Peter Montague

  • The coal industry\'s ace in the hole

    The coal industry is planning to replace oil by turning coal into liquid fuels and into feedstocks for the chemical industry. Of course they are also planning to burn ever-more coal to produce electricity. If these plans materialise, green chemistry and renewable solar energy will both be sidelined for the rest of this century.

  • United States: A rocky start for 'clean coal'

    The US Department of Energy announced January 30 that it is pulling out of the Futuregen Project in Mattoon, Illinois — the United States’ US$1.8 billion “clean coal” demonstration plant, scheduled to start construction next year. The DoE had committed to paying 74% ($1.3 billion) of Futuregen’s costs.

  • Chlorine can be a killer

    Several new studies have implicated chlorinated chemicals in human disease, including breast cancer and tooth decay. Chlorine chemistry is the premier example of humans adopting a new technology without thinking about the

  • US has another kind of drug problem

    A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 1998 estimated that adverse reactions to prescription drugs kill about 106,000 people in the USA each year — roughly three times as many as are killed by

  • Seeds of destruction

    The New York Times in October ran "Playing God in the Garden" by Michael Pollan. It explains why many people in the US are already eating genetically engineered foods like corn and potatoes without knowing it, and why there is a

  • Another pesticide surprise

    The decline and disappearance of frog populations worldwide remains a mystery, despite efforts by hundreds of scientists to determine the causes. The other major problem facing frogs — massive deformities observed since 1995 in

  • Democracy and the environment

    The environmental movement is treading water and slowly drowning. There is abundant evidence that our efforts — and they have been formidable, even heroic — have largely failed. After 30 years of exceedingly hard work and

  • Study finds worrying environmental trends

    Starting in the 1950s, awareness of environmental destruction developed slowly in the US. Various events slowly shook the public awake: atomic fallout from weapons testing in 1956-1963; a nationwide pesticide scare in 1959; birth

  • Drugs in the water

    A new class of water pollutants has been discovered during the past six years. Pharmaceutical drugs given to people and domestic animals, including antibiotics, hormones, strong pain killers, tranquillisers and chemotherapy

  • Bad news on the Great Lakes

    An International Joint Commission (IJC) was created by treaty between the US and Canada in 1909, to resolve problems in the Great Lakes. Since 1972, the IJC has been working aggressively to improve water quality in the lakes, with

  • Dangers of chlorinated water

    There were just over 4 million live births in the US in 1992. There were 30,000 foetal deaths. A foetal death is one that occurs after at least 20 weeks of gestation but prior to birth. In actuality, there were very likely more

  • Growing threat of accidental nuclear war

    The Cold War ended six years ago, and President Clinton has said, "In this new world, our children are growing up free from the shadows of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust". Unfortunately, the president is not