Latest Articles

Have a Coke and a Frown

Residents of a number of Colombian villages say their health, crops, and farm animals are being threatened by an American-sponsored program intended to wipe out heroin poppy and coca cultivation, and they fear that problems are likely to get worse with a Clinton administration proposal to intensify its anti-drug efforts in Colombia. Government planes and […]

Leaf Me Alone

Reacting to mounting consumer unease about genetically modified (GM) foods, McDonald’s and other fast-food chains are quietly telling their french-fry suppliers to stop using Monsanto’s GM “New Leaf” potato, which has been designed to produce a toxin that repels a potato pest. Many farmers are finding that the market for the GM potatoes is shrinking […]

Fly in the Ointment

Friends of the Earth UK is urging vacationers to travel closer to home and to take trains rather than planes. A planeload of passengers flying from Britain to Florida and back produces as much carbon dioxide as does the average British driver in one year. The world’s 16,000 jet airplanes pump out more than 600 […]

That's Not Cool

Four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state harm water quality and threaten endangered salmon, and breaching the dams may be the best way to comply with the Clean Water Act, the U.S. EPA told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last week. In a letter to the Corps, the EPA called the […]

Banging Their Erasers

Contractors that operate U.S. government uranium processing plants in Kentucky and Ohio erased hundreds of environmental and safety problems from computer records in 1993 without government approval, according to court documents and other papers obtained by the Louisville Courier-Journal. After a three-year investigation that ended in 1996, the Department of Energy reconstructed the erased items […]

A conservative argument for Clinton's forest initiative

Ed Marston, publisher of High Country News, proclaims in his paper’s April 10, 2000 issue: “The war between extractive interests and the environmental movement for control of the Interior West’s public lands is drawing to a close. The timber era, the cattle era, the mainstem big-dam era, the wise-use era are ending. An immense landscape […]

Alternatives to Elephant Poaching

A Real Windfall

All federal agencies in the Denver area will be powered in part by wind under the U.S. government’s largest contract to buy green energy, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced yesterday. The agencies will buy 10 megawatts of power annually from wind farms operated by Colorado utilities — enough energy to run 3,500 households for a […]

You Ottawa Be Ashamed

A coalition of environmental groups yesterday accused Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. of holding secret talks that could weaken environmental protection under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The enviros accuse Canada of leading a charge to weaken the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an environmental watchdog set up under NAFTA to make sure the three […]

I'll Have No Truck With Diesel

Under a landmark agreement announced yesterday, the three largest grocery chains in Southern California will buy 150 alternative-fuel big rigs to replace heavily polluting diesel trucks. The deal settles a lawsuit filed in 1998 by enviro groups and the state attorney general’s office, which alleged that the companies were exposing people to hazardous diesel exhaust […]