Currents

Why become a bat rehabilitiator? Without exception, rehabilitators talk about their fascination with the small mammals. "Most people don’t realize how intelligent and valuable bats are," says rehabilitator Amanda Lollar. But according to Melinda Alvarado, a bat rehabber working out of San Luis Obispo, California, all you have to do is meet a bat to be hooked. "They look right at you with their bright little eyes," she says, "and you can see the intelligence and curiosity shining there."

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard preliminary arguments last week in a case in which a coalition of 12 states and a handful of environmental groups charge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with neglecting its responsibility to protect public health by regulating tailpipe emissions that contribute to global warming.

Climate experts warn us that the first sign of a shifting climate will be turbulent, unpredictable weather. So when Hurricane Jeanne crashed ashore in Florida in September of 2004, environmentalists couldn’t help but wonder if this was it: climate change in action. It seems as though the past few years have been characterized by all sorts of weather extremes. We know that the planet has warmed 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 100 years, but is there really a link between our weather and climate change?

Despite many a gloom-and-doom environmental scenario, Scripps-Howard News Service columnist Joan Lowy identifies five hot green trends underscoring Americans’ love for the environment as Earth Day approaches this Friday.

From mid-May to mid-August, there is almost continuous daylight in Iceland, which gives the tiny island (39,000 square miles) country a short but intense growing season. Iceland touches the Arctic Circle at its northern tip, and the cold limits the range of crops, through cabbage, cauliflower and potatoes thrive, and tomatoes and cucumbers manage well in greenhouses heated by Iceland’s huge reserve of geothermal energy.

The tree-lined streets have an eeries quietness. The neighborhood, with its orderly rows of World War II-era homes, looks as though there should be activity, but there is none. The grass is cut and the trees and bushes are trimmed, suggesting some civility to the shady streets, but these tasks are preformed by the state to ward off trespassers. Such efforts have plainly been in vain, as many homes are married by graffiti, vandalism and looting.

Shocked by their own conclusions, researchers from the University of California released a study last week showing that exhaust fumes from school buses were leaking inside the passenger cabins, exposing schoolchildren to significantly higher levels of pollutants than passersby on the streets below.

Environmentalists were aghast last week upon discovering that the Bush administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had weakened otherwise stringent new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines on assessing the cancer risk of various chemicals. In essence, the added OMB requirements allow for unlimited industry challenges on cancer risk rulings, meaning chemical companies will be able to at least slow down phase-outs of products already known to increase childhood cancer rates.