environment

George W. Bush sets new goals for U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.

With a few choice puffs of presidential CO2 in the Rose Garden yesterday afternoon, President Bush extinguished any hopes that environmentalists may have had for a meaningful shift in his climate change policies. The president committed the United States to stopping the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. A decade ago, the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol, agreeing to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels between 2008-2012. You don't need a Harvard MBA to recognize that, compared with the second goal, the first is a walk in the park. Our greenhouse-gas emissions in 2006, for example, were about 15 percent higher than in 1990.

Everyday products, from baby-bottles to beer, contain particles manipulated by unregulated and potentially dangerous nanotechnology, according to a new report by Friends of the Earth.

The report, "Out of the Laboratory and On To Our Plates," identifies 104 products -- like Miller beer brands, Baby Dream's "Nano Silver" milk bottle, and Samsung refrigerators -- with particles artificially manipulated at the atomic level. Nanoparticles are more chemically reactive than their larger counterparts, can be more toxic to human cells, and can more easily invade our tissues and organs. The authors advocate a moratorium until governments test their safety -- and, perhaps more critically, require companies to label products that contain them. MORE

Eight states have been hashing out a compact governing the use and protection of water from the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes hold almost a quarter of the world's fresh surface water and supply drinking water to some 30 million people, making them a natural flash point for water disputes. This compact originated in 1999, when the U.S. states - confronted by a Canadian company's proposal to fill tankers with Lake Ontario water and ship it off to Asia - decided to make sure they presented a united front against threats to their most precious natural resource. MORE