Latest Articles

Aw, Shoot!

Controversy has erupted over the plan of a poverty-stricken black community living north of South Africa’s Kruger National Park to allow wealthy foreigners a shot at hunting the park’s elephants. The Makuleke community jointly manages 30,000 hectares of park land with the government, an arrangement reached two years ago to compensate the Makuleke because they […]

Zed, last of his species, in "Down the Plughole"

Compost-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat

San Francisco this year is becoming the first major U.S. city to offer curbside recycling for food waste, one sign of a growing nationwide trend toward composting. Communities across the U.S. are finding it difficult to meet the recycling goals they set in the early 1990s, and some are now pushing composting as a way […]

Ashes, Ashes, the Forests Fall Down

Indonesia’s forests are disappearing even faster than expected, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry and Estate Crops, which used satellite imagery to produce new forest cover maps. The Ministry now estimates that the deforestation rate is 1.5 million hectares per year, nearly twice what the World Bank estimated in 1994. Since 1985, at least […]

Desperate Times Call for Giant Styrofoam Islands

Desperate to find a way to combat climate change, some scientists are proposing off-the-wall fixes, like making a Styrofoam continent about the size of North America that would float in the South Pacific and counteract global warming by reflecting sunlight into space. The idea is ludicrous, of course, says Michael MacCracken of the U.S. Global […]

Poached Aches

Poachers are pushing tigers in India toward extinction, feeding a growing demand at pharmacies and fur shops in China and Japan for illicit products derived from endangered animals. A few weeks ago, park rangers in India’s Madhya Pradesh state recovered a carcass tentatively identified as Sita, a famous tiger that had been featured on the […]

Nuke Cleanup Bombs

Cleanup efforts at nuclear weapons production sites around the U.S. are proceeding too slowly, largely because Congress has been too stingy with funding and because management of cleanup efforts has been poor, according to a new report given to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The Savannah River nuclear site […]

The Internet may give a boost to energy efficiency.Com and Get It

The emerging new economy created by the Internet is producing more than just a business revolution — it is also generating enormous environmental benefits. The Internet can turn buildings into websites, and replace warehouses with supply-chain software. It can turn paper and CDs into electrons, and replace trucks with fiberoptic cable. This means significant energy […]

Burning Emberas

Some 170 Embera-Katio Indians from a northeastern Colombia rainforest have been camped out since Dec. 17 on the grounds of the Colombian Environment Ministry in Bogota, protesting a massive hydroelectric project that is destroying their homes and way of life. About 2,400 Emberas live in stilted huts along the banks of the Sinu River and […]

Hot and Steamy

Geothermal power will get a boost today when U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announces a goal of generating as much as 10 percent of the West’s electricity from geothermal sources by 2020. Richardson will announce $4.8 million in grants to advance research in geothermal energy, a renewable source that taps heat energy from under the […]