After years of budget cuts and neglect at national parks, environmentalists are optimistic that the White House decision to replace outgoing National Park Service Director Fran Mainella with career NPS officer Mary Bomar is a step in the right direction. Bomar is credited with managing several major revitalization projects that led to surges in park attendance in previous posts.
A coalition of environmental groups led by American Rivers and Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund has filed suit in federal court challenging a White House decision to lower protections for salmon and other fish in the re-licensing of 70 dams across the country. At issue is a loophole in the 2005 Energy Policy Act that allows dam operators to avoid implementing onerous and expensive wildlife protections that they deem too costly or that limit hydroelectric power production.
California lawmakers joined environmental groups last week in celebrating the passage of a landmark global warming bill designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation caps California’s emissions at 1990 levels by 2020 (representing an estimated 25 percent overall reduction from current levels); establishes a mandatory emissions reduction reporting program to the state"s Air Resource Board; and establishes a "cap and trade" program allowing businesses to buy and sell emissions rights.
In the past few decades, houses have gotten greener, but they’ve gotten bigger too, leaving lingering questions: Is super-sized housing defeating conservation efforts? Can McMansions truly be green?
Although looking at natural resources in terms of dollars and cents may call to mind greed-mongering capitalists lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills, in reality a failure to account for the financial value of a nation’s natural resources and environmental services unwittingly promotes taking the environment for granted and retards the development of poor nations.
Relations between Israel and Jordan are strained, largely due to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the Arab world in general, study in Israel is verboten. But Jordanian students opt for environmental studies at the Albert Katz Institute in Israel because the school’s team of professors and researchers is renowned globally for its breakthrough environmental research, including drip irrigation, solar energy harnessing, algae cultivation and brackish water salmon farming. The Jordanians also come to experience a different culture and "see these people we’ve fought with and heard about all our lives with our own eyes," one student confides.
With 3,700 stores in all 50 states, Wal-Mart is well known as the country’s top seller of diapers, toothpaste, DVDs, breakfast cereal and organic lettuce? It may not hold that honor yet, but it’s well on its way.
Long Island Sound is a celebrated estuary stretching from New London, Connecticut and Long Island to New York City. Its shores are home to nine million people and its watershed stretches 17,000 square miles.
The water in Maine’s Kennebec River looks a bit like root beer. That was just one of many thoughts that flashed through my head as I hurled through the turbulence known as "Big Momma" on a bright yellow raft supplied by adventure outfitters Northern Outdoors.
Last Friday, in honor of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina slamming into the U.S. coastline, an estimated 2,500 bicyclists took to the streets of 30 North American cities to raise awareness of the links between extreme weather and global warming. Activists from Critical Mass and Rising Tide North America organized the ride.
