Currents

Coffee increases alertness and performance, and even helps prevent some diseases. Coffee’s great! But not any coffee. There are both ethical and environmental issues surrounding coffee, and they get a little bit confusing.

Marine Campaigns Spotlight Wasteful Fishing Practices Thirty miles off Cape Cod, Dr. Carl Safina of the National Audubon Society’s Living Oceans Program and pilot Charlie Horton circle desert-like stretches of blue water in a single-engine Super Cub. Their object: to locate schools of bluefin tuna, 500- to 700-pound fish that are highly prized by commercial […]

Organic Foods May Be Grown with Sewage Sludge and Drugs Last December, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman made a greatly anticipated announcement that at once had farmers, consumers and organic retailers across the country holding their breath, then raising their voices in astonished protest: The proposed federal organic standards for U.S. food crops included inherently […]

A Universal Studios Theme Park in Japan Sits on Top of a Toxic Waste Site There were the usual men in suits, and there were also actors dressed as Woody Woodpecker, Marilyn Monroe, Herman Munster and Groucho Marx. The place was Osaka, Japan, two years ago, and the occasion was the signing of an agreement […]

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.

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 […]