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.
Property-rights advocates are hoping this week that the U.S. Supreme Court elects to take up the case of Texas developer Fred Purcell, who is suing for the right to develop a 216-acre Texas tract despite the presence of an obscure endangered cave bug within the geological catacombs underneath his land. While Purcell has lost the case at every level thus far, backers believe that strong arguments of dissent from six appellate judges in the most recent round of litigation could provide an entrée to the highest court in the land, where a decision in favor of developers could jeopardize the endangered status of hundreds of rare and struggling species across the country.
Last week, the United Nations released a report predicting dire consequences over the next 50 years from the damage done to the world’s natural environment by humankind. According to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment study "shows how human activities are causing environmental damage on a massive scale throughout the world, and how biodiversity—the very basis for life on Earth—is declining at an alarming rate."
Some old-timers still remember the Pacific Northwest in its glory. They say the salmon were so numerous you could walk across their backs as they swam upstream to spawn every year. That was before the dams stopped the stream flows, and logging and cattle grazing denuded the stream sides. In those days, the old-growth forests seemed limitless and everlasting. That’s a faded memory now, as we struggle to save the last of the Northwest’s big trees and the species, like the spotted owl, that depend upon them.
What the world’s automakers refused to do in California they readily agreed to in Canada. On April 5, a who’s who of big carmakers signed a voluntary agreement to build much cleaner automobiles for the Canadian market, avoiding the emission of more than 5.3 megatons of greenhouse gases by 2010. When faced with the same prospect in California, they called their lawyers.
In a recent poll conducted on behalf of the nonpartisan Civil Society Institute, two-thirds of participants, representing a wide socioeconomic and geographic range of Americans, said they considered driving a more fuel-efficient car to be patriotic in light of increasing U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil reserves.
In what could be a crushing blow to Bush administration plans to store the nation’s nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department has announced that federal scientists may have misrepresented findings regarding the potential for water to seep into and jeopardize storage facilities at the controversial site.
It’s amazing the amount of horrific news we manage to filter out during the course of a day. I recently awoke to discover that there had been a major earthquake in Asia. CNN told me, "Hundreds of people are reported dead after a massive earthquake struck off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, just three months after a huge quake and tsunami devastated the region."
Despite backing from the majority of the G8 nations currently meeting in Derby, UK, the United States is opposing a British proposal calling on industrialized nations to combat illegal logging in the world’s threatened rainforests by banning the purchase of timber harvested in unsustainable manners.
"Free parking," it’s a lovely phrase, isn’t it? Since so many of the things we do are not free, it’s great that at least we can stow our vehicles at no cost, right? Well, actually, we are paying dearly for parking, according to a new book by David Shoup, a professor at UCLA.
