Latest Articles
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Waste Hot, Want Not
The German government angered enviros yesterday by announcing that in August it will resume the shipment of highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, after a two-year ban established because of safety violations. Four of Germany’s 19 nuclear power plants are near their capacity to store spent fuel rods, and the plant owners say that […]
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Ranchers Try to Buffalo Bill
Several Arizona lawmakers and Utah ranchers sued the feds yesterday over the creation of the new Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in northern Arizona. The plaintiffs are asking the court to find unconstitutional the 1906 Antiquities Act, which Pres. Clinton used to create the new monument earlier this month. Since 1906, all but three presidents have […]
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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Ream the Competition
Businesses that seek out ways to reuse and recycle products and cut their emissions save money, in addition to helping save the environment, according to a new economic study conducted in the Pacific Northwest. Over the last seven years, 137 Northwest businesses polled saved a total of $42 million by reusing and recycling items. The […]
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Deride 'Em, Cowboys
Ranchers and enviros in nine Western states are teaming up to file suit today against the Defense Department to halt low-level military training flights that they say harm livestock, fish, and wildlife. The Air Force flies planes over more than 1 million square miles, most of it public land in the West, and some of […]
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Beware of Oil Slicks on the Road to the Lincoln Bedroom
Vice Pres. Al Gore doesn’t like to talk up his family’s close ties to Occidental Petroleum, a company that has raised the ire of enviros — most recently by attempting to drill for oil on the ancestral lands of the U’wa Indian tribe in Colombia. Gore inherited more than $500,000 in Occidental stock from his […]
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Dripping Them the Bird
Some rare seabird species have been pushed closer to extinction by a big oil spill off the French Atlantic coast last month, the French environment ministry said yesterday. An estimated 300,000 birds were killed or injured when a tanker broke in half and leaked about 15,000 tons of oil into the sea. In the wake […]
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A Kick in the Grass
20 million acres of U.S. land are covered by lawn 1 hour spent mowing a lawn with a gas-powered mower produces as many emissions as 50 hours spent driving an average car 5 percent of U.S. air pollution in summer months is emitted by gas-powered lawn equipment 27,000 gallons of water are needed each week […]
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Barking Up the Right Tree
U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck said in a speech yesterday that the era of extensive road-building in national forests is over and that the administration would release a new proposal to close forest roads within a few weeks. Roads have gone from being a capital improvement to a liability, Dombeck told the Commonwealth Club […]
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If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Tribe, Again
Leaders of four Northwest tribes met with top Clinton administration officials yesterday to talk salmon. The tribes, which have treaty fishing rights, requested the meeting to discuss efforts to revive the 13 threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead trout runs in the Columbia River Basin. Participants were tight-lipped after yesterday’s gathering, which was the most […]
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A Bunch of Buttin-skis
A number of the environmental and social activists who helped sink the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last month are now heading to the ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland, to protest a meeting that starts tomorrow of the World Economic Forum, an elite group that includes representatives from 1,000 of the world’s largest […]
