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Olympic Heights

Green-roof project aims to clean up Beijing for Olympics With the 2008 Olympics in Beijing inching closer, the Chinese are hard at work cleaning up the notoriously smog-ridden city. Polluting […]

My favorite side effects of the ivory-bill discovery

Best local creation to emerge from the recent discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas: a haircut that pays tribute. For $25, you too can sport a moussed mohawk painted red, white, and black.

Second best: the ivory-billed cheeseburger. Um ... gross.

And finally, best factoid to surface in the media hype: the former name of bird town Brinkley, Ak., is Lick Skillet.

David Cash, Massachusetts air-policy director, answers questions

David Cash. What work do you do? How does it relate to the environment? I’m the director of air policy for the state of Massachusetts in the Executive Office of […]

Vegetarianism gets hotttt.

The hottest thang in veggie circles these days? Gastroporn.

It comes (ahem) courtesy of Britain's venerable Vegetarian Society, as part of its "Can you keep it up for a week?" campaign. A must-watch.

(Check out The Independent for the backstory.)

Readers accuse Umbra of missing the mark, and more

  Re: Epistled Off Dear Editor: I work for a consumer-product company (apparel, not cleaning products), and I know the impact of emails and letters from customers. I think Umbra […]

A Bum Wrap

Study settles cloth vs. disposable diaper question The debate over the relative environmental merits of cloth vs. disposable diapers, like the one over paper vs. plastic bags, arouses passions entirely […]

Revenge of the Filth

Space is getting awfully dirty Litter encircles our planet, in the form of thousands — or even millions — of bits of space debris: abandoned satellites and rockets, chunks blown […]

‘Eco-terrorism’ is the feds’ new all-purpose excuse to increase domestic surveillance.

Now, I don't really have a conspiratorial temperament. I tend to think that stupidity is responsible for far more of what ails the world than evil -- which is why I'm more optimistic than many of my eco-brethren.

However, this seems worth worrying about. After all, as the old saying goes, it's not paranoia if they're really watching you.

Trying to drum up this sort of frenzy serves dual, overlapping purposes. One, it reignites some of the flagging terrorist hysteria that does so much to prop up the right wing, greasing the skids for a further expansion of domestic police powers. Two, it works to discredit the green movement as a whole, greasing the skids for further deregulation of corporate power.

At the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee show trial yesterday, they trotted an FBI flunky in to proclaim earnestly that the ELF and the ALF constitute the single greatest domestic terrorist threat the nation faces today. (* See correction below)

The first thing to note, of course, is that both these organizations explicitly renounce violence against people and have been responsible for not a single death. Not one.

The second thing to note is that they are not "organizations" as such. They have no leaders, no central coordinating councils or locations. They are loosely affiliated cells, united by a cause. The feds might be able to bust this or that cell, but there's no sense in which they could "defeat" these organizations.

This gives the feds license for an unending, ever-escalating war -- and really, what do the feds love more? They get greater surveillance latitude and any number of extra-judicial powers. After all, it's terrorism!

But of course, it's not really those organizations Inhofe is after anyway, is it?

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the panel's chairman, said he hoped to examine more closely how the groups might be getting assistance in fund raising and communications from tax-exempt organizations' "mainstream activists" not directly blamed for the violence.

"Just like al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media," Inhofe said.

Yes, let's "examine more closely" the mainstream activists that give us such trouble. I can practically hear the Dr. Evil laugh here.

Make no mistake, this is what they want:

In film short, Mark Dowie plugs plan to boost funding for grassroots activism

Mark Dowie, a prizewinning investigative journalist, was talking about the need to revamp American environmentalism long before the Reapers declared it dead. His Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1996 book Losing Ground cast […]

Northwest caribuou may not be long for this world.

We've heard a lot about caribou recently, mostly in the fight over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But fewer people know that the Northwest is home to the last remaining caribou herd to inhabit the lower 48 states. They are considered the most endangered large mammal in the continental United States.

Woodland caribou once ranged in New England, the Upper Midwest, and as far south as the Salmon River in Idaho. Today, the last survivors, the tiny Selkirk herd, occupy only a small range in northeast Washington, northern Idaho, and an adjacent portion of British Columbia. Even in BC, where caribou are relatively abundant, their range has shrunk dramatically as logging, development, and other habitat disruption makes itself felt in the Canadian Rockies. (Click on the small map at left for a look at present and historical range.)

The Selkirk herd has mimicked larger trends in North American caribou. Once numbering between 200 and 400, the herd has clung to a precarious existence since its listing as an endangered species in 1993. At present, the herd comprises only 35 animals, down from a recent high of 52 in 1995, which was achieved partly by three years of "augmentation" during the late-1980s when caribou from northern BC were transplanted to sustain the dwindling population.