The environmental justice community lost a leading light last week when activist Damu Smith succumbed to colon cancer at the age of 53. Smith had worked tirelessly as a toxics campaigner for Greenpeace throughout the 1990s, and in 2001 formed the nonprofit Black Voices for Peace in order to mobilize African Americans against U.S. military aggression in Iraq and for better education, housing, jobs and healthcare on the homefront.

When the National Park Service floated the idea last year of naming various rooms, benches and bricks throughout the nation’s park system after corporate and individual philanthropists, many purists were aghast, claiming that such a move would open the door to increased commercialization and a corporate takeover of America’s natural and cultural treasures. Those same purists breathed a sigh of relief last week, however, when Park Service director Fran Mainella told reporters his agency would drop the contentious proposal in favor of preserving the status quo.

Dr. Deborah Brosnan is a marine scientist who brims with passion for learning about and protecting the oceans. In recent years, she has also turned her considerable scientific expertise to helping people and ecosystems cope with the destruction wrought by natural disasters. Her work has taken her into typhoons, under erupting volcanoes, through a terrifying plane crash and at ground zero of the Asian tsunami. Her experiences in Southeast Asia led her to found the Tsunami Reef Action Fund, which is working to restore human and natural systems severely battered by Mother Nature’s fury.

Two start-up companies backed by venture capital are teaming up with the state of New Mexico to build the world’s largest solar power farm on 3,200 acres of mostly public land near the Mexican border. The proposed facility would be 60 times larger than the world’s biggest currently operating solar farm in Germany’s Bavaria region.

As part of an attempt to ease the run-up of gas prices across the United States in recent months, the Bush administration is allowing certain regions to waive environmental rules mandating switching over from one fuel additive, the widely available MTBE, to the less polluting and more costly ethanol. The White House hopes the move will avert the regional fuel shortages already starting to crop up this spring.