Latest Articles

Meriwether Friend

The Sierra Club is launching a five-year campaign to protect and restore millions of acres of wildlands along the route traveled nearly 200 years ago by the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The group has its eye on 34 sites in eight states, mostly public land, that it would like to keep from development. […]

Without Mangroves, India is Swamped

Rapid logging of the mangrove forest that stretches across coastal areas in India’s southeastern state of Orissa seems to have contributed to the terrible destruction caused by an October 29 cyclone that killed at least 7,600 and affected some 15 million. The mangrove forest has traditionally protected inland areas from serious damage by cyclones and […]

Trade Win?

Seeking to shore up enviro support and mollify free trade critics, Vice Pres. Al Gore announced yesterday that Pres. Clinton will sign an executive order requiring full environmental reviews of all new trade agreements. The order begins to put environmental concerns on par with business concerns in international agreements, a step that some environmentalists praised […]

What's Eating Leonardo DiCaprio?

You may remember him from such box-office blockbusters as “Titanic” and “Romeo and Juliet.” Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest project is even bigger — getting the world to do something about climate change. Today DiCaprio is announcing that he will host Earth Day 2000 events on the Mall in Washington, D.C. He joins the Earth Day Network […]

Carboys and Indians

Fifteen years after a Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked a poisonous gas that killed at least 7,000 people in Bhopal, India, and permanently injured tens of thousands more, survivors and relatives of victims filed suit yesterday against Union Carbide and its former chair in federal court in Manhattan. The suit seeks unspecified damages and wants […]

Changing Riders in Midstream

Senate Republicans agreed last night to eliminate or change a number of anti-environmental riders that have been tacked onto the Interior Department spending bill, clearing the way for agreement with the White House on a budget deal. GOP leaders consented to allow the feds to charge oil and gas companies a more fair, significantly higher […]

Cold Discomfort

Climate change is threatening polar bears along Hudson Bay with starvation by shortening their hunting season, according to a study by the Canadian Wildlife Service published in the journal Arctic. In the past 20 years, the sea ice season on Hudson Bay has been reduced by three weeks, giving the bears in the area less […]

Fishful Thinking

Salmon on the Snake River could be saved without breaching dams, according to a draft federal report to be released today, but agencies and citizens in the Northwest would need to make some drastic and potentially painful changes. Stringent controls on fishing, development, logging, and grazing would be needed throughout the Columbia Basin to save […]

Grime and No Punishment

Enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws under the Clinton administration has often been haphazard and lax, and many major polluters have been able to operate with little fear of punishment, according to a Boston Globe analysis of seven years of records. Larger companies, particularly those with political muscle, are often treated differently than smaller businesses, […]

Grumping About Dumping

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (D) filed suit yesterday against General Electric for the company’s three decades of dumping PCBs into the Hudson River. The state’s suit does not address the environmental or health effects of GE’s pollution, which are the subject of an ongoing EPA inquiry, but rather pursues monetary damages against the […]