Latest Articles

Wails for Whales

Some 800 gray whales, about 3 percent of the gray whale population, died this year during their annual migration from the lagoons of Baja California to feeding grounds in the Bering Sea. This is the largest number in the 24 years records have been kept. The 150 or so whales which washed up dead on […]

Birds of Pray

Israelis and Palestinians are teaming up to preserve the lesser kestral, a threatened raptor which finds ideal nesting spots in the dark crannies of aging buildings in Jerusalem’s Old City. Today only about 400 pairs nest in Israel, down from about 2,000 in the 1970s. The birds find fewer old buildings each year and fewer […]

What a Team!

Environmentalists are increasingly teaming up with big business to help corporations produce environmentally sound products. Earlier this year, the Marine Stewardship Council sat down with Unilever, the corporate parent of Gorton and Birdseye frozen foods, and worked out a “sustainable fish” labeling system for grocery store packages of salmon, haddock, and other fish. European companies […]

James Corless, Surface Transportation Policy Project

James Corless is the northern California campaign manager for the Surface Transportation Policy Project. STPP works to promote better transportation and land-use planning, walkable communities, public transportation, and citizen involvement in decision-making. Sunday, 18 Jul 1999 TRUCKEE, Calif. For countless immigrants, it’s been reinvented time and again as the ultimate promised land. One writer calls […]

Grandfathers' Clock Running Out

The EPA has discovered that a number of old, coal-fired power plants, “grandfathered” under the Clean Air Act, seem to have flouted the law by making major renovations to produce more power without installing required pollution controls. The EPA is still investigating and no action has yet been taken against the power companies, but the […]

A-Salt on Whales

A vigorous international campaign is mounting against plans by Mexico and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. to build the world’s largest salt plant on a Pacific lagoon that is a major breeding ground for gray whales. The proposed saltworks on the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California would pump 6,600 gallons of water out of the lagoon […]

House Beautiful?

Enviros scored a number of victories in an Interior Department funding bill passed by the House last night. The House will now run up against the Senate, which has inserted a number of anti-environmental passages into its version of the bill. The House bill would bar the use of federal funds for building logging roads […]

Green Eyeshades

A panel of the National Research Council is urging the federal government to resume development of a “green” accounting system that would calculate, in addition to standard economic measurements, the costs of such things as resource depletion and environmental and health damage from pollution. The Commerce Department had been working on just such a system, […]

Reefer Madness

Between 70 and 90 percent of coral reefs in the Indian Ocean have been destroyed by human activity, marine biologists say, and unless action is taken the remaining reefs will likely be destroyed as well. Sewage dumping, soil erosion, and dynamiting by fishers are all taking their toll, but the most serious problem facing the […]

Building Owners Painted into a Corner

The feds announced yesterday that they are launching a big crackdown on building owners who fail to notify tenants that their homes may contain lead paint. Attorney General Janet Reno, Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, and EPA Administrator Carol Browner said the government had fined four District of Columbia property owners $87,000 and ordered them to […]