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Bleach Blanket Bingo

U.S. Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta announced four initiatives to help preserve coral reefs yesterday, after a monitoring group released a report saying that 27 percent of the world’s reefs were gone and that 70 percent would be dead by 2050. Mineta’s plan includes creating several “no anchoring” zones for large ships near reefs in the […]

Everglades Super Fresh

President Clinton yesterday signed into law what was the only piece of major environmental legislation passed by Congress this year, a $7.8 billion plan to restore the Florida Everglades over the next 30 year to 40 years. The signing drew an enthusiastic Bush to the White House — that’d be Jeb, the Florida governor. Meanwhile, […]

Flipper Flap

That most coveted and contentious of labels — dolphin-safe tuna — remains before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The Clinton administration wants to relax the labeling standard to allow for tuna caught by purse-seine nets as long as the dolphin caught in the nets are set free. Environmentalists are split […]

Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

Jeff Ruch is executive director of PEER, a service organization helping federal, state, and local agency scientists, law enforcement officers, land managers, and other professionals uphold environmental values within public service. Monday, 11 Dec 2000 WASHINGTON, D.C. Most days begin with a phone call. This particular call came from an Arizona State Parks naturalist named […]

Eight Years Is Enough

After eight years of often contentious negotiation among environmentalists, Native Americans, and representatives of the mining and logging industries, British Columbia has approved a plan to preserve 5 million more acres of land. The area in northern B.C. connects with the 11 million-acre Muskwa-Kechika preserve and is an important part of a huge wildlife corridor, […]

POP Stars

Delegates from 122 nations reached agreement yesterday on a treaty to ban or reduce the use of 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs), chemicals such as PCBs and pesticides that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and genetic abnormalities in humans and wildlife. The ban, which must be ratified by 50 countries to become legally […]

Halt! Who Cuts There?

A federal judge on Friday halted 178 timber sales in western Oregon and Washington and Northern California after finding that they presented risks to threatened and endangered salmon. In issuing her injunction, Judge Barbara Rothstein found that the National Marine Fisheries Service had overlooked its own rules to protect fish when it approved the logging […]

Noble Prize

At a ceremony in Stockholm on Friday, scientists and activists from Ethiopia, Indonesia, Turkey, and the U.S. received Right Livelihood awards, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prizes,” for their work on environmental and human rights initiatives. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, the chief environmental official in Ethiopia, was honored for leading an international effort to […]

Burning Japanese, I Really Think So

Even though Japanese citizens tend to throw out only half as much trash as U.S. citizens, Tokyo will be out of space for its garbage in 30 years, according to its sanitation department. Because of a general lack of space for trash in the country, Japan burns about 75 percent of its garbage, compared to […]

Will election 2000 lead to reform or not?

The crowds demonstrating outside Florida courtrooms and counting rooms have been reminding me of the historical opera “Boris Godounov.” It opens with peasants milling about, waiting to find out who will be their next czar. Every now and then a handler comes out and whips them up to yell for Boris, who is not the […]