Latest Articles
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Beetlemania
Two native Indian groups in Canada plan to begin logging immediately on government land, acts of open defiance against the British Columbia government. Yesterday, more than 100 native leaders threw their support behind the Westbank Tribal Nation, which says it is exercising its aboriginal and common-law rights to log forests in its traditional territories. The […]
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Oops, I'd Forgotten It Was World Ozone Day
Today, on World Ozone Day, the U.N. is warning that the growing illegal trade in CFCs could seriously hamper efforts to end the consumption and production of the ozone-depleting substance. CFC smugglers are expected to turn their attention to large developing nations like India and China, where there are millions of users of CFC-based equipment. […]
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If You Build It, Floyd Will Come
While residents along the East Coast of the U.S. make emergency preparations and evacuate as Hurricane Floyd heads inland, coastal scientists and policy makers worry that rising sea levels and more intense storms are likely to cause an increasing number of disasters in coastal areas. Population growth is booming along U.S. coasts, in part because […]
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Not the Same Old Gas
Climate scientists are abandoning their old estimates about greenhouse gas emissions, saying there are too many uncertainties to predict likely future levels. A new draft report on emissions by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which encompasses the views of hundreds of leading scientists and economists, does not present just one likely scenario, as […]
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Pretty Boy on Floyd
Without urgent action to curb climate change, the world will be increasingly vulnerable to environmental crises and destructive storms like Hurricane Floyd, which is now headed for the East Coast of the U.S., Pres. Clinton said today in New Zealand during a speech on global warming. He warned that sea levels are likely to rise […]
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Pollen-hate
Organic farmers are increasingly worried and angry about the possibility that their crops will be contaminated by cross-pollination with genetically modified crops. In Canada, the National Farmers Union wants to government to make biotech firms liable for “transgenic” pollution of organic and traditional crops. Meanwhile, a team of British scientists argues that organic farming could […]
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Soot Suit
New York state plans to sue 17 coal-burning power plants in the Midwest and the Virginias, a new approach in the effort to clean up air pollution that blows into the Northeast from Midwestern and Southern states. Northeastern states and the federal government have long fought to get coal-burning plants to reduce the emissions that […]
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U.N.-Happy
The U.N. is warning that time is running out to forestall worldwide environmental problems, and it’s already too late to prevent some biodiversity loss and irreversible damage to ecosystems like tropical forests. An end-of-the-century report by the U.N. Environment Program, compiled by experts from more than 100 nations, predicts that a number of “full-scale emergencies” […]
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More Senate Logrolling
The Senate killed a proposal yesterday that would have taken $33.6 million from the Forest Service timber-sale and road-building budget and put it toward protecting and surveying rare plants and animals in the Northwest and reducing the national debt. Republicans argued that the proposal, which Sens. Richard Bryan (D-Nev.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tried to […]
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Truck Trick
Automakers are planning to introduce as many as two dozen small sport-utility-like vehicles with car-based designs in the coming years and ask that they be classified as light trucks, a designation that has lower fuel-efficiency requirements. The new designs look like hybrids of SUVs, minivans, and cars. While the new vehicles get worse gas mileage […]
