It’s no big surprise that the environmentally friendly Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington is buying renewably generated "green power," but the appearance on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annual top 10 list of schools like the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois is more eye-opening.
As this issue goes to press, the Paramount Classics/Participant Productions film An Inconvenient Truth, starring former Vice President Al Gore and directed by Davis Guggenheim, was opening widely in theaters around the country, and receiving an excellent critical reception.
In an effort to help reduce stress on already ailing fish populations and limit ocean habitat destruction, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy has branched out from its standard modus operandi of purchasing development rights from farmers to buying out fishing permits from a handful of California bottom trawlers. So far the group has bought six federal trawling permits and four vessels from fishermen in Morro Bay, located roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Last week the Senate majority proposed legislation continuing an offshore drilling moratorium for the Gulf of Mexico that has been in effect for 25 years, but allowing some oil and gas drilling to take place across an 8 million acre swath of open ocean 100 miles off the coast of Florida. Meanwhile, a House bill passed last month calls for overturning the moratorium entirely, potentially opening up tens of millions of additional coastal acres off the Gulf of Mexico to resource extraction.
Russian researchers returned from an exploratory mission in Western Siberia last year to report that the world’s largest frozen peat bog there, land as large as France and Germany combined, was quickly melting away “into shallow lakes.” Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Russia’s Tomsk State University and the leader of the research effort, told the journal
Gulf Coast residents, already faced with some of the nation’s toughest environmental challenges, didn’t really need Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to emphasize their vulnerability. Environmental groups were also affected when hurricanes devastated these communities and exacerbated the alarming environmental threats.
On a warm April morning, John Keeley’s farm southeast of Portland, Oregon is lively with sound. His two dogs bark as they dash around the farm’s dark wooden buildings; his sheep and lambs bleat as they waddle across rolling green fields. Birds twitter, and turkeys cackle. But the white boxes scattered around his 85 acres are mostly silent.
The state-initiated Organopónico Bolivar I is the first urban, organic garden to show its green face in Caracas, Venezuela. The country now imports about 80 percent of the food that it consumes. To Noralí Verenzuela, the garden’s director, the new greenery represents a positive step. "People are waking up," she says. "We’ve been dependent on McDonald’s and Wendy’s for so long."
The 24 million kids who ride buses an average of 1.5 hours a day are being exposed to high levels of diesel exhaust that can affect their health.
Have you ever driven by a school in your community at night and seen the lights blazing, when you know the building is empty? Do you wonder how much money and energy that wastes? The United States Department of Energy has an answer for you, sort of. If your school district is typical, one of every four dollars it spends on energy is unnecessary.
