Earths.net

2/2/01
5:46:35 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

1. UP SHEET CREEK The middle of the West Antarctic ice sheet -- one of the world's largest collections of water -- is shrinking and could contribute to a dramatic rise in global sea levels, according to a study published in the journal Science. The researchers found that part of the ice sheet, the Pine Island Glacier, thinned by 30 to 36 feet and retreated by three miles from 1992 to 1999. No one is certain, of course, but global warming might be driving the change. Andrew Shepherd, the lead author of the study from the University College London, noted, "The disintegration of Antarctic ice shelves is a commonly predicted effect of global warming."

straight to the source: Toronto Globe and Mail, Martin Mittelstaedt, 02 Feb 2001 <http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/International/20010202/UICEEN.html>

straight to the source: Philadelphia Inquirer, Paul Recer, 02 Feb 2001 <http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/02/02/national/MELT02.htm>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: Global warming survivor -- the comic adventures of Zed, last of his species <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/zed/zed120500.stm>

2. TRASH TALKING The first piece of legislation signed by Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo requires local governments to reduce waste disposal by 25 percent across the county in five years, mostly through re-use, recycling, and composting. Macapagal, who came into office the same day as U.S. President Bush, said, "I am told no other country in the world has adopted this integrated ecological approach to solid waste management." The country currently has big trash problems. Only 84 percent of Manila's trash gets collected, with the rest ending up in vacant lots or rivers. In Quezon City, about 217 squatters were killed last year by a giant trash avalanche when a portion of a landfill collapsed.

straight to the source: Philippine Daily Inquirer, Amy Bainbridge, 27 Jan 2001 <http://www.inquirer.net/issues/jan2001/jan27/frontpage/front_3.htm>

straight to the source: Philippine Daily Inquirer, Dennis M. Arroyo, 29 Jan 2001 <http://www.inquirer.net/issues/jan2001/jan29/features/fea_3.htm>

3. THE MILKY WAY Got fresh organic milk? Nope? Well, all you milk-drinkers out there ought to try a glass -- and learn just what we're giving up in taste and quality for the questionable privilege of living far away from the sources of our increasingly industrialized food. A drink or two of the sweet stuff causes columnist Donella Meadows to wonder -- with all of our supposed progress, what are we rushing toward and what are we leaving behind? Read more on the Grist Magazine website.

read it only in Grist Magazine: Are we losing touch with good, simple things? <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/citizen/citizen013001.stm>

4. A TRADER TO THEIR CAUSE Several U.S. corporations are doing an about-face: To get Democrats in Congress to stop holding up free-trade agreements, some representatives of Big Business are abandoning their long-held opposition to linking free trade with environmental and labor standards. For example, Caterpillar CEO Glen Barton said in a letter last month to the Clinton administration that the U.S. hadn't done enough to encourage such linkages and that U.S. officials should consult more seriously with -- gulp -- opponents of the World Trade Organization. Boeing, the American International Group, and others are considering whether to join Caterpillar in endorsing a U.S.-Jordan trade agreement that includes environmental and labor clauses. Of course, there are still voices within the business community that come from the dark side and argue against tying trade to such conditions, but some progress is better than none. Right?

5. CROP FAILURES Almost 30 percent of farmers in the U.S. who grew genetically modified corn last year violated planting restrictions meant to keep insects from becoming resistant to the crop, according to a biotech industry survey submitted to the U.S. EPA this week. More than 90 percent of the farmers thought they had followed the rules, but many couldn't identify the correct restrictions when asked in the survey. A spokesperson for biotech giant Monsanto pointed to the fact that 71 percent of farmers correctly followed rules and said the survey showed that "farmers want to do the right thing." But Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists countered that a lot more work needs to be done.

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, Associated Press, 01 Feb 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/524896.asp>

The 10 worst corporations in the world -- and other gems from assorted magazines in our Best of the Rest section

http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/best/best012601.stm#corporations

Nary a drop to drink -- a review of "Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource" in our Books Unbound section

<http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books010901.stm>

As the worm turns -- or: how I learned to start vermicomposting and love the worm -- in our Main Dish column

<http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/ness101100.stm>

2/2/01
5:38:19 PM

EcoNet News

http://www.igc.org/igc/gateway/enindex.html

Help Form a Campus Coalition Against the FTAA

This is a call for a mass mobilization of students from colleges across the East coast to attend the next Summit of the Americas in April 18-22, 2001 in which the proposed FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) document, an extension of NAFTA to the entire Western Hemisphere, will be discussed by trade ministers and corporate executives.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enalerts/981086179/index_html

Brazilian Farmers Seize Monsanto Facilities in Anti-GE Protest

More than 1,000 poor Brazilian farmers, bolstered by foreign activists from the international "Anti- Davos" summit, stormed a U.S.-based Monsanto biotech plant and threatened on Friday to camp out indefinitely to protest genetically modified (GM) food.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enalerts/981086343/index_html

Uphold Logging Moratorium - PNG's Review of New Concessions Marred

The review of some 30 proposed logging operations being carried out in Papua New Guinea (PNG) appears to be a grand masquerade; full of deception, political interference and lack of good faith. Join with PNG communities and NGO groups in demanding that the government of PNG maintain the moratorium until all proposed and ongoing operations have been thoroughly reviewed and remedial actions taken.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enalerts/981088030/index_html

Industry Group Sues to Stop Calif. Plan to Ban MTBE

U.S. manufacturers of MTBE said they filed a lawsuit on Wednesday under the federal Clean Air Act to block California's plan to ban the fuel additive from state gasoline supplies by the end of 2002.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enalerts/981088151/index_html

Colorado Prairie Dog Summit Set for March

The Colorado Prairie Dog Summit will focus on prairie dog colonies along Colorado's Front Range with the objective of determining the best methods for preserving these colonies where they are and the best methods for relocating those facing development or destruction.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enalerts/981088279/index_html

EcoNet Headlines: February 2, 2001

Wrecked Galapagos Oil Tanker "To Stay Where It Is"

Salvage teams have given up trying to move the stricken oil tanker that fouled Charles Darwin's Galapagos island paradise, and will have to leave it where it is, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Sunday.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981083901/index_html

India-Bound Mercury Shipment Turns Back to U.S.

Waste mercury on its way to India has been recalled to the United States by its owner amid growing protests in both countries.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981084039/index_html

The Great Canadian Timber Heist

It has been revealed that commercial logging companies in British Columbia, Canada, have robbed the province of an estimated $138 million in timber revenues over a 15-month period.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981084286/index_html

Lawsuit to Protect Salmon from Pesticides

Commercial fishermen have joined forces with two environmental groups to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failure to protect salmon from the harmful effects of pesticides.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981084516/index_html

Settlement Requires Boaters to Brake for Manatees

Florida's endangered manatee population received a welcome boost last week in a landmark legal settlement reached in principle between conservationists and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The agreement will slow down boats in manatee habitat, reducing the risk of collisions between the rare mammals and boat propellers.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981084609/index_html

World Bank Not Transparent on Forest Policy, Charge Environmentalists

A letter sent Tuesday by more than 40 conservation groups says that there has been little feedback and communication from the World Bank on the new strategy and policy since regional consultations were completed.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981084816/index_html

Major Glacier in Antarctica Is Shrinking, Say Scientists

A major glacier formation in Antarctica is shrinking, according to a new scientific report which is likely to heighten concerns that global warming is causing the world's ice cover to melt.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981084947/index_html

Tallgrass Prairies May Provide Early Warning of Climate Change

While their size has diminished over the years - only an estimated 5 percent of the original tallgrass prairie in the United States exists today - their importance in the ability to predict climate changes has not, according to research conducted by two Kansas State University scientists.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981085080/index_html

RACHEL: Biotech, the Basics, Part 1

Genetic engineering is an extremely powerful technology whose mechanisms are not fully understood even by those who do the basic scientific work. In this series, we will review the main problems that have been identified with genetically engineered crops.

