OnEarth back issues from January 2005:
Incurable optimist.(Editorial)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Sometimes I get kidded about my optimism. But I'm no fool. I know the world is a place of heartbreak. I contemplate the ravages of starvation among children in Sudan or Kenya, and I think of my own children, who through some stroke of luck were born into abundance. Faced with a ...
What now?(The View From NRDC)
Jan 01, 2005; ... The reelection of George W. Bush does not bode well for the health of Americans, for our air and our water, or for our last stretches of unspoiled land. This is not personal: His record on the environment is beyond dismal. Many hunters and anglers--typically Bush supporters--came to that ...
Chamber of salvation.(Letter to the Editor)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Your lobster story ("The Hunt for Red Gold," by Mark Jacobson, Fall 2004) was one of the finest things of its kind that I've read. Good for you for running it big, and good for the writer! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BILL MCKIBBEN RIPTON, VERMONT ...
Solar tribe.(Letter to the Editor)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Tim Folger's excellent article, "A Thirsty Nation" (Fall 2004), paints an enlightening picture of the Hopi and Navajo dilemma: How can they reclaim their water from Peabody Energy without suffering economic hardship? The solution offered in the article would improve their situation, but ...
Language barriers.(Letter to the Editor)
Jan 01, 2005; ... I think many Republicans who would otherwise vote green are disheartened by the lack of suitable candidates within their party. They vote Republican anyway to support traditional family values and fiscal conservatism, the GOP's big selling points. A grass-roots movement that supports ...
Fluoride warning.(Letter to the Editor)
Jan 01, 2005; ... I was pleased to read Laura Wright's review of The Fluoride Deception (Reviews, Fall 2004). This is a sign that major environmental organizations are now taking seriously the hazard of fluoride in our water supply. The danger posed to humans, as noted in the review, doesn't even touch on ...
Color me green.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Jan 01, 2005; ... I appreciated Sarah Mahoney's article, "Confessions of a Beauty-Product Junkie" (Fall, 2004). Although Christian Daughton of the Environmental Protection Agency is concerned about ...
Water logged.(Letter to the Editor)
Jan 01, 2005; ... In "Dead in the Water" (Fall 2004), Douglas Page failed to discuss how underwater trees are contributing to the habitats of which they are now a part. What harm will be done when they are removed? Also, although I agree that logs harvested by Sawfish will find a ...
Is environmental destruction a war crime? In Iraq and elsewhere, it is not just guns and missiles that kill people. Yet international law seems powerless to heal nations ravaged by conflict.(Briefings)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Armies have been despoiling the environment of the Middle East for millennia. But it was the 1991 Gulf War, says Jay Austin, a senior attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Law Institute, that dramatically revealed the limitations of international law in governing the ...
Phone-y landscape.(Briefings)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Death Valley, Glacier Bay, the Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Yosemite. What do these places have in common? If you said "national parks," score half a point. The correct answer is ... national parks with cell phone towers. Yellowstone has 12; there's even a hideous 100-foot tower ...
The fertile mind: a renowned expert in tropical agriculture is designing a green revolution to reduce Africa's staggering hunger.(Briefings)(Interview)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Pedro Sanchez won the World Food Prize in 2002 and a MacArthur Foundation award in 2003 for his pioneering work in raising food yields in developing nations. The director of the tropical agriculture program at Columbia University's Earth Institute, Sanchez is also cochairman of the Hunger ...
Stealing beauty: more than 100 U.S. species have gone extinct since the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973. Why?(Briefings)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... The inch-long golden coqui, a Puerto Rican tree frog; the Lotis blue butterfly, a native of the sphagnum-willow bogs of northern California; Guam's gorgeously colored cardinal honey-eater, pictured above. According to a recent report by the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland, ...
Rediscovering beauty.(Briefings)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... The glories of the natural world can be documented in literal fashion, or they can be conveyed in subtler ways that allow free rein to our imagination. Artist Jerry Burchfield's cameraless "lumen prints" depict the flowers, plants, and fruits he found in the flooded forests of the Amazon ....
On the road again: New Hampshire's Dr. Splatt teaches kids about the environment by appealing to the yuck factor.(Briefings)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Every spring, an otherwise routine trip to and from school becomes a delightfully grisly scientific outing for thousands of children across the country. While parents drive, the kids peer out the car window, notebooks and pencils at the ready, looking for fresh carcasses or patches of ...
