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A Peppy New Car

Oil's Well in California

A battle is brewing over oil drilling off the coast of California, and the controversy is likely to become an issue in the 2000 presidential race. Federal officials are expected this month to give oil companies permission to develop 40 offshore oil leases. California Gov. Gray Davis (D), California Sens. Barbara Boxer (D) and Dianne […]

Supreme Court A-Noise Enviros

The Supreme Court today refused to hear a case from environmental groups that want the feds to act more quickly to reduce noise in the Grand Canyon from sightseeing planes. The Federal Aviation Administration is developing rules that would control air traffic over the park and reduce noise by 2008, but seven enviro groups had […]

Royal Flushed over Frankenfoods

Britain’s Prince Charles has bucked the royal tradition of political neutrality by loudly voicing his opposition to genetically modified crops, pitting him against Prime Minister Tony Blair. Charles, a committed organic farmer, wrote an article for the widely circulated Daily Mail posing “10 unanswered questions” about the safety, ethics, and effectiveness of gene-modification technology. Opinion […]

DDT-Free Willy

Some killer whales in the Gulf of Alaska have dangerously high concentrations of DDT and PCBs in their blubber, according to a new scientific study. Scientists worry that several pods of whales in the area could die off because of the industrial contamination, which may interfere with their reproduction. Both DDT and PCBs are banned […]

Bonn Fire

The Kyoto climate change treaty is running into real trouble over a European Union proposal to cap emissions trading. A new study of the European proposal by the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimates that a trading cap would have the largest impact on the U.S., reducing its ability to make trades by two-thirds and requiring […]

Cold Comfort

A two-mile long ice core drilled out of an Antarctic ice sheet shows that levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane are higher now than at any time in the past 420,000 years. The ice-core record is the longest obtained to date. The findings — gathered by a U.S.-Russian-French team at Russia’s Vostok […]

Sara Patton, NW Energy Coalition

Sara Patton is director of the NW Energy Coalition based in Seattle, Wash. Sunday, 6 Jun 1999 SEATTLE, Wash. I am home from several days in Portland, Ore., attempting to type through the ministrations of my small white cat who apparently missed me while I was gone. On Friday I was on a panel in […]

A review of 'From the Redwood Forest' and 'Forest Blood'

The recent high-profile deal to keep chainsaws out of the Headwaters grove of ancient redwood trees near Eureka, Calif., is unlikely to bring about a truce in the raging war over old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest and northern California. Environmentalists continue to dig in their heels and repudiate all compromise (more than 90 percent of U.S. old-growth has already been lost, they say; no more can be sacrificed). Meanwhile, the timber industry flexes its mighty political muscle and logs on.

Amazon.gov

Brazil’s government will send army, navy, and air force units into the Amazon rainforest this weekend to crack down on illegal logging. This aggressive campaign, which will last several weeks and cost $3.5 million, represents a change of course for Brazilian Pres. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, whom enviros have accused of ignoring the threats against the […]