Thousands of Americans are probably by now preparing for their exotic summer vacations in the Mediterranean. But they’re not the only ones–chances are, an illegal fleet of Italian driftnetters is, too.

"Homeless people are not ‘those’ people; they are my neighbors and friends," says Marilyn Kaufman, who lives in Washington, DC. Her dream of creating real jobs for homeless people recently found a suitable vehicle–a solar-powered ice cream vending cart. Incorporating a new, super-efficient insulation, the carts will be the rolling stock of "DC Kool Ice," Kaufman’s start-up venture that employs the homeless as vendors. Cooled by solar power instead of dry ice, the carts save about $20,000 in yearly energy costs for a fleet of 12, which allows Kaufman to pay her vendors a realistic living wage of $10 and hour.

Chris Stapleton doesn’t fit the profile of an environmental pioneer. Yet, the burly third generation contractor has built a booming business around solving some of Connecticut’s waste problems.

It is springtime in New York State. The elemental scent of thawed earth laces the air. Freeze-dried moss greens in the pale, lemon-yellow sunlight. Sunbeams filter through the pine boughs and lay in bright slivers on the forest floor. Wild turkeys lope silently across rust-colored pine needles. In the distance is the sounds of chopping. Another logging operation? No–happily it’s the sound of a hiking trail being cleared upstate–the northernmost reach of the appropriately named, eagerly awaited, Long Path.

A curious sight has appeared recently in the stark desert lanscape near Piedras Negras, Mexico: the towering smokestacks of a mammoth coal-burning plant called Carbon II. When finished, Carbon II will supply a big dose of Mexico’s growing power needs and hundreds of jobs. But it will also create an unwelcome export: sulfur dioxide emissions, vastly exceeding U.S. standards, that will drift north of the border.

For three days, the campers tried to enjoy the deep-freezer of a Maine winter, surrounded by hemlocks laden with snow and hardwood trees bare as bones. Layered in long underwear and anything else we have invented to live like polar bears, they passed their time by watching for large black and red crested pileated woodpeckers flashing through the trees, or by taking long, warming cross country ski trips on the 18-inch snowpack in Mt. Blue State Park. On the fourth day at 5:00 A.M., the call rang out for someone’s tent: "Trucks!" The 15 campers crawled out of their warm mummy bags and trundled out to the road to link arms against the logging trucks. By the end of the day, 13 of them sat in jail; by the end of the winter, 35 people had been arrested. And that was in 1993. The protestors kicked off 1994 by closing the company’s headquarters for a day, tree-sitting in the president’s yard and occupying Maine’s Department of Conservation offices, which led to 12 or more arrests.