E Magazine articles from March 2000

E Magazine archives from March 2000

Clean energy now! (E Word).
March 1, 2000... Earth Day 2000 is shaping up as a major, watershed event. In addition to thousands of smaller celebrations, a huge April 22 rally in Washington, DC will feature musicians and speakers reaching the multitudes from a solar-powered stage. E's...

Breathing deeply. (Advice & dissent: letters from our readers).
March 1, 2000... "Bad Air Days" by April Reese (November/ December 1999), was a commendable piece drawing attention to a very serious problem, but fell short of addressing the real problems affiliated with polluted air and the associated health problems...

Learning curve. (Advice & dissent: letters from our readers).
March 1, 2000... I read, with great interest, Jennifer Bogo's article "Sustainability 101" (November/December 1999). There are many excellent items on the new approaches to teaching sustainability, and I commend you. However, there is one obvious great big hole...

Corrections.
March 1, 2000... In the article "Soy Baby Blues" (Your Health, November/December 1999), it was reported that the Center of Ethics and Toxics (CETOS) recently published research indicating a 200 to 300 percent increase in phytoestrogen levels of transgenic...

After Seattle: following failed trade talks, the protest continues. (Currents).
March 1, 2000... When a world conference on the once-sleepy issue of trade came to Seattle late last November, the press got the soundbite they were looking for: 50,000 demonstrators crowded the city, leaving a trail of shattered windows and police barricades...

Feeling the heat: student Davids take on a business-led global warming Goliath. (Currents).
March 1, 2000... The world's scientists have reached a nearly unanimous consensus that the surface of the Earth is warming as a result of human activities. With strongly affirmative voices from respected bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the...

Car-free and carefree: living without an automobile is a logical lifestyle choice. (Currents).
March 1, 2000... North Americans are locked into an ongoing love affair-cum-addiction with the automobile. Fortunately, this vehicular romance is losing heat as the globe warms, thanks to a growing number of people who have decided to go car-free. "Give up my...

High-stake hogs in South Dakota.
March 1, 2000... Life may not be so sunny for Sioux tribal members if Sun Prairie Farms gets its way and constructs the third-largest hog operation in the world on tribal land in Mellette County, South Dakota. The farms would produce 859,000 hogs a year on 13...

Don't dump on me.
March 1, 2000... Rusted tin cans, rotting carpets, refrigerators, a playground set, coffee makers, toilet seats, paint cans, deer carcasses stuffed into garbage cans, tons of household garbage, thousands of tires--the list reads like a cross between a town dump...

London's lavender hill mob.
March 1, 2000... It sounds improbable: derelict south London land transformed into fields of lavender. But you can see and smell the two and a half acres planted on abandoned local council property by the visionary BioRegional Development Group (BDG). The...

Phosphorus pollution: too much of a good thing.
March 1, 2000... The first evidence of a troubled lake is blue-green algae and a foul smell. The next: dead fish littering the shore. The culprit in this crime against nature is phosphorus pollution, a growing danger to delicate lake ecosystems. Although sewage...

Waste not, want not: waste exchanges save energy, money and landfill space. (Currents).
March 1, 2000... Ancient wisdom teaches that one person's trash is another person's gold. The pundits never predicted, however, that the "gold" would take names like "diphenylacetonitrile" and "Povidone K-30 BP/EP." There's no magic alchemy involved--just a...

White abalone: loved to death.
March 1, 2000... The large, flat shells of living abalone once carpeted the rocky waters along California's coastline from Mexico to Oregon. Prior to European settlement, Native Americans feasted on the mollusk's muscular foot and employed its shell as a...

Science for sale? Industry-funded `consumer' groups stand up for chemicals. (Currents).
March 1, 2000... Is the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) dangerously alarmist? Does Consumer Reports magazine "use junk science to develop `sensational' reports that advance the... extreme environmental positions" of its publisher, Consumers...

A fishy situation. (Updates).
March 1, 2000... If a few genetically modified (GM) fish escape into the wild, they could wipe out an entire local population of their species, warn two Purdue biologists, William Muir and Richard Howard (see "The Biotech Century," May/June 1998). The larger...

Constitutionally stumped. (Updates).
March 1, 2000... In Minnesota, the royal rumble between loggers and environmentalists has resurfaced under the mantle of constitutional philosophy (see "The Forest Primeval," September/October 1997). A logging group filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service...

Blowing smoke. (Updates).
March 1, 2000... Still reeling from the May court decision which overturned strict new air pollution rules (see "Bad Air Days," November/December 1999), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has now stepped back in the ring, ordering 392 power and...

Power for the people: the biggest Earth Day ever demands `Clean Energy Now!'.
March 1, 2000... Denis Hayes is back. The menace he's stalking this time: dirty energy, which contributes to global warming and befouls the air in the world's cities. The last time Denis Hayes organized Earth Day, in 1990, 200 million people turned out--and a...

Harnessing hydrogen: the fuel cell leads the way to clean energy.
March 1, 2000... Dearborn, Michigan is a company town. Ford's testing labs, museums and office towers line up for miles along a tree-lined boulevard in what looks for all the world like an upscale college campus. The decidedly less glamorous Rouge manufacturing...

View from the bottom: are medicated baby powders doing more harm than good? (Your Health).
March 1, 2000... Lead has been identified by the federal government as the foremost environmental health threat to American children. Nearly one million children still have elevated blood lead levels, over four percent of the population. Now, according to San...

A better breakfast: organic cereals start the day off right. (Eating Right).
March 1, 2000... Gradually over the last century, the American idea of a healthy breakfast evolved from eggs and sausage to Cheerios. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, American consumption of breakfast cereal increased dramatically...

With a little help ... microcredit benefits businesses, bank accounts and the environment, too. (Money Matters).
March 1, 2000... Socially responsible investing has traditionally meant keeping your money away from negative investments. But what if you lent part of your nest-egg to a poor person, and they used it to start a business that enabled them to escape poverty,...

Landfill to living room: salvaged building materials are catching on. (House & Home).
March 1, 2000... In 1976, Dr. Dan Knapp quit his teaching job and started hanging around the dump in Lane County, Oregon. On a mission to rescue reusable items, he rooted through tons of trash, undaunted by the landfill's "No Salvage" signs. "I thought that...

India diary: a green tour of the subcontinent. (Going Green).
March 1, 2000... November 28-29, 1999. Our delegation of journalists, winners of the annual Population Institute reporting awards, arrives in New Delhi in the middle of the night and drives through nearly deserted streets to our hotel. The 4 a.m. calm is...

A growing legacy: saving heirloom seeds for a sustainable future. (Consumer News).
March 1, 2000... Kent Whealy is saving the Earth, one tomato at a time. Known in seed circles as America s godfather of the heirloom seed movement, Whealy is the founder of the Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit organization dedicated to systematically...

April showers. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... With an acre of rainforest disappearing every two seconds, it's certainly a race to save this precious resource. And now that the online community Care2.com has teamed up with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), it's an Internet marathon everyone can...

Calling the shots. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... Do the Earth Day crowds have you running late? That protest in Seattle made you fall behind schedule? Thanks to TTI COMM, that apologetic call home won't be at the expense on Mother Earth. The Florida-based telecommunications service has just...

The prodigal toothbrush. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... Imagine the life of a toothbrush: imprisoned in a cup, waiting entire days only to be wrenched and thrust repeatedly against forgotten food, stashed in the crevices of your teeth. Eventually the toothbrush, exhausted and weak, is dropped into...

Move over Kraft ... (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... ... Because good old mac 'n cheese just got a whole new look. No matter what your reason for swearing off the real thing, Road's End Organics is telling you to curl back up with this ultimate in comfort food. The company has put a twist on the...

Natural slumbers. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... Did you know that most of the commercially grown cotton used to make your mattress and bedding relies heavily on the use of chemicals that leave toxins in the soil, air and individual cotton fibers? If this widespread pollution is enough to...

Budding tastes. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... To complement the festive Earth Day atmosphere outside, during the month of April people will also be able to celebrate their relationship with the environment inside the doors of their favorite supermarket. Mother Earth's Organic Food Festival...

Good night, sweet hound. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... Is your poor pet tossing and turning on an uncomfortable mat, his dreams polluted with chemicals, while the rest of your family slumbers peacefully on natural, organic bedding? If you're worried that Fido isn't getting the same nighttime health...

Paint the town ... grey. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).
March 1, 2000... Gamblin Artist Colors Co., an Oregon company known for making low toxicity artist paints, continues its Earth Day tradition of offering free special-edition paint during the month of April. Each year, pigment dust that has collected in the...

The modern Poltergeist.
March 1, 2000... Remember Stephen Spielberg's Poltergeist, in which a family moves into a developer-touted `dream house' only to discover it's haunted by unseen supernatural forces? Toxic Deception (Common Courage Press, $17.95) opens with a real-life parallel:...

Where the wild things commute.
March 1, 2000... Scrutinized by the intent eye of a vigilant green heron, biologist Peter Friederici follows coyote tracks beneath darting flocks of swallows. While this may sound like a scene from deep within the wilderness, it actually occurs amid the densely...

Cooking ecology.
March 1, 2000... Afraid your child will grow up thinking cooking is setting the popcorn button on the microwave? Dianne Pratt gives kids opportunity to feel flour between their fingers--while learning about food, ecology and animals--in Hey Kids! You're Cookin'...

Living in harmony.
March 1, 2000... "Music can make things happen," says editor Julie Middleton, who believes the more than 400 songs, chants, rounds and hymns compiled in Songs for Earthlings: A Green Spirituality Songbook are the key not only to entertaining evenings of music,...

Safe shampoos, synthetic oil and economics: the latest on cleansers, auto emissions and environmental regulation. (Ask E).
March 1, 2000... Are the shampoo and bath wash ingredients Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and Sodium Laureth Sulfate hazardous in any way?--Carol Bean, Lyme, NH Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) are surface cleansers derived from coconut...