Who wants a drumstick? The six-foot-tall phorusrhacos longissimus roamed what is now Argentina during the Middle Miocene.
People often talk as if warming temperatures are the only evidence of human-induced global climate change. But the amount of carbon dioxide in the…
Water skiing on the Mississippi River
It takes more than 200 pages of dense, legalistic language to detail the intricacies of the federal Clean Water Act. But the bottom line is simple: Federal and state governments must protect lakes, streams and…
R.J. Matson/Post-Dispatch
The Doe Run Company has been operating a giant lead smelter in Herculaneum for decades. For just as long, elevated lead levels have been found in people, properties and roads around it.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Missouri Department…
A home destroyed by beach erosion in the Alaskan village of Shishmaref. It was evacuated because of global warming.
When President Barack Obama was in Copenhagen on Oct. 2, he was trying to attract an Olympic Games for Chicago.
Next time, he…
This is no way to collect biogas.
About 2 million tons of trash is generated in the St. Louis region each year. Half winds up in landfills. Those landfills could be our own miniature Saudi Arabias.
Buried deep within those landfills are piles of…
Close up view of a Chinese mystery snail.
As threats go, being overrun by an invasive snail species is about as frightening as, say, being run over by a glacier.
But that — the snail invasion, not the runaway glacier — is…
General Electric ran TV commercial a few years back in which a young executive pitches improved energy efficiency to his corporate board.
“Why should we care about this stuff,” his boss demands.
“Because it can save us 40 percent on our energy…
Remember all that talk about how global warming was going to change our lives? It already has.
A new federal report on the impact of climate change condenses the latest science from a variety of disciplines. Among the findings:
• Heavy downpours are…
A Tennessee valley flooded by toxic coal ash.
More than 1.3 million tons of toxic coal ash sludge are stored in ponds and landfills at Missouri and Illinois power plants. About 300 similar sites are located across the country. Federal environmental…
The tough new emissions and mileage standards announced by the White House on Tuesday are a major step forward for automakers and the planet.
The new standards will significantly reduce the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from cars at a time when…
Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond is saying “green” jobs are too expensive, according to this story from Bill Lambrecht in our Washington bureau. Mr. Lambrecht reports:
“Green jobs are not so much created as they are bought with massive taxpayers subsidies,” Bond said…
It’s Earth Day today, as we note in an editorial and a commentary today. Both pieces note how far we have to go as a society to become better stewards of the Earth. U.S. News and World Report had a neat list of 10…
Today is Earth Day. But you already knew that.
You knew it because Earth Day has become Earth Week — a hybrid of selfless environmental activism and shameless marketing opportunism. If the original was a media sensation, this latest version is an…
Each year, U.S. power plants generate enough coal ash to fill 1 million railroad cars. It contains toxic metals — including arsenic, lead, selenium and mercury — that can cause cancer and other serious health problems.
Individually, each of those toxins…
President George W. Bush has protected three Pacific Ocean areas as marine national monument areas Tuesday. The three areas, a combined almost 200,000 square miles, are:
• Rose Atoll, a pink coral near American Samoa.
• The Marianas Marine National Monument, the three…
The Associated Press is reporting this afternoon that President George W. Bush is issuing rules changes that diminish the scope of the Endangered Species Act. The rules reduce the input of scientists, eliminate some mandatory reviews and prevent the ESA from…
Post-Dispatch photo by Robert Cohen
Nine Days before the Feb. 5 presidential primaries in Missouri and Illinois, this editorial page endorsed Barack Obama and John McCain in their respective races.
We did so enthusiastically. We wrote that either Mr. Obama’s message of…
Let’s face it, the Endangered Species Act can create quite a burden. If your goal is to build dams or open federal land to mining, logging and oil drilling, all those threatened animals and plants just get in the way.
Congress…
An article in Popular Mechanics discusses a project by Saint Louis University earth scientists that uses advanced 3-dimensional mapping technology to create simulated flood plains using detailed topographical, photographic, and imaging data.
These digital models can mitigate the damage done by the next big flood…
