Canada’s Tar Sands Are Dirty, Dangerous … and Managed by Awfully Nice Folks. Does that Make them Ethically Just?
Jason Mark
Feature Articles
Not a Pretty Picture
More than 500 cosmetics sold in the United States contain chemicals banned from beauty products in Europe, Canada, and Japan. A proposed law aims to change that.
Noelle Robbins
Riding the Long Wave
A writer paddles the Salish Sea and ponders the impacts of our society’s short attention span.
Kurt Hoelting
Tunnel Vision
Oil companies are determined to build two massive new pipelines to transport crude from the tar sands. Local activists, concerned about spills and water quality, have geared up to fight them.
To Our Readers
Don’t Blame Canada
I’ve always been surprised that so many environmentalists, typically found on the political left, are such stalwart believers in the conservative doctrine of supply-side economics.
For proof,...
Earth Island Reports
Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters: Spring 2011
Save the Whales! … And the Frogs and Fish!
Sacred Land Film Project: Spring 2011
Notes from Hallowed Ground
International Marine Mammal Project: Spring 2011
Sting Supports the Dolphins
Brower Youth Awards: Spring 2011
New Book Offers a Roadmap for Change Makers
Information Recycled, Reused, and Improved
Project Report: Plastic Pollution Coalition
Serengeti Watch: Spring 2011
Safeguarding the Great Migration
New Projects: Spring 2011
Earth Island Institute welcomes two more new projects to our ever-growing family.
Changing Gears Bike ShopChanging Gears offers used bicycle sales, full-service repairs, paid job training for forme...
1000 Words
Chris Jordan
Running the Numbers
Reportage
Fighting Spirit
Given the threat they pose to regional water and air quality and their especially heavy carbon footprint, the tar sands mines have attracted the ire of a broad range of environmental groups. ForestEth...
After the Gold Rush?
The newest outpost of the global petroleum race is not far from the middle of nowhere. Two hours north of Edmonton the ranches and farms suddenly surrender to the vastness of Canada’s boreal for...
New Frontiers for Black Gold
Extracting oil from tar sands is technically difficult, environmentally destructive, and expensive. It’s also lucrative. No surprise, then, that countries around the world are sizing up their ow...
Caution: Wide Load
For more than 40 years, Linwood Laughy and his wife Borg Hendrickson have lived on Highway 12, two miles from Kooskia, Idaho, the last stop on the two-lane highway before it winds deep into the Clearw...
Conversation
Janine Benyus
In the 1990s, Janine Benyus, a natural sciences writer and the author of several wilderness guides, began to pay close attention to how various organisms adapted to the ecosystems around them. That le...
In Review
Drowning Academic Freedom
Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story Written, Produced, and Directed by Larkin McPhee
Movements Beyond Movements
Journal Bookshelf
Can’t Find My Way Home
You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall by Colin Ellard 336 pages, Doubleday, 2009
A Child of Dystopia Reads Ecotopia
Ecotopia: The Novel of Your Future by Ernest Callenbach 181 pages, Bantam New Age Book, 1975
Voices
Still Crazy After All These Years
It was 35 years ago that I learned, first-hand, about the negative externalities of American driving. My friend and boss, Lonnie Light, and I were working in the West Texas oil patch when we had to go...
Talking Points
Local News from All Over: Spring 2011
Around the World
Notes from a Warming World: Spring 2011
Temperature Gauge
Fluoride, Toothpaste and the A-Bomb
Pollution, Pollution,
You can use the latest toothpaste
And then wash out your mouth
With industrial waste.
When Harvard professor and humorist Tom Lehrer penned those lines in 1965, he proba...
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Gas Attack? … Or Friendly Fire?
At first, some environmentalists saw the natural gas boom as a way to promote a relatively carbon-light “bridge fuel” that would take us from dirty coal to clean renewables. Then concerns ...
Ally Renewables with Natural Gas
Richard Ward is director of energy initiatives at the Aspen Science Center and senior energy advisor to the UN Foundation’s Energy Future Coalition. Ward was previously with Royal Dutch Shell, w...
Natural Gas: A Bridge to Nowhere
As program director at Rainforest Action Network, Jennifer Krill helped lead campaigns to protect old growth forests and break America’s oil addiction. She is currently the executive director of...