Unearthed

The soot spewing from the exhaust pipes of diesel buses doesn’t just look dirty, it is dirty. Diesel exhaust accounts for 20 percent of U.S. air pollution, says the Natural Resources Defense Council. Some forward-thinking transit agencies are fighting back with hybrid diesel-electric buses. New York City Transit (NYCT), for example, took the lead and […]

Even without global warming, Phoenix has been the poster child for what’s known as the heat-island effect. Asphalt radiates solar heat like a stovetop, creating a heat island where farmlands and desert have been paved over to make room for tract housing and some four million vehicles. The heat island has become a large land mass. And it’s getting hotter. Global warming and runaway development could make Phoenix hell on Earth—with freeways.

Body-Slamming the Environment? After the Minnesota legislative session adjourned last May, former professional wrestler and current Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, took to the airwaves. He began making the national media rounds, not as a new governor, but as the celebrity author of a new autobiography called I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed. Ventura has […]

Working with the low-income, primarily Latino population of East Austin, Texas, Susana Almanza and Sylvia Herrera of People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources led a successful fight to shut down a chemical tank farm and move a rodent-infested landfill.

Did Canadian canola farmer Percy Schmeiser intentionally plant patented, genetically engineered (GE) seed on his Saskatchewan farm in 1997 and 1998? Chemical giant Monsanto says he did; he says he didn"t. The question is important, because Schmeiser has become a major figure in the anti-GE movement, lecturing widely on the wrongs done him by Monsanto.

It began when lobstermen throughout the Long Island Sound began pulling up their pots empty last fall. As the climax to an especially productive decade, the fishery had spiraled in a swift and devastating collapse. The parasite now pinpointed for the massive die-off of commercial lobsters already existed in the Sound, but had multiplied in […]

Cooking programs across the nation are discovering increasingly creative ways to dispose of their considerable leftovers.

License plates have certainly gotten more colorful in recent years! What was once a bland assortment of duo-toned numbers is now a mobile art gallery of nature imagery. Environmental plates have caught on in a big way. Throughout the country, these tags have become wildly popular and are generating millions of dollars for a wide […]