rivers and watersheds

Coming soon: Street View-style maps of the country’s endangered rivers

Internet time-wasters, start your engines. A nonprofit called Below the Surface is gearing up to map 27 of the country's most endangered rivers using the same technology that gave the world Google Street View. That means 360-degree shots of beautiful, polluted, shrinking, over-tapped waterways for the world to click on (and, hopefully, get fired up […]

The new fracking battleground: Trenton

There's a new battlefront in the fracking fight: the Delaware River Basin, which provides water to 5 percent of the country's population. And anti-fracking dreamboat Mark Ruffalo is asking for help in fighting against fracking there. You don’t have to take Ruffalo’s word for it — you probably want to fight fracking anyway. When 350.org […]

Report: We have plenty of water, we’re just dumb with it

We have enough clean water worldwide, we're just not using it well, a new study says. The report, produced by the Challenge Program on Water and Food, looked at 10 river basins, from the Ganges to the Nile to the Andes, and found that, "There is clearly sufficient water to sustain food, energy, industrial and environmental needs during the 21st century."

Once a wasteland, Howe Sound comes back to life

Humans can royally muck up the environment, but sometimes we can put things right again. Seven years ago, Vancouver's Howe Sound was a lifeless chemical stew, poisoned by contamination from a copper mine. And now, according to the Globe and Mail, there's this:

Sightings of grey whales, killer whales and schools of hundreds of white-sided dolphins are now being made regularly in the Sound, where massive herring spawns are once again occurring. “We are seeing the revitalization of an entire ecosystem. It is really uplifting,” said John Buchanan, a Squamish conservationist who voluntarily walks streams in the area to help count spawning salmon.

And this:

Critical List: Kyoto will expire with no successor; Rock climbers scale wind turbines

Global fail: The Kyoto Protocol will expire without a deal to take its place, the top UN climate official said yesterday. China's own Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a report that the country's not doing so hot on the environmental front. The report ticked off problems like acid rain (half of the China's cities […]

Critical List: EPA gives chemical industry a pass; Rolls-Royce owners snubs EVs

The EPA could ask chemical companies to report on Americans' exposure to their products, but it's not. "Where's there's coal, there's opportunity": The energy industry funds brainwashing — sorry, "education" — for students. The Grand Calumet river ferries about 200,000 cubic yards of toxic crap into Lake Michigan each year. The federal government is cleaning […]

Reviving a river in Mexico City

Mexico City has treated its rivers badly: They tend to be paved over and filled with sewage. But Elías Cattan, a green building leader in Mexico City, wants to turn one of these f*cked-under resources back into a healthy, flowing river. Under Cattan’s guidance, the trash-clogged Río Piedad would become a viable waterway with a […]

Critical List: Senate wimps out on oil subsidies bill; solar storms loom

The Senate voted down a bill that would have ended tax subsidies for the five biggest oil companies. The bill had little to no chance of passing the House and becoming law, but the Senate wussed out on taking a stand even on a bill crafted only to score political points. In Maryland, "renewable energy" […]

The most important film event of the year

The most important film event of the year is just around the corner. I refer, of course, not to the Oscars, but to its fun-loving cousin from Northern California, the Wild and Scenic Film Festival. What’s the draw? It’s held in Nevada City, a Hallmark-perfect (literally) town in the Sierra foothills. It features great films […]