Currents

Linda Zander, a dairy farmer in Lynden, Washington, says that she and her husband are seriously ill from the sewage sludge spread on a neighbor’s farm. Zander, who now heads Help for Sewage Sludge Victims, recently won a civil suit which found that the sewage had fouled her air and contaminated her well. Patti Baker of Elkrun, Ohio was cheering her victory. The former runner says she can hardly walk upstairs after sludge fertilizer, spread on a nearby stripmine, seeped into her well.

Rosalind Wallace and Gretchen Roffler were both lucky and smart when they encountered a mountain lion in the remote reaches of Olympic National Park last summer. The two park employees, who were doing spotted owl surveys at the time, did everything right. They stayed upright, always above the lion. They stood their ground and didn’t even think about running. They looked the cat directly in the eyes. Most important, they made sure not to act like prey.

Legend has it that under the hills around Winchester, England’s ancient capital lies a sleeping dragon. Only when the tribes of Britain gather once again upon it’s head at Twyford Down would the dragon awake to protect the land and banish tyranny from the shores.

The "Magna Carta" of Environmental Protection Faces an Uncertain Future When Utah Governor Mike Leavitt proposed constructing a 120-mile freeway running north and south through his state, developers eagerly waited to begin digging and paving. But a few significant details bogged down their plans. As a coalition of environmental groups called Utahns for Better Transportation […]

High-Tech Plans to Generate Undersea Electricity Say anything, but don’t accuse Jared Blumenfeld of thinking small. The director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment has been staring at the Golden Gate Bridge a lot lately, wondering how the picture-postcard scene would look if he tucked a huge electric power plant beneath it. If done […]

The Bushmeat Crisis is Emptying Africa’s Forests Deep in the heart of the Congo River Basin, the tropical forest is lush and full of life. Immense Sapelli and Okoumé trees tower over the forest floor, and small antelopes called duikers plunge through the undergrowth while the calls of bonobos and sooty mangabeys sound from the […]

Venice’s $3 Billion Plan to Stop a Rising Sea Gets Mixed Reviews It’s a clear, calm night—no storms, no wind, no unusual weather of any kind—but Venice’s Piazza San Marco is flooding. As the tide crests, seawater begins pouring from storm drains, forming a growing pond in the middle of the city’s most important square. […]

Can a Big Country With Very Few People be Overpopulated? Just because a country has a huge land area and a relatively small population does not mean it can continue to grow unchecked. In Canada and Australia, for instance, activists are raising the possibility that they may already be overpopulated. Australians are worried about two […]

The High-Tech Industry is Poisonous to Low-Wage Immigrant Workers In February 2000, Garrett Brown of California’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration (Cal-OSHA) found that a high-tech plant in Fremont, California was poisoning its workers with arsenic. Brown learned that American Xtal Technology (AXT), while filling semiconductor contracts for the Department of Defense and the National […]

Nigeria’s Coastline is Besieged by Global Warming New research is sounding the alarm, predicting that climate-related sea level rise is likely to put 80 percent of Nigeria’s coastline at risk of being swept away by the surging waves of the Atlantic Ocean. In a research study entitled, "Perception and Reality: Assessing Priorities for Sustainable Development […]