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981085384/index_html

GREEN/Defenders: No Money for Listing but Plenty for Welfare Ranching

A new report by Forest Guardians finds that although there is "insufficient funds to list additional endangered species," there is millions in subsidies for livestock grazing that "comes at an enormous cost to the natural environment and the endangered species that depend on it."

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/981085647/index_html

2/2/01
5:31:18 PM

Public Citizen

Feb. 2, 2001

Firestone Report Reveals News Data Supporting Recall of Non-Decatur Wilderness AT Tires

Statement of Joan Claybrook, President of Public Citizen

While Firestone's report today states that there was no single cause for the tread separations experienced in the recalled ATX and Decatur-made Wilderness AT tires, one thing is clear: Firestone's own warranty data support a recall of Wilderness AT tires produced at other plants.

Embedded on page nine of the lengthy report is new data acknowledging that the adjustment rate ¯ that is, the rate at which customers brought their tires in for problems ¯ was essentially the same, whether the tires were made in Decatur, Joliet or Wilson. This means that the tires were equally problematic regardless of the plant in which they were manufactured, and that all Wilderness AT tires could crack and separate.

It also raises a serious safety concern for drivers everywhere, because when Firestone recalled Decatur-made Wilderness AT tires, the company often replaced them with Wilderness AT tires made at other plants. If these tires, too, are unsafe, as Firestone's own data indicate, there should be an immediate recall of all Wilderness AT tires.

Throughout this fiasco, company executives have dodged questions, dragged their feet and danced around the hard issues. It's time for them to admit that more tires are out there on the roads right now that could lead to more tragic deaths and injuries. We need a complete recall now.

http://www.Citizen.org

2/2/01
5:25:28 PM

The Nation

ON US POLITICS:

KATHA POLLITT: No Olive Branch http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010219&s=pollitt

SENATOR PAUL WELLSTONE: Winning Politics http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010219&s=wellstone

ELLEN WILLIS: Freedom From Religion http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010219&s=willis

ON THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Wiesel Words http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010219&s=hitchens

GRAHAM USHER: Waiting for Sharon http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010219&s=usher

And don't miss recent articles by Vincent Bugliosi, Gregory Palast, Michael Eric Dyson, Gore Vidal, Harvey Wasserman and JoAnn Wypijewski, among many others. All available at:

http://www.thenation.com

2/2/01
5:22:58 PM

THE BISMARCK TRIBUNE

Bismarck, North Dakota

Hemp may loom large in farming's future

By Jerry W. Kram

MINOT -- Industrial hemp could become as important as canola as a crop in North Dakota, according to the director of agricultural research at North Dakota State University.

Cole Gustafson summarized the work NDSU is trying do on industrial hemp at a seminar Friday at the KMOT Ag Expo in Minot. He said there already is a well developed niche market for hemp products that North Dakota producers could fill. However, before that happens, federal anti-drug regulations will have to be changed. Hemp is the same species as marijuana, but has extremely low levels of the chemical that makes people high.

"Just to have a research plot, we have to get a permit from the Drug Enforcement Agency," Gustafson said. "That means we have to put up a chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire."

He estimated that NDSU will have to spend about $14,000 to establish a research plot, mostly for the required security measures.

The DEA has turned down two applications from NDSU to establish a hemp research plot. Thanks to assistance from the state's congressional delegation, Gustafson thinks a third application should be approved this year.

The purpose of the plot will be to answer basic agronomic questions, such as when to plant the crop, how much fertilizer it requires and what varieties will grow the best in the state.

"We have almost no information on how to grow hemp in North Dakota," Gustafson said. Researchers in Indiana and Hawaii as well as Canada are working with hemp, he added, but even research done in Canada won't exactly translate to North Dakota because of geographic differences, such as climate and soils.

"We need answers to just about every basic question on how to grow hemp," he said.

Gustafson said NDSU also has state of the art equipment to do other kinds of hemp research that is better tolerated by the DEA. These include chemical analyses of the valuable oil extracted from hemp seed and developing machines to harvest the tough, fibrous stems.

NDSU is neutral on the question of legalizing hemp, Gustafson said, but is responding to increasing producer interest in the crop. He said his office gets more questions on hemp production than any other potential crop.

Permission soon?

Robert Robinson, founder of Modern Hemp, a nonprofit group in Minot that is pushing for the legalization of hemp, believes Congress could soon reverse the federal government's stand on hemp. He thinks farmers could be growing it as soon as 2003.

"I have talked to our governor and he said he will continue what Gov. Schafer has done for hemp," Robinson said.

He pointed to 14 states that have deregulated or legalized hemp production, as North Dakota did in 1999. A growing number of senators and representatives are joining North Dakota's delegation in supporting the deregulation of hemp.

"Nearly everybody I've spoken to at the Ag Expo has been in support of it," Robinson said. "People understand industrial hemp is a different product than marijuana."

Robinson said that hemp is grown legally in many countries, including Canada, and hasn't caused problems for law enforcement agents in those countries. In the United States, however, the DEA is trying even harder to crack down on hemp.

"The DEA is trying to adopt regulations that would effectively ban all hemp oil products for human consumption," he said. "That would include banning hemp shampoo, lotions and lip balms from the United States."

Robinson said the reasons the DEA opposes hemp production are nonsensical and the public and lawmakers are starting to recognize that. He said fears that children could associate products like hemp tennis shoes or hemp clothing with marijuana are probably counterproductive.

"If the United States government continues to portray hemp as making marijuana OK, they're wrong," Robinson said. Quoting a study on that question he continued, "It is only the DEA's failure to distinguish between an agricultural crop and a drug crop that is sending a wrong message to children. Our information-enabled generation is rapidly learning the truth about industrial hemp and will become far more skeptical about government pronouncements as time passes."

He added that this distrust of government information may make it harder to convince children of the harm done by drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

http://www.ndonline.com/tribwebpage/news/jan2001/127200192710.html

2/2/01
1:13:23 PM

Press Release

Religious Campaign to Nation's Capital on Mission to Save America's Forests Church and Synagogue Leaders ask Bush to protect Nation's Forests

Taking its crusade of forest preservation to Congress and a new Administration, the Religious Campaign For Forest Conservation begins a round of meetings in Washington, D.C. this week with Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, members of Congress, and other Bush Administration officials Long dismayed over industrial logging in the National Forests, the assembled coalition of clerics and laypersons will press for legislation to end commercial timber harvesting on America's public lands.

Founded three years ago against a backdrop of disappearing ancient forests, the Religious Campaign For Forest Conservation represents a broad swath of America's religious groups making common cause to convince lawmakers that logging public land is a moral and spiritual affiance Campaign Coordinator Fred Krueger, of Santa Rosa, California, said, "We have requested a meeting with President Bush so that we may explain that religion carries a profound moral obligation to protect the Creator's forests. Americans of faith are reaching out to the new President to help him and his Administration realize that protecting God's final forests is a vital concern to large numbers of Christians and Jews."

At a Monday morning prayer breakfast, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service Michael Dombeck will receive an award from the group in recognition of his efforts to save what remains of America's pristine forests. Throughout the week, delegates from the Religious Campaign will meet with members of Congress to urge passage of legislation protect all National Forests from continued clear-cutting.

