How much is enough? It’s a question many Americans haven’t had to answer. Since the explosion of consumerism that followed the scarcity of World War II, the American middle class has enjoyed its unprecedented prosperity unleavened by guilt (unless it was to tell the kids to eat their peas because "they’re starving in India.")
The highlights of Jacques Cousteau’s life are hardly a mystery; every schoolkid knows about his pioneering underwater photography, his famous TV program The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1968-1976), his environmental activism and his many awards and prizes.
A two-ton Chinese spy satellite the size of a small car is headed for a crash landing somewhere on Earth. Although most satellites quickly burn up when they reenter Eath’s atmosphere , this one is prepared for a fiery ride, and is deemed sufficiently armored to survive it.
Imagine a microscopic marine predator which can spend years at a time without food, but which, when conditions are favorable, suddenly emerges from the sediment, changes shape and kills millions of fish after stunning them with poison so powerful it can cause immuno-suppression in humans. Find it hard to believe? Go tell it to Dr. JoAnn Burkholder.
Mike Hogan recalls after being shocked the day he discovered that Keep America Beautiful (KAB) isn’t an environmental group. Like countless baby boomers, Hogan grew up watching KAB’s infamous crying Indian TV avertisement. One of the most popular public service announcements of all time, it featured a Native American who, after paddling a canoe through a littered waterway, weeps at the sight of pollution surrounding him.
Inside the white-coated world of U.S. university, commercial and military laboratories, about 55,000 primates are used each year to study a range of phenomenon, from brain disorders and sexually transmitted diseases to nuclear radiation and the toxicity of household products.
To become a guru, you don’t need a set of robes, the ability to levitate or an exotic accent. Joe Dominquez and his partner Vicki Robin are two ordinary Americans whose mantra is gaining popularity throughout the western world. The pair, authors of the bestselling book Your Money Or Your Life and directors of the Seattle-based New Road Map Foundation, offer their acolytes a simple message:…
For most of us, trotting off to the grocery store is an unloved chore donw on automatic pilot. No wonder, then, that how we get those groceries home is the last thing on our minds. But the environmental impact of supermarket bags is daunting. And t he best choice–cloth–is nowhere in sight.
Since the early 1960s, scientists have observed some shocking mutations in wildlife–hermaphroditic seagulls with both male and female sex organs, eagles with crossed beaks, panthers born with undescended testicles, alligators with shriveled penises (see Currents January/February 1996), and fish gonads which aren’t distinctly male or female.
June 3, 1994 was an ideal day for a home garden tour in Tulsa, Oklahoma–the weather was beautiful and the plants were in full bloom. That day, over 800 people had visited Evelyn Connor’s garden, and they had been impressed by her lush naturalistic landscape, which includes Mullien pinks and a mass of three-foot-high native purple cornflowers.
