Latest Articles
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No Truth in Advertising
The Better Business Bureau is going after the nuclear power industry for running ads that the bureau says “have a strong potential to mislead customers.” The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association, has been paying for ads in national magazines and the New York Times that tout nuclear as the “clean air energy” and claim […]
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Kawasaki Lets the Good Times Roll
The Japanese government settled a 17-year legal battle yesterday with 500 citizens who have been made sick by air pollution. The plantiffs, who live along highways in Kawasaki, an industrial city just south of Tokyo, filed suit claiming that they suffered from asthma and other ailments caused by exhaust from passing cars and trucks. Last […]
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Go Blow It on the Mountain
A rider that would allow a mining company to blow a 900-foot hole in a mountain in Washington state and dump mining waste on federal land has so far remained attached to a large spending bill to fund the war in Kosovo. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) authored the rider after the feds denied a permit […]
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Organic Farmers Cross over Pollination
Pollen from genetically engineered plants can travel significant distances and contaminate other crops, according to a report commissioned by the British government and leaked to the public this week. The report asserts that 1 percent of organic plants in any field could become genetically modified hybrids through cross-pollination, and it argues that “acceptable” levels of […]
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Step on the Gas, Ford
Ford Motor Co. Chair Bill Ford Jr. talked up the company’s commitment to the environment yesterday at its annual shareholders meeting. Several stockholders at the meeting charged that the company is not doing enough to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, but their proposal to require the company to disclose its emissions and its lobbying efforts […]
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Ja, Ja, Let's Get This Finnished
European Union governments reached agreement yesterday on a common approach for international talks next month on the Kyoto climate change treaty. Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands had sought to water down the European stance, but they relented and agreed that at least 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions reductions would come from domestic action. The […]
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L.A.D.P. Green
The Los Angeles Department of Power and Water, the nation’s largest municipal utility, is leaning green. Today the department is launching a “Green Power” program that will let customers get their energy from solar, wind, and biomass power for a 6 percent rate increase. In return, customers will get price breaks and rebates on energy-efficient […]
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Spoken Like an Athlete
Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Bradley, speaking to YMCA volunteers and young people in Manchester, N.H., about the environment: “My approach would be to try to clean up what is polluted and prevent what is not polluted from becoming polluted.”
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A Slice of Eden Saved by Divine Intervention
Bette Midler (a.k.a. the Divine Miss M) saved the day for New York City community gardens yesterday, swooping in at the last minute with personal funds and money from her private conservation organization to buy and preserve gardens that were headed for the auction block. In all, Midler’s group and the Trust for Public Land […]
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Give Me a Home Where the Stealth Bombers Roam
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is trying to stealthily hand over millions of acres of public land to the military permanently, including a southwestern Arizona bombing range that is home to endangered Sonoran pronghorn, enviros charged yesterday. McCain wants to grant the military permanent use of the 2.7 million-acre Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range in Arizona, […]
