Winter 2002

The US Department of the Interior is set to decide by November 1 whether to reverse a Clinton-era denial of geothermal development in the Medicine Lake Highlands, a caldera sacred to the Modoc, Shasta, Pit River and other Native American tribes.

Student activists say they are ready to apply “political pressure,” including civil disobedience, to stop the University of California Berkeley from paving over Albany’s Gill Tract, the largest piece of undeveloped agricultural land in the urban San Francisco Bay Area.

A little more than a year ago, “Remedy” — she uses a pseudonym to elude being served with a civil lawsuit for trespassing — was working in a bookstore in Olympia, Washington. That September, she took a nine-day vacation to California’s Humboldt County to raise her awareness about logging issues.

What happens when a catastrophe destroys your home? A fire, an earthquake, maybe even a war rips through your living room, tears your walls down and leaves a crumbled heap of drywall, rebar, and debris. If you survived, you’d probably move, find a new home and start over.

Environmentalists often talk in terms of “stewardship,” “protection,” and “defense” as if we are guardians of a child. Certainly there is a dire need to protect environments everywhere.