Latest Articles

Mercury Rising

Do the Wild Thing

The Wildlands Project, an eight-year-old Tucson-based group, aims to revolutionize wilderness protection in North America by linking wild areas from coast to coast. Launched by Michael Soule, considered by some the father of conservation biology, and Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!, the group envisions 25 networks that would, among other things, connect Yellowstone to […]

Inventor of the Internet, Savior of the Fish Net

Vice Pres. Al Gore is catching flak for announcing a $5 million aid package for the troubled New England fishing industry, but neglecting to mention that the aid was not new but rather that it had been approved almost a year previously. Gore’s office said he was simply making a “formal official announcement” that the […]

Terroriffic!

Environmentalists have stepped in where the feds feared to tread, publishing on the Internet information about the risks of chemical accidents in the U.S., including state-by-state summaries of potential “worst-case scenarios.” The information was provided to the EPA by thousands of companies, but a new federal law prevents the agency from posting the info on […]

Bill Clinton, Weather Vane for Trade Winds

Pres. Clinton yesterday warned business and political leaders that they need to address the environmental and social concerns of average citizens as they pursue a more open trading system, a call that comes as environmentalists, labor unions, and a host of other groups make plans to demonstrate against the World Trade Organization during its upcoming […]

Food Not Fit for a Dog

U.S. farmers are in a near panic because of growing uncertainty over genetically modified crops, and the American Corn Growers Association has even claimed that multinational seed and chemical companies “misled” farmers by encouraging them to plant millions of acres without warning them that the crops don’t have consumer acceptance. In the past month, Japan’s […]

Pop Goes the Treaty

Negotiators from 115 countries have reached tentative agreement to end the production of eight dangerous chemicals as early as 2003 or 2004, when an international treaty on phasing out the use of 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is set to come into force. After six days of negotiations that ended on Saturday, the biggest unresolved […]

Don't let a chance to save the butterfly flutter by

A couple of weeks ago, while the federal government was removing peregrine falcons from the list of endangered species, I was out watching the first monarch butterflies migrate through the desert on their way to Mexico. I saw both the migratory monarchs and their homebody cousins, the butterflies known as Queens, hovering around the lovely […]

In Case You Still Haven't Reached for the Prozac

Costa Rica’s golden toad has gone extinct because its natural habitat has dried up, sending a warning that freshwater species and habitats around the world are in serious trouble, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s new 1999 Living Planet Report. It found that climate change, pollution, and heavy fishing threaten frogs, alligators, flamingos, and river […]

Today's Financial Advice: Avoid Long-Term Investments

Emissions of greenhouse gases could rise enormously over the next 100 years, according to a draft report by leading climatologists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC researchers developed four general potential scenarios for how the climate system could develop over the coming century. Many scientists say that to avert a climatic disaster, […]