The government of Kenya is lobbying the U.N.’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to give the African lion its most protected status. Kenya’s Wildlife Services estimates that the overall population of the king of beasts—now numbering about 23,000—has been cut in half over the past decade due to habitat loss, a decline in prey, and unsustainable trophy hunting.
Last week California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) called on automakers to build cars and trucks that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent within the next 12 years. As a state that is by itself the sixth-largest economy in the world, California plays a vital regulatory role in efforts to reduce pollution. The decision by the Air Resources Board ups the ante against global warming, as automakers will most likely comply with the new regulations on all vehicles intended for sale in the U.S.
When is the American auto industry going to "get it" and start producing gas-electric hybrid vehicles to compete with the Japanese models already here from Toyota and Honda? From the looks of the New York International Auto Show, which runs from April 9 to April 18, the environment is still not coming into focus in Detroit.
Last week the U.N. Environment Program announced that the number of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" in the world’s oceans has been increasing since the 1970s and has nearly reached 150, threatening fisheries as well as humans who depend on fish.
The California Rice Commission voted six to five last week to approve the nation’s first commercial-scale planting of a crop genetically engineered to produce drug compounds.
Last week the Bush Administration took the controversial survey-and-manage provision–which required the review of potential timber sales for the presence of endangered species–out of the Northwest Forest Plan.
Twenty-five years ago, the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island decimated what had been a bright future for nuclear power in the United States. While no one was killed and only a small amount of radioactivity escaped, no American utility has dared to build a new nuclear power plant since.
The problem with trying to keep up with President Bush is that it’s a war with many fronts: Beat him down over, say, wetlands protection, and he pops up with a new plan to ease restrictions on cutting down old-growth forests. Block his insane fixation with drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and he tries to kill legislation aimed at getting toxic mercury out of the environment.
The Environmental Protection Agency reported last week that it has taken Love Canal off its Superfund list, declaring clean-up work in the area complete. The contamination of soil and groundwater in the Niagara Falls, New York neighborhood spurred Congress in 1980 to pass its landmark Superfund legislation mandating clean-up of industrial pollution sites across the U.S.
According to recently released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the growth rate of the world population has slowed down considerably over the last decade. In 2002, humanity added 74 million people to its global population, down from 87 million added per year a decade ago.
