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“In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold.” So Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote of his years of hard labor in 19th century Siberia, after a jittery Tsar Nicholas I banished the famed writer to the lonely Far East. For centuries, the massive swath of land east of Moscow and north of China has been a place [...]
It’s not hard to imagine the damage weird weather inflicts on our planet. Hurricane Katrina, for example, obliterated coastal communities, wiped out businesses and left hundreds of dead bodies in its wake. Quantifying the cost of such a one-off (we hope) event is pretty easy too: Katrina left us with a bill of $81 billion, [...]
Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, isn’t really known for his eloquence. The former Colorado senator spends much of his time now wrestling over efforts to expand oil and gas drilling on federal lands and water—important work, of course, but not exactly the sort of thing that launches speechwriters on spiraling flights of eloquence. [...]
In a decision that could have a major impact on both the mining industry and the Obama Administration’s relationship with conservatives, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it was vetoing the largest single mountaintop mining removal permit in West Virginia history. In using its authority under the Clean Water Act to block approval [...]
These days, environmentalism has become synonymous with the fight against climate change. But good green campaigners know that more immediate environmental challenges still exist. That reality hit home yesterday when the United Nations said it will send an emergency team to Nigeria, after 200 children died in an outbreak of lead poisoning related to gold [...]
There’s no doubt that recent economic instability has sent gold prices soaring. But gold doesn’t grow on trees–would that it did!—and higher prices for the yellow metal has encouraged companies to go to greater lengths to retrieve the precious element, setting up battles with conservationists.
