Showing 60 results
Robert Verchick | June 12, 2011
Copenhagen—Denmark’s famed “Little Harbor Lady,” or in English, “Little Mermaid,” has had her share of antics and perils. She’s been photographed by millions in Copenhagen’s harbor, carted off and shown at the 2010 World Fair in Shanghai, beheaded (several times), dynamited, splashed with pink paint, and enveloped in a Burqua. An environmental nerd for all […]
Robert Verchick | June 5, 2011
Bonn–At a climate conference in Germany, with lager in hand, I was prepared to ponder nearly any environmental insult or failure. But rat pee? Really? The urine of rats, as it turns out, is known to transmit the leptospirosis bacteria which can lead to high fever, bad headaches, vomiting, and diarrhea. During summer rainstorms in São Paulo, Brazil, […]
Robert Verchick | February 21, 2011
If you’ve ever visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—one of the most visited national parks in the United States—you have Horace Kephart and George Masa to thank. These two men, the first a travel writer, the second a landscape photographer from Osaka, Japan, each settled among those six-thousand foot peaks with intentions of starting a […]
Robert Verchick | July 21, 2009
A new report from the National Research Council on Friday slams a long-delayed Army Corps of Engineers hurricane protection study, saying it fails to recommend a unified, comprehensive long-term plan for protecting New Orleans and the Louisiana coast. You know the story: as Hurricane Katrina swept across New Orleans, the city’s levee system broke apart […]
Robert Verchick | February 9, 2009
About thirty miles from my front door, heavy barges are dumping rocks into Louisiana’s Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO), hoping to permanently plug the de-commissioned shipping channel before the end of the next hurricane season. It’s a big plug. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that the structure will weigh 430,000 tons, “with a base 450 feet […]
Robert Verchick | November 13, 2008
President-Elect Obama has promised to support spending $150 billion over 10 years to create 5 million new “green collar jobs.” If allocated correctly, these jobs could jump-start the economies of urban neighborhoods and pockets of rural poverty. Imagine a country where a new generation of workers earns good wages and benefits— even saving for the […]