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Emitting Less NOx-ious Gas

The owner of two of New England’s most polluting power plants yesterday announced a three-year, $17 million plan to reduce emissions that cause smog and acid rain. U.S. Generating Co., which acquired the plants last year, said it would cut nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 23 percent and work toward reductions in sulfur-dioxide (SO2) emissions. […]

The Intermountain West becomes a California suburb

One does not expect enlightenment from a barber shop conversation, but there it was. I’d always had hunches about the nature of demographic change in Western mountain towns, nasty hunches, hunches counter to the conventional wisdom that immigration was motivated by the newcomers’ love of the land, so the newcomers would become allies in environmental […]

A Tale of Two Fisheries

At the beginning of this millennium, the Norse began to fish what is now called the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1501, the Company of Adventurers to the New Found Lands was chartered in England to make summer expeditions to that rich fishing ground. For the next 500 years, the Grand Banks […]

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Whale Meets Its Makah

Makah Indians this morning successfully harpooned and killed a whale off the coast of Washington state, the first whale kill by the tribe in more than 70 years. No protestors were in the area when the whale was hit. Protestors have dogged the whalers since their hunt began last week; four of their vessels have […]

Does the W. Stand for Waffle?

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the leading GOP presidential hopeful, has seen the light on climate change. “I believe there is global warming,” he said at a news conference on Thursday. Just a few weeks ago, Bush had said that the “science is still out” on the issue, but since then he’s had some briefings […]

Unappealing Ruling

A federal appeals court on Friday threw a wrench into the Clinton administration’s plans to tighten air quality regulations, ruling that the EPA overstepped its authority by adopting new standards for ozone and particulates in 1997. The judges found that the EPA’s actions were unconstitutional and that the agency had failed to show that the […]

Blame It on IMF, Not Rio?

Brazil’s recession is taking a toll on its rainforest. The nation, in an effort to show the world that it can control its spending and to comply with conditions for a $41.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, has made deep cuts in its budget, including slashing funding by half for the Environment Ministry. […]

Painting the Town Green

Southern California’s smog-fighting agency is cracking down on paint makers, requiring them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help clean the region’s air. The South Coast Air Quality Management District on Friday adopted tough new rules that will force manufacturers to make expensive reformulations to nearly half the industrial and household paints and […]

Boat Flight at the Not-OK Coral

A shrimp boat plowed into a coral reef off Mexico’s coast this weekend, causing extensive damage to 1,290 square yards of coral, one of the worst cases of damage to a Mexican reef in years. Marine traffic is outlawed in the reef area near Cancun, but the boat moved into the area after its engines […]