Tag / Environment

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  • Boundless Bodies: Toxic Chemicals in Everyday Places

    A woman loses both her legs in the aftermath of tampon-induced Toxic Shock Syndrome. A child suffers brain damage years after innocently biting a lead-painted toy. A man spends nineteen days on a ventilator after waterproofing his boots. We hear these stories on the news, but quickly tune them out. Our apathetic attitudes seem rational.…

  • The Newest Migrant of the Seas

    Many people complain that the news is garbage. But for more than six months in 1987, it actually was. We’re talking real garbage. Trash. Waste. More than 3,150 tons of it, all on one barge—the Mobro 4000. An almost-bankrupt Alabama businessman, wary that one New York town’s landfill was almost full, suggested its trash be…

  • Free Market Environmentalism

    “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” President Obama stated during his State of the Union address. It would be easy to dismiss the President’s words as banal and empty platitudes were it not for the landmark agreement he made in November with President Xi Jinping of China, which stipulated…

  • The Activist Ego Chamber

    BY RAJA KRISHNA On a cloudy Friday morning in early May, seven Washington University students were arrested for trying to enter a board of trustees meeting. The “Wash. U. Seven,” as they started calling themselves, say they wanted to deliver a letter to CEO of Peabody Energy Greg Boyce, a member of the board and…

  • White Man’s Burden 2.0

    BY GABE RUBIN Sebastião Salgado has a bit of a primitivist fetish. In his latest project, an expansive installation at Madrid’s Caixa Forum, the celebrated photojournalist tries to capture the Earth’s most breathtaking landscapes in places like the Sandwich Islands and the Amazon in order to draw attention to their fragility and impending destruction. Given…

  • Urban Forestry: What’s That About?

    BY EMILY ORR What if I told you a means exists to simultaneously boost a city’s economy, increase public safety, and provide substantial health and environmental benefits? Would you believe me? What if I told you that this means is as simple and cheap as planting a tree? Planting trees, or “urban tree projects,” has…

  • The Break Up

    On Wednesday, November 2nd and Friday, November 4th, WashU students held events entitled “Break up with BofA,” encouraging students to get out of what they called an “unhealthy relationship” with Bank of America. The protests were led by a student from “Occupy WashU” and, for some reason, by members of Green Action.  The flyers passed…