Mr. Krueger stressed that his group also aims to be heard by the incoming Administration. "President Bush must recognize that America's religious communities are heartsick at the way our nation's forests are being logged to obliteration by a few unaccountable corporations. He has the responsibility to halt the rampant destruction going on in the Creator's forests. Ours is a spiritual message that we pray he will hear and take to his heart."

As industrial logging has reduced old-growth forests in the United States to a fraction of their former glory, there has been a corresponding upswing in the number of religious leaders speaking out for strong governmental protections.

Stressing that their campaign is a religious one rather than a gathering of environmental activists, the Reverend Owen Owens, recently retired as director of racial and environmental justice for the American Baptist Churches' Office of National Ministries, said, "Must we destroy tomorrow to live today? No! Jesus calls us to live so that we lay the foundation for better days to come. Today, vast clear-cut wastelands cry out for Christ's stewards to save the remnants of ancient forests so they may continue to glorify their Maker."

Affirming the religious message, Connie Hanson, national president of Christians Caring for Creation, stated "The commercial logging and destruction of our National Forests, God's creation, is an outrage, and a wrong that must be righted. This is a moral and a spiritual issue! That is why we are calling for protection and restoration of our forests." Recognizing that cessation of timber harvesting can cause economic dislocations, Mrs. Hanson also wants what she calls "restoration jobs for forest communities and their workers."

Speaking for many of the Campaign's Jewish members, Rabbi Warren Stone, Chair of the Environmental Affairs Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, stated that "As a Jew and a Rabbi, preserving and protecting God's creation of forests, wilderness and diverse species is a moral and spiritual mandate of my Jewish tradition. How important it is to join other faith traditions who share this common vision."

Additional comments:

Endorsing the position that their national effort is part of Jewish belief, Dr. Barak Gale, chair of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Coalition for the Environment and Jewish Life, said that "Our campaign in Washington coincides with Tu B'Shevat, our New Year of the Trees, and we will recite blessings over the fruit of the trees and the earth. The work of the RCFC in advocating for responsible stewardship of our National Forest is a major blessing for the earth."

Highlighting the group's belief that forests are one of God's unique creations, Brother Keith Warner, ofm, a Roman Catholic Franciscan friar at Mission San Juan Bautista, California, relates that "St. Francis of Assisi sang of the beauty of Creation, and found God in it. The destruction our society is meting out on forest ecosystems is a travesty, and people of faith must speak out with a moral voice to stop it."

A second Franciscan, Brother Jacek Orzechowski, from Durham, North Carolina, stressed that "believing in God and caring for the integrity of God's forests are two sides of the same coin."

Reflecting the history of the Episcopal Church's involvement with social issues, Beverly Meeker, a member of the Episcopal Environmental Network at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, said "When I stand in the wilderness, I am in awe, as in the Beginning; eyes open for the first time, I ken the hand of God at every turn. And God says to me, this is your home. Now care for it, grow with it, protect it."

Another Episcopalian, the Reverend Sally Bingham of the Episcopal Committee on the Environment, in San Francisco, succinctly states that "Any arbitrary destruction of Creation is a direct insult to our Creator."

With only a scant three percent of America's original forests still standing, some RCFC members express a sense of urgency in their mission. Dr. Robert Jonas of Watertown, Massachusetts, believes that "The work of the Campaign is a Godsend at this time in our nation's history. People of diverse Christian and Jewish denominations are finding a common focus in our love for God's forests. We expect more and more churches and synagogues to join us in our fight to protect the cathedrals of our National Forests."

Dr. Bob Marshall of Kenna, West Virginia, asserts that "the evidence is clear and irrefutable that our public forests are dangerously abused by commercial timbering. I am encouraged that so many Christians and Jews are now taking seriously the Scriptural mandates that we must defend, protect and preserve God's sacred forests."

For the Reverend Peter Moore-Kochliacs, a Methodist minister from San Diego, forests are part and parcel of God's handiwork. "God's forests have a right to life, a right not intrinsically linked to the human. We humans are to be earthkeepers for God's good creation. When we endanger God's forests, we diminish God and also ourselves."

The thrust of the Religious Campaign appears to enjoy broad, national appeal among religious leaders, as shown by a glance at the map. As the Reverend Lisa Gray of the American Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. explained, "I am involved in the Religious Campaign because God gave us dominion over the earth, which means a loving preservation of Creation. Our leaders need a lesson in God's grammar, so that they understand the true meaning of the Creation Story, and of our assignment on this earth."

Up in Hallowell, Maine, Beth Wheatley believes that humans "have a fundamental responsibility to protect and care for all life. What are forests but life? We must end industrial logging in the National Forests now. Before even more life is lost."

Joining the delegates will be Julia "Butterfly" Hill, whose two-year occupation of the thousand year-old redwood tree known as "Luna" brought worldwide attention to the destruction of America's forests. "We are at a critical point in the history of ancient forests," said Ms. Hill. "It is imperative that we protect the fragments of forest we have left so that future generations may enjoy the Creator's gifts."

Allen Johnson, producer of Creation Song radio in Dunmore, West Virginia, offers a glimpse of the effect of over-logging in Appalachia. "I live in a forest community that has felt the effects of a boom-and-bust extractive economy. Trees and people are both treated as expendable. Our nation must come to value the people who live in forest communities."

A perspective from the Eastern Orthodox Church comes from Dr. Vincent Rossi, a theologian in Forestville, California, who demonstrates the common linkage between various beliefs under the RCFC umbrella. "It is spiritually and morally impossible for any truly religious person to separate the worship of God from loving and respecting creation," said Rossi. "If you don't love trees, you don't love God."

"The bible guides my approach to forests," said Tom Herschelman, from the Saron United Church of Christ's Eco-Justice Task Force in Sheboygan Falls, WI. "In the creation story, God saw ‘goodness' in the creation before and after humans were created. For this reason we respect the created order and love and respect God's creation. Rather than dominate creation, we are to have dominion -- which means to care for the life and processes created by God as God would care for it. For this reason, I am asking legislators to honor God by ceasing commercial logging on our public forests."

Jim Davidson, a businessman and member of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod in St. Paul, Minnesota, also reflects on Scripture and our national predicament. "Most Americans know Christ's parable of the Prodigal Son: A son squanders his inheritance in sinful living. America IS that prodigal son, squandering an inheritance of earth's most magnificent forests on junk mail and slick ads. As a nation, we must repent and return to the Creator's plan, passing a legacy of healthy forests on to future generations!

And from the damp wintry reaches of the Pacific Northwest, Pentecostal Minister Peter Illyn of La Center, Washington, said "Stewardship is not idolatry; it is faithfulness. I became an environmentalist because I am a hristian. If I love the Creator," Reverend Illyn concluded, "I must take care of creation."

Unity of the faiths on the issue of forests was a theme of Peggy Bruton, a Lutheran from Olympia, Washington. "The faith community needs to unite and remind itself that concern for the earth is our mandate. We have to assert that our approach to the natural world must not be informed by greed. Our goal has to be to live in sustainable harmony with nature. We've strayed from this mandate and we have to restore the balance. With the future of our forests in jeopardy, we must remember our God-given mandate for forest stewardship."

The delegation of the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation will be in Washington, D.C. through February 8th. "During these busy days," said Campaign Coordinator Fred Krueger, "we hope to sound a clarion call to the new President and the Congress that men and women of religious belief demand that this immoral destruction of God's remaining forests be ended now."

Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation

409 Mendocino Avenue Suite A Santa Rosa, CA 95401

Fred Kreuger Director (707) 573-3162

2/2/01
1:09:04 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS)

http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

ASHCROFT CONFIRMED; ENVIRONMENTALISTS RECOILE

By Brian Hansen

WASHINGTON, DC, February 1, 2001 (ENS) - A bitterly divided Senate today voted to ratify controversial U.S. Attorney General designee John Ashcroft. He is a conservative Republican whose suitability to serve as the nation's top legal official was furiously denounced by a phalanx of abortion rights supporters, civil rights leaders, and environmental groups.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-15.html

INDIAN QUAKE SHAKES UP FEAR OF DAM COLLAPSE

By Tara Chand Malhotra

AHMEDABAD, India, February 1, 2001 (ENS) - As India struggles to come to grips with devastation and loss after the worst earthquake in living memory, critics of a controversial dam on the Narmada River warn that it is located in a seismically active zone of Gujarat state.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-01.html

LONDON MAYOR HITS THE RAOD WITH AIR STRATEGY

LONDON, United Kingdom, February 1, 2001 (ENS) - The poisonous smog that gave London its foggy reputation has gone, only to be replaced by nitrogen oxide and fine particles - mostly invisible, but just as deadly. On Wednesday, London Mayor Ken Livingstone presented the Air Quality Strategy for one of the most polluted cities in Europe.

For full text and graphics, visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-11.html

HOME FIRES TARGETED IN DANISH DIOXIN WARNING

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, February 1, 2001 (ENS) - The Danish environmental protection agency (EPA) today launched an information campaign aimed at householders, warning of the environmental hazards of burning waste in domestic heating boilers and wood stoves.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-02.html

FERN SOAKS UP ARSENIC FROM SOIL

GAINESVILLE, Florida, February 1, 2001 (ENS) - The solution to one of man's most vexing environmental problems may lie in one of nature's most remarkable plants. University of Florida scientists have discovered a fern that soaks up arsenic from contaminated soil.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-06.html

LAND POLICY WREAKS HAVOC ON ZIMBABWE'S WILDLIFE

WEST NICHOLSON, Zimbabwe, February 1, 2001 (ENS) - Wildlife are increasingly the victims in Zimbabwe's internal struggle for land ownership. The owners of Chipizi game ranch in Matabeleland South Province tell ENS they have lost giraffe, zebra, warthog, cheetah and wildebeeste to poachers intent on quickly generating income.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-11.html

TALLGRASS PRAIRIES COULD BE CLIMATE EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS

MANHATTAN, Kansas, February 1, 2001 (ENS) - Long term studies in tallgrass prairies may be able to predict and help researchers better understand how ecosystems across North America might respond to certain aspects of climate change, such as global warming, droughts and changes in precipitation amounts, says Kansas State University professor Alan Knapp.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-07.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: FEBRUARY 1, 2001

California Water Agencies to Pump with Renewable Power

Bank of America Dims Lights in California

Geologist Seeks Ways to Squeeze Oil From Rocks

Saving Salmon Important to Entire Ecosystem

Right Whale Calf Found Dead Off Florida

Uranium Contaminates Space Around Earth

Conservation Groups Propose Long Island Sound Reserve

Dixie Chick Plays 'Millionaire' for Nature Conservancy

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/feb2001/2001L-02-01-09.html

SEND NEWS STORY TIPS TO news@ens-news.com

TO ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT EDITORS:

Bioenergy, Inc. Positions Itself for Growth With New Patents and Additions to Management Staff

MINNEAPOLIS, MN, Feb. 1 -/E-Wire/-- Bioenergy, Inc. announces that the U.S. Patent Office has issued two patents covering the ability of Bioenergy Ribose(TM) to boost energy during and after exercise as well as during recovery from illness, and to prevent muscular soreness and cramping in both athletic and medical situations. Both patents have domestic and international applications.

/CONTACT: Bioenergy, Inc., Matt Smith, 763/757-0032 or 614/296-6334 (cell) or Morgan&Myers, Bernice Neumann, 612/825-0050 or 612/802-1832 (cell)/

/Web site: http://www.bioenergy.com//

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Feb01/01Feb0105.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

New Report Shows - Clean Diesel Power Key to Success of Maritime Industry

WASHINGTON, DC, Feb.1 -/E-Wire/-- Diesel powers the American economy- including almost the entire commercial maritime fleet. This is the conclusion of an extensive study conducted by Charles River Associates and released by the Washington based Diesel Technology Forum. In addition to cargo ships, tankers, tugs, and towboats, diesel powers 94% of all freight shipments, 85% of all public transit buses, two-thirds of all farm equipment, and all heavy construction equipment. Forum representatives are carrying this message to the "Conference on Marine Vessels and Air Quality" being held in San Francisco on February 1st and 2nd.

/CONTACT: Allen Schaeffer 703/234-4411 or 301/346-2086, email: aschaeffer@dieselforum.orgom/

/Web site: http://www.dieselforum.org

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Feb01/01Feb0104.html

TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Small Landowners Fear Corporations Seek Backroom Deal on Endangered Species

WASHINGTON, DC, Feb.1 -/E-Wire/-- Large corporations are pressuring the Bush Administration for special exemptions to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for their benefit at the expense of smaller landowners, says a grassroots coalition.

/CONTACT: Kathleen Benedetto 202-255-2064/

/Web site: http://www.nwi.org

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Feb01/01Feb0103.html

TO BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Chipnology(TM) Named To Participate In EPA's New Pesticide Educational Outreach Pilot Program For Nation's Schools

ORLANDO, FLA., Feb. 1 -/E-Wire/-- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is inviting interested parties to participate in a new pesticide educational outreach pilot program to be developed with Orlando-based Chipnology, Inc., which will create and distribute educational kits for use in schools throughout the country using some of Chipnology's unique talking technologies.

/CONTACT: Laura Dye, Chipnology, Inc., 301-529-5700/

/Web site: http://www.everidge.com/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Feb01/01Feb0102.html

TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDITOR:

Environmental Resource Center Celebrates Its Twentieth Anniversary

CARY, N.C., Feb. 1 -/E-Wire/-- Environmental Resource Center, a leading provider of environmental, health, and safety consulting and training, is proud to announce the celebration of its twentieth anniversary beginning on February 1, 2001 and continuing throughout the year.

/CONTACT: Tammy Silverthorne of Environmental Resource Center, 919-469-1585, ext. 226/

/Web Site: http://www.ercweb.com/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Feb01/01Feb0101.html

SEND YOUR PRESS RELEASE ON E-WIRE -- 1-888-764-NEWS

2/2/01
1:00:16 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

FACTBOX - Senate bill would boost clean coal technology - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9676

Calif. seeks energy savings to avoid summer blackouts - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9680

California green groups split over power policy - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9681

UPDATE - Alcoa sets new $1 bln cost reduction target - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9683

Arsenic-eating plant could improve environment - study - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9675

Dry summer drying out NZ farming regions - NIWA - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9673

ANALYSIS - Europe's green farming crusade to face obstacles - NETHERLANDS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9682

Activists urge Nepal to sign global landmine treaty - NEPAL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9678

FEATURE - Great bio-treasure hunt in Australia's barrier reef - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9674

Honeywell, Amadeus form energy pact - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9677

Anti-logging protesters moon Australia's Howard - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9679

2/2/01
12:53:40 PM

Irish Times

Deception Over Health Risks of Depleted Uranium

by Lara Marlowe

Is depleted uranium, the waste product of the nuclear industry used to make tank-piercing weapons, responsible for Gulf War syndrome and Balkans syndrome?

