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."
As many of the world’s most important commercial fish populations have collapsed, fish farms have stepped in to fill the void. Marine aquaculture has more than doubled in size over the past decade, and now accounts for nearly 20 percent of the world’s seafood supply. The fast-growing industry has also triggered some environmental problems, but now it appears to be solving many of them.
"Clean and Green" New Zealand struggles with many contradictions, including high cancer rates (see "Clean and Green New Zealand is a Study in Environmental Contrasts," May/June 2003). Today, New Zealand’s endangered national bird, the kiwi, is facing further peril.
Congressman Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, introduced legislation that would sharply curtail the power of the Endangered Species Act (see "Fall of the Wild," cover story, May/June 1999). Pombo has long been a vocal critic of the legislation. In his September 19 announcement of the bill, Pombo assailed current legislation for having […]
E‘s 2004 book Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change (Routledge), based on a special feature in the September/ October 2000 issue of the magazine, reported on many of the connections between intense storm damage and global warming now under discussion in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Colin Woodard described […]
