Latest Articles

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 […]

Why, I Ottawa …

After two days of talks in Ottawa, a U.S.-led bloc of nations and the European Union yesterday failed to iron out disagreements over how to implement a climate change treaty. Negotiators had hoped to reach an agreement that could be more formally approved by their countries next week in Oslo, but the Ottawa meeting produced […]

Harry Potter and the Ozone Layer

As the holiday gift-buying frenzy picks up, no one really knows whether online shopping hurts or helps the environment. The nonprofit Center for Energy and Climate Solutions says such shopping may be an environmental plus, citing the benefits of delivery trucks and warehouses over the multiple car trips and energy-intensive retail space necessary for traditional […]

Great, Salt Lake!

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R) created a special state office yesterday dedicated to blocking a proposal to store 44,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The Goshute tribe says it has the sovereign right to accept the waste, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory […]

Leap, Frogs

Federal scientists have found that commonly used pesticides in California’s Central Valley are contributing to the decline of frogs in the state. The research found that the pesticides diazinon and Dursban are blown east into Yosemite National Park and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where they are absorbed in the frogs’ bodies. The chemicals […]