The US Department of Defence and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation both still deny it. But in July 1990 - the month before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait - a report submitted to the US army by Science Applications International Corporation compared the merits of tungsten and depleted uranium (or DU) as armour penetrators. DU is a "low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, and chemical toxicity causing kidney damage", the report said.

Following combat, it added, "the condition of the battlefield, and the long-term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators . . ." The report warned that "aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant, with potential radiological and toxicological effects". A navy memo dated September 1990 alludes to "the hazard created from residual radiation of a spent round" and notes that "prolonged exposure could cause illness".

How can one explain that children of Gulf War veterans suffer the same birth defects as Iraqi children born in zones contaminated by DU? That the same symptoms - fatigue, depression, respiratory and kidney problems and in many cases leukaemia - affect civilians and soldiers exposed to DU in both the Gulf and the Balkans? And if DU is harmless, why is Kuwait paying private companies millions of dollars to decontaminate its battlefields? Who will pay to decontaminate Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo?

Three journalists, Martin Meissonnier, who is French, the Belgian Frederic Loore and Roger Trilling from the US, have spent two years investigating DU production, use and effects. Their conclusions - published in Paris on Monday by Robert Laffont in a book, Depleted Uranium, the In-visible War – are causing tremors in the defense establishments of the US and Britain, the only states to have used DU weapons.

The book and a television documentary by the same journalists show the US government was at best grossly negligent and deceitful towards US nuclear workers, soldiers and the civilians of Iraq and former Yugoslavia. At worst -as stated by Paul Sullivan, the head of the National Gulf War Resource Centre - the US is guilty of knowingly contaminating parts of the Gulf and former Yugoslavia for the next 4.5 billion years.

Uranium is found in nature. Those who oppose the use of DU in weapons do so on emotional, not scientific, grounds, NATO and Pentagon spokesmen tell us. If there is no proof, most people conclude, then why worry?

But when he says that DU is a safe material, US Col Eric Daxon ignores even the study produced by his own Armed Forces Radiology Research Institute, which concluded that DU forms tumors and mutates genes in laboratory mice. "Strong evidence exists to support detailed study of potential DU carcinogenicity," the institute's study concluded.

So why did NATO only recently warn Albanian Kosovars not to let their children play on destroyed tanks? Why was a video on the dangers of DU, made in 1995 by Capt Doug Rokke of the US army, never shown? Why were US servicemen and women now suffering from Gulf War syndrome allowed to scramble over destroyed Iraqi armour taking photos? Why did their commanding officer, Gen Barry McCaffrey, wear nuclear-biological-chemical protective clothing when he visited units in the desert?

Mr. Trilling admits that "there's a doubt in everybody's mind" about the exact relationship between DU and cancer, and he does not exclude the likelihood that vaccines given to soldiers, the bombing of chemical plants in Serbia and Iraq and the oil well fires in Kuwait also contributed to ailments. "DU is a terror weapon in the sense that no one really knows what it does," he says. "The Gulf veteran groups are desperate to find out. The people we talk to are half mad with terror."

The authors were among the first to report that uranium at the only three US plants which process DU was contaminated with transuranics - highly radioactive elements including plutonium. The plants were meant to process natural uranium, but in the 1950s, without notifying the workers or surrounding communities, the US Department of Energy decided to reprocess spent fuel from military nuclear reactors.

In other words, the hundreds of tonnes of DU fired in the Gulf and in the Balkans were not so "depleted" after all. It was in response to a question from Mr. Trilling on January 17th that the outgoing Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, acknowledged the plutonium contamination that independent scientists began to suspect in the early 1990s.

THE US anti-DU activist Dan Fahey sums up the Pentagon's attitude as, "Don't look, don't find". Congress ordered the Pentagon to investigate the effects of DU in 1993, but nearly eight years later it has undertaken no serious research on the inhalation of DU or the birth defects afflicting veterans' children. When Gerry Wheat, a Gulf War veteran wounded with DU shrapnel, complained of pain in his left kidney, the Veterans' Administration hospital insisted on checking his right kidney instead.

It was known from 1952 that the defoliant Agent Orange caused cancer, degenerative diseases and birth defects. Yet when Vietnam veterans suffered these afflictions, the Pentagon insisted there was no evidence they were caused by Agent Orange. Workers at Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which produced DU in Kentucky, breathed and touched carcinogenic plutonium dust for decades before the Department of Energy admitted in 1999 that the entire place was contaminated. Ten thousand Paducah workers, many of them cancer-stricken, are now suing the US government.

In Italy, Belgium and France, criticism of NATO's use of DU is growing. Yet the number of countries with DU weapons has doubled to more than 40 since Meissonier, Loore and Trilling began their research. "It's a burgeoning industry," Meissonier says. "There aren't any wars on at the moment, so why can't there be a moratorium until the scientists figure out what these weapons do?"

Comments:

This is more in the line of the US Govt hiding additive dose effects linked directly to chemical illnesses. DU dust is fine and anyone walking thru it stirs up enough in the air to exceed daily occupational dose levels. DU has long retention time in the lungs and body, and adds to other toxins from industry, nature, and the gulf war infrastructure releases. DU is a factor from two points - its long retention on bone is important and its lymph node bioconcentration is important. Other toxics like fluorides follow a similar pathway, and also increase the toxic load on the lymph systems cells forcing them to malfunction.

Bottom Line, The US Govt, the Govts labs and scientists, and NATO are conducting a snow job and lying to avoid gross liabilities and charges that may get into war crimes - especially in regard to stalling simple research into this problem and in fact intentionally driving keeping the ills defined as mysterious.

These are gross violations of the US national security of this country as harming the citizens and their armed forces with such tactics is nothing short of covering up a global disaster.

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0201-01.htm

2/2/01
12:31:12 PM

Irish Times

Deception Over Health Risks of Depleted Uranium

by Lara Marlowe

Is depleted uranium, the waste product of the nuclear industry used to make tank-piercing weapons, responsible for Gulf War syndrome and Balkans syndrome? The US Department of Defence and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation both still deny it. But in July 1990 - the month before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait - a report submitted to the US army by Science Applications International Corporation compared the merits of tungsten and depleted uranium (or DU) as armour penetrators. DU is a "low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, and chemical toxicity causing kidney damage", the report said.

Three journalists, Martin Meissonnier, who is French, the Belgian Frederic Loore and Roger Trilling from the US, have spent two years investigating DU production, use and effects. Their conclusions - published in Paris on Monday by Robert Laffont in a book, Depleted Uranium, the In- visible War - are causing tremors in the defence establishments of the US and Britain, the only states to have used DU weapons.

The book and a television documentary by the same journalists show the US government was at best grossly negligent and deceitful towards US nuclear workers, soldiers and the civilians of Iraq and former Yugoslavia. At worst - as stated by Paul Sullivan, the head of the National Gulf War Resource Centre - the US is guilty of knowingly contaminating parts of the Gulf and former Yugoslavia for the next 4.5 billion years.

But when he says that DU is a safe material, US Col Eric Daxon ignores even the study produced by his own Armed Forces Radiology Research Institute, which concluded that DU forms tumours and mutates genes in laboratory mice. "Strong evidence exists to support detailed study of potential DU carcinogenicity," the institute's study concluded.

Mr Trilling admits that "there's a doubt in everybody's mind" about the exact relationship between DU and cancer, and he does not exclude the likelihood that vaccines given to soldiers, the bombing of chemical plants in Serbia and Iraq and the oil well fires in Kuwait also contributed to ailments. "DU is a terror weapon in the sense that no one really knows what it does," he says. "The Gulf veteran groups are desperate to find out. The people we talk to are half mad with terror."

