From mid-May to mid-August, there is almost continuous daylight in Iceland, which gives the tiny island (39,000 square miles) country a short but intense growing season. Iceland touches the Arctic Circle at its northern tip, and the cold limits the range of crops, through cabbage, cauliflower and potatoes thrive, and tomatoes and cucumbers manage well in greenhouses heated by Iceland’s huge reserve of geothermal energy.
Climate experts warn us that the first sign of a shifting climate will be turbulent, unpredictable weather. So when Hurricane Jeanne crashed ashore in Florida in September of 2004, environmentalists couldn’t help but wonder if this was it: climate change in action. It seems as though the past few years have been characterized by all sorts of weather extremes. We know that the planet has warmed 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 100 years, but is there really a link between our weather and climate change?
What happens to empty plastic soda bottles left out on the curb for recycling? Would you believe they’re made into luggage racks and door padding for cars?
After every meal she and her family eat at home, Philadelphian Happy Fernandez dumps food scraps into a big plastic bag she keeps in her refridgerator. Then on Sunday and Wednesday nights, she puts the accumulated waste into a bucket and sets it out curbside. By morning, the bucket is empty and a contented group of New Jersey pigs is burping in satisfaction over a gourmet breakfast.
Quiet, dusty Rockport, Texas is a shrimping and sport fishing center, a vacation destination for "winter Texans" from the Midwest, and one of the only places in the world to see the endangered whooping crane, the largest bird in North America.
During the dog days of last summer, when the New York City tabloids needed a breather from O.J. Simpson, <I>Newsday</I> discovered Gus the Neurotic Bear. He wasn’t too hard to find. A 700-pound polar bear, he lives in the Central Park Zoo, sharing a large slate-gray quarry of rock, both real and fake, with Lily and Ida. The females do what you might expect of bears in sticky 97-degree heat: roll on their backs to scratch fleas, pee in the stream, sit and watch the passing crowd in the windows of their habitat. But, in a deep pool, Gus swims short laps like a bear possessed. He surfaces with a neck like a giant fur buoy and falls into a back stroke to the other side, pauses, and dives back along the bottom with bubbles trailing by his whiskers. He repeats the same motions for hours on end, down to the way his tongue flicks across his back lips.
Yolanda Rivera parks her rusty two-toned Cadillac Seville on the cracked concrete driveway at the site of her future factory in New York City’s South Bronx. She may not be your typical capitalist entrepreneur, but then the Bronx is not your typical park. Manufacturers have been abandoning the brick factories for decades, leaving only the giant Hunts Point wholesale food market, and Rivera now stands in the 90-acre Harlem rail yards which have done little but grow weeds since the early 70s.
Sometimes medicine isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. Take Premarin, the leading estrogen replacement drug prescribed to about eight million women to prevent the "hot flashes" of menopause or the "dowager’s hump" of osteoporosis in old age. Wyeth-Averst Laboratories has made the drug for 50 years, but the basic ingredient remains a natural estrogen collected from the urine of pregnant mares.
Ten Years ago, you had to be a true believer to buy organic produce. It was expensive, and it looked awful – small, shriveled and covered with the bruises and holds wrought by unsprayed bugs. But that was then, and organic produce has come a long way since. Visit a good health food store now, and you’ll find fruits and vegetables that easily rival any in Stop & Shop: plump, shiny, and blemish-free.
Why become a bat rehabilitiator? Without exception, rehabilitators talk about their fascination with the small mammals. "Most people don’t realize how intelligent and valuable bats are," says rehabilitator Amanda Lollar. But according to Melinda Alvarado, a bat rehabber working out of San Luis Obispo, California, all you have to do is meet a bat to be hooked. "They look right at you with their bright little eyes," she says, "and you can see the intelligence and curiosity shining there."