Thieves in the night.(Briefings)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... How Canada's natural bounty feeds an illicit drug trade Landowners in Canada's eastern provinces are tripping over tree stumps in their own backyards and calling the police in a fury. Under cover of night, looters are sneaking onto their property and making off with their ...
California's sleeping monster: a farmer and a scientist join forces to turn a hazard into a valuable resource.(Briefings)
Jan 01, 2005; ... California's Central Valley, one of the world's most fertile regions, accounted for 60 percent of the state's $29.4 billion agricultural output in 2003. But now 500,000 acres--about 4 percent of the valley's total farmland--are threatened by what one scientist calls a "sleeping monster." ...
How to fly the guilt-free skies: air travel is an inescapable part of modern life--and a major contributor to global warming. Short of growing wings, what's a poor traveler to do?(Living Green)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Some time ago, in celebration of my 40th birthday, I decided to embark on a journey unlike any I'd taken before. I would travel around the world strictly by land and sea, avoiding all forms of air transportation. My notion was that, by sticking to the earth's surface, I'd regain a visceral ...
Fires down under: in Australia's remote Northern Territory, traditional Aboriginal burning practices hold vital lessons for the American West.
Jan 01, 2005; ... As the sky darkens, the outlines of the savanna trees vanish into blackness. Cyrus and Lindsay Rostron, our two Aboriginal guides, aged 13 and 11, respectively, hold firesticks in their hands. They touch the burning branches to the grass, and flames spread around us. ...
Despite its bold talk of a green future: Detroit is still stuck in reverse.
Jan 01, 2005; ... Each January, Detroit kicks off the new year with the North American International Auto Show, a catwalk of automotive seduction. New cars don't just jump through hoops; they drive through plate-glass windows and veils of smoke and fire, are lowered--sometimes dropped--from a high ceiling, ...
Oregon's secret harvest: deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, matsutake and other rare mushrooms are prized delicacies--not to mention big business.
Jan 01, 2005; ... I ARRIVE TOO LATE. IT'S SEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE morning and already the mushroom pickers have bought their permits and headed up into the surrounding forests. Only a single pickup truck remains in the parking lot. When a man and woman come out of the Forest Service station in Chemult, Oregon, ...
Harvest of hope? Agriculture is a colossal environmental problem; genetic science could be part of the solution.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... MENDEL IN THE KITCHEN A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Foods BY NINA FEDOROFF AND NANCY MARIE BROWN Joseph Henry Press, 370 pp., $24.95 A young postdoctoral student in a molecular biology lab once told me the problem with her line of ...
Caribou Rising.(FROM OUR CONTRIBUTORS)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Caribou Rising, by Rick Bass. Sierra Club Books, 164 pp., $19.95 OnEarth contributing editor Rick Bass reminds us in Caribou Rising that preserving one of our last wild places should not be the only reason to keep oil and gas companies from setting up shop in the Arctic National ...
Vanishing.(FROM OUR CONTRIBUTORS)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Vanishing, by Antonin Kratochvil. Design Method of Operation, 248 pp., $72 The premise of Vanishing is simple: Look now before it's gone. Photographer Antonin Kratochvil has culled 118 haunting landscapes and portraits from more than 16 years spent working in earth's most ...
Hibernation.(Brief Article)(Poem)(Illustration)
Jan 01, 2005; ... <Pre> Imagine rising from your basement bed After a sleep so long It seems another lifetime, dreaming Of green blueberry days, moist thimbleberries-- To struggle awake, shrug on your warm ...
John James Audubon: The Making of an American.(BOOKSHELF)(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... JOHN JAMES AUDUBON The Making of an American BY RICHARD RHODES Alfred A. Knopf, 528 pp., $30 In 1964, the year Alice Ford published her landmark biography of John James Audubon, a few dusky seaside sparrows were still nesting near Florida's St ....
The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold.(BOOKSHELF)(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... A JOURNEY INTO COLD BY GRETEL EHRLICH Pantheon, 224 pp., $21.95 In the spring of 2003, scientists working in the Canadian Yukon discovered that shorter winters and warmer temperatures had caused not only behavioral changes in red squirrels, but also ...
