Explore Publications

In the summer of 1997, Tyrone Hayes, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, accepted what seemed a harmless offer to join a panel of eight other scientists investigating the safety of the common weed-killer atrazine. The panel had been commissioned by atrazine's inventor and primary manufacturer, the Swiss-based chemical giant then called Novartis and since renamed Syngenta. The company wanted to know if its product threatened "non-target" organisms, including fish, reptiles, and amphibians-creatures whose fate had remained largely unexplored through the half century in which atrazine had become the most heavily used herbicide in the United States as well as one of its most widespread environmental contaminants.

A former ad exec only now realizes "Beyond Petroleum" is just an oily smokescreen.

Stock in International Coal Group Inc. slipped on Thursday, a day after the company was sued by the lone survivor of the mine disaster that killed 12 men at its Sago coal mine in West Virginia.

Techint, the Argentine company that built the Camisea pipeline which carries natural gas from Peru's Amazon jungle region to a port on the country's Pacific coast, used unqualified welders, in a clear violation of international norms, according to a new report by E-Tech, a California-based non-profit engineering and environmental consultancy firm.

For years, most industry groups have fought any effort to limit carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming, warning of dire consequences for the U.S. economy. But with growing public anxiety about climate change, major corporations are increasingly preparing for -- and, in some cases, lobbying for -- Congress to regulate emissions of heat-trapping gases.

How big a problem is the growing influence of the bipartisan Beltway Party? Details on this can be found in a report from the Real News Project. RealNews examined the track records of prominent Washington Democrats, consultants, advertising and public relations executives, lobbyists, attorneys and the like who have close connections to the top circles of their party. Many of them served in the Clinton-Gore White House, and many of them will likely be tapped should a Democrat be elected in 2008 and have considerable influence in a future Democratic-controlled Congress.

An former advertising executive realizes he created one of the greatest greenwashing campaigns of all time.

North Slope operations -- like oil production facilities everywhere -- release into the air a steady stream of pollutants and greenhouse gases, spewed by vehicles, power generators and the drilling process itself. Estimates vary, but the North Slope oil fields probably produce more smog-forming nitrogen oxides than Washington, D.C., and more carbon dioxide than San Francisco.

Entergy New Orleans customers are paying nearly a third more for their power bills than they were last year, and a further proposed rate increase could mean bills will be 50 percent higher than before Hurricane Katrina.

Entergy is one of the largest and most profitable private utilities in America. But it still wants Katrina victims to pay the price of doing business.