For people who want to keep up with environmental news but don’t want to drown in a sea of paper, Green Disk offers a wealth of information without filling up the mailbox or the local landfill. The Green Disk: Paperless Environmental Journal comes on a computer diskette in Mac or DOS format. Included in the […]
Books
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
A grand intellectual critique
John Ralston Saul has developed a theory to explain what ails the world: rationality run amuck. Language, in the hands of bureaucrats or modern poets and novelists, is designed to obscure, as in environmental impact statements, or is all style and no substance. The ultimate rationalizers – Robert S. McNamara and Henry Kissinger – destroy […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Hammering out “ecosystem management’
Lynx, grizzly bear and salmon could be the winners in a new plan to link the current patchwork of parks, national forests and recreation areas in Washington’s North Cascades. Along with the National Park Service, groups like The Wilderness Society, the National Parks and Conservation Association and the Canadian Earthcare Society will host a three-day […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Reclaiming high places
Alpine forget-me-not, a miniature, bright blue flower, grows above timberline through constant winds, glaring sun and only two months of summer. Now, in addition, it faces the added stresses of mines, ski areas and increased radiation through a thinning ozone layer. At the 11th annual High Altitude Revegetation Workshop, scientists and managers will discuss how […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
E-Mail for the rural West
The West’s great distances, geography and weather often isolate its communities. That can make for a high quality of life but difficult communications. The Helena, Mont.-based computer non-profit WestNet hopes to overcome those barriers by providing a computer-based bulletin board service. With a computer and a modem, anyone – from ranchers and loggers, to Native […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
From driveways to watersheds
When oil became scarce in the 1970s, New Mexico’s solar industry quickly boomed and then busted. State tax subsidies had helped sell complicated new systems that sometimes didn’t work, and by the mid-80s many people ditched their solar designs. In an effort to rebuild its solar industry, the New Mexico Natural Resources Department has published […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Back to the sun
When oil became scarce in the 1970s, New Mexico’s solar industry quickly boomed and then busted. State tax subsidies had helped sell complicated new systems that sometimes didn’t work, and by the mid-80s many people ditched their solar designs. In an effort to rebuild its solar industry, the New Mexico Natural Resources Department has published […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Symposium won’t be dry
-Rivers at the Crossroads: Law, Science, Politics, and People” will bring together conservationists, agriculturalists and politicos to talk about water-use conflicts in Idaho and other Western states. Symposium organizer Marty Bridges says the meeting will give people the opportunity to voice their concerns about water-use policy directly to the heads of the Idaho Department of […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Workers need protection
The health and safety of workers cleaning up the nation’s nuclear weapons complex have been badly neglected, according to a study by the Office of Technology Assessment, a research arm of the U.S. Congress. Because of the historic autonomy and secrecy of its atomic mission, the Department of Energy is the only federal agency exempt […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Wet and wild symposium
With memories of drought still fresh in the West, the Montana Environmental Education Association is sponsoring “Water, Wet & Wild: Flowing into the 21st Century” from March 25-27 in Billings, Mont. Designed for elementary and high school teachers, the meeting offers workshops on water pollution and water rights and exhibits by film makers and publishers. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Roxborough friends fight for park
Local residents who enjoy the relative wildness and beauty of Roxborough State Park near Denver, Colo., are fighting a developer’s plans to build 850 houses along the park’s entire eastern boundary. The development, known as Southdowns at Roxborough, could begin as soon as this March and would destroy wildlife habitat for deer, elk and golden […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
New plans for Yellowstone
Managers in Yellowstone National Park just released a plan that could leave the park’s 2.2 million acres of backcountry a little more organized. The draft backcountry management plan suggests classifying the park into three management zones. Most people would visit the threshold zone, which surrounds roads and developed areas in the park. It would have […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Fast food at fault
That humble staple of the fast-food industry – the french fry – is more dangerous than it looks. A recent study by the non-profit Columbia Basin Institute found that fry-makers in the Columbia River Basin waste cheap water and poison residential wells. The 100-page report, Value Added and Subtracted, says fry-makers use only half of […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
A natural vacation
National forests in the Northwest have opened unused fire lookouts, stock stations and maintenance cabins to the public. All can be rented for overnight camping with up to a two-week stay allowed in some places. Because each facility is rented by the national forest in which it is located, two brochures, available at most Forest […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
For green writers
Environmental issues are particularly difficult for journalists from small newspapers and broadcast stations who do not have the benefit of large libraries, colleges or conferences. “Charting the Environmental Journalism Frontier,” an April 14-16 workshop at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will help such journalists develop a better understanding of environmental issues in the West. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Missile chaos
In a 4-inch-thick draft environmental impact statement, the U.S. Army recently concluded that its missile test flights to the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico could have significant land-use impacts. Launched from either Green River, Utah, or Fort Wingate, N.M., the missiles would fly over Canyonlands National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Green scientists get-together
A March 12-13 conference at the University of Oregon looks at how scientists can participate in environmental politics and policy-making. “The 1994 Public Interest Science Conference” includes panels on science in the courtroom, scientists and the Endangered Species Act, and the use or misuse of science by politicians. More than two dozen panelists will speak […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
No change on the range
When you’re right, you’re right, and when Philip Fradkin worked for the Los Angeles Times from 1964-1975 as that paper’s first environmental reporter, and for Audubon from 1976-81 as that magazine’s first Western editor, he often batted 1,000. Fradkin recalls those days in his book of collected essays, Wanderings of an Environmental Journalist: In Alaska […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Forcing the spring
Mainstream organizations such as the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation often define the environmental movement. In Forcing the Spring, writer Robert Gottlieb shows that alternative groups, such as Mothers of East Los Angeles, are equally important. These grass-roots groups rely on community members more than experts, concentrate on changing the social order rather than […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Agriculture in the round
For the past three years, up to 400 people have gathered in Denver for Colorado Gov. Roy Romer’s Agricultural Outlook Forum. This year, on Feb. 18, Romer wants the gathering to focus on the ecology and economics of sustainable farming. Experts such as Marty Strange, who founded Nebraska’s Center for Rural Affairs, and Ralph Grossi, […]