The Perils of Plastic:
If used with common sense, plastics and food can be a safe combination, experts say. But certain types of plastic are made with chemicals that may cause health problems if they leach into food.
So Sensitive!
Are you feeling tired most of the time? Does your spouse have a continuous cold and your child a mysterious rash? Chemical sensitivities could be responsible for these ailments. And your house—as well as the stuff in it—is likely to be the source of your discomforts. and its taste was reformulated in recent years to appeal to Americans.
A Mighty Wind:
For Wind Energy Investments, It’s the Potential That Counts As the fastest-growing energy source in the world, abundant, safe, renewable wind power seems like a very promising investment opportunity. But Americans looking to jump on the wind bandwagon had best be careful, because no U.S.-based wind power companies are publicly traded. Adventurous investors willing to […]
The Chalalan Example
Visiting the homespun Chalalan Ecolodge in Bolivia.As we sped up the Tuichi River in a motorized canoe, scarlet macaws squawked by overhead; capybaras at the water’s edge defied my perceptions of rodents; and tapir’s footprints blemished the spotless sands. This was going to be no ordinary visit to the Amazon.
Cooking Schools Save the Scraps
Cooking programs across the nation are discovering increasingly creative ways to dispose of their considerable leftovers.
Phoenix
Even without global warming, Phoenix has been the poster child for what’s known as the heat-island effect. Asphalt radiates solar heat like a stovetop, creating a heat island where farmlands and desert have been paved over to make room for tract housing and some four million vehicles. The heat island has become a large land mass. And it’s getting hotter. Global warming and runaway development could make Phoenix hell on Earth—with freeways.
Dangerous Tans
More than 28 million Americans patronize tanning salons each year, with young women constituting the fastest-growing group of users. A recent study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found a staggering 51 percent of high school girls visited tanning beds at least four times in the past year. "Laying out" is a cheap pastime—sessions under the lights run for roughly five bucks a pop—but dermatologists wonder about the long-term costs.
Caring Capacity
We’ve written about overpopulation many times in these pages because we think it is a profoundly important environmental issue. Yet it’s one that the green movement largely ignores, primarily for fear of alienating a public that may associate family planning with abortion or see attempts to curb immigration as racist.
Getting on Track
The discovery of gold in the spiritually important Little Rocky Mountains in northern Montana is a curse that the Native-American community of Fort Belknap has lived with for more than 100 years. During the 19th century, the mountains were removed from the tribe’s reservation so prospectors could dig for gold. The community is still suffering, this time from the side effects of industrial-scale mining.
All for Show
It may sound like an unusual pairing—protecting endangered species by putting them in the circus—but Ringling has become an actor in this new arena. In 1995, Feld Entertainment, Ringling’s corporate parent (which also owns the Disney on Ice and Siegfried and Roy shows), established the Center for Elephant Conservation (CEC), a $5 million, 200-acre Asian elephant breeding and research facility in Polk City, Florida. Since 1992, when Ringling began a breeding program, 15 elephants have been born, more than anywhere else in North America, including zoos.