Latest Articles
-
Editorial License
One good thing about the melting ice and open water found at the North Pole earlier this month — they spurred both the New York Times and Washington Post to run editorials today talking up environmental protection. The Times reminds us that the White House plays a “decisive” role in all matters environmental, and gives […]
-
Steve Yanoviak, tropical biologist
Steve Yanoviak is a postdoctoral research associate at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and he currently resides in Costa Rica nine months of the year, researching rain forest canopy insect diversity in the Monteverde cloud forest. He has been studying the ecology of tropical insects for over seven years. Sunday, 27 Aug 2000 […]
-
Sea turtle activists are pushing for protections in Texas
They may be swimming against the current, but sea turtle advocates say they want Gov. George W. Bush (R) to show a little of his fabled compassion for the endangered reptiles that frequent the Gulf of Mexico along the Texas coast. The New York Times ad. Image: STRP. As the GOP presidential hopeful prepared to […]
-
Drawing the Short Straw
Over the next 25 years, the number of people facing chronic or severe water shortages could increase from 505 million to more than 3 billion, according to a report released this week by Population Action International. The report said water shortages would be worst in the Middle East and much of Africa. But — you’d […]
-
Slick Willy-Nilly
Republican vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney said yesterday that President Clinton had used his executive authority “willy-nilly all over the West” to create too many national monuments, and that some of Clinton’s designations would likely be rescinded under a GOP administration. Clinton has created or added to 10 national monuments, setting aside almost 4 million acres […]
-
The Spirit of 84
America’s fourth largest lumber retailer, 84 Lumber, pledged yesterday that by 2003 it will phase out all wood from forests considered endangered and sell only wood independently certified as coming from sustainably managed forests. With this move, 84 Lumber, which has more than 400 stores in 30 states, follows the lead of the top two […]
-
Puppety Love
Tame offspring and unsafe food sources could spell trouble for the effort to restore the California condor in the West, says a new study published in the journal Conservation Biology. Since the feds rounded up the last 27 wild condors in the 1980s and began a captive breeding program, most eggs have been removed from […]
-
Clinton Rules
On the chance that Gov. George W. Bush may become president next January, the Clinton administration is burning the midnight oil to complete a bundle of new regulations backed by environmentalists and other liberal groups and opposed by business interests. At the U.S. EPA alone, 67 regulatory decisions are on tap, including ones relating to […]
-
![]()
![]()
One class of chemicals is causing a cacophony of environmental problems
To the average observer, environmental crises may seem to pop up as randomly as Starbucks franchises. Every so often, worries about a substance such as DDT or dioxin surface and, after a public outcry and tireless campaigning by environmental groups, some action is taken. In his powerful new book Pandora's Poison, Joe Thornton makes the point that many of the environmental problems that have come to light in the past 40 years are not isolated from each other at all but rather have been caused by just one class of chemicals: organochlorines.
