The Death Toll Rises In 1995, Stephen Churchill, the 19-year-old son of a fire inspector, became the first Briton to die of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD, the form of CJD that has been linked to mad cow disease). The first signs were a gradual deterioration of Churchill’s college grades, accompanied by depression and dizziness, followed […]
Although the USDA is quick to proclaim that mad cow disease has never been detected in the United States, it is less eager to talk about a similar disease that is occurring here—chronic wasting disease (CWD), a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that is similar to mad cow disease except that it occurs in deer and elk […]
Savage Outbreaks of Animal-Borne Diseases Raise Fears that the Next Epidemic Could be in the U.S.
Across America, Activists are Fighting to Save Our Living Oceans
In Derek Hansen’s novel Sole Survivor, a band of plucky, environmentally minded New Zealanders triumph against a fleet of ruthless Japanese longline fishermen intent on strip-mining the seas. The book makes exciting reading, but in reality, those Japanese fishermen—and their counterparts in an international network that spans the globe—have the upper hand. Neither local law […]
A Toxic Trail Leads to the Now-Closed Defense Depot The United States military produces nearly a ton of hazardous wastes every minute, an amount that surpasses even the biggest multinational corporations. More than 120 military sites have been placed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund National Priority List. Locating toxin-laden military installations near many […]
DaimlerChrysler and Ford Launch Sustainability ProjectsThe northern Brazilian state of Par?, set in the largest contiguous tropical rainforest in the world, is four times the size of Germany but has a tiny fraction of that industrialized country’s economic activity. That’s why defenders of the rainforest say it’s important to build a sustainable economy in Brazil’s […]
Laurel Hill Offers Biodiversity in the Shadow of the New Jersey Turnpike With more than 600,000 drivers each day, the northern half of the New Jersey Turnpike is among the most widely traveled roads in America. For the most part, it’s not a pretty sight. The industrial wastelands, abandoned factories and former landfills that pass […]
Arriving in Copenhagen by sea, the first thing travelers see of Denmark is a row of 20 enormous wind turbines gently spinning above the waves nearly two miles from shore. Completed last December, the Middelgrunden Wind Farm is the world’s largest offshore wind power facility. Its wind machines, each with blades 100 feet long, together […]
Virginia Tries to Duck Responsibility for Protecting Horseshoe Crabs Horseshoe crabs—actually more related to spiders than crabs—have gotten along fine, without help from human beings, for 300 million years or so, paleontologists estimate, predating even the dinosaurs. But the twentieth century has been a rough one for the horseshoe crab. It began with their existence […]
