Four Greenpeace activists locked themselves together in the Canadian headquarters of Kimberly-Clark last week, demanding that the U.S.-based paper company stop using virgin pulp from Canada’s boreal forests in its popular products.
The troubled Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is set to expire in 2012. With American sentiment for action on global warming building rapidly, environmentalists are focusing on drafting a follow-up agreement on which even holdouts like the U.S. and Australia can agree.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last December that the agency will likely approve the sale of cloned foods this year. The FDA’s action flies in the face of widespread scientific concern about the risks of food from clones, and ignores the animal cruelty and troubling ethical concerns that the cloning process brings. What’s worse, the FDA indicates that it will not require labeling on cloned food, so consumers will have no way to avoid these experimental foods.
The natural alliance between religious and secular environmentalists is happening in thousands of local contexts where secularists and people of faith work together to resist climate change, toxic waste disposal and destructive economic "development." Facing the same environmental crisis that their secular counterparts do, people of faith have been changing their basic attitudes towards nature and seeing the moral connections between our treatment of nature and our treatment of people.
Illegal logging across parts of Southeast Asia, including in national parks, is decimating wildlife populations. The orangutan is at particular risk. According to a recent report by United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), 98 percent of remaining forests on Sumatra and Borneo could be gone by 2022, with serious consequences for local people and wildlife.
The natural gas-powered Honda Civic topped the Greenest Vehicles of 2007 list released last week by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Second and third spots went to Toyota’s hybrid Prius and Honda’s Civic Hybrid.
The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, a collaboration between the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and Pew Oceans Commission, last week issued its U.S. Ocean Policy Report Card for 2006. The United States received an overall grade of C- on efforts to protect the nation’s ocean waters and marine ecosystems, a minor improvement over last year’s D+.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings to look into allegations that climate scientists at seven federal agencies were subjected to political pressure in order to play down the threat of global warming. Scientists said their reports on climate had been edited to suit political purposes and that references to "climate change" or "global warming" had been removed.
The day after President Bush’s State of the Union Address, Greenpeace released the findings of its “energy revolution” report, debunking the President’s proposals for “clean coal” & “safe nuclear power” and a heavy reliance on ethanol.
California artist Charles Carter literally returned to nature, shunning modern conveniences for years while living in a tipi to find the solitude and sanctuary that became his muse. His jewelry and paintings reflect the primitive spirit of the land.