The shape of things to come: a battle begins to protect our climate and public lands for four more years.(Dispatches)
Jan 01, 2005 ... A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation." So said President George W. Bush in his reelection victory speech as he asked for the support of those who had voted for his opponent. But at his press conference the next day, he struck a decidedly different tone: "When ...
You bathe, you pay.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Some of us can remember Mom standing outside the bathroom, banging on the door and declaring that shower time was over--"unless you want to pay the water bill!" But in some parts of California, this never happened. Many residents of the Golden State have never paid for the amount of water ...
Latinos hit hard.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Latinos bear the brunt of the nation's environmental health woes, according to a new NRDC report. Nearly 26 million of the 38.8 million Latinos in the United States live in urban and agricultural areas where federal air quality standards are violated, and Hispanic children are twice as ...
Green housing for all.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Rich or poor, everyone deserves to live in a clean, green, energy-efficient home. So in September, NRDC and the Enterprise Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., teamed up to launch a $550 million, five-year program called Green Communities to guide and fund the ...
A green Nobel.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... On October 8, Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmental leader and founder of the country's Green Belt movement, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace." Never before has the prestigious award been given to an environmental ...
Cars of the future.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... California has become the first state to regulate automobile emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute significantly to global warming. The new tailpipe standards, which implement a 2002 law (see "The Golden Touch," page 47) to reduce global warming pollution, ...
Victory: for the birds.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Behold the Cape Sable seaside sparrow: a highly endangered palm-size bird that makes its home nowhere on earth but in the grassy marshes of Florida's ailing Everglades. Less than a few thousand remain, and over five years, NRDC, with the help of the law firm Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, ...
We are the world.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Last summer, NRDC joined with environmental and foreign-policy luminaries and a coalition of other groups to launch the Earth Legacy Campaign. The campaign has called for the formation of the first congressional commission to examine the state of the global environment, its effect on ...
Victory: saving Powder River.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... As fossil fuel prices climb, sources of energy that had little value a decade ago are now hot commodities. Such is the case with coal bed methane--a gas that is naturally produced and trapped in coal seams. When the Bureau of Land Management awarded Pennaco Energy three exploration leases ...
A recycling promise.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... At long last, New York City's on-again, off-again love affair with recycling is ... back on. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has locked Gotham into a recycling contract that will go into effect in 2007 and end no sooner than 2027. Two years ago, Bloomberg dumped plastic and glass from the city's ...
Crunching mercury.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Let's see: Last month you had one large halibut filet, two Maine lobsters (plus that extra claw you snagged), eight oysters, and seven Maryland blue crabs. That sounds like a good month of nutritious seafood eating. Lots of that heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acid and lots of protein. But how ...
One cool plan.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... The federal government may not recognize carbon dioxide as a pollutant worth regulating, but on September 17, New Jersey became the sixth state in the nation to declare that it is. New Jersey can now participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state program that aims to ...
Follow the leader: tips for your home.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Designing an environmentally friendly building involves more than installing solar panels on the roof and stocking the bathroom with recycled paper products. These days green design also means recycling rain, sink, and shower water to flush toilets; maximizing natural light and ...
Ask NRDC.(Dispatches)(Natural Resources Defense Council )(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... Q Is burning firewood really that bad for the environment? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A It depends. It's bad for the environment if you chop down old-growth trees in the woods behind your house and then burn them in a regular fireplace. It's all right to burn firewood ...
Washington watch.(Dispatches)(Brief Article)
Jan 01, 2005 ... <Pre> "The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty." --Jean Jacques Rousseau </Pre> OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW. Many of the issues that embroiled the 108th Congress will resurface ...
The Golden Touch: a native Californian has helped her state become the nation's environmental leader.(Fieldwork)
Jan 01, 2005; ... More than half a million people move to California each year. Some are drawn by jobs, others come for college, but many are beckoned by the state's natural treasures, from the 1,100 miles of Pacific coastline to the 14,000-foot peaks of the Sierra Nevada. In a land of newcomers, Ann ...
Postcard from the Redneck Riviera.(Open Space)
Jan 01, 2005; ... For a few weeks last fall, white seashell-shaped clouds changed the way the earth looked in satellite photos. Cameras captured an onslaught of hurricanes from enormous distances, making the mad weather seem a mere design element, an illustration of theories involving chaos and complexity, ...