Latest Articles

Notes on the Underground

The February issue of Scientific American tells of a new technology that makes me both rejoice and worry. It looks so great, so likely to relieve a massive environmental problem that there’s no way I could oppose it. But on second, third, and fourth thought, I have some doubts. The technology is called carbon sequestration. […]

As Long As It Doesn't Drive Up the Cost of Happy Meal Toys

The U.S. environmental community is debating whether to actively oppose the Clinton administration’s plan to give China permanent normal trade relations status as China prepares to enter the World Trade Organization. Some enviros are hesitant in an election year to label House Democrats as “anti-environmental” if they vote for normal trade relations, and some worry […]

Greenslinging

The environment — oh-so-neglected for much of the presidential campaign (as we noted in past columns) — has bubbled up to the top of the issue mix in recent days. While the Republican battle royale between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain still steals most of the ink and gets the […]

Why we need to push livestock off public lands

Whatever might be said of the arid West, it “ain’t no cow country.” That’s what Henry Fonda, playing Wyatt Earp, said of Arizona in John Ford’s 1946 film My Darling Clementine. That’s also the bottom line of a book I’ve written, The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. In […]

Playing Chicken

1,500 Car-Jackers Get a Day Off

Residents of Bogota, Colombia, went to work yesterday by foot, bicycle, in-line skate, and horse, observing a day-long ban on the use of private cars. The ban, imposed by Mayor Enrique Penalosa to foster environmental awareness, was the first of its kind in a developing nation. A number of European cities have instituted similar car-free […]

Bet You Could Get a Good Price for Them in Bogata

Dirty diesel buses will be phased off California streets by 2007 under a far-reaching regulation unanimously adopted yesterday by the California Air Resources Board. The rule, the first of its kind in the nation, will require buses to use alternative fuels or cleaner diesel technology. It represents the first step in a major new effort […]

Arsenic and Old Laws

Tens of millions of Americans are drinking water with unsafe levels of arsenic, a known toxin and carcinogen, according to a report released yesterday by the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC is threatening to sue the EPA unless it immediately strengthens its 58-year-old standard for arsenic levels in drinking water. EPA officials say a more […]

Wilted Greens

The Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM) has become the nation’s fourth largest political party and recently increased its clout by forming an alliance with Mexico’s biggest opposition party, the pro-business National Action Party. Many Mexican enviros say the Greens have done little to fight the nation’s serious environmental problems, and they accuse the PVEM of […]

But It Gives Strip-Mall Developers a Nice Head Start

Africa lost more than 9 million acres of forest each year between 1990 and 1995, primarily because of logging, overgrazing, conversion of land for agriculture, and civil unrest, according to a new study by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Africa had an annual deforestation rate of 0.7 percent between 1990 and 1995, more than […]