Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, and Evans/McDonough pollster Ted Nordhaus wrote an essay last fall titled "The Death of Environmentalism," an incendiary bomb thrown at the green braintrust. But the bombastic report may have been less than meets the eye.
Climate change has yet to make it onto the radar screens of most Americans. The opposite is true in England, where the science is hotly debated.
An issue that should really hit home among the legions of ski resort bums and so-called “weekend warriors” is the looming specter of global warming.
Shocked by their own conclusions, researchers from the University of California released a study last week showing that exhaust fumes from school buses were leaking inside the passenger cabins, exposing schoolchildren to significantly higher levels of pollutants than passersby on the streets below.
Environmentalists were aghast last week upon discovering that the Bush administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had weakened otherwise stringent new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines on assessing the cancer risk of various chemicals. In essence, the added OMB requirements allow for unlimited industry challenges on cancer risk rulings, meaning chemical companies will be able to at least slow down phase-outs of products already known to increase childhood cancer rates.
Anne Parker, a retired school teacher, lives in what should be a pleasant middle-class neigborhood in Rahway, New Jersey. The curbs hold orange jack-o-latern leaf bags, the sidewalks have cracked from the roots of stately sycamore trees, the brick or ranch-style house have tricycles or basketball hoops in the driveways. There is even a pair of that famous suburban species, the plastic pink lawn flamingo.
Do we teach our children <I>too</I> well about the environment evils threatening the Earth? It’s easy for them to succumb to dispair, but there’s a lot to be positive about, too.
It’s become a cliche to say, as those of us who are trying to save the world invariably do, that we’re "doing it for the children." The aim, of course, is a stance of noble self-sacrifice. But what, after all, is wrong with self-interest when working to make the planet a better place to live?
Property-rights advocates are hoping this week that the U.S. Supreme Court elects to take up the case of Texas developer Fred Purcell, who is suing for the right to develop a 216-acre Texas tract despite the presence of an obscure endangered cave bug within the geological catacombs underneath his land. While Purcell has lost the case at every level thus far, backers believe that strong arguments of dissent from six appellate judges in the most recent round of litigation could provide an entrée to the highest court in the land, where a decision in favor of developers could jeopardize the endangered status of hundreds of rare and struggling species across the country.
Last week, the United Nations released a report predicting dire consequences over the next 50 years from the damage done to the world’s natural environment by humankind. According to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment study "shows how human activities are causing environmental damage on a massive scale throughout the world, and how biodiversity—the very basis for life on Earth—is declining at an alarming rate."
