A National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel announced on June 22 that there is sufficient evidence to say with a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the twentieth century were the warmest in the last 400 years.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will decide whether the EPA is required to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions or whether measures to control emissions will remain voluntary.
"This is not a drill! It’s happening! Everybody get up!" was the shouted alarm that awoke Splash movie star Daryl Hannah, scores of farmers and other supporters around 5 a.m., June 13, as the state’s boot heel stomped America’s largest urban farm. Three hundred-plus LAPD and L.A. County sheriffs raided the 14-acre South Central Farm, to evict 350 mostly Latino and African-American poor families who’d grown food at a community garden there since 1992, following the Los Angeles riots.
Carmaker Toyota plans to manufacture leaner, greener vehicles that rely on electricity and ethanol as power sources, company president Katsuaki Watanabe recently announced. The company, whose United States fleet fuel efficiency is second only to Honda’s, plans to double the gas-electric hybrid models it offers (to 14) by early next decade.
President George W. Bush has dubbed Hawaii’s Northwestern Islands a National Monument, a move that creates the planet’s largest marine reserve. At 139,000 square miles, the ecosystem is nearly as large as California and is home to sharks, whales, coral reefs and endangered Hawaiian monk seals, as well as a host of other marine life. The declaration bars commercial activities in the area.
Based on the results of an investigative series by the Chicago Tribune newspaper, the Consumers Union has issued a recommendation that pregnant women avoid eating tuna of any kind due to the high risk of unhealthy levels of mercury contained therein.
The nonprofit Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed suit last week calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require labeling for and conduct mandatory reviews of genetically engineered foods to be sold in the United States. Many environmental and consumer advocates fear that genetically engineered (GE) foods can harm human and ecosystem health, and as such have been lobbying Congress for years to pass more stringent regulations governing what has become the fastest growing sector of agriculture.
Welcome to E/The Environmental Magazine first streaming audio debate. This face-off between Wayne Pacelle, chief operating officer of the Humane Society of the U.S., and Charles Stenholm, a former Democratic congressman from Texas and current lobbyist for the horse slaughter industry (as a senior policy advisor at Olsson, Frank and Weeda) was recorded live on WPKN-FM in Bridgeport, Connecticut March 14, 2006.
It’s not every day you see a U.S. Senator surrounded by garbage. The senator was Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and the location was the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut, on a site overlooking the tidal Norwalk River, which flows into Long Island Sound. The garbage (including no less than three water bottles) was there to showcase the effectiveness of 275 storm drain filters…
In yet more glum climate-related news, international researchers have found that the world’s tropical regions have widened over the past quarter century, most likely as a result of human-induced global warming. The study, published in last week’s issue of the journal Science, details how the tropics have expanded an average of 140 miles toward the poles around the globe.
