Environment

Protection of Nature, Protection of Health For a second year, I was invited to attend a gathering of environmental journalists from around the globe, sponsored by the Greenaccord organization, with some 50 countries represented this fall. For four days, we listened to scientific experts who focused on urban air pollution, climate change and health, chemical […]

This morning, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is likely to easily approve the nomination of Dale Hall, a regional director in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to head the agency — making the full Senate vote a formality. It’s the kind of vote that makes environmentalists cringe. Hall, a 27-year Fish and […]

I don’t fit neatly into the job description of an environmental journalist, although I have kept returning to the beat ever since my first documentary on the subject some 30 years ago. That was a story about how the new Republican governor of Oregon, Tom McCall, had set out to prove that the economy and […]

Austin, Texas, was the site for the 15th annual conference of the SEJ (Sept. 28 – Oct. 2, 2005), bringing together 600-some eco-scribes from around the country, from the auspicious to the acolyte. Also on-hand were oil company execs, the California congressman who’d just succeeded in gutting the Endangered Species Act, and Bill Moyers to […]

There was some speculation that he wouldn’t actually appear, but there, in a polo shirt, sat House Natural Resources Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA), just inches away from Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. The Sierra Club’s Carl Pope and House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA): making nice in Austin. © Jim Motavalli The setting was […]

It’s great to know that we’re all in this high-gas-prices thing together, consumers and oil companies alike. “If each of us took just one small step toward conservation, the impact would be huge,” says a recent Chevron ad campaign, which adds that the company is “working around the clock” to get oil back to pre-Katrina […]

A couple of weeks ago, I came across probably the most horrifying article I’ve ever read – an investigative piece by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., about a mercury-based preservative (thimerosal) in kids’ vaccines that may well be linked to the autism epidemic that’s sweeping our country. Whether or not Kennedy ever decides to run for […]

America’s 13 Most Endangered Rivers: Can They be Saved? Peter Lourie, a chronicler of river life, says that rivers are living mysteries, linking the past to the future. Today, that link has been largely broken. Through damming, dredging and channelization, we have changed the way rivers flow–diverting water to generate hydropower, support navigation and irrigate […]

The twin smokestacks are set well back from High Street, barely visible to drivers passing through this industrialized sector of East Oakland, California. A sign at the front gate reads: “INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS … People, Service and Environment.” Within the confines of this compound, two kilns burn continuously five days a week, incinerating some 20 […]