Latest Articles

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn's Trash

The massive Fresh Kills landfill, where New York City has dumped its garbage for 60 years, will be shut down two years from now, and city officials are already daydreaming about making the land into a large city park. The city’s sanitation department has hired Steven Handel, a plant ecologist at Rutgers University, to study […]

Sleazy Money

Each of the leading presidential contenders has done favors for campaign contributors, often compromising the environment in the process, according to a new report conducted by the Center for Public Integrity. Bill Bradley has drawn hefty campaign contributions from the chemical industry and introduced numerous bills that eliminate tariffs on certain highly toxic pesticides, the […]

Three

• factor by which an average resident of an industrialized nation consumes more fresh water than an average resident of a developing nation • factor by which sulfur dioxide emissions are expected to increase in Asia by 2010 • number of hours a television can be powered with the energy saved from a recycled aluminum […]

A writer and farmer tells it like it is

O, environmental writers. The religious scribes of our day. I love them but I fear them too, because of the way self-righteousness can rear up like some suddenly animated pond scum in a Stephen King movie and cover the picnic, the teenagers, everything that was ever fun and alive and moving around. Wait, it’s not […]

Baja Humbug

A proposal for a huge tourist resort in Baja California, Mexico, has sharply divided the rural community of San Quintin Valley, with some residents eager for the thousands of new jobs the resort could create and others anxious over the ecological destruction it could cause. The $700 million-plus resort, proposed by a group of investors […]

Feeling Sheepish

Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep gained endangered status Monday, eight months after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had given the species a temporary, emergency listing. An estimated 125 bighorns remain in the 400-mile-long Sierra Nevada range, less than half the population of 15 years ago. The bighorn herds have been devastated by hunting, domestic sheep […]

Pay the Bill

Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Bradley attacked corporate pork yesterday, announcing that as president he would work to eliminate tax shelters, loopholes, and subsidies that favor big companies, including those engaged in environmentally destructive practices. Bradley specifically said he wants to cut benefits to mining companies that drill on public land and pay small royalties, oil […]

Into Thin Air

A federal court has struck another blow to EPA’s clean-air efforts, ordering the EPA to change a rule that would have expanded a program to require the use of reformulated gasoline, which burns more cleanly than conventional gasoline. The rule, issued in September 1998, would have allowed up to 80 municipalities not in violation of […]

No Kidding

Far too little is known about the health risks facing kids in the U.S. from the use of pesticides at schools, according to a General Accounting Office report conducted at the request of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). About 2,300 cases of pesticide-related exposure in schools were reported to poison-control centers from 1993 to 1996, and […]

Getting Wasted

As of 1998, Americans were recycling 28.8 percent of the municipal solid waste stream, up from 16 percent in 1990 and 10 percent in 1980. But after years of rapid growth, recycling rates seem to be leveling off and many states and municipalities are finding it difficult to achieve their more ambitious recycling goals. Today […]