The Great American Lawn, a coast-to-coast carpet of green, inspires $6 billion in annual spending. Lawn care companies do $1.5 billion of business a year in the U.S., applying up to 50 million pounds of toxic chemicals in the process. The American lawn is a relatively modern phenomenon. Few homeowners could contemplate installing one until […]
Home Depot and endangered wood, Wal-Mart and sweatshops, Monsanto and genetically engineered foods. Besides being the targets of activist protesting, these companies have all had pressure from their investors to do the right thing. A year ago, Greenpeace made a decision that caused ripples in the environmental community. The group, known for daring tactics against […]
The Alaska Wilderness Recreation and Tourism Association (AWRTA) reports that more and more travelers are carefully choosing their transportation to America’s last frontier.
Helping to save the planet’s oldest tropical rainforest is more about empowering people than rescuing trees. That’s the philosophy of Earth Island Institute’s Borneo Project, which for the past 10 years has aided indigenous peoples of the world’s third-largest island in preserving both their forests and culture. Begun as a sister-city relationship between Berkeley, California, […]
Bears that threaten people or wreak havoc foraging for food are a little harder to deter than the average pest. In the usual scenario, they are trapped and relocated, and if the bear returns, it must be killed—not a popular solution. It took biologist Carrie Hunt and a team of Karelian Bear Dogs to teach […]
The first and only time I spoke with Donella Meadows, I was a sophomore studying in Dartmouth College’s Environmental Studies Program — and very nervous to be sitting in the office of one of the school’s most famous professors. I had developed an interest in writing about the environment and asked if she had any […]
Religious pilgrims are trampling the grounds of the El Carmen monastery in the Sierra del Nixcongo Mountains near Mexico City. Thousands of them flock there on Catholic holidays to set up camp and walk a forest path that recreates Jesus" crucifixion. But they don’t just walk. They drive through the forest and park wherever they […]
Last September, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced a recommended drainage plan for the Yazoo Backwater Area, affecting a significant portion of the Mississippi River floodplain. The $181 billion Yazoo Backwater Pumps would become the world’s largest hydraulic pumping plant, with a target area of 200,000 acres of wetlands to be drained for agricultural […]
In 1991, environmental activist Kieran Suckling was living in a tiny New Mexico town in the heart of timber and grazing country. His nascent group, then called the Greater Gila Biodiversity Project, finally had a budget—$5,000 for the year to cover all the work of a tiny handful of friends committed to keeping species from […]
Local Building Councils are Guided by Environmental Principles About 50 people had gathered in the auditorium at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art to hear urban planners, architects and energy engineers talk about the environmental challenges facing South Florida. There was concern about the low attendance, but also optimism that a movement was being born. […]
