Environmentalists have given up too much by not being radical enough

Photo: © 2000 David-Lorne Photographic We are destroying our country — I mean our country itself, our land. This is...

Plan B tries again

Plan B, the emergency contraceptive rejected for over-the-counter sales by the FDA in May, has reapplied after limiting sales to those 16 years of age and older.

Concern about sales of the contraceptive to young teens was the FDA's putative reason for rejecting Plan B, despite the overwhelming support for the medicine from FDA's scientific panel. Many observers believe that the FDA's director bowed to pressure from the anti-abortion movement and its allies in the Bush administration.

But Plan B is likely to slash the number of abortions. As the PI article reports:

James Trussell, director of Princeton University's Office of Population Research . . . has concluded that easy access to emergency contraception could cut by half the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions among U.S. women, ages 15 to 44.

Pegeen Hanrahan, mayor of Gainesville, Fla., answers questions

Pegeen Hanrahan What work do you do? Earlier this year I was elected to serve as mayor of Gainesville, Fla.,...

Umbra on lead pipes and drinking water

Dear Umbra, I live in New York City, which is reputed to have some of the best drinking water in...

All the mus(ing) that’s fit to print

In its Sunday endorsement of Kerry and scathing critique of Bush, The New York Times spends more time on the environment than the candidates did in their three debates. (To whom does such an endorsement speak -- do any undecideds read The Times?) Amidst the many many paragraphs that lay out an argument against a second Bush administration, the patient greenie finds this one:

If Mr. Bush had wanted to make a mark on an issue on which Republicans and Democrats have long made common cause, he could have picked the environment. Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor chosen to run the Environmental Protection Agency, came from that bipartisan tradition. Yet she left after three years of futile struggle against the ideologues and industry lobbyists Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had installed in every other important environmental post. The result has been a systematic weakening of regulatory safeguards across the entire spectrum of environmental issues, from clean air to wilderness protection.

The editorial spends more time condemning Bush's record than building a case for a Kerry presidency. Yet, the editorial board found space among the relatively few sentences allocated to praising Kerry to call attention to this environmental matter:

Enviro group launches campaign against Victoria’s Secret catalogs

An enviro group called ForestEthics has trained its sights on the Victoria's Secret catalog, urging the company to make the shift to more eco-friendly paper and avoid fiber that comes from endangered forests. The real target is Victoria's parent company, Limited Brands Inc. Limited Brands procures coated paper from an International Paper Co. plant near Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, which ForestEthics charges has damaged surrounding forests and wildlife. "We're exposing Victoria's Dirty Secret, which is that the million catalogs that it mails a day are destroying some of the world's last remaining old-growth forests and threatening endangered species," said ForestEthics' Tzeporah Berman. Limited Brands denies everything and claims to be environmentally sensitive, as does International Paper. Speaking of exposing, a Grist editor has volunteered to do further investigation into this vital story. He will report his results in a week. Maybe two weeks.

Victoria’s Dirty Secret

Enviro group launches campaign against Victoria’s Secret catalogs An enviro group called ForestEthics has trained its sights on the Victoria’s...

Umbra on UV ratings

Dear Umbra, Our radio station provides daily information regarding ultraviolet ratings. I am curious about what these ratings actually represent,...

Bush-appointed judges rule against environmental regs more often than others, report finds

Bush speaks his mind at the second debate. Photo: Joe Angeles/WUSTL. President Bush‘s remarks about Supreme Court appointees during the...