Latest Articles

U'wa Ta Shame

A court in Colombia gave the go-ahead yesterday to Occidental Petroleum to drill for oil on rainforest land claimed by the U’wa indigenous tribe, overturning an earlier court decision that had suspended drilling in response to a petition from the U’wa. Work on construction of an exploratory drilling site is expected to resume immediately. The […]

Keeping Pollution at Bei-jing

A small but increasing number of Chinese citizens are filing lawsuits seeking compensation for the effects of pollution, some of them with help from a recently opened legal-aid center in Beijing, the first such center in the nation to focus on pollution. Many of these cases involve severe river pollution, which kills fish and farm […]

Man Oh Manatee

Manatees in Florida’s waters are dying at a record rate, causing concern that the state’s small population of the marine mammals may be in trouble. One hundred manatees died in the first three months of this year, including 32 killed by powerboats, compared with 80 total deaths during the same period in 1999. In other […]

Juvenile Delinquents Eat Lead

Millions more children than earlier thought might have mental impairments linked to lead poisoning, a finding that suggests that the federal government’s current recommendation for acceptable blood-lead levels is much too high, according to a study presented yesterday in Boston at a joint conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Pediatric Academic Societies. In […]

Grazing Cain

In a sweeping decision that affects more than 150 million acres in the western and central U.S., the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Clinton administration did not violate the law in 1995 when it imposed stricter environmental regulations on the grazing of cattle and sheep on federal land. The unanimous ruling, a big victory […]

We Be Culture Jammin'

Maybe you’ve seen Adbusters magazine or the Adbusters website, with their takeoffs on common ads. “Joe Chemo,” the popular Joe Camel, sits sad, sick, and bald in a hospital bed. A sports utility vehicle surges through the wilderness under the slogan: NATURE — IT’LL GROW BACK. A slumped over vodka bottle proclaims ABSOLUTE IMPOTENCE. It […]

Onward Christian Soldiers

Climate-related disasters in poor nations are caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from wealthy nations and should no longer be termed “natural disasters,” argues the UK organization Christian Aid in a report released today. These catastrophes, which are becoming more and more frequent thanks to global warming, kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars. “Nine […]

Turning Over a New Reef

The world’s coral reefs made a partial rebound in 1999 after a bad year in 1998, but they are still threatened by climate change and overfishing, according to the group Reef Check. In 1998, scientists estimated that 15 percent of the world’s reefs had died off, a trend abetted by that year’s record-breaking ocean temperatures, […]

The Firm

The text of a bill being pushed by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) that would weaken regulation of pesticides is almost a word-for-word duplicate of a draft written by a consulting firm working for a coalition of pesticide manufacturers, agricultural organizations, and food processors. A landmark 1996 law set a new, stringent safety standard for using […]

Following Suits

Friends of the Earth and other enviro groups are moving forward with a lawsuit arguing that the U.S. Forest Service has violated laws that require it to consider the full costs of logging on national forests, including the financial impacts on tourism, watershed protection, and wildlife. The groups filed the case in 1998, seeking to […]