Green Groups Get Results From the Internet Recently, Naomi Van Tol created a small website to fight for a forest near Memphis, Tennessee. She never expected to get responses from Romania. “I've [also] had supportive e-mail from folks from Brazil, Denmark, and other countries,” she says, “in addition to many responses from people across the […]
Citizen Ralph Runs for Real in 2000 In 1996, when Ralph Nader made his first run for the Presidency under the banner of the Green Party, he had a hard time articulating the party's many-hued platform, preferring to stick with his tried-and-true message about the dangers of multinational corporations. This year, as he runs a […]
Making the Macaw Banditos an Offer They Can't Refuse In Bolivia's Llanos de Moxos region, a former wildlife trapper named Pocho shows off the delicate snare he devised to nab blue-throated macaws for the illegal pet trade. He points out the seven notches on its stem, one for each macaw caught with this snare. Today, […]
Finnish Environmentalists Work to Stop Relentless Old-Growth Logging By appearance and reputation, Finland is resplendent in its verdant natural beauty. A flat country with expansive marine clay plains, low plateaus and small hills, fully 76 percent of the nation is covered by dense forest and woodland areas. More than 180,000 sparkling lakes and nearly as […]
Growing a Green Business
If you are bothered by the smell of trace amounts of chlorine in your tap water, expose it in a clear, uncovered bottle to the sun’s rays for an hour and the smell will dissipate.
How to Avoid Fuming Fibers, Deceptive Stickers and Alien Mussels What are the toxic dangers of the carpet-cleaning chemical ethylene glycol monobutyl ether? —Roger Schatz, Chicago, IL Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, also known as 2-butoxyethanol, is the most toxic of the glycol ethers. It is a clear, syrupy liquid with a mild, rancid odor that […]
Explorations of Gravel Mining, the Antarctic Shelf and "Natural" Cleansers What are the environmental impacts of gravel extraction? Kristina Hayward Berkshire, UK Gravel extraction, often in stream beds, is big business in the United States and elsewhere, and there's a definite environmental cost. Gravel is used to help build patios, parking lots, roads and building […]
Some People Don’t Have ‘The Complexion for Protection’ When, in 1979, Dr. Robert Bullard wrote a study called Solid Waste Sites and the Black Houston Community, nobody had heard of environmental racism (see the special report in this issue). It would be three more years before anyone used that phrase, but Dr. Bullard had plainly […]
Dissection’s Deadly Toll Hits Frogs Hardest For most high school students, dissecting a formaldehyde-soaked frog is an educational rite of passage. But the practice has decimated the population of frogs and other wild-caught animals, and more and more kids are refusing to do it. “I don’t think it’s right to kill animals,” says Amanda Swann, […]
