Protect EPA Protect EPA? We shouldn’t have to say it, or do it. EPA – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – is supposed to protect us. Yet, the EPA is under siege. And if we don’t help protect it, it won’t be around to protect us. The threats EPA faces is real. ♦ The new […]
There are many places around the world where people do not have access to safe drinking water. Here in the U.S., we often take safe drinking water for granted. After all, if you are thirsty all you need to do is to turn on a tap and fill up your glass. What was once considered […]
If you’ve been wondering what fracking is and whether it’s good or bad, you’re not alone. It’s a complicated, high tech process whose advocates say it produces abundant clean energy. As an environmentalist as well as a consumer, though, I’m concerned about the impacts fracking is having on drinking water, clean air, and farmland. To […]
Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican Member of Congress who’s running for President, vows she’ll cripple the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if she’s elected. Maybe if she spent a week in China like I recently did, she’d change her mind. I’ve just returned from a seven-day trip to Beijing, China’s capital, and Xi’an, the country’s cultural […]
The French Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to ban fracking, a toxic way to extract natural gas from rock thousands of feet below ground and pollutes groundwater and sickens people and animals in the process. The state of New Jersey is the only state to ban fracking in the U.S., though the process is underway in […]
I don’t like to exaggerate the impacts of the many environmental issues we face. But it’s impossible to overstate how dangerous fracking is. Fracking stands for “hydraulic fracturing,” a highly polluting process for tapping underground pools of natural gas. It involves drilling a hole a mile deep and thousands of feet long, then pumping down […]
The current debate about health care seems seriously lacking in one important way: there’s no focus on the environmental problems that make so many of us sick. Just scan the front pages of this week’s New York Times if you need to be convinced. “Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells,” documents instances of children contracting […]
Did you make a cup of tea or throw in a load of laundry before starting to read this post? You probably could have, given the easy acess most of us have to clean water. One person of every three on the planet today isn’t nearly so fortunate, according to the International Water Management Institute, […]
