The drone of lawn mowers is a classic sign of summer in the suburbs. But these gas guzzlers contribute heavily to another summer phenomenon: smog. The yearly pollution from one gas mower is equivalent to “43 new cars driving 12,000 miles each,” says Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. […]
Climate change
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Of global warming and White House elephants
Any day now, if all goes according to plan, a bill that will actually do something about global warming will come up in the United States Senate. Come up, and go right down. Not even the bill’s sponsors, Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, predict passage. Their goal is to […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Global Warming’s Unlikely Harbingers
The West is heating up — and bark beetles are moving in for the kill
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
Perspectives on change — climate change
On the northern edge of Alaska, says journalist Charles Wohlforth, the impacts of human-caused climate change have become part of daily life. Spring is coming earlier, and Iñupiaq whaling crews are making ever-narrower escapes from cracking sea ice. In The Whale and the Supercomputer, Wohlforth looks at such changes from the perspectives of two very […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
A near-miss for California’s clean-air rules
California’s newest clean-air law narrowly escaped an attempt to shoot it down in the U.S. Congress. Faced with the worst air pollution in the nation, the state has led the way in enacting tough air-quality regulations. But although California has made progress in combating auto emissions, pollution from small engines like lawnmowers and weed whackers […]
Posted inWotr
The salting of the West – who cares?
If a Colorado mine were to dump a hundred thousand tons of chemical salts onto the ground, chances are good that residents nearby would be upset and local and state agencies would get on the mine operator’s case. Yet, the state of Colorado dumps 125,000 tons of chemical salts on its roads each year, and […]
Posted inWotr
The biggest environmental issue is staring us in the face
Tom Bell says we’d better connect the dots that reveal global warming.
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
West Coast states tackle global warming
While the Bush administration takes a light-handed approach to curbing global warming, West Coast governors are determined to give the cause some regulatory punch. In September, outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis, in collaboration with Gov. Gary Locke, D-Wash., and Gov. Ted Kulongoski, D-Ore., announced a new, region-wide approach to slowing greenhouse gas emissions. The governors […]
Posted inWotr
Leaving Las Vegas
I lived in Las Vegas recently for about a year, doing research at a large weapons-testing facility outside of town. Among all the places I’ve lived, from tropical islands to small towns and Western strip-mall communities, Las Vegas seemed uniquely American in its boosterism for get-rich-quick schemes, the sex industry and for the stupendous desert […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Who’s at the helm?
The EPA hasn’t had anyone at the wheel for three months — but it’s been charging full steam ahead
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
Mr. Middle Ground gets called to Washington
Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt nominated to head the EPA
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
The EPA needs an urban pit bull
You walk past a wrecking yard and see, on the other side of a high chain-link fence, not a pit bull with a mouth full of teeth, but a goldfish in a tank. That’s the image called up by Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt’s nomination as head of the Environmental Protection Administration. It’s a nomination that […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
Of avalanche forecasting and snow haiku
Last winter in southwestern Colorado, on the kind of bluebird day when a ski-toting fellow endowed with more bravado than avalanche acumen could be seduced into believing the whole world was a benign winter playground, I found myself in good company in tricky terrain. The day began on a sub-zero morning before dawn in the […]
Posted inWotr
We need a shoe to drop on climate change
In 1999, Hurricane Mitch, which had lost most of its kick by the time it reached Honduras, still killed more than 10,000 people as a result of intense flooding, making it the biggest storm-related disaster in Central American history. A year later, 25,000 people died in Venezuelan rainstorms, the greatest such disaster in South America, […]
Posted inWotr
For wet or for dry
I was pushed out of New York 30 years ago. I couldn’t take the city as it was, and I couldn’t change to meet New York on its terms. We moved to Colorado, where a mountain loomed in our backyard. There were challenges, of course. A tiny coal-mining town is alien to someone raised on […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
Hispanic community takes on polluters
Hodgepodge zoning puts chrome-plating plants next to homes
Posted inWotr
Like Butte, Montana, an old dog hangs on
(Note: a longer version of this essay is here.) On the dust-blown fringe of Butte, Mont., at the core of one of the nation’s largest Superfund sites, lives an amazing paradox. Its genus is Canus, but its species would have to be called extraordinarius. I doubt there’s another mutt like this on the planet. The […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Administration, industry stamp out clean airregs
California has long been a trendsetter. Since 1967, the smog-ridden state has set clean air standards that are stricter than federal laws require. But now, the auto industry, backed by the Bush administration, is trying to halt the California Air Resources Board’s progressive auto-emissions regulations. In 1990, the state required that 10 percent of cars […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Brownfields program makes cleanup profitable
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. While Congress and President Bush allow the Superfund cleanup program to bleed out, they’re pumping money into a related program called “Brownfields.” In January, President Bush approved $250 million for Brownfields, and is now asking Congress to double the program’s funding over the next […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Life in the wasteland
A small Utah town unearths a toxic legacy just as its only hope for rescue, the federal Superfund cleanup program, blows away