To a java junkie, there is no such thing as too much coffee, but when it comes to the world’s coffee industry, the opposite is true. The massive overproduction of coffee presently glutting world markets is causing a crisis of historic proportions. Currently selling for approximately 45 cents per pound, the price of coffee beans […]
Native Americans across the continent continue to struggle against environmental and social injustice. Tribal lands are disproportionately ravaged by mining and forestry industries, and every site in America currently proposed to store nuclear waste is on Native lands, according to the advocacy group Honor the Earth. Along with the destruction of traditional culture and the […]
Rameshwari Devi sits in front of a pit of smoldering coal, roasting shoes. Plumes of acrid smoke rise from the oven as the plastic soles begin to melt. She coughs incessantly as she strips the soles and tosses them in a heap, discarding the leather uppers.
The Real Pests? Joe Crozier and Yvette Maiangowi thought that, like many other Americans, they were simply developing seasonal allergies. Within months of moving into their Arizona home, the symptoms began: asthma, headaches and fatigue. Worst affected was four-year-old James: He ground his teeth at night and vomited frequently. “At first we thought these [problems] […]
Last September, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced a recommended drainage plan for the Yazoo Backwater Area, affecting a significant portion of the Mississippi River floodplain. The $181 billion Yazoo Backwater Pumps would become the world’s largest hydraulic pumping plant, with a target area of 200,000 acres of wetlands to be drained for agricultural […]
Nova Scotia’s Solar Sewage Solution One of Bear River, Nova Scotia’s biggest tourist attractions is its sewage treatment plant. Pleasing to the eye and almost completely odorless, the 80,000-gallon facility is located right in the heart of the small town’s tourist district. Every year, close to 2,000 people visit the plant. Bear River became the […]
Four hundred years ago, according to legend, Spanish mustangs swam from shipwrecks to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Today, untamed descendants of these horses still run free in small herds along Shackleford Banks, an undeveloped island off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina.
Anchors Away? The word “anchor” suggests the sea, not the land-locked expanse of our nation’s wilderness. But for the past two years, the anchors issue has forced the Forest Service to ride a growing swell of stormy debate over their on-shore use. The anchors invading our wildest places are tinyonly a few bolts, or a […]
Religious pilgrims are trampling the grounds of the El Carmen monastery in the Sierra del Nixcongo Mountains near Mexico City. Thousands of them flock there on Catholic holidays to set up camp and walk a forest path that recreates Jesus" crucifixion. But they don’t just walk. They drive through the forest and park wherever they […]
Transferring a second group of wolves from Fort St. John, British Columbia to Yellowstone National Park and the Frank Church River of No Return National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho this January was a controversial move (See Latitudes, August 1995) that not only ignited sparks with ranchers near Yellowstone, but also with some Canadians, like the activist group Friends of the Wolf (FOW).
