Latest Articles
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Partners to Trade Emissions
The World Bank yesterday launched the first global emissions trading fund, which is meant to combat climate change by promoting the transfer of environmentally friendly technology to developing countries. Modeled after a sulfur-dioxide emissions trading program in the U.S., the new World Bank program offers companies in industrial nations credits against future carbon-dioxide emissions limits […]
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Bump in Grinding
Chip mills are driving up logging in North Carolina, according to early results from a two-year government-commissioned study of the mills’ environmental and economic impact. About 140 chip mills have opened up in the South in the past decade, and enviros say they are dramatically changing the timber industry, leading to increased clear-cutting, and enticing […]
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Kernel Clink
The U.S. EPA put new restrictions Friday on the growing of genetically modified corn, responding belatedly to concerns that genetically modified crops may be causing ecological disruptions. Under the new rules, farmers who cultivate genetically engineered Bt corn, which produces its own insecticide, will be required to plant at least 20 percent of their acreage […]
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I Know What You Did Last, Summers
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said yesterday that a major lesson from last month’s failed World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle is that any new trade discussions must address the issues of environmental regulation, worker rights, and child labor. Summers made his remarks to corporate executives in Bombay, the business capital of India, an audience that […]
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Beached Wail
Venezuela has banned fishing and swimming along hundreds of miles of Caribbean coastline after finding dangerous levels of sewage pollution caused by massive flooding last month. Powerful floods and mudslides that hit the nation’s northern coast in mid-December killed up to 50,000 people and destroyed many sewage pipes and water treatment plants. The ban affects […]
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Jaws Dropping
A coalition of enviro groups has filed suit against the U.S. government to force protection of the endangered manatee, a marine mammal that spends much of the year in Florida’s warm coastal waters. The enviros say that U.S. and Florida officials have failed to enforce restrictions on boating, coastal development, and habitat destruction, thereby leading […]
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Smog Tied
Record levels of air pollution in Milan, Italy, pushed officials Sunday to impose a one-day ban on cars and motorbikes in the city center, for the first time in 25 years. Meanwhile, Britain’s air quality took a dive in 1999, according to Friends of the Earth. Pollution levels exceeded health standards on average one day […]
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99 and 44/100 Percent Bad
Elephant poaching is rampant in Africa despite a 10-year-old international ban on the ivory trade, Britain’s Environmental Investigation Agency announced on Sunday. Between April and December 1999, customs officers seized at least seven illegal shipments of ivory, including 1.8 tons at an airport and 221 pairs of tusks shipped to southern China. The Convention on […]
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Well Hello, Dalai
Ten days into the year 2000, as the media were abuzz with the merger of America Online and Time Warner, the Internet wafted to me the Dalai Lama’s millennium address. It’s a strange global info-world that brings those two pieces of information to one’s attention on the same day. The Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama […]
