Currents

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.

It seems patently unfair that Europeans are probably doing more than any people on Earth to reduce global warming emissions, and yet Europe is in the vanguard of feeling the heat. A report released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) August 18 said that the continent is warming more rapidly than the rest of the world, with the likely results heat waves (like the scorcher in France that killed 15,000 people last summer), floods and the loss of three quarters of the Swiss Alps’ glaciers by 2050.

In a nod to conservation-minded voters, Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry has proposed a 10-year, $30 billion plan to move the U.S. closer to energy independence. The linchpin of Kerry’s ambitious plan would be providing financial incentives to manufacturers and consumers to increase the energy efficiency of the nation’s automotive fleet. The plan also calls for the nation to derive 20 percent of its power from renewable sources—including solar, wind, ethanol and biodiesel—by 2020.

An international group comprised of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists has found that airborne industrial pollution from Asia is lingering high over New England and the Atlantic Ocean this summer, raising concerns that improved American air quality in recent years may be jeopardized by the effects of increasing industrialization and weak regulation abroad.

The singer-actress Eartha Kitt (TV"s Catwoman) was thankful for the solid construction of her Range Rover after it flipped over in Westport, Connecticut in early August. "Thank God for that car," she said. "I don’t think I’ll ever drive another."

Twenty years ago, much of the public land around the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona resembled the barren and desolate landscape found in a Sub-Saharan desert. For years, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had granted grazing permits to ranchers for thousands of acres of fragile land along the San Pedro.

In yet another case of habitat destruction endangering an already protected wildlife species, Australia’s koala bears are facing extinction unless concerned citizens and government officials can stem the tide of urbanization sweeping across the country’s eastern seaboard.