In other words, the hundreds of tonnes of DU fired in the Gulf and in the Balkans were not so "depleted" after all. It was in response to a question from Mr Trilling on January 17th that the outgoing Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, acknowledged the plutonium contamination that independent scientists began to suspect in the early 1990s.

Comments:

This is more in the line of the US Govt hiding additive dose effects linked directly to chemical illnesses. DU dust is fine and anyone walking thru it stirs up enough in the air to exceed daily occupational dose levels. DU has long retention time in the lungs and body, and adds to other toxins from industry, nature, and the gulf war infrastructure releases. DU is a factor from two points--------its long retention on bone is important and its lymph node bioconcentration is important. Other toxics like fluorides follow a similar pathway, and also increase the toxic load on the lymph systems cells forcing them to malfunction.

Bottom Line, The US Govt, the Govts labs and scientists, and NATO are conducting a snow job and lying to avoid gross liabilities and charges that may get into war crimes--------especially in regard to stalling simple research into this problem and in fact intentionally driving keeping the ills defined as mysterious.

These are gross violations of the US national security of this country as harming the citizens and their armed forces with such tactics is nothing short of covering up a global disaster.

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0201-01.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0201-01.htm</A

2/2/01
12:27:47 PM

The Nation

Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, the man who maintains one of the most progressive voting records in Congress has stirred a political firestorm on the left with his unexpected support for George W. Bush's most controversial cabinet appointment, the newly confirmed attorney general John Ashcroft.

On Tuesday, Feingold was the sole Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote to recommend Ashcroft's confirmation by the full Senate. And, today he became one of only eight Democratic senators out of fifty to vote in support of Ashcroft's nomination. Civil rights, women's rights, labor and environmental activists, who have long been among Feingold's most fervent supporters, are furious at the senator they used to consider one of their most reliable allies on the Hill.

But, in an exclusive interview with The Nation's John Nichols, Feingold insisted that he hasn't gone over to the political dark side and explained his thinking in his only extended interview regarding the Ashcroft matter. Read the full conversation in the latest installment of Nichols's Online Beat available only at:

http://www.thenation.com/thebeat

Also exclusively available on The Nation's website is David Corn's examination of the continuing inspections in numerous Florida counties of various sets of controversial election ballots by different news organizations, including The Miami Herald and USA Today. His conclusion: In a better-run contest--with better machines, better pollworkers, and better voters (who assiduously followed instructions)--Gore would have won. Read Corn's piece in its entirety at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=corn20010131

And still available is Vincent Bugliosi's explosive report, "None Dare Call It Treason," published recently in the pages of The Nation and sparking controversy coast to coast. Available only at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010205&s=bugliosi

2/2/01
12:25:03 PM

MEDIA ADVISORY: DOUBTS ON MASSACRE: Media Ignore Questions About Incident That Sparked Kosovo War

February 1, 2001

In 1999, the discovery of bodies in the Kosovo village of Racak helped push NATO into war. New evidence casting doubt on claims that the bodies were civilian victims of a massacre has stirred debate in the European media-- but there has been a virtual blackout on the news in the U.S. press.

In January of 1999, the American head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Kosovo announced that 45 Kosovar Albanians from the village of Racak had been massacred by Serb soldiers. U.S. diplomat William Walker condemned the killings as a "horrendous" massacre, stating that the dead were all civilians who had been brutally executed, many of them mutilated after death.

Once the massacre story was reported in heart-wrenching detail by media across the globe, pressure for war intensified and previously reluctant European allies took a major step toward authorizing airstrikes. A Washington Post article (4/18/99) reconstructing the Kosovo decision-making process found that "Racak transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular events seldom do."

Troubling questions soon emerged, however, about whether or not there had actually been a massacre at Racak, or whether the incident had been manipulated to push NATO into war-- questions almost completely ignored by the U.S. media at the time.

Front-page news articles by veteran Yugoslavia correspondents questioning William Walker's account were published in French newspapers like Le Figaro ("Dark Clouds Over a Massacre," 1/20/99) and Le Monde ("Were the Dead in Racak Really Massacred in Cold Blood?," 1/21/99). The German daily Berliner Zeitung reported in March (3/13/99) that several European governments, including Germany and Italy, were pressing the OSCE to fire William Walker based on information from OSCE monitors in Kosovo that the Racak bodies "were not-- as Walker declared-- victims of a Serbian massacre of civilians," but were mostly KLA fighters killed in battle.

The Sunday Times of London (3/12/00) reported that Walker's team of American observers was covertly working with the CIA, pursuing a policy intended to push NATO into war. "European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes inevitable," the Sunday Times reported.

After the massacre, the European Union hired a Finnish team of forensic pathologists to investigate the deaths. Their report was kept secret until now, two years later. The U.S. media is ignoring the story, despite the report's finding that although people did indeed die at Racak, there is no evidence of a massacre.

According to the Berliner Zeitung (1/16/01), the Finnish investigators could not establish that the victims were civilians, whether they were from Racak, or even exactly where they had been killed. Furthermore, the investigators found only one body that showed traces of an execution-style killing, and no evidence at all that the bodies had been mutilated.

The Berliner Zeitung also reports that these findings were completed as early as June 2000, but that their publication had been blocked by the UN and the EU.

Except for one brief wire story from United Press International (1/18/01), not a single U.S. media outlet has run a story on the Finnish team's findings. News outlets continue to refer to the Racak massacre without qualification, despite the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the story.

A recent Chicago Tribune report (1/23/01) about the Albanian separatist militia in southern Serbia speculated that the Serbs might "revert to form and respond to an Albanian provocation with a Racak-style retaliation." (The KLA-linked militia, called the UCPMB, are reportedly preparing for a new war and recently fired on British KFOR troops-- London Guardian, 1/26/01.) The Tribune made no mention of any questions surrounding the Racak incident.

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer story (1/23/01) about Yugoslavia's relationship with the war crimes tribunal at The Hague claimed that "Serbs refuse to accept the world's vision of them as aggressors," and noted that Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica "alleges the killings [at Racak] were staged to look like a massacre to embarrass Yugoslavia." The Finnish team's findings about Racak, which prompted Kostunica's recent allegations, went unmentioned.

An Associated Press article (1/18/01) did elliptically note the new report's existence, reporting that Kostunica wants to discuss with The Hague "reports attributed to Finnish pathologists saying there was no evidence of a Serb massacre" at Racak (1/18/01).

With tensions in southern Serbia mounting and fears of a new Kosovo war escalating daily, the U.S. media's silence on this story is troubling.

2/2/01
12:16:40 PM

PLASTICS NEWS

A Crane International Newspaper for the Plastics Industries

Johnson Controls hits new high with idea

PICTURES: 2001 Sebring door panels with caption; "Johnson Controls Inc. has started production of door panels consisting of polypropylene, kenaf and hemp."

By Rhoda Miel Plastics News Staff

The newest addition to Johnson Controls Inc.'s automotive interior lineup has a different kind of a buss to it.

Hemp.

Not the illicit marijuana variety of plant, but its industrial cousin - grown for use in ropes, paper and textiles and now part of the Eco-Cor bio-composite plastic JCI is using as a sub-strate in door trim panels for DaimlerChrysler AG's 2001 Sebring convertible.

JCI's Plymouth, Mich.-based auto unit just started production of the panels at its Holland, Mich., facility. The parts are made of a blend of 50 percent polypropylene, 25 percent hemp and 25 percent kenaf.

It is one of a growing number of substrates made with bio-composites, a mix that also features natural fibers such as flax and jute, developed to improve strength and decrease weight in structural plastic parts.

