Latest Articles

Johnny Muir, Meet Johnny Cash

A growing trend in the conservation movement has enviros across the U.S. offering financial incentives to farmers and ranchers to protect land or endangered animals. In Indiana, the Nature Conservancy is giving some farmers an average of $3,000 to help them buy equipment needed for low-erosion tillage. In Nevada and Utah, several environmental groups are […]

Be My Ballantine

Pres. Clinton will propose a $2.4 billion package of programs to combat global warming, including $200 million to promote the sales of energy-efficient U.S. technology abroad, White House officials said yesterday. That’s a 40 percent increase over what Congress approved for similar programs last year, but White House environmental staffer Roger Ballantine said the administration […]

Float Like a Butterfly … We Hope

Mexican officials are cracking down on illegal logging that threatens the winter habitat of hundreds of millions of migratory monarch butterflies, but they have yet to halt the tree-chopping completely. The government and sustainable development groups are working to promote monarch ecotourism in the nation’s central Michoacan state as a way to create jobs and […]

Letter Rip

Leaders of green groups are pushing Pres. Clinton to put his money where his mouth is on trade and the environment. In a letter to the prez, the enviros praise his recent speeches about the importance of including environmental and labor concerns in trade matters, but they say his words have been contradicted by action […]

And wishing I'd left the car at home

Editor’s note: Actor and environmental activist Ed Begley, Jr., journeyed last month in a natural-gas car from his hometown of Los Angeles to Des Moines, Iowa, site of the nation’s first political caucuses, to raise the profile of clean-car technology. Here he relates his (mis)adventures. Ed — happier in a tree than in a car. […]

Oh, We Got Trouble — With a Capital T and That Rhymes with P and That Stands for Population

Re: Daily Grist Dear Editor: What a great magazine! Now that I subscribe to the Daily Gist, I clutch my cuppa java as I pass through your cloud of gloom. Better gloom than darkness. However, I’m mystified that we don’t hear more about the big P — population. Why? All these summits, all this talk […]

Paper Chase

a 50 percent increase in worldwide paper consumption is expected by 2010 115 billion sheets of paper are used annually for personal computers 700 pounds of paper are consumed by the average American each year 10,000 trees are cut down annually in China to make holiday cards 3 cubic yards of landfill space can be […]

Just Plane Wrong

A British Columbia airline has gotten a slap on the wrist for refusing to sell a ticket to a Greenpeace activist. Pacific Coastal Airlines tried to defend itself by saying that it provides transportation to many loggers and logging industry employees and that having a Greenpeace worker on its plane could “compromise safety.” But the […]

Where There's Smoke, There's Sick Kids

Mexico City residents are choking on record levels of dirty air this week, after suspended-particle pollution hit an all-time high on Monday. Outdoor activities at schools and youth sports centers were prohibited, and parents were warned to keep kids indoors. Factories in the southeastern part of the city were ordered to cut back operations by […]

Slippery Slope

BP Exploration, a part of the oil giant BP Amoco, yesterday agreed to pay $15.5 million for failing to immediately report the illegal disposal of hazardous materials at an oil field on Alaska’s North Slope. A BP contractor dumped thousands of gallons of toxic waste at the Endicott oil field between 1993 and 1995, one […]