Environment

How We Almost Blew Up Ohio

Nuclear regulators blame plant employees for a near miss at Davis-Besse power station. Maybe it's the regulators we should be worried about.

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| Mon Apr. 28, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Pro Nuke? Anti Nuke? An Online Conversation With The Experts

Does nuclear energy have its place? Talk about it on the Blue Marble blog this week with guest moderators Stewart Brand, Judith Lewis, Jonas Siegel, and Harvey Wasserman.

Mon Apr. 28, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Nuke vs. Solar: The Carbon Calculus

How life-cycle emissions stack up for various fuels—plus, the nuclear breakdown

Mon Apr. 28, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Nuclear's Lucky Number

Six federal subsidies powering an atomic revival in the United States

Mon Apr. 28, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

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Slow Train to Yucca Mountain

Will America's nuclear waste repository ever open, and, more important: should it?

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| Mon Apr. 28, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

MoJo Convo: Nuclear Energy

We asked a futurist, a MoJo writer, a No Nukes activist, and a weapons security expert: What is nuclear energy's...

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| Sun Apr. 27, 2008 9:22 PM PDT

The Problem With Nuclear: No Uranium

Nuclear foes have long cited environmental damage as a key reason to oppose atomic power. But even pro-nukes folks may have trouble supporting nuclear power in the future, since a new report shows that high-grade uranium ore, the raw material that powers nuclear plants, is steadily declining worldwide. In fact, uranium supplies have been waning for about 50 years and the situation will only...

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| Fri Apr. 25, 2008 3:09 PM PDT

Will Low-Carbon Diets Catch On?

Britain's largest food retailer, Tesco, says it's going to start putting carbon footprint labels on food in its stores next month. Although the "carbon labels" will only be on food produced under Tesco's own brand name, it will be the first time a major food retailer has made such a move. Tesco worked with the Carbon Trust to find a way to calculate foods'...

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| Wed Apr. 23, 2008 10:20 AM PDT

Earth Day's Shame: Eco-Barbie

When I first saw the press release about a "green" Mattel collection of accessories called Barbie BCause, I thought it...

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| Tue Apr. 22, 2008 5:03 PM PDT

Food Miles & Your Carbon Footprint

The number of miles your food travels from farm to plate makes a difference in your personal climate-change footprint. But not as much as eating red meat and dairy, which are responsible for nearly half of all food-related greenhouse gas emissions for an average U.S. household. New research published in Environmental Science & Technology finds it's how food is produced, not how far...

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| Mon Apr. 21, 2008 7:57 PM PDT
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The Coal Miner's Granddaughter

Meet the self-proclaimed Appalachian redneck fighting for the children in coal mining country.

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| Fri Apr. 18, 2008 1:35 PM PDT

The Future of Energy: Resources

Learn more about the challenges ahead, and about how you can contribute to an energy-smart future.

Thu Apr. 17, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Bright Ideas

It's going to take a lot more than changing lightbulbs to get us on the path to sustainability. We investigate the options (solar? nuclear? cow poop?), what's hype, and what's really happening.

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| Thu Apr. 17, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

How Fishing Screws With Ecosystems

Fishing provokes volatile fluctuations in the targeted populations, though no one really knows why or how. Until now. Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography have found that current methods of fishing decapitate the "age pyramid:" lopping off the few large, older fish who make up the top of the pyramid and leaving a broad base of faster growing small fish. This rapidly growing...

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| Wed Apr. 16, 2008 7:06 PM PDT

Some Corals Survived A-Bombs, Others Didn't

Fifty years ago the last atomic bomb test shook the Pacific's Bikini Atoll. Now corals are flourishing here again—though with 42 fewer species than prior to the bomb blasts. At least 28 of the missing corals appear to be genuine local extinctions, victims of the 23 bombs exploded at Bikini between 1946 and 1958. An international team has been surveying biodiversity at the...

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| Tue Apr. 15, 2008 5:17 PM PDT

Half Australia's Shorebirds Gone, Cambodia's Recovering

First the good news. Storks, pelicans, ibises, and other rare waterbirds from Cambodia's famed Tonle Sap region are making a comeback. Some of the waterbird species have rebounded 20-fold since 2001. That's when the Wildlife Conservation Society partnered with the Ministry of Environment of the Royal Government of Cambodia to employ former hunters and egg poachers as round-the-clock park rangers to monitor the...

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| Mon Apr. 14, 2008 11:56 PM PDT
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Louisiana's Mulch Madness

Cypress forests are the state's best defense against hurricanes. So why are loggers clear-cutting the last trees?

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| Sun Apr. 13, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Oil Trumps Whales

Northern right whale with calf, Eubalaena glacialis. Photo: Georgia Department of Natural Resources The Bush administration wants to open 5.6 million acres in the Bering Sea off Alaska to oil and gas leasing, including an area north of the Aleutian Islands near Bristol Bay designated critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale. The proposal was published in Tuesday's Federal Register by the...

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| Sat Apr. 12, 2008 12:18 PM PDT

Lock Up CO2 In DVDs

Here's an idea. Carbon dioxide removed from smokestack emissions could become a valuable raw material for the production of polycarbonate plastics in eyeglass lenses, car headlamps, DVDs, CDs, and drink bottles. The processes involved would offer less expensive, safer and greener products, researchers suggested in two separate reports presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. "Carbon dioxide is readily available,...

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| Thu Apr. 10, 2008 7:26 PM PDT

Flower Scent Destroyed by Air Pollution

Air pollution is destroying the fragrance of flowers and preventing pollinating insects from following scent trails to their source. The research from the University of Virginia indicates that power plants and automobiles are behind at least some of the decline of wild pollinators, like bees. According to Jose Fuentes, co-author of the study, the scent molecules produced by flowers in the less polluted...

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| Thu Apr. 10, 2008 6:16 PM PDT