"When [the development team] looked to natural fibers, they really liked what they saw," said David Phillips, director of material and process development for JCI's interiors unit.

The natural fibers are inexpensive and renewable - a new crop comes in every year - and industrial hemp offers increased strength in a plastic blend, said Rob Springer, lead process engineer for JCI. Hemp has a longer fiber than kenaf, which helps the panel stand up to deep cavities in a mold, such as an armrest in a door panel.

Composite panels also weigh less than all-plastic parts.

JCI makes Eco-Corby compression molding composite sheets, which allows it to make a thinner part then does injection molding. The PP in the mix also provides a natural adhesion to cover stock such as a cloth or thermoplastic polyolefin, Phillips said.

But do not expect 1970's counterculture heroes Cheech and Chong to turn up in a Sebring in their next movie. Lighting up this hemp will not get anyone high.

Industrial hemp is bred for its fiber length and strength, not its drug properties - although the links to its illegal cousin, marijuana, have kept it out of farm fields in the United States since 1950's.

Most of the hemp going into the JCI substrate comes from Canada.

Besides, Springer noted, the blend in the plastic door panels is formulated for fire resistance.

"It's self-extinguishing," Springer said. "It's not going to burn, no matter how hard you try." (END)

Cranes Communications, Inc. 7040 North Rush Street Chicago, Illinois 60611-2590

2/2/01
12:14:13 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

1. DO THE HUSTLE U.S. companies are hustling down to Mexico to build power plants to supply energy-starved California, and Mexican environmentalists aren't happy about it. Mexican officials and the power companies say that the economic benefits of the new plants will outweigh the pollution they add to the air. Alejandro Calvillo, director of Greenpeace Mexico, counters that the environmental costs are unacceptable and the U.S. has no right to export more of its dirty industry problems to Mexico.

2. O-OH, HE'S A LITTLE RUNWAY The Bush administration wants to speed construction of more runways at major airports in the U.S. by streamlining reviews of their environmental impacts. The Federal Aviation Administration has done an about-face and now argues that more runways offer a quicker solution to airport gridlock than updating air-traffic-control computers. But the current process of obtaining federal and state environmental permits for new runways can take 10 years or more. A report by Congress's General Accounting Office has found that the time delay does not always lead to better environmental protection. Enviros, however, are in a tizzy about the idea of speeding up runway approval. Marty Hayden of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund said, "Streamlining is a code word for either truncating or waiving environmental laws and reducing or eliminating meaningful public participation."

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environ/20010201/t000009446.html

3. MCCHICKEN SANDWICHED Stung by a backlash from some farmers and consumers, Monsanto has been saying recently that it pursued the wrong course in trying to win market approval of genetically engineered foods without addressing concerns that the foods might pose risks to human health and the environment. Listen in on Monsanto CEO Hendrik Verfaille: "We tried to convince the opponents or activists that we were right and they were wrong, that they should listen to us and that they basically should shut up." At a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Verfaille spoke fondly of a new approach -- actually talking with activist groups to try to reach common ground. Wow. On the same panel, McDonald's chair and CEO, Jack Greenberg, complained that it's unfair for anti-globalization activists to target his corporation during protests because the chain is actually a collection of small, locally owned businesses.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Adrian Croft, 31 Jan 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9669>

straight to the source: New York Times, Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata, and Melody Petersen, 25 Jan 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/business/25FOOD.html>

read it only in Grist Magazine: One man takes on globalization and, yes, McDonald's -- by Donella Meadows and Hal Hamilton <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/citizen/citizen071700.stm>

do good: Take action against genetically engineered foods <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/food.stm>

4. FUND-AMENTALS Enviros are taking on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to enforce rules that require companies to disclose what it could cost them to make sure they don't mess up the environment. Calvert Funds, a socially responsible investment firm, and the nonprofit World Resources Institute say that investors aren't being given enough information about the financial impact that environmental compliance and clean ups have on companies' bottom lines. Calvert's Julie Fox Gorte said, "This lack of transparency could pose a heightened risk for investors."

<http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books090199.stm>

5. AAAAY, IT'S THE FRONDS! A common fern can thrive on big amounts of arsenic and could possibly be put to use soaking up arsenic from contaminated land and water, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. The fern, a nonnative plant that grows in the Southeastern U.S. and California, is the first known plant to do well on a diet of the toxic nasty. Lena Ma, who led the study team at the University of Florida at Gainesville, said, "When I take people to my greenhouse to look at a fern with 8,000 parts per million of arsenic, they can't imagine it's toxic waste." This being America, a company in Virginia has already bought the rights to market the fern commercially.

straight to the source: MSNBC, Associated Press, 31 Jan 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/524400.asp?cp1=1>

straight to the source: BBC News, 31 Jan 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1146000/1146555.stm>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

Tell us which sucks most -- Detroit automakers, the Bush administration, or enviros <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho012601.stm>

How to pardon Clinton -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha013001.stm>

How's the weather? -- taking the Earth's temperature -- in our Heat Beat section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/heatbeat/weather011101.stm>

2/2/01
12:07:31 PM

Become a Lake

An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, he sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

"How does it taste?" the master asked.

"Bitter," spit the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."

As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the master asked, "How does it taste?"

"Much fresher," remarked the apprentice.

"Do you taste the salt?" asked the master.

"No," said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside the young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, "The pain of life is pure salt, no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a glass. Become a lake."

2/2/01
11:51:18 AM

Food irradiation - the global agenda

You may find my web site of interest regarding the global agenda for food irradiation. Excerpted in this month's Nexus Magazine.

http://www.squirrel.com.au/~sbryce/irradiationaustralia.html

2/2/01
11:31:14 AM

The Tyack Permit" Overview:

In the early 1980s, the U.S. Navy identified as a special threat the new, quieter generation of submarines being built by the Soviet Union. The undersea passive sonar systems deployed throughout the world by the U.S. Navy supposedly would not be able to detect these new submarines.

The Navy conducted a review of available technology and selected the alternative of low frequency active sonar as the best response. The Navy made this decision without preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the potential damage this technology could cause to the ocean environment and ocean life.

The Navy proceeded to design, engineer, fabricate, and test this system in remote areas of the world. The Navy took the position that these tests did not need permits under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) or the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Navy's internal documents reveal that the Navy was well aware that the low frequency sounds might be harmful to cetaceans. The entire development and testing process took place in secret.

In 1995, the Natural Resources Defense Council discovered the program and wrote the Navy a letter citing numerous laws being violated by the development and testing program.

In 1996, the Navy agreed to prepare an EIS for the system, known as SURTASS LFA. As part of preparing the EIS, the Navy also agreed to perform a Scientific Research Program (SRP) for low frequency active sonar (LFAS). Dr. Peter Tyack of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution participated as a member of the SRP team.

In the three phases of the SRP, the research revealed that whales diverted from their normal migration routes to avoid the sound, that whales ceased singing in response to broadcasts of the sonar, and that whale songs changed after broadcasts. The testing took place at broadcast levels thousands of times less than the levels to be used by the Navy during routine operation of the system.

In 1998, the SRP conducted research off Hawai`i under a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). These tests resulted in numerous reports from whale watch captains and shore observers that the Humpback Whales fled from the test area. A snorkeler exposed to a broadcast emerged from the water with symptoms a doctor compared to a trauma patient in a hospital. A separated Humpback Whale calf and a separated dolphin calf appeared during the testing. A separated melon head whale calf appeared shortly after the testing.

Based on this evidence and other reports of adverse effects, various groups and individuals filed lawsuits against the Navy, the National Marine Fisheries Service (now NOAA Fisheries), and other federal agencies.

