The Working Group on Climate Change and Development, a coalition of environmental and relief aid organizations, released a report last week stating that the onset of global warming threatens to undermine progress made in recent decades on lifting residents of many developing nations out of poverty.
With Halloween season just past, it’s a good time to talk about scary stuff. We’re not talking about <I>Saw</I> or <I>The Grudge</I>, here, but the kind of scare-mongering that our elected officials choose to do. You know, the "yellow alert" kind of scary.
Researchers from the GSF-National Research Centre for Environment and Health in Neuherberg, Germany released some disturbing findings last week: The amount of time commuters spend in traffic could actually increase their risk of heart attack.
While no one questions that conservation efforts have made the bald eagle’s recovery possible, even the environmental community is split on whether delisting the bird is a good idea…
Two high-level commissions have issued a clear message in the past year: Americans are unintentionally destroying the oceans through pollution, over-development and over-fishing. These reports have generated a tidal wave of marine metaphors, with commentators talking about "a sea change" or efforts to "smooth troubled waters." Now ocean advocates are organizing to turn words into action.
Ice coring began in the 1950s, and since then researchers have been removing samples from the Arctic, Antarctic and any other location where ice accumulates unhindered by melting. A trove of information about the atmosphere and environment waits inside, gleaned from the physical properties of the ice itself, and from the antique air bubbles within it.
On almost any given day in the southern part of Colombia, spray planes fly in with a mission to destroy the cocaine crops that dot the region’s small farms. It starts with the even beat of a military helicopter, followed by a plane that sprays a chemical stream. The substance used is a mixture of glyphosate, water, and added surfactants, comprising a powerful herbicide manufactured by Monsanto that is chemically similar to Roundup.
U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer last week ruled that the Clinton-era ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks was invalid because the decision-making process did not involve enough public participation and as such violated federal law. Brimmer’s opinion on the matter stated that the rule was "the product of a prejudged, political decision to ban snowmobiles from all the national parks."
A recent report summarizing the findings of 500 scientists from 60 countries confirms that the world’s amphibian population is undergoing a die-off of unprecedented proportions, most likely as a result of a combination of human-caused environmental problems. According to researchers at the World Conservation Union, almost a third of the 5,743 known species of frogs, toads, newts and salamanders on Earth are facing extinction within the next few years.
The Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) is a determinedly non-partisan organization whose members tend to cover the same basic issues, but come from a plethora of publications with widely divergent editorial policies, staffed by reporters with many different personal views.
