E Magazine articles from September 2000

E Magazine archives from September 2000

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot.(environment)(Editorial)
September 1, 2000... This is a very special issue of E Magazine. In the magazine's 10-year history, we have on only one other occasion devoted the entire feature section to a single story. That piece, a cross-country exploration of environmental racism, appeared in...

ADVICE & DISSENT.(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2000... LETTERS FROM OUR READERS SMART GROWTH FLUNKS The May/June 2000 feature article on sprawl, "Malling America," touts "smart growth" as the answer to the problem. This article leaves the impression that growth is inevitable but as long...

Saving the Sequoias.(environment)
September 1, 2000... Federal Protection For California's 3,000-year-old Trees John Muir called them "the greatest of living things." California's giant sequoias--also known simply as "the big trees"--have outlived millennia of ecological and cultural change on...

A River Runs Through It.(environment)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Grassroots Take on General Electric in the Battle To Clean Up the Hudson Clearwater's Great Hudson River Revival draws a crowd of thousands every year, people young and old who gather under the shady trees of Croton Point, New York to...

IN BRIEF.(art)
September 1, 2000... THE ARTISTS' GREEN ORCHARD When the 175-acre Villa Montalvo estate in Saratoga was bequeathed to the state of California in 1930, the owner stipulated that the new park continue nurturing music, art, literature and architecture. One result...

Greener Cleaners.(environment)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Dry Cleaning Industry's Quiet Revolution For years, "environmentally friendly" was a phrase unlikely to be connected with the dry cleaning industry. Perchloroethylene (PERC), the solvent used by dry cleaners, is a volatile...

Jamming the Gears.(environment)
September 1, 2000... Are These Front-Line Fighters Eco-Heroes or Eco-Terrorists? "On October 16, 1997, my Eureka, California District Office was rocked by what sounded like a thunderous explosion. In fact, the sound was that of a 500-pound tree stump being...

UPDATES.(environment)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... NOT OFF THE HOOK When Congress passed the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act, some optimists thought that overexploitation of U.S. fisheries might finally be coming to an end. Yet, a new report from Congress finds "overfishing levels in the...

Reality Check.(environment)
September 1, 2000... The Global Warming Debate Is Over. It's Real, Inexorable, and Headed Our Way IN 1995, MORE THAN 2,000 SCIENTISTS FROM 100 COUNTRIES REPORTED TO THE UNITED NATIONS THAT OUR BURNING OF OIL, COAL AND NATURAl, GAS IS CHANGING THE EARTH'S...

Through a Lens, Darkly.(environment)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING--I HAVE SEEN IT WITH MY OWN EYES, I SEE IT RIGHT NOW. I have stood in the empty rookeries of displaced Adelie penguins, and felt a chill from the receding ice of the Antarctic Peninsula. I saw young black...

CHINA: The Cost of Coal.
September 1, 2000... IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND WHY CHINA IS A GREENHOUSE GIANT, picture my friend Zhenbing Zhou. Funny, immensely charming, a great (and sometimes endless) talker, Zhenbing was my interpreter and constant companion during a recent six-week journey...

THE CALIFORNIA COAST: Tidepools in Trouble.(Environment)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... AN HOUR PAST DAWN, THE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA SUN IS BURNING THROUGH THE MORNING HAZE and the waters of Monterey Bay are rising after a 6:21 a.m. low tide. Rafe Sagarin, curly hair tousled by the unruly wind, crosses the exposed granite tidepools...

FIJI: The Heat's Not Just Political.(Pacific island)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... "THE POLITICAL CLIMATE IS HEATING UP AND HEADING TOWARDS A REAL FRENZY," a man in Suva, the small third world capitol of Fiji told me the week before the country's Indian prime minister was taken hostage by Fijian nationalists and the military...

NEW JERSEY'S BEACHES: On Shifting Sands.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... ON STORMY DAYS, the wind at the tip of Sandy Hook, a former military base now turned into the bustling Gateway National Recreation Area, is enough to knock you down, and it churns the Atlantic into a froth favored by surfers but anathema to the...

AUSTRALIA: The Reefs Are Going Down Under.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... MAGNETIC ISLAND IS LIKE CATALINA WITH DEATH ADDERS. "They like to lie under piles of leaves," Ann Tager advises, as she shows me her wooded backyard. The most visited of the Great Barrier Reef islands, Magnetic is a half hour ferry ride from...

NEW YORK CITY: An Island Ecology.
September 1, 2000... NEW YORK CITY, WITH MORE THAN SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE, SPILLS OUT OVER 378 SQUARE MILES OF LAND separated by such waterways as the Hudson, East and Harlem Rivers, Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. The city, one of America's most diverse...

ANTARCTICA: The Ice is Moving.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... PUKING PENGUINS AND GLOBAL WARMING MAY NOT, ON THEIR FACE, APPEAR TO HAVE MUCH IN COMMON. But as I discovered on the Antarctic Peninsula, a 700-mile long tail of ice and rocky islands jutting up towards Latin America, scientific evidence is...

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA: In a Tropical Depression?
September 1, 2000... AN 80-DEGREE DAY THAT WRAPS ITSELF AROUND YOU, turquoise waters shimmering under a bright tropical sun. It has all the elements of a Caribbean paradise, except for one little thing: there's no beach. Andy McDonald gestures toward a battered...

