Currents

Will Green Power Survive California’s Energy Crisis? With bated breath, the nation has been watching California to see how electric utility restructuring would affect the price of power, the reliability of electric service and the green power industry. Consumer advocates hoped for lower power prices. Environmentalists hoped to see green power on a larger scale […]

After Founding Esprit and North Face, Doug Tompkins Dresses Up an 800,000-Acre Park When Esprit founder Doug Tompkins went on a rainforest exploration trip to Chile seven years ago, he didn’t realize he’d soon be buying huge swaths of land down there, or that his growing passion for preservation would stir controversy all over the […]

Australia FIghts Back Against invader Species.

Bikes and Buses Battle the Road, Tire and Asphalt Lobby You’re riding your bike to work on the Willamette River Pathway in Portland, Oregon. Before you get to your office, you stop for a shower at Bike Central, a commuting facility downtown. That evening, you put your bicycle on a bus rack and head for […]

Independent Landowners Cut Down Trees to Save the Forest Although its southern half is dotted with sprawling suburban corridors, northern Maine is as empty and dark as a velvet stage curtain. The mixed forests—tall white pine, bristly spruce, oak and maple—seem to extend forever. "Most striking in the Maine wilderness is the continuousness of the […]

Attempting to Push an Anti-Environmental Agenda, Congress Goes Into Stealth Mode.

In yet another example of the dire state of the world’s oceans, the World Conservation Union announced last week that it will be adding 10 species of sharks and rays to its global "Red List" of endangered species. Researchers cite overfishing throughout the world’s oceans as well as soaring demand for shark fin in Asia as the primary culprits in the global decline of shark populations.

Rocky Flats nuclear facility became the Department of Energy’s (DOE) golden child in July when the last of the weapons-grade plutonium stored there was shipped away ahead of schedule. For nearly 40 years, Rocky Flats, just 15 miles northwest of downtown Denver, produced plutonium pits or "triggers" for thousands of the country’s stockpiled nuclear weapons. Remediation at the Flats, a highly contaminated Superfund site, is also moving forward dramatically under budget. Instead of the anticipated $37 billon, cleanup is now projected at $7 billion. In a time of federal budget deficits, and with Superfund’s core funding stream whittled away to $28 million, accelerated cleanup seems too good to be true. Many community members and environmental organizations—while happy to see the 6,400-acre site out of commission—are concerned that the project is being done in haste and find it unsettling that plutonium residue and toxins will be left several feet under the surface.

John Muir called them “the greatest of living things.” California’s giant sequoias—also known simply as “the big trees”—have outlived millennia of ecological and cultural change on the west side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. These grand monuments to natural history, which can grow taller than the Statue of Liberty, were full grown when Jesus Christ […]