Latest Articles
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Still One Wild and Crazy President
As one of his last major public land initiatives, Pres. Clinton is preparing to designate up to a dozen areas in the West as national monuments, with the aim of protecting the wild lands from commercial development and recreational overuse. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said the administration has decided to act because Congress has failed […]
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Green Houses Are a Gas
Developers have built 3,500 “green” homes in Colorado during the past two years, more than $1 billion worth, making Colorado the top green building state. Colorado kicked off the nation’s only statewide green building program in March 1997 and has assembled a task force that is raising money for public education and hopes to launch […]
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J. Crud
The U.S. catalog industry last year produced 17 billion catalogs, or 64 for each American, and used 3.35 million tons of paper, more than 12 percent of all the printing and writing paper produced in the country, according to a study by the Alliance for Environmental Innovation, an initiative of the Environmental Defense Fund and […]
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Waiting for WTO
The high priests of free trade are getting nervous. Corporate and government officials from the 134 nations that belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO) have long planned to meet in Seattle at the end of this month to negotiate the next round of global trade rules. Now they discover that thousands of angry citizens […]
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Tibet-er Late Than Never
After years of clashes between poor Tibetans trying to make a living from the land and foreign environmentalists trying to save forests, conservation groups and agencies like the U.N. Development Program have begun working with local Tibetan authorities to wipe out poverty in an ecologically sound manner. Future Generations, a U.S. conservation group, has entered […]
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They're Going Through a Phase — You Know, Hormones
Biotechnology advocates and opponents squared off yesterday in Chicago at the first of three public debates on genetically modified foods being hosted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The hearing was highly structured, and most of the daylong session was devoted to discussions by panels that appeared heavily weighted with members who favor the […]
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Brooking No Damage to Blue Lagoon
A U.N. report made public yesterday warned of potential environmental harm from a salt plant that Mitsubishi and the Mexican government want to build on a lagoon in Baja California, near a U.N. World Heritage site, the biggest wildlife sanctuary in Latin America. The report is slated to be presented to the U.N. World Heritage […]
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Looking for Rare Plants in All the Wrong Places
Federal officials agreed yesterday to settle a lawsuit with enviros that has halted timber sales on 24.5 million acres of federal forests in Washington, Oregon, and California. The agreement would lift an injunction against 34 timber sales, which was imposed by U.S. District Judge William Dwyer, and open up other sales that the U.S. Forest […]
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Budget Ryder Hertz
The House yesterday overwhelmingly passed a massive budget bill that the Clinton administration says is a good deal for the environment. Congress knocked off a number of anti-environmental riders that had concerned conservationists and boosted funding for Clinton’s Lands Legacy program to purchase environmentally sensitive land. But the bill still contains a few riders that […]