Something ugly is gorwing in the sea and it’s beaffling the best brains in biology. An epidemic of tumors is ravaging reptiles from the Caribbean to the South Pacific. Fibropapilloma, biologists call the disease, but they admit they know far too little about why it is attacking the already-endangered green sea turtle.
A decade ago Jacksonville, Florida was one malodorous metropolis. Aromas reminiscent of rotten eggs and industrial-strength sour lemons wafter through town. Indeed, nearly three-fourths of the city’s air pollution complaints were odor-related, the chief culprits being pulp mills, a watewater treatment facility, organic chemical plants, incinerators, and food and manure processing plants.
Avid followers of Arnold Schwarzenegger should probably avoid The Video Project, a tiny, two-rom shop in Oakland, California. For 10 years, the shop has housed several hundred thought-provoking alternatives to the Hollywood blockbusters crowding the average video emporium. The diversity of their collection is impressive, ranging from the plight of Tibetan refugees to the "eco-rap" performances of urban youth. But the productions share a common purpose, notes executive director Steve Ladd: "informing people about how to create a safe and sustainable world."
Animal Damage Control (ADC), a controversial federal program initiated in the 1930s, has over 60 years of killing wild animals under its belt. Using leghold traps, ariel gunning, denning (killing coyote and fox pups still in their den) and sodium cyanide bait, ADC was responsible for the death of over 2.5 million wild animals in 1991–all, they say, to protect livestock.
The new chief of the U.S. Forest Service has received everything from kudos to death threats for his past recommendations to protect the spotted owl. What’s his vision for the 90s for our 191 million acres of national forest land?
Multilevel marketing–otherwise known as MLM, or "network marketing"–is a familiar concept to many Americans, though most would more readily recognize the names Amway and Shaklee, companies which have employed such neighbor-to-neighbor sales strategies successfully for decades. Indeed, both companies have become major contenders in the personal care, vitamin and household products industries. This is due, in large part, to the viability of the network markeeting concept, but also to increasing consumer interest in environmentally safe products, which have gradually become a bigger and bigger part of both Amway’s and Shaklee’s product lines. But now some relatively new arrivals on the MLM scene- such as the unmistakably green sounding comapnies Greenway and Natural World–are looking to prove that the grass is even greener on their side of the fence.
April 24, 1994 will mark eight years since Reactor Four at the Chernobyl atomic power complex in the Ukraine blew up, heaving 50 tons of radioactive materials into the sky. But unlike natural disasters, this one isn’t healing.
In the rustic New England shoreline village of Guilford, Connecticut, homes go for $250,00 and up. But if you want a bargain visit Meadow Street, where any one out of nine solid homes, some abandoned by their owners, are going begging, despite price tags of less than $100,000. The reason? The houses have an unwanted neighbor: a Connecticut Light & Power Company (CL&P) substation.
The first bioengineered animal, patented in 1988 and called the "Harvard oncomouse," was programmed with a gene predisposing it to cancer. Harvard researcher Philip Leder developed the animal, and chemical giant DuPont owns exclusive rights to the patent. The contorversial milestone brought together religious groups, scientists, farmers, environmentalists and animal rights activists, all opposed to the patenting of life. "The technique of custom-making a rodent, considered the stuff of science fiction a decade ago, has become almost low-tech…so routine at many laboratories that [the president of GenPharm International of Mountain view,California] David Winter calls it ‘dial-a-mouse,’" reported Marla Cone in May 1993 article in the Los Angeles Times. GenPharm’s corporate development director Howard Rosen agrees: "We do ‘custom tailor’ mice."
New federal policies are promoting energy-saving computers and cleaner computer production. Here’s what you can do to make a dent in the enormous power and resource expenditures that go into making and operating the 12.6 million computers purchased in the U.S. each year.
