TURNING OVER AN OLD LEAF One of the world’s largest agricultural crops until the late 1800s, hemp is not only the plant from which marijuana is derived, it is also thought to be the first cultivated plant. Indeed, hemp fiber, harvested from the Cannibis sativa plant, is famous for its versatility, and is found in […]
Sandra Postel is one of the world’s leading authorities on how the world uses water, and how it can conserve for the future…
Photo Network The coastal waters north of Boston have become markedly cleaner over the past decade, mostly because of the construction of sewage treatment plants in Lynn and Salem—but the outcome has lobstermen fuming. Although the sustainability of marine life in Massachusetts has been a recurring regional news story this year, Boston Harbor’s polluted waters […]
Over the last few years, diaper services in the Boston area have shut their doors, leaving parents who prefer cloth scrambling for alternatives.
Are We Ignoring the Early Warning Signs of Global Warming? Pasqual Gorriz / AP Wide World Photos Could bad weather be more than bad luck? Were the droughts, disease outbreaks, wildfires and floods brought on by the great El Ni?o weather event of 1997-98 more than just the chance result of our variable global climate? […]
Protection Varies at America’s 12 Marine Reserves Galyn C. Hammond The wind muffles his speech as Ed Cassano, manager of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, looks out from his 56-foot research vessel Ballena. He gazes onto the broad Pacific waters that nurture the largest concentration of blue whales in the world—not to mention plentiful […]
When the great naturalist Aldo Leopold first set eyes on the Colorado River delta in 1922, he saw what he called “a milk and honey wilderness” full of “a hundred green lagoons.” Leopold would find that landscape utterly changed today. The mighty Colorado no longer flows this far south; as Sandra Postel, director of the […]
The planet has been blessed with more freshwater than we could ever possibly need. But because this abundant resource is distributed unevenly on the planet, we are starting to run up against the limits of available freshwater in many parts of the globe.
Water isn’t necessarily the only thing coming out of our faucets—harmful levels of lead, mercury and chlorine have also found their way into drinking water supplies. For many people, the solution to the question mark over their taps has been bottled water. 1994 Tom McCarthy / Photo Network Twenty years ago, the concept of marketing […]
People With Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) Are Becoming the New Homeless
