Latest Articles

Nukes Still Driving Us Buggy

Thirty U.S. nuclear power plants still need to upgrade their computers to be immune from the Y2K computer bug, and six of the plants are not scheduled to finish their repairs until just weeks before year end, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said yesterday. The NRC said that none of the systems still in need of […]

Expensive Willy

Norway’s whale hunters have faced vehement anti-whaling protests this year, but their biggest problem may be that Norwegians are eating less whale meat. The number of minke whales killed this year, 589, was 36 fewer than last year, the first drop since Norway defied the International Whaling Commission and resumed commercial hunting in 1993. Even […]

Magic Carpet Riders

Despite a stern tongue lashing from the New York Times editorial page on Monday, the Senate version of the Interior appropriations bill continues to provide a comfy roosting spot for a handful of anti-environmental riders. Some of the offending items got sliced off when the Senate reinstated Rule 16, the sensible old regulation requiring that […]

How Do They Harm Thee? We Can't Count the Ways

A prominent U.S. panel of scientists has concluded that not enough is known about hormone-altering chemicals to calculate their risks to humans. In a report requested by Congress, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday acknowledged that pesticides and other chemicals that mimic estrogen and block male hormones seem to be feminizing some […]

Urban Bright

The Department of Energy wants to put solar panels on vacant, contaminated urban industrial sites, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson will announce today. The project will get underway in Chicago, where a solar panel manufacturer has agreed to set up shop on a 17-acre former dump site, and the city and local electric utility have agreed […]

Strip Joint Visit

Israel’s new environment minister, Dalia Itzik, on Monday toured the blighted Gaza Strip with her Palestinian counterpart, Yousef Abu Safieh, marking the beginning of what they hope will be an era of cooperation in addressing the region’s environmental woes. Discussion between the two was polite, but each side pointed to problems the other had caused. […]

A Match Made in Hell?

Dow Chemical is moving to buy Union Carbide in a huge $9.3 billion deal that would create a worldwide chemical industry giant, second in size only to DuPont. The deal still needs approval from the boards of both companies. Union Carbide is perhaps best known for the world’s worst recorded industrial accident, in which a […]

Dead in the Water

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico has doubled in size since last year to 7,728 square miles, larger than it’s ever been before — and larger than New Jersey. The dead zone, a layer of water at the bottom of the Gulf so low in oxygen that it can’t support life, forms annually, […]

Coke Ain't It

Coca-Cola has reneged on a promise to use recycled plastic in its bottles, an environmental group charged this week. The GrassRoots Recycling Network, an umbrella organization for some 400 enviro groups, criticized Coke in an ad in Monday’s New York Times, and plans to run a series of similar ads in various other publications. In […]

Bright ideas for saving energy

Power plants and climate change have been on the minds of many consumers who lost electrical service and sweated out the record-breaking temperatures that recently hit areas across the country. Most experts believe the planet’s temperature has been rising as a result of increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, […]