Latest Articles
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The endless campaign shows it's time to change the electoral system
What is it we are learning in the aftermath of this crazy election? How powerful a single vote can be? Or how worthless a single vote can be, when 19,000 of them can be tossed out in one county? When boxes of ballots get lost? When recounts are demanded or stopped depending on their expected […]
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Every Which Way But Loose Standards
Dissatisfied with the federal government’s efforts to control dirty emissions from buses and big trucks, 13 states have decided to join with California in trying to impose tighter controls on diesel engines. Nearly every Northeastern state, as well as Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Texas, is preparing to adopt strict clean-air rules that are being […]
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Gym Dandy
To increase its chances of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing has ordered some of its biggest polluters to clean up their acts. A $1.25 billion cleanup project is aimed at helping Beijing, notorious for having some of the dirtiest air in the world, approach World Health Organization air standards by 2006. A visit to […]
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Climate negotiators in The Hague have their work cut out for them
THE HAGUE, Netherlands Bill McKibben reports from The Hague: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five This month’s international climate negotiations in The Hague, though full of sound and fury, are about one thing and one thing only: using policy in an attempt to bridge the wide gap between science and politics. […]
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Little Dutch Boy Withdraws Finger
Many of the 45,000 big dams that have been built around the world cost too much and have had negative impacts on the environment and the poor, according to a report released yesterday by the World Commission on Dams. The commission, which was set up in 1998 by the World Bank and World Conservation Union, […]
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Fleet Enemy
Japan sent its whaling fleet to sea today with much fanfare, including fireworks and a brass band. Despite angry international protests and the possibility of U.S. sanctions, the Japanese intend to kill 400 minke whales over the next five months, part of an expanded whaling effort that the Japanese insist is for research purposes. Critics […]
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Master of Their Dominion
Under a landmark court settlement, Dominion Virginia Power this week agreed to spend $1.2 billion to cut emissions at eight coal-fired power plants by 70 percent within 12 years. Currently the utility’s plants emit more sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the pollutants that cause acid rain and smog, than all 30 power plants in New […]
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Top Banana
The world’s top banana producer, Chiquita, which grows about one-quarter of all bananas, announced its participation this week in the Better Banana Project, an environmental certification program requiring companies to rein in the use of toxic chemicals, reduce pollution, and conserve soil and water. Chiquita said that it has spent $20 million over the last […]
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A Bitterroot to Swallow
After years of debate, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said yesterday that it would reintroduce grizzly bears into the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana and central Idaho beginning in 2002. The reintroduced bears would have less protection than other grizzlies in the wild, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Building […]
