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 […]
Middlebury College Recycles Paper—and Its Old Buildings "I had my first college class in that room right there," says Chad Malone, pointing to a ground-floor chamber stripped to a concrete shell and filled with rubble. "Chem 104. This was a terrible building. Cold, cold." Very few people get to trash their old college classrooms (at […]
Henry SiJohn, square-faced and bespectacled, peered across the broad waters of Lake Coeur d’Alene, the spiritual center of his Coeur d’Alene tribe. The water shimmered a deep blue, making for a pretty backdrop for the numerous weddings held at a posh neighboring golf resort. Once promoted for national park status, the lake has stoked the […]
There’s no doubt that wind and solar are clean, efficient and renewable sources of energy, but not everyone welcomes an alternative power project in their backyard. A proposed 170-turbine wind park off the southern coast of Massachusetts has generated considerable heat, but no power yet. The planned park on Horseshoe Shoals in Nantucket Sound has […]
How Clean is Your Bottled Water? There’s no question about it, bottled water has become a hot commodity. Americans pay $4 billion dollars a year for the privilege of drinking it. Sales of bottled water have grown nine-fold in the past 20 years, and tripled in the last 10, making it the fastest-growing segment of […]
The Society of Environmental Journalists Plays an Important–and Controversial–Role The first time Deborah Schoch saw industrial-grade DDT it was a chunk the size of a walnut. Schoch was working for the Los Angeles Times, covering the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to survey for contamination of a lower-middle-class neighborhood near two Superfund sites. Environmental writer Barry […]
