In The News

One Man’s Drive to Clean Up the Earth

Eric Prideaux February 27, 2006
Imogen M. Greene, a US citizen who has lived outside of Tokyo for years, is on a mission. His pseudonym, IM Greene, describes his goal to decrease air pollution. Greene confronts drivers of idling vehicles, tapping on their windows and telling them, “idling forbidden.” Most drivers are cooperative. Some might ask what right does a man from the US, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse...

Economists Price the Ravages of Climate Change

Scheherazade Daneshkhu February 8, 2006
The emerging discipline of environmental economics struggles to persuade people to set aside concrete short-term economic advantages to act against the long-term problem of global environmental change. No individual country can solve the problem on its own, and some economists fear that this means the problem could go unsolved - why should nations risk competitive edge today for a problem with...

E-Waste@Large

Elizabeth Royte January 27, 2006
Computer recycling is meant to keep hazardous materials out of incinerators and landfills, reusing components to avoid the pollution and energy use required to obtain new materials. But recycling is also expensive and hazardous. So many companies, rather than disassemble the machines, chose to export them to developing nations, where they are not repaired or sold, but dumped. Each month, 400,...

Aussies Tackle Global Warming

Alan Goodall January 20, 2006
Amidst rising energy demand and a growing concern about environmental degradation, Australia is emerging as the new leader in the effort to combat global warming in the Asia-Pacific. At a meeting in Sydney last week, Australia along with India, China, South Korea, Japan and the US mapped out practical solutions to eliminate deficiencies of the Kyoto Protocol. The participants – who together...

Caviar Trade Shut Down to Save Sturgeon

CJ Chivers January 17, 2006
Caviar - a delicacy symbolic of wealth - may soon become an even more rarified substance. The secretariat of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has blocked the global export of wild caviar, or sturgeon eggs. Sturgeon, whose population is waning, are an ancient fish, but damming, pollution, and corruption involving fishing and illegal trade threaten their survival. The ban...

Ears of Plenty

December 21, 2005
Throughout human history, grains such as maize, rice and wheat provided the sustenance that allowed successive generations to survive and increase their numbers. Out of these three plants, wheat is the oldest and most broadly dispersed. Wheat tells the story of human agricultural practice, to which the growth and wane of human populations are inextricably linked. Technological innovation, from...

The Tsunami Report Card

Karl F. Indefurth December 21, 2005
On December 26, 2004, an earthquake of staggering proportions unleashed ocean waves that crashed ashore in Asia and East Africa, killing 225,000 people and displacing 1.7 million more. Quickly, world governments, international organizations and a multitude of non-profits pledged support. Many predicted that unless this effort proved successful, a "second tsunami" of widespread disease...