Latest Articles

From Russia, Without Love

Russian police are targeting environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists in a security crackdown that gained momentum after a terrorist scare last month. Police have interrogated at least seven enviros in the past two months and searched some of their homes, and at least one of them is still in jail, activists say. The enviros, who are […]

More Green, Less House

U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases, which cause climate change, rose just 0.02 percent last year, the smallest annual increase since the recession year of 1991, according to the Department of Energy. At the same time, the U.S. economy grew by 3.9 percent. DOE economist Arthur Rypinski said it would take several years of similar data […]

Energy Boom

As Asia’s population expands and its burgeoning middle classes pursue more energy-intensive lifestyles, Northeast Asian nations are turning to nuclear energy to meet growing demand, building many nuclear power plants and planning hundreds more. Many of the region’s citizens are uncomfortable with this trend, especially after the accident last month at a nuclear fuel facility […]

Dammed If He Does, Dammed If He Doesn't

Last Wednesday’s New York Times featured a full-page ad urging Vice Pres. Al Gore to take a stronger position on dam removal on the lower Snake River in Washington state, a step that enviros believe would improve the survival chances of several salmon species that call the river home. What happens to a decision deferred? […]

Spy-ghetti

Ancona, Italy, announced yesterday that it will pay $70,000 for satellite photographs to help it pinpoint the exact location of illegal toxic waste dumps in the city. Italy’s Environment Ministry says at least 152,000 tons of illegal refuse, much of it toxic, are dumped in the nation each year, primarily by organized gangs dubbed the […]

No More Genetically Modified Haggis

A British law requiring genetically modified foods to be labeled as such — in restaurants and bakeries as well as supermarkets — has caused manufacturers, retailers, and restaurant chains to make a mad dash to rid their goods of GM ingredients. But the law is also causing a fair amount of confusion, because different companies […]

Dirt Poor

Some 60 percent of the hillside areas in Central America and the Andean region of South America show signs of serious soil erosion, according to a new report by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Cali, Colombia. Tropical hillsides, which comprise 9 percent of the world’s landmass, lose 13 billion tons of […]

Platforms, Shoo

Oil companies are looking to save millions of dollars in costs by leaving oil platform towers in place in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast to serve as artificial reefs instead of paying to remove them, as required under state and federal law. California state Sen. Dede Alpert (D) is sponsoring a bill that […]

Ted's Bill: Bogus

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) is stirring up trouble again with a rider attached to an appropriations bill that would exempt Alaska salmon fishing from the Endangered Species Act. The Clinton administration has threatened to veto the bill over the rider, a move that could jeopardize not only the Columbia River chinook stocks that migrate […]

Schroeder Plays a New Song

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder opened the fifth U.N. World Climate Conference yesterday in Bonn, Germany, with an unexpected call to developed nations to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change by 2002. Thus far, only 14 countries, most of them developing, small island nations already threatened by rising sea levels, have ratified the treaty, which […]