Earth Talk

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E – The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: Is Amazon.com an environmental hero or villain?– J. West, Orange, CA Not surprisingly, Amazon.com’s environmental performance is a mixed bag. One charge often levied by critics is that Amazon’s low pricing and expedited shipping encourages customers to spend more on more unnecessary stuff, […]

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E – The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: How are Florida’s manatees faring lately and what has the government and/or conservationists been doing to protect them? –  JoAnne B., Sumter, SC Indeed, Florida’s manatees have come back from where they stood on the brink of extinction in the late 1960s, when […]

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E – The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: What are conservation dogs? – Jon Gretcham, Portland, OR Simply put, conservation dogs are canines specially trained in sniffing out evidence of specific wildlife species that scientists are seeking to learn more about for one reason or another. Most commonly these dogs are […]

Dear EarthTalk: My husband thinks it’s better for the planet to hand-wash dishes in the sink, but it seems to me using the dishwasher is more eco-friendly. Can you settle this debate for us?— Chris B., Bowie, MD Hands-down, the dishwasher is the way to go, not only from the standpoint of water waste and […]

Dear EarthTalk: Should we all be ditching our gas stoves in favor of electric models?– Mary R., San Francisco, CA Walking into your kitchen to make dinner appears relatively simple with a gas-powered stove readily available to cook your every desire. But while rotating the switch to turn on a gas stove, most people do […]

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E – The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: What’s up with efforts by Native Americans to take back the national parks?– C. Woodend, Brea, CA Prior to white settlement, as many as 15 million Indigenous people inhabited what would come to be called the contiguous United States; by the 1890s only […]

Dear EarthTalk: What’s the latest on efforts to force Procter & Gamble to stop using virgin forest fiber for its toilet paper products? – P. Brody, Boulder, CO Strolling down the toilet paper aisle, one is faced with a grave decision: 3-ply or ultra-plush? For consumers, factors like price, size and comfort always come to […]

Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that some wildlife species are evolving much more rapidly in response to the warming climate? – D. Gould, Hendersonville, NC It’s amazing to think that climate change is causing animals to evolve faster than they would otherwise, but the science speaks for itself. Researchers from Australia’s Deakin University found evidence […]

Dear EarthTalk: Can the American lobster fishermen survive new restrictions on their activities thanks to the endangered species listing of the Atlantic Right Whale?   – A.N. Smith, Bourne, MA For centuries, North Atlantic right whales were aggressively hunted for their meat and their oil, which was used to keep lamps lit and to make soap. These […]

Dear EarthTalk: Is so-called “Off-Earth Manufacturing” really the environmental panacea that Jeff Bezos and other proponents say it is? – M. Traney, Smithfield, RI In July 2021, Richard Branson rocketed into suborbital space aboard a craft he helped fund, launching a new era of commercial space travel. Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket emitted plumes of white smoke […]