The Navy terminated the tests and convinced the judges to dismiss the cases remaining as moot because the research was complete and the Navy did not intend any further testing.

In March 2000, the Navy's research manager of the LFA program sent an email detailing plans to conduct further tests off the Azores, Dominica, and possibly Hawai`i. An NMFS staff member referred to this research as Phase IV of the SRP. The Hawai`i County Green Party moved to reopen the suit it filed in 1998.

In response, the Navy filed an affidavit from the program manager saying that no such research was going to be funded or conducted.

In May 2000, Dr. Peter Tyack filed an application with NMFS to conduct low frequency active sonar testing on whales in the Azores to begin in July.

Neither the application nor the Federal Register Notice of the application prepared by NMFS referred to the testing as including low frequency active sonars.

In August 2000, NMFS granted Dr. Tyack a five-year permit to conduct such research. The permit allowed harmful impact on the whales far in excess of anything permitted in the 1998 tests.

To summarize:

-- the Navy conducted secret tests of a technology known to be potentially harmful to cetaceans without obeying the applicable environmental laws;

-- after the existence of the technology and the testing program came to public attention, the Navy conducted a minimal research program examining only a few of the potential effects on a very limited number of ocean species;

-- when adverse effects became public and led to litigation, public controversy, congressional calls to suspend the program, and other undesirable impacts, the Navy backed out of directly funding further research;

-- the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution permitted Dr. Peter Tyack to provide an alternative to the Navy research;

-- the National Marine Fisheries Service cooperated with Dr. Tyack to disguise the nature of the research and to permit the research to be conducted far from U.S. waters. Dr. Tyack is required to file a report only once a year. Locating the research in the Azores and limiting reports to once a year means that the network of individuals and organizations opposed to deployment of this technology will be prevented from monitoring the research.

Having begun as an illegal, secret program, LFAS surfaced briefly to reveal its true nature. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NMFS then cooperated to take the program back into a semi-secret level to avoid further exposure.

The rest of this document is available at http://www.geocities.com/shootdaguy/research/tyackpermit.html

2/2/01
11:08:36 AM

Participate in the LFAS discoveries

I am just now bringing this information to people and I thought that you might like to share it with your readers who have continued to show an interest in preventing acoustic damage being done to marine life.

I will paste here an invitation which I have also posted on the Internet at these two locations:

http://manyrooms.net/invitation.html

http://www.angelfire.com/ca/fishattorney/LFAS/invitation.html

I am just now bringing this information forth.

Thanks. Cheryl A. Magill

Today, on January 31, 2001, you are invited to read several documents.

1. You are invited to read Mr. Lanny Sinkin's report titled, "LOW FREQUENCY ACTIVE SONAR RESEARCH: The Tyack Permit"

This report is being hosted at the following Internet locations:

http://www.geocities.com/shootdaguy/research/tyackpermit.html

http://manyrooms.net/TyackPermit.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/ca/fishattorney/LFAS/tyackpermit.html

Attorney Lanny Sinkin identifies a process by which agendas for LFA acoustic testing were likely pushed through even while court litigation remained unresolved. In the report, Mr. Sinkin illustrates concerns that the five-year acoustic research project may have been facilitated through a private surrogate research group so as to effectively insulate government agencies against then on-going litigation. Last year, Mr. Sinkin was representing eleven plaintiffs in federal court at the time when this five-year acoustic testing permit was being processed.

The Stop LFAS Worldwide Network continues to applaud Mr. Sinkin's efforts. We have a majority of members who agree with his assertions, and a consensus, which continues to encourage similar on-going discoveries.

2. Additionally, you are further invited to read the responses prepared by six environmental groups in response to a request for a letter of authorization regarding Shock Tests proposed to be done on the Winston S. Churchill. These responses were prepared only a few days ago and appear at this URL:

http://www.geocities.com/shootdaguy/shock/comments_on_shock_testing.html

"Comments on the Proposed Rule for the U.S. Navy's Letter of Authorization to take a small number of marine mammals incidental to shock testing of the USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81):"

Comments offered in the responses to this proposed rule all discuss Level A Harassment Criterion as relate to serious injury and temporary threshold shift. The self-described responsibilities of NMFS/NOAA Fisheries come under examination in exploring the agency's responsibilities for "consulting" versus "cooperation." The need is sited for less arbitrary or less "capricious" interpretations of acoustic impacts.

3. Furthermore, you are invited to use a copy of the Federal Register notice regarding NPAL / ATOC in order to prepare your response to:

"Taking and Importing Marine Mammals; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Operation of a Low Frequency Sound Source by the North Pacific Acoustic Laboratory"

http://angelfire.com/ca/fishattorney/NPAL/noaanpal.htm

Comments on the application and the proposed regulations are due to be mailed by February 5th, 2001.

4. Also, because the Final Environmental Impact Statement for SURTASS LFA Sonar is rumored as "soon to be released," you are invited to stop at the following web locations and to look for more updated information regarding same once we have received notice of final publication.

http://listen.to/lfas viewpoints

http://www.angelfire.com/ca/fishattorney/FinalEIS/

Please know that the information referenced herein may be revised or changed at any time.

Thank you for considering these invitations.

Best regards,

Cheryl A. Magill Coordinator Stop LFAS Worldwide Network cheryl@manyrooms.net

2/2/01
10:59:34 AM

EXPLORATORY INITIATIVE ON THE NEW HUMAN GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES

January 30, 2001

NO HUMAN CLONING

The recent announcement that a private consortium of scientists intends to begin cloning human beings is a very serious development. (See URLs below.)

These scientists have the skills and resources to create human clones. They are operating outside any structures of public or scientific accountability. In a growing number of countries, their efforts to clone human children would be felonies punishable by imprisonment.

Human cloning is a crime against human dignity and humanity. It is a step toward the commodification and brutalization of human life. We must not allow ourselves to be pushed any further down this road. If we can't stop human beings from being cloned, try to imagine what we won't be able to stop next.

The Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies is in discussion with other organizations about what needs to be done, and will report on this soon.

In the meantime, here is what people can do:

1. On Saturday and Sunday February 24-25 a major conference on "Globalization and Technology" will be held in New York City. (See the URL below.) The Saturday night plenary, and sessions on Sunday, will focus on genetic engineering, including human genetic engineering. There will be a special session on Sunday on the situation regarding human cloning and what needs to be done. We encourage everyone who can do so to attend these sessions. IF YOU WISH TO ATTEND PLEASE LET US KNOW by reply to this email, so that we can facilitate arrangements.

2. On Monday Feb. 26, from 9:00 am - 3:00 pm, there will be a special strategy meeting on human cloning and the challenge of the new human genetic technologies, also in New York City. IF YOUR ORGANIZATION WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A REPRESENTATIVE THERE PLEASE LET US KNOW by reply to this email.

We will be holding similar meetings concerning human cloning in Northern California and elsewhere in the near future. Information about these meetings will be shared in subsequent Bulletins.

The Exploratory Initiative is producing materials for people who want to work to stop human cloning. Copies will be available at the meetings noted above, and information on how to obtain copies will be given in future Bulletins. We are setting up a web page and other support activity as well.

We believe that humanity's technological abilities are a great gift and a great responsibility. We must take action now to prevent their dangerous misuse and ensure their wise use in the decades and centuries to come. Our common humanity is at stake.

INFORMATION ON THE PROPOSAL TO BEGIN HUMAN CLONING:

Washington Post: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53307-2001Jan26.html

LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/print/20010128/t000008216.html

BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1144000/1144694.stm

INFORMATION ON THE "GