Does it Speak for the Family Farmer—or for Large-Scale Agribusiness? Before he goes to his job as communications director for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Bryce Oates has to feed his free-range chickens, who are being raised on an antibiotic- and hormone-free diet. Like most farmers in Missouri, Oates can’t make a living from farming […]
Overharvesting Threatens the Booming Herbal Industry Officers confiscated plants with a market value of $250 to $500 per pound from two homes in New York. In Indiana, a two-year investigation led to the issuing of search warrants, misdemeanor charges and the bust of six traffickers. Ordinary drug dealers? Not quite. In both cases the plants […]
Governor Jennifer Granholm Champions Smart Growth Well before she ran as a centrist Democrat and was elected handily to become the first woman to govern Michigan, Jennifer Granholm understood that joining urban Democrats with suburban Republican swing voters was her formula for victory. What ideas in the nation’s eighth-largest state could put black and ethnic […]
When Ohio University recycling manager Ed Newman wants to see how the campus is recycling he goes right to the heart of the matter—into the dumpster. Though numbers show that students and faculty are recycling a decent 25 to 30 percent of residence and dining hall trash, Newman finds a different story when he goes on a "dumpster dive" into one of the university containers.
A coalition of environmental groups led by Earthjustice last week filed suit against the Bush administration, asserting that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is failing to protect public health and violating the Clean Air Act by ignoring tons of unaccounted-for mercury emissions each year.
Scientists are attributing a rapid collapse of seabird populations around Great Britain’s Northern Isles in recent years to global warming. Rising sea temperatures, they say, are upsetting the delicate balance of the region’s ecological relationships. Microscopic plankton, which form the lowest rung on the marine food chain, are moving north as ocean waters warm, depriving small fish like sandeel of their primary food source. As these populations of small fish decline, area seabirds, which depend on them as food, stop reproducing and eventually starve.
Fresh, cool breezes waft in gently, rolling the sapphire water into a soothing rhythm. Colorful kites dance overhead, while kids shape forts, moats and towers out of the silky-soft sand. Nowhere is anyone arguing over upcoming elections or fretting over Al Qaeda’s next moves. But America’s beaches are nonetheless becoming battlegrounds of heated political debate, and have seen flip-flopping mirroring the shifting sands.
Governors of western states have rallied behind a bipartisan proposal from California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico’s Bill Richardson to significantly increase their regional production of renewable energy over the next two decades. The governors have agreed to institute new sources of government funding–along with tax breaks and other incentives and regulatory measures–in order to encourage utilities to develop more renewable power sources and rely less on fossil fuels moving forward.
In lieu of federal action to stave off global warming, attorneys general (AGs) from eight states as well as New York City have banded together in filing a "public nuisance" lawsuit calling on the nation’s largest utilities to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. So far, AGs from California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin have linked up for the suit. They hope to convince colleagues in other states to join in as well.
First developed as a power source for NASA’s Apollo missions, fuel cells convert hydrogen and oxygen into usable electricity, with heat and water as byproducts.
