Wednesday, 13 Jul 2005

A lawn time ago, in a cul-de-sac far, far away, a rebellion took hold. A brave band of fume-addled homeowners turned off their gasoline-powered mowers, coughed twice, and sputtered, "There must be a better way." Well, friends, they were right. There is a better way. And it's taking hold across the nation. OK, not really, but if Umbra had anything to say about it, gas-fueled lawn care would be a thing of the past. Find out what she recommends instead.

Exx Marks the Boycott

Activists kick off big boycott of ExxonMobil

Spelling-impaired activists at Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, MoveOn.org, and nine other enviro and progressive groups have launched a nationwide "Exxpose Exxon" consumer boycott campaign. While the coalition doesn't expect to have a big impact on ExxonMobil's bottom line, it hopes to change the public's perception of the world's largest publicly traded oil company and pressure it into good, green corporate citizenship -- investing in clean energy, supporting mandatory greenhouse-gas emissions caps, and backing off from its aim to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "On Arctic drilling and global warming, they are the worst of the worst," said Athan Manuel of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. ExxonMobil also has yet to pay several billion dollars in punitive damages stemming from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.


The mighty Mississippi is known as many things: a trade route, a literary setting, a wicked hard word for kids to spell. In its lower reaches, the river basin has also become a prime spot for industry to set up shop and spew toxins -- a trend that has earned one part of Louisiana the nickname "Cancer Alley." In the new book Diamond, author and activist Steve Lerner tells the story of one town there and its years-long struggle against mega-polluter Shell Chemicals. Reviewer Julie Sze gives the lowdown on the battle and the book.

Beyond the Pail

Dealing with big-city garbage is big business for small towns

As landfills top off and shut down near big U.S. cities, taking in the trash is becoming a profitable enterprise for smaller towns hundreds of miles away from metropolises. Despite local concerns that landfills may cause long-term environmental problems, trash-industry execs insist communities are taking few risks when they accept big-city garbage. And many municipalities welcome the revenue. "We're rich," says a supervisor of Fox Township, Penn. (pop. under 4,000), which takes in 1,300 of the 50,000 tons of garbage exported every day from New York City -- and has millions of dollars in the bank as a result. Nearly a quarter of all municipal trash crossed state lines on its way to a final dumping ground in 2003, according to the Congressional Research Service, and the number of states importing at least one million tons of trash a year increased from two in 2001 to 10 in 2003.

One Tree Shill

Sierra Club touts new Ford hybrid SUV

The Sierra Club has long criticized Ford Motor Co. for its environmental offenses, primarily the industry-worst average fuel economy of its fleet. So members may be surprised when Ford's hybrid Mercury Mariner SUV is prominently featured in an upcoming club newsletter and on SierraClub.org. When the green group first offered to promote a Ford hybrid SUV last year, the company turned it away, but now -- thanks to intervention from CEO Bill Ford -- it is welcoming the opportunity to buff its battered green image. Ford, claims the club, deserves credit for becoming the third global automaker to offer a hybrid vehicle. Other activist groups aren't so complimentary. Ford's actions are encouraging, says Rainforest Action Network's Michael Brune, but "the production levels [for its hybrid SUV] are so low that it will have no measurable impact on Ford's bottom-of-the-barrel fleet-wide fuel efficiency or off-the-charts greenhouse-gas emissions."