Environmental Issues and Protection

Forest Service Inflamed By Brooklyn Anti-Fracking Artist's Smokey the Bear

Brooklyn-based artist and environmental activist Lopi LaRoe sees Smokey the Bear as a friend. As a kid raised by environmentalists, she grew up with him, she says, and feels a particular connection to the affable, but informative cultural touchstone invented by the US Forest Service in 1944. "So I t ... More >>

EPA Grants New York $340 Million To Clean Up Sandy's Watery Mess

When President Obama signed the $60 billion Sandy relief package into law back in February, the monies were given specific designations to where and what it would be spent on. The Environmental Protection Agency had claim to the post-Sandy environmental damages. As a result, the bill outsourced the ... More >>

A Fierce Green Fire Burns Unevenly

Will a New High-Pressure Gas Line Help New Yorkers—Or Blow Them Up?

Pipe Bomb

The Gowanus Canal Cleanup Will Cost Half a Billion Dollars

The Environmental Protection Agency released its plan for cleaning up the Gowanus Canal Superfund site yesterday, and as expected, the process is going to be complicated, time-consuming, and mind-bogglingly expensive. Since its completion in the 1860s, the Gowanus has been the home of virtually eve ... More >>

Climate Change Activists Project Hurricane Sandy Images Onto Gas Station

The Exxon Mobil station on 2nd Street and Avenue C became an impromptu movie theater last night, as a coalition of climate-change activists projected a short film about Hurricane Sandy recovery onto the wall above it. Josh Fox, one of the filmmakers behind the anti-fracking film Gasland, shot the 2 ... More >>

HELL ON WHEELS

Go biking with ghouls

Q and A: Michael Lemonick On Global Weirdness, Climate Change, And How To Talk About Science

Michael Lemonick is a former senior science writer at Time Magazine, the senior staff writer at Climate Central, and the lead author of Global Weirdness, a new book that attempts to lay out, in simple terms, what scientists do and don't know about climate change. We spoke with him this week about c ... More >>

Yoko Ono And Sean Lennon Rewrite "The Times They Are a-Changin'" To Protest Fracking; Rock And Roll Officially Dead

Rock and roll, 62-ish, died Friday at 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan after a courageous battle with poor taste. At the time of its death, rock and roll was surrounded by friends, family, and comedian Jimmy Fallon, as Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon -- the former wife and son (respectively) of Beatle Jo ... More >>

South Bronxites Sue FreshDirect, City For Ducking Asthma Risk Study

When the city Industrial Development Agency voted back in February to give FreshDirect $128 million in tax breaks and other goodies to move their shipping headquarters from Queens to the Bronx, local residents who were peeved at the prospect of a fleet of produce-laden trucks idling all night -- in ... More >>

Can The Department of Environmental Conservation Handle Fracking Comments?

And now it's time for another fracking story! At the Voice, we have been keeping up with hydraulic fracturing developments in New York and the rest of the U.S. As the Empire State weighs whether to lift a drilling moratorium, part of that process was the public commentary period. A few months bac ... More >>

Fracking Dangers: Does Hydraulic Fracturing Cause Deadly Lung Disease?

As fracking spreads across the Marcellus shale formation and the rest of America with the White House's support, a government researcher has announced today that sand dust emitted during hydraulic fracturing might be one "of the most dangerous threats to workers." Citing a National Institute for Oc ... More >>

Lights Off for Earth Hour? Rightbloggers Leave Lights On, Declare Victory Over So-Called "Environment"

Conservatism is making a big comeback, folks. The proof? The tremendous success of Human Achievement Hour on Saturday. What, you never heard of it? Well, you've heard of Earth Hour, right? That thing where all the stupid hippies turned their lights off for an hour to celebrate their precious, so-ca ... More >>

Gross Gowanus Canal: Cleanup Conversations Continue

​The Gowanus Canal, which has the unique honor(?) of being one of the few water bodies in America that can kill a baby whale, might soon lose its century-old street cred as a cesspool for industrial waste. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency met with area residents and shared its ... More >>

There's a Lot of Trash in Williamsburg and Greenpoint

​Two neighborhoods in New York City are trashier than ever, at least, in a manner of speaking. According to a new study released today, there are more garbage trucks in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where 19 of New York City's 58 waste transfer stations are located -- "362 trucks per hour at si ... More >>

Meat Eater's Guide Reveals Carbon Footprint of Your Steak, Chicken, Cheese Platter

