Latest Articles

Cat on a Hot Radioactive Roof

An ingredient in kitty litter may be just the thing to help clean up a radioactive mess left in West Valley, N.Y., by an old recycling plant for spent nuclear fuel rods. Nearly 1,000 scientists and engineers have spent 18 years and $1.5 billion working to clean up the site, employing such high technology as […]

GM to Heavily Promote New Off-Road SUV in Oregon

Dozens of enviro groups, businesses, and churches are banding together in Oregon to push for more federally protected wilderness in the state. The new “Oregon Wild” campaign, spearheaded by the Oregon Natural Resources Council, calls for the protection of 4.9 million acres of roadless national forest land, in addition to the 2.1 million acres in […]

Make It $10 Billion and We'll Turn Niagara Falls Into a Water-Slide Park

The military commanders of the Army Corps of Engineers are waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to boost the agency’s $4 billion civil works budget by more than 50 percent, even as the Clinton administration is publicly questioning the agency’s traditional agenda of major water projects. Many of those projects have been criticized as wasteful and environmentally […]

A Disappearing Act

  137 species are estimated to go extinct each day 50,000 species are estimated to go extinct each year 78 species were on the original U.S. endangered species list 1,201 species were on the U.S. endangered species list as of October 1999 43 percent of endangered and threatened animals in the U.S. depend on wetlands […]

We Got the Fever

A new analysis by government scientists indicates that the planet’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate, suggesting that the future impact of global warming may be more sudden and severe than previously predicted. The study, which will be published in the March 1 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that the very […]

Mileage, Shmileage — What About the Cup Holders?

DaimlerChrysler has unveiled a new 72-mpg diesel-electric hybrid sedan with a lightweight plastic body, but it has no plans to sell the car. The concept vehicle, the Dodge ESX3, would be priced at $28,500 — $7,500 more than a comparable, conventional Dodge Intrepid sedan — were it ever to hit the showrooms. DaimlerChrysler argues that […]

This Takes Our Breath Away

Emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants have made the air in the Ohio River Valley dirtier than the air in the Northeast, according to a new scientific study commissioned by a coalition of Ohio environmental groups. The Northeastern states have long argued that pollution from Midwestern power plants drifts into their air; this study […]

Old Man Sewer

Most of the nitrogen pollution that is killing marine life in the Gulf of Mexico, creating the infamous “dead zone,” originates in Midwestern states such as Ohio and Minnesota, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey, published in the journal Nature. Areas near rivers in the Midwest deliver more deadly nitrogen to […]

Hot Georgia Brown

New satellite data from NASA paint an unpleasant picture of the planet, with sprawl creating more mega-cities that are getting hotter and hotter. NASA found that the temperature in Atlanta, Ga., sometimes rose to 12 degrees Fahrenheit more than the surrounding countryside, an effect attributed to more pavement and fewer trees. Between 1973 and 1992, […]

An excerpt from Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins

Imagine for a moment a world where cities have become peaceful and serene because cars and buses are whisper quiet, vehicles exhaust only water vapor, and parks and greenways have replaced unneeded urban freeways. OPEC has ceased to function because the price of oil has fallen to five dollars a barrel, but there are few buyers for it because cheaper and better ways now exist to get the services people once turned to oil to provide. Living standards for all people have dramatically improved, particularly for the poor and those in developing countries. Involuntary unemployment no longer exists, and income taxes have largely been eliminated. Houses, even low-income housing units, can pay part of their mortgage costs by the energy they produce; there are few if any active landfills; worldwide forest cover is increasing; dams are being dismantled; atmospheric C02 levels are decreasing for the first time in two hundred years; and effluent water leaving factories is cleaner than the water coming into them. Industrialized countries have reduced resource use by 80 percent while improving the quality of life.