Latest Articles

Come on, Rudy, Sign the Local Motion

Instant correction: Those of you who perused Muckraker early this morning or over the weekend may have read that New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) was prepared to sign a major letter from mayors and other local officials calling for the federal government to do more to combat global warming. Not so keen to […]

All We Are Saying Is Give Peace a Chance

Recently I invited friends around the world to ask their friends and neighbors a simple question: “What would the world be like if it were what you really want, not what you’ve learned to settle for or what you think is possible? What do you really want the world to be like for your children […]

Natural Born Litterers

Take This Blob and Shove It

A giant blob of radioactive waste is expanding inside a million-gallon tank buried at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state, and the Department of Energy and site contractor Lockheed Martin are baffled by the problem. A pump that was supposed to dissipate pockets of hydrogen gas in the tank instead whipped the contents into […]

Environmentalism: It's Dyn-o-mite!

Eco-terrorism — arson, bombings, and sabotage done in the name of protecting the environment — is on the rise in the American West. At least 100 major acts of eco-terrorism have taken place in the West since 1980, causing $42.8 million in damages, and 33 of the incidents occurred in the last four years. The […]

Justice Folks

Environmental justice is becoming a higher priority in California as more Latino legislators come to power and try to improve the kinds of neighborhoods in which they grew up, where minority families live side-by-side with factories and waste dumps. Earlier this month, California lawmakers passed a package of bills that aims to limit pollution in […]

Solar Sells

Citizens who generate their own electricity by solar power or other means could get credits on their electric bills for feeding excess power to utilities, under a bill unveiled on Friday by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.). More than two dozen states already have laws that allow “net metering” of this sort, but Inslee says a […]

Prez to Ride Out Storm?

Pres. Clinton plans to stand tough this year against congressional Republicans who have attached at least 39 anti-environmental riders to government spending bills. In past years, Clinton has caved in and approved bills containing such riders, but the administration is now signaling that he is ready to veto major appropriations bills if the riders aren’t […]

A Chip-Mill on Their Shoulders

Commercial logging has escalated dramatically in the South in recent years, and an unlikely set of Southerners, including local loggers and tourism officials, are speaking up to say that tree-cutting is out of control in the region. After the feds drastically reduced logging in the Northwest in the early 1990s, big timber companies focused their […]

Winning a Tony

Al Gore’s presidential campaign is promising pro-environment business leaders a special session with campaign Chair Tony Coelho if they raise $5,000 for the candidate by next Thursday, the end of the year’s third quarter. Gore is struggling both to raise money and to keep himself in good standing with the environmental community. One enviro said […]