The taint of Nicholas Ceausecu’s dictatorship still lingers over Romania like a stubborn odor. The present is not much better: 44 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Corruption is taken for granted in Romania, but there are some hopeful signs, including new grassroots activism. In the small town of Sighisoara, for instance, a citizens group defeated the government’s plans to build a Dracula theme park.
Forget about Ralph Nader. The Green Party candidate to watch this fall is Jonathan Carter, who’s running for governor in Maine. It’s not that Carter is a household name nationally like Nader became two years ago. What makes Carter important around the country is that he is the first Green to get public financing for […]
New York City’s recycling program has suffered the biggest setback since its inception in 1989. In mid-June, at the 11th hour in budget negotiations, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council agreed to suspend the collection of plastics for one year and glass for two years, saving the city $45 million for the next two […]
It’s easy enough to make the world population explosion go away: Start with the "birth dearth" that could cause Europe to lose 24 percent of its population by 2060, and cut Japan’s in half by 2100. In England, women have an average of 1.7 children, below replacement level. In Spain, the fertility rate is 1.15—the lowest rate in the world. Stir in the fact that the United Nations (UN) recently revised a minor course correction in its population projections, finding that AIDS and declining fertility rates in the Third World will lead to 400 million fewer people sharing the planet by 2050.
Revered and reviled, pampered and persecuted, the domestic cat (Felis catus) has stirred up passionate sentiment since it first came to live among human beings 4,000 years ago. Though it may no longer be worshipped as a god or burned as a demon, the cat continues to evoke feelings ranging from adoration to hatred. The hunting prowess that made it so valuable to farmers and sailors has landed it on the most-wanted list of some wildlife advocates who blame the world’s most widespread predator for accelerating the demise of imperiled species from tiny beach mice to the majestic Florida panther.
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.
When most Americans think of Russian nature, they think of environmental catastrophe—Chernobyl, oil spills, pollution. Yet Russia, with one-eighth of the Earth’s land area, has one of the world’s premiere systems of strictly protected areas, called "zapovedniks." Few people outside Russia know of the system or its important part in sustaining the global ecological balance. Large tracts of virgin forest play a role in global ecology comparable to rain forests. Intact areas of wilderness allow large-scale animal migrations. Scientific data long collected in the zapovednik system could shed light on global climate change and ecological trends.
Could someone please tell me: When on Earth did water go from being an essential liquid upon which all life depends
to a commercial "beverage?"
The message is clear: Bottled water is "good" water, as opposed to that nasty, unsafe stuff that comes out of the tap. But in most cases tap water adheres to stricter purity standards than bottled water, whose source—far from a mountain spring—can be wells underneath industrial facilities. Indeed, 40 percent of bottled water began life as, well, tap water.
With tap water quality increasingly under fire in the court of public opinion, the market for home water filter systems has surged. Co-op America says consumers who are still concerned about their tap water, or who don’t like its taste, should consider filters over bottled water, since they are less ecologically harmful (and considerably cheaper per serving). Filters are reusable and result in less waste and transportation than bottled water.
