I always found it amusing that New York Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio—"Joltin" Joe," as the sportscasters dubbed him—went on after retirement to stump for kitchen coffee makers. But one thing Mr. Coffee never jolted us with were the real facts about America’s favorite hot beverage.
Thank you for the outstanding coverage of the problems facing the world’s oceans ("Ocean Rescue," cover story, July/August 2005). As the articles point out, two blue-ribbon commissions have separately come to the same conclusion: our oceans are in trouble and the time for action is now. However, your discussion of one solution—individual fishing quotas—left out an issue in which citizens can play a crucial role.
Veggie "biodiesel" buses are cool with touring bands these days, and sometimes the music also includes a lecture on the benefits of this low-emission fuel. Top players with biodiesel bus conversions include Neil Young, Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson.
Driven by the disastrous effect two-stroke engines were having on the environment, the Bluewater Network was created in 1996 as a project of the Earth Island Institute. Bluewater Network, now part of Friends of the Earth, focuses on the negative effects of transportation on air and water quality.
In a rare show of mussel power, scuba-diving scientists on the Allegheny River are moving thousands of endangered bivalves to make way for bridge reconstruction in Forest County, Pennsylvania. But increased housing construction on the shores of the "wild and scenic" waterway is causing environmentalists new concerns.
The notion that ocean tides can be harnessed to create pollution-free electricity is making a crucial jump from drawing board to reality. State and federal regulators have approved a plan to install six underwater turbines in New York City. It’s the first grid-connected, multi-turbine source of tidal energy in the world.
A factory stands in Carthage, Missouri with a singular purpose: transforming turkey byproducts—beaks, feathers, bones and all—into oil. "It’s real," says Alan Libshutz, president of the small New York company that developed the process. "You put turkeys in the front and you get oil out the back."
Natural gas provides about 24 percent of U.S. energy requirements, compared to 40 percent for oil and 23 percent for coal. Consumption has risen for a decade because gas was relatively cheap until the late 1990s and generates fewer pollutants and greenhouse gases than coal or oil. But even with a drilling boom under way, domestic production lags demand and environmentalists are opposing new LNG projects.
Treating Christmas tree fields each spring, farmworker Felix Alvarez, 43, soaks his skin with Roundup, a weedkiller linked to cancer among applicators. Each spring and summer, Hispanic workers like Alvarez handle some of the deadliest pesticides allowed by law, potentially risking their health to help Americans celebrate life.
After a decade of success in rolling back global levels of consumption, the California strawberry industry that uses 40 percent of the nation’s supply of ozone-depleting biocide methyl bromide convinced the Bush administration to back pedal. It was a victory for the "bromide barons."
