The Bush administration continues to stonewall on the subject of reducing mercury emissions, even though the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Michael Leavitt, admitted August 24 that fish in almost all of the country’s rivers and streams are heavily dosed with the toxic heavy metal.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is supporting proposed state legislation calling for the addition of solar energy systems to one million homes across California by 2017 to save electricity and cut pollution.
Last week, the U.S. Forest Service approved another timber sale in an area previously protected from logging by the controversial Clinton-era "roadless rule." Both of the new timber sales are to take place in Southeast Alaska, where dwindling natural resources and a sluggish economy have conspired to drive unemployment rates to unprecedented highs.
The rock piles outside the Western Mineral Products plant were too good to pass up. "We all played over there," recalls Kevin Reich, who moved to the neighborhood as a sixth-grader in 1979. But the rock piles were the by-product of processing vermiculite ore mined by W.R. Grace & Company in Libby, Montana, and they’re now known to contain asbestos.
It has never been easier to fly. Internet-based services and third-party affiliates like Travelocity.com and CheapTickets.com now offer plane tickets at all-time lows, conveniently purchased with a simple click of the mouse. While these fares may seem like a dream come true for low-budget travelers, the resulting surge in air traffic carries with it major environmental costs.
Seahorses may have the best love lives of any fish in the ocean. These delicate, swirled-tail members of the <I>syngnathid</I> family (pipefish, sea dragons) are frequently depicted in mythology, rapturously entwined. But this millennia-old dance may soon be over, as seahorses are increasingly endangered.
Light electric vehicles can save energy, cut congestion and spare the air, and have gained attention in the last decade for their positive environmental potential. But in practice, they haven’t quite caught on.
While President Bush’s terrible environmental record would presumably hand John Kerry a golden campaign issue, the Democrat avoids the topic, possibly because polls show green issues are not occupying a major part of the voters" attention. When asked, most people say the candidates have similar positions on environmental issues.
Researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado released findings last week predicting that cities in the U.S. and Europe would likely suffer from more frequent and intense heat waves in years to come as a result of global warming.
In anticipation of a call from the Bush administration to take the grizzly bear off the threatened species list, the U.S. Forest Service has released a grizzly habitat management plan for the six national forests it operates surrounding Yellowstone National Park. Environmentalists say the plan does not protect enough habitat to ensure that the bear’s recovery takes hold.