How is eating meat like driving? This handy graphic says it all.​ Did you know that eating cheese is worse for the environment than eating pork? And eating fish is less eco-friendly than eating chicken? (Sorry, pescatarians and dairy-friendly vegetarians.) Learn more fun facts about the carbon ... More >>

Motorcycle Crackdown in Northern Manhattan

​Watch your bikes. Cops are cracking down on illegal, "dangerous" motorcycles "common in Northern Manhattan," says the NYPD. Twelve such motorcycles were seized over the weekend for being unregistered, uninsured, altered illegally, or part of the problem of noise pollution and generally hazard ... More >>

Rightbloggers Counter Eco-Nazis' "Earth Hour" by Patriotically Wasting Electricity

This weekend, an unknown number of people worldwide participated in the fifth annual "Earth Hour" sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. They turned off electricity to "take a stand against climate change." Landmarks were dimmed, but the effect on either energy consumption or awareness is unknown an ... More >>

Earth Hour Is Tonight

​Tonight, New York will join a host of international cities observing Earth Hour by shutting off the lights in a bunch of landmark buildings. This includes the Empire State Building, the U.N. headquarters, the New York Public Library, and a whole bunch of others, including some signs in Times Squa ... More >>

Kurt Vonnegut Tries to Spoil Earth Day

​Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives. April 30, 1970, Vol. XV, No. 18 Vonnegut & Earth Day by Anna Mayo It was the night before Earth Day. Kurt Vonnegut, set off by the ambience of the Algonquin Hotel, looked more like Mark Twain than Hal Holbrook. He was talking about th ... More >>

Mayor Bloomberg Toys With Charging for Trash Collection, Nothing is Off Limits

​Budget cuts: necessary stink, but potentially smellier if trash collection moves up on Bloomberg's agenda to get our city back in the black. At a recent press conference, the mayor mentioned possibly charging residents for garbage collection as the city already does for restaurants and busine ... More >>

Katie Couric's Weather Report: All Wet (When It Comes to Climate Change)

Couric: Partly cloudyOn Monday night, Katie Couric swung from CBS's coverage of the oil spill to the Tennessee floods by saying she was moving "from a man-made disaster to a natural one." That's one big and unproven assumption. How does Couric know that the worst Tennessee flooding in history has no ... More >>

Otarian's Radhika Oswal Tells Us About Low-Carbon Eating, and About Her Own Apparently Large Carbon Footprint

David Adams/news.com.auOtarian's founder, Radhika Oswal.​Back in February, we noted that New York seemed to be experiencing a rise in vegetarian and/or vegan fast-food dining outlets. Among their ranks was Otarian, a new chain whose food was purportedly "based on the principles of vegetarianis ... More >>

TU B’SHEVAT SHABBAT WITH JEWISH NATIONAL FUND

SOUND OF MELTING ICE

DJ Spooky gives a voice to Arctic glaciers

No Impact Man Tests Limits of Man's Carbon Footprint, Wife's Patience

Earth Days Revisits Environmentalism's Early Years

The Starting Line

At Baruch, campus entrepreneurs scratch their itch to get businesses off the ground

Truth Out

Sick of being lied to by the EPA, 9-11 plaintiffs use the courts to force the answers they seek

EPA Screws New York

New plan for cleaning up 9-11 toxins worse than the old one

Still Dusted

Clinton, Nadler call for investigation of EPA response to 9-11

Polar Eclipse

Hey, remember when climate change was a swell idea? Coconuts were in the offing.

Bush's Mandate From Above

Asthma Goes Rural, Thanks to Amnesty for Polluters

Spoon-Feeding Poison

EPA Opens the Door to Testing Bug Killers on People

Leaving a Mess in Mesopotamia

Long-Term Damage From a Short-Term War

Bio-Whatchamacallit

Tom Ridge's 'Crazy' Plan to Watch the Sky for Spores

Nation

The Unkindest Cuts

Lost Jobs Tough to Recycle

The Dust May Never Settle

How Dangerous Was That Dark Cloud Hanging Over Manhattan?

Mutant Malathion

How New York’s Mosquito-Spray Campaign Spawned a Deadly Neurotoxin

Prez Wakes Up in Wonderful World

Friends and Foes Hail Bush, the Conquering Hero

Power Mad

The Anti-Pollution Fight Heats Up in Williamsburg

Shock Corridor

How a Long-Dormant Law Could Spark a Hudson Valley Power Plant Boom

Eco Action

Partial Victory for Dissident NYC Sierra Club Group

Wood You Believe This?

City Still Using Tropical Trees for Benches

Erode to Knowledge

The Green Menace

Greenwash