Latest Articles

Some Assembly Required

Causing anti-globalization activists to cry foul, the World Trade Organization decided yesterday that it will hold its first top-level meetings since the infamous 1999 Battle in Seattle in Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation with a questionable human rights record and little history of public protest. In the past, the U.S. State Department has said that […]

Gale-force Wins

The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to confirm Gale Norton as Interior secretary and Christine Todd Whitman as top dog at the U.S. EPA. The 75-24 vote to approve Norton was a significant victory for President Bush, given the fervor with which environmental groups opposed her nomination. Norton has a long history of supporting the mining, […]

Reef It Alone

Australian Environment Minister Robert Hill put oil exploration in the Great Barrier Reef on hold this week, citing concerns that the testing might harm whales. Geologic exploration company TGS NOPEC had plans to conduct seismic testing some 30 miles from the reef, part of which is a U.N. World Heritage Site and breeding area for […]

Never Say Nader Again?

Ralph Nader is getting the cold shoulder from Democrats on Capitol Hill, and some liberal activists have stopped contributing to the groups he founded. For example, Joan Claybrook, president of the Nader group Public Citizen, said that members of Congress were refusing to work with her group. Polls have shown that about half of the […]

A Day in the Life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Russia’s environmental resources are being “plundered” and the current government has only made the problem worse, says Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the 81-year-old Nobel Prize winner. In a newspaper column last week, the writer criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for abolishing the country’s environmental protection and forestry agencies and shifting their responsibilities to the extraction-happy Natural Resources […]

Year of the Snake Oil Salesman

President Bush said yesterday that he was “deeply concerned” that the energy crisis in California was “spreading beyond the California borders.” The thing to do about it, he said, was to make it far easier for companies to drill for oil and gas and to build new power plants. “And a good place to look […]

Are we losing touch with good, simple things?

Years ago, when I went out to my new chicken house and found the very first freshly laid egg, I stared at it in awe. “How did that hen do that?” I wondered. She takes in grain and bugs and kitchen scraps and turns them into an egg. Shell on the outside, white and yolk […]

Monica Who?

Argy Bargy

A pile of trash that has been floating at sea for 15 years may have finally found a home in Florida. The pile — which began as 14,000 tons of municipal waste from Philadelphia in 1986 — has been rejected by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Singapore, as well as the states of Georgia, Ohio, and […]

Montana: Max Has Money, Enviros Are a Pain

Montana Republicans are gearing up to make the state’s enviro laws much more friendly to industry groups, arguing that the laws have hurt the state’s economy and cost jobs in the mining, logging, and energy industries. The effort is likely to succeed because Republicans have the majority in both legislative chambers and the state’s new […]