical plant accidents. Environmental groups say that communities could better plan for disasters if they had access […]

Walled Whitman

A week before President Bush broke his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman wrote a confidential memo urging him to stand by the promise or risk damaging the U.S.’s standing among international allies. Since Whitman lost the battle, both conservatives and environmentalists say that her […]