Interview: NRDC’s Allen Hershkowitz
E Magazine interviews NRDC environmentalist Allen Hershkowitz.
Buffalo Burgers, Trashed PCs and Dirty Cotton
How can restaurants serve bison meat if there are so few of the majestic animals left in the wild? Aren’t bison endangered? —Pat Henderson, Columbus, OH The American bison, which is commonly called a buffalo, is not on the U.S. Endangered Species List. According to the National Bison Association, there are approximately 350,000 of the […]
Arctic Mayhem, Contrails and Climate, and Dirty Diesels
What threats would oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pose to wildlife? —Alexander Brower, Jefferson, WI The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) "among the most complete, pristine, and undisturbed ecosystems on Earth." ANWR’s Area 1002, the coastal plain where oil drilling is proposed, is home to […]
Reactors, Trees and Recycling
Taking a Stance on Nuclear Energy, Newspapers and College Recycling What is a breeder reactor, and what are fission and fusion? —Anthony Gill, St. Bonaventure, NY Sue Gagner, public affairs officer of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), offers this definition, “A fission reactor splits the nucleus of atoms into parts, while fusion involves combining the […]
Esprit de Tompkins
Esprit founder Douglas Tompkins is on a conservation rampage in Latin America.
Smokey Bear’s Squirrelly Sister
Reddy the grrl squirrel replaces Smokey the Bear and advocates for letting forest fires burn, not suppression.
Redesigning Restaurants
Ritu Primlani, founder of Thimmakka’s Resources for Environmental Education, is on a remarkable mission. Through her brainchild, Greening Ethnic Restaurants (GER), Primlani reaches out to Indian and other Asian eateries with little environmental knowledge and transforms them into "green" enterprises. That’s no easy feat, considering that restaurants consume more energy per square foot than any other industry, gobbling water and producing huge amounts of solid waste. Add in the difficulty of approaching overworked restaurant owners who rarely speak fluent English, and the task seems nearly impossible.
Farming’s Brave New Face
Welcome to the world of precision agriculture. This brave new field benefits from the emergence and convergence of several technologies, including geographic information systems (GIS), automated machine guidance, infield and remote sensing, mobile computing, telecommunications and advanced information processing. Global positioning systems (GPS), which provide highly accurate geo-spatial information, are one of precision agriculture’s key technologies.
Climate Change in the Carolinas
Climate change affects coastal North Carolina, leading to flooding and environmental ills.
Undiscovered Florida
Think Florida vacation and the mind turns inevitably to Disney World, which takes up 47 square miles of prime Orlando real estate and is as big as San Francisco. But there’s another side of Florida, one that places you amid some of the nicest white sand beaches anywhere, and within shouting distance of the state’s unique and sporadically protected wildlife.