Latest Articles
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Psychiatric Help 5 Cents
Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), whom environmentalists love to hate, has taken to denouncing gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, and some enviros are reacting with schizophrenic behavior. While the Sierra Club in Seattle has been handing out mock baseball cards accusing Gorton of “striking out” on the environment, the Sierra Club in D.C. recently posed Gorton in […]
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The Unkindest Cut
The $792 billion tax-cut plan, passed by the GOP-controlled Congress and under veto threat from Pres. Clinton, would give more than $1 billion in subsidies over the next five years to petroleum, chemical, timber, and nuclear-power industries, says Friends of the Earth. One of the biggest tax breaks for a narrow interest would repeal rules […]
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Operation Butterfly Storm
The Group of 100, a leading Mexican environmental organization, yesterday called on the nation’s army to defend the winter refuge of monarch butterflies against heavily armed illegal loggers. Locals living near the butterfly refuge in western Michoacan state have reported that 100 trucks loaded with lumber leave the refuge each night. An audit published in […]
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I Just Can't Help It — I Looove to Pollute!
A Tampa man portrayed by prosecutors as an incorrigible polluter was sentenced yesterday to 13 years in the slammer, the longest sentence ever given out in a federal environmental crimes case. Gary Benkovitz, 62, owner of a company that cleans and resells 55-gallon drums, has been convicted of deliberately releasing more than 4 million gallons […]
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Whom Do We Blame, as We Watch Nature Dry Up?
Early this summer, long before the word “drought” was mentioned in the media, our household of farmers was ready to strangle the weather forecasters. “A gorgeous sunny day coming up,” they warble. “Another beeyootiful weekend!” To us that means a day of blistering sun, a beeyootiful weekend of irrigating. “City folk!” we mutter, as the […]
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Wind-ing Up for the Pitch
The world’s most efficient wind turbine went to work today in Norfolk, Britain. The 220-foot turbine is thought to be the tallest in Europe and is 50 percent more powerful than the next largest turbine in the U.K. It will supply energy to the national grid, generating enough power for about half the local population […]
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I'll Drink to That
The Clinton administration is proposing a new regulation that would require states to write individual clean-up plans for every body of water that is too dirty for fishing and swimming, currently about 20,000 rivers, bays, and lakes, or 40 percent of water bodies in the U.S. The proposed regulation from the EPA, which would enforce […]
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Spotting Leopards
Scientists are using unattended cameras to record evidence of rich wildlife diversity in the Cambodian jungle, which until recently had been off-limits to scientists during three decades of civil war. This effort — the first of 10 planned by the Cambodian Wildlife Protection Office working with the World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation Society — […]
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Of Homer and the Trojans
The owners of the defunct Trojan nuclear power plant in Oregon, which many locals believe was the inspiration for the accident-prone nuclear plant on “The Simpsons,” want to make the area into a state park. Portland General Electric is offering the land for free, hoping to show that a decommissioned nuclear plant can be safe. […]
