Latest Articles
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Crop Failures
Almost 30 percent of farmers in the U.S. who grew genetically modified corn last year violated planting restrictions meant to keep insects from becoming resistant to the crop, according to a biotech industry survey submitted to the U.S. EPA this week. More than 90 percent of the farmers thought they had followed the rules, but […]
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A Trader to Their Cause
Several U.S. corporations are doing an about-face: To get Democrats in Congress to stop holding up free-trade agreements, some representatives of Big Business are abandoning their long-held opposition to linking free trade with environmental and labor standards. For example, Caterpillar CEO Glen Barton said in a letter last month to the Clinton administration that the […]
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Trash Talking
The first piece of legislation signed by Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo requires local governments to reduce waste disposal by 25 percent across the county in five years, mostly through re-use, recycling, and composting. Macapagal, who came into office the same day as U.S. President Bush, said, “I am told no other country in the world […]
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Up Sheet Creek
The middle of the West Antarctic ice sheet — one of the world’s largest collections of water — is shrinking and could contribute to a dramatic rise in global sea levels, according to a study published in the journal Science. The researchers found that part of the ice sheet, the Pine Island Glacier, thinned by […]
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Aaaay, It's the Fronds!
A common fern can thrive on big amounts of arsenic and could possibly be put to use soaking up arsenic from contaminated land and water, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. The fern, a nonnative plant that grows in the Southeastern U.S. and California, is the first known plant to do […]
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Fund-amentals
Enviros are taking on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to enforce rules that require companies to disclose what it could cost them to make sure they don’t mess up the environment. Calvert Funds, a socially responsible investment firm, and the nonprofit World Resources Institute say that investors aren’t being given enough information […]
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McChicken Sandwiched
Stung by a backlash from some farmers and consumers, Monsanto has been saying recently that it pursued the wrong course in trying to win market approval of genetically engineered foods without addressing concerns that the foods might pose risks to human health and the environment. Listen in on Monsanto CEO Hendrik Verfaille: "We tried to […]
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O-oh, He's a Little Runway
The Bush administration wants to speed construction of more runways at major airports in the U.S. by streamlining reviews of their environmental impacts. The Federal Aviation Administration has done an about-face and now argues that more runways offer a quicker solution to airport gridlock than updating air-traffic-control computers. But the current process of obtaining federal […]
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Do the Hustle
U.S. companies are hustling down to Mexico to build power plants to supply energy-starved California, and Mexican environmentalists aren’t happy about it. Mexican officials and the power companies say that the economic benefits of the new plants will outweigh the pollution they add to the air. Alejandro Calvillo, director of Greenpeace Mexico, counters that the […]
