On:

Rachel Carson wrote the book “Silent Spring” years ago to warn that the use of the pesticide DDT was killing America?s songbirds. Now our birds have another enemy: herbicide-tolerant genetically-modified crops. These crops enable farmers to spray herbicides on their fields to get rid of the weeds, without killing their crops. However, a decline in weeds means a decline in the seeds those weeds produce?many of which are the staple food for bird populations. Birds and butterflies don?t like the kind of plants we eat?they like things like milkweed, which is the main diet of Monarch butterflies. If we get rid of the weeds, we?ll leave them nothing to eat.
read more

On:

Horror stories about the raging wildfires in Colorado and Arizona have been on the front pages of our newspapers every day for the past few months. But another major fire, burning in Georgia, has been ignored by the media.

Fires just as large as the ones in the West have been burning for 3 months in Georgia’s 396,000 acre Okefenokee Swamp, causing layers of smoke to pollute the air over Florida, Alabama and South Carolina. So far, more than 124,000 acres have burned since March, which is equivalent to the wildfires in Arizona and Colorado. But the Georgia fires have been confined mostly to the uninhabited swamp, meaning no houses burned and no one had to be evacuated.
read more

On:

As wary as we are about genetically-modified food, we?re tempted to succumb when new products are created that improve our personal lives, instead of simply making things easier for huge farming conglomerates. Perhaps GM companies will try to win us over to their side by seducing us with some of their new inventions.

One of these new products may be the genetically-modified ?spidergoat.? Scientists at the Canadian company Nexia have figured out how to combine the DNA from a goat and a spider to create a goat which produces silk that is five times stronger than steel. The fiber will be spun from the their milk, since science is not yet up to creating spinnerets on the stomachs of goats.
read more

On:

As wildfires engulf large parts of Arizona and Colorado, firefighters are searching desperately for a new way to fight them. It?s dangerous for fighters to get in front of the flames, so they end up fighting the fire from behind, desperately trying to put out as much of it as possible and feeling helpless as they see it take a new path.

They might be able to head it off if they could dump water on it from the air. They do some of this, but the amount that can be dropped is so small, it?s like pouring a thimble of water on a bonfire. Also, drop planes have to fly low and close the fire, or else the water they drop will evaporate before it reaches the ground. This is dangerous work, and lives have been lost this way.
read more