ALASKA: The Big Meltdown.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... "IN THE ARCTIC," SAYS DAN RITZMAN, AN ALASKA-BASED CAMPAIGNER FOR GREENPEACE, "CLIMATE CHANGE IS NO LONGER A THEORY, it's a reality, and it's affecting the wildlife and people which live there." Of course, you might expect Greenpeace to say...

PACIFIC NORTHWEST: The Incredible Shrinking Glaciers.
September 1, 2000... IT FEELS AS IF A GIANT MEAT LOCKER HAS SWUNG OPEN, sending a cold, yet thin, wind blowing down South Cascade Glacier just outside North Cascades National Park in northern Washington. The sun glares. Everything is white. The expanse of snow acts...

INDIA: Clouds Got In the Way.(the poor air quality of India has begun to affect the Indian Ocean as well)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... THE INDIAN COASTAL CITY OF MUMBAI, FORMERLY BOMBAY, IS HOME TO INDIA'S VIBRANT FILM INDUSTRY ("Bollywood") and probably boasts more cell phones per capita than any other city on the subcontinent. But it is also home to Asia's largest slums....

Hitting a Brick Wall.(there seems to be a much higher-than-normal incidence of autism in some areas, such as Brick Township, New Jersey)
September 1, 2000... No Doubt Autism Is Genetic, But Is the Environment Also Implicated? My first introduction to autism was Rain Man," says Bobble Gallagher of the 1989 movie. "That was all a lot of people knew about autism for a very long time." Her limited...

Drink Up.(tips on selecting coffee, tea, and other hot beverages that are environmentally friendly)
September 1, 2000... Hot Beverages That Are Good for the Earth Shade-grown coffee. Fair-traded tea. Hot cocoa from all-natural ingredients, chai that's certified organic. Bottoms up, thirsty environmentalist. It's never been easier to find a hot drink that's...

Caught by the Web.(Ecology through the internet)
September 1, 2000... Cyberspace Offers Faster Access to Greener Worlds The Internet has quickly become an indispensible tool for the environmental movement, offering a cheap and effective way to exchange information and coordinate events among a wide audience....

Down the Drain.(Efficient bathroom)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... How to Conserve Resources by Spending Some Quality Time in the Bathroom The modern bathroom may be convenient, but it's no friend to the environment. In fact, the toilets, showers, sinks, lights and just about every other fixture found in...

Hands-On Harvesting.(Organic food)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Volunteers Get Dirty on International Organic Farms The flock sits safely in the stable, and the nearby streets are silent. The tranquil evenings of Pradorrey, a village in northwestern Spain, are reward enough for a day spent tending sheep...

Sounds Natural.(Recordings, nature)(Review)
September 1, 2000... A Consumer Guide to Music From the Earth Though the haunting and soaring sounds of the deep sea now echo in our consciousness, before the late 1960s human beings knew nothing of this hidden sonic world. It was an underwater microphone that...

CITRUS-SOLVED.(natural soap by Shadow Lake)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Tired of chemicals seeping into your daily chores? Shadow Lake, makers of Citra-Solv for more than 15 years, introduce two new vegetable-based products to help you clean naturally. Ultra Citra-Dish and Ultra Citra-Suds contain natural...

MAKING THE GRADE.(Ecology at school)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Why not start the school year off right by making your campus a little greener? The State University of New York (SUNY)-Buffalo has launched a"Think Green" program to encourage a greener student lifestyle. From promoting paper-free...

FILLO FOR EVERYONE.(Greek bakery)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Baklava, spanikopita, tyropita... if you aren't familiar with these delicious Greek foods, then you need some help from the Fillo Factory. The company, now in its fourth year, creates ready-to-use fillo dough and mouth-watering pastry treats....

PAPER TRAILS.(Organic paper products by Acorn Designs)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... A healthier alternative to Hallmark, Acorn Designs offers a variety of organic paper products including journals, stationery and cards. The company, founded by an ecologist-turned-artist, is one of the first and only to use 100 percent kenaf in...

The Neighborhood Forager.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... If you're curious about that tree you've just parked your car under, you should consult Arthur Plotnick's The Urban Tree Book (Chelsea Green, $18.95), which concentrates on those commonly found in cities and suburbs. Avoiding the dry...

Cooking with Herb.(Review)
September 1, 2000... TIPPING THE SCALES Even if your family isn't vegetarian, your children will be enchanted by the hilarious tale of Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon the only fire-breather with his own vegetable garden. When the town almost mistakes him for one...

Requiem for Nature.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... TIME TO TRY HARDER Everyone agrees that we should save the rainforest, but according to ecologist John Terborgh's book, Requiem for Nature, remarkably little progress is being made. He documents in gripping detail the many ways in which...

Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... STORY TIME Everyone has a story to tell, and that is the basis of Margaret Read MacDonald's Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About (Linnet Books, $17.50). MacDonald has put together a compilation of 41 educational stories from more than...

Reckoning for Roundup and Art for Tots.(Letters)
September 1, 2000... A Toxic Check on Herbicides and Kids' Supplies The park our children use is routinely sprayed with the herbicide Roundup, Is that chemical safe, especially for children? --Ewa Bialkowski, San Jose, CA The Center for Ethics and...