Latest Articles
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Talk About a Flood of Refugees
Bangladeshi Environment Minister Sajeeda Choudhury warned this weekend that if sea levels rise in line with climate change predictions, approximately 20 million Bangladeshis would become environmental refugees and industrialized nations would have an obligation to find room for them. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that up to 17.5 percent of Bangladesh’s landmass […]
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Poll Position
An overwhelming majority of Americans support Pres. Clinton’s proposal to protect 54 million acres of national forests from logging, road-building, and development, according to a poll commissioned by the Heritage Forests Campaign and conducted by American Viewpoint, a leading Republican polling firm. Some 76 percent of 1,000 registered voters surveyed said they were in favor […]
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Bill's Bad Week
One of the headlines in the Des Moines Register’s “Life” section on Saturday read: “Muckraker Comes to Town.” Well, they got the headline right, anyway. The story referred to filmmaker Michael Moore, not this reporter, who is also in town following the presidential candidates around as they madly scour Iowa in search of votes in […]
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Pork Politics
“Campaign reform” is much too polite a phrase. “Ending corruption” is more like it. I could — and maybe I will — write a column a week from now till next fall’s election counting the ways campaign contributions corrupt our government, destroy our public assets, and rob taxpayers. Today’s example is industrial hog farming. This […]
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EV Come, EV Go?
General Motors Corp. is still committed to manufacturing its EV1 electric cars, the company’s vice chair said yesterday, contrary to reports last week that the company planned to abandon its electric car program to concentrate on vehicles powered by fuel cells and hybrid-electric systems. News that GM was dropping the EV1 had angered some enviro […]
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Cut the Crap
Congress could save taxpayers $50 billion by cutting environmentally harmful projects and subsidies, according to a report released yesterday by the Green Scissors coalition, which includes enviro and government watchdog groups. Among other egregious expenditures of public money, the coalition pointed to subsidies for hard rock mining, fossil-fuel research, and the oil, timber, and sugar […]
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Wizards of Oslo
The Norwegian government announced yesterday that it is giving a 37 percent boost to funding for renewable energy projects, citing a large increase in the number of project proposals. Meanwhile, U.S. environmentalists wish their government had the same foresight. Arizona averages more than 300 sunny days a year, but people working in the solar industry […]
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Greens Against Genes
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and other enviro and public interest groups are trekking to Montreal, Canada, planning to raise their voices against genetic engineering as U.N. talks on the issue start Monday. Representatives of 134 nations will convene to discuss a proposed Biosafety Protocol, which is intended to establish rules for the international movement […]
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Slackers
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, following its usual pattern, recently missed two deadlines for deciding whether species should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, and enviros are taking the agency to task. In a move that could lead to a marked decline in logging in Northern California, the Environmental Protection Information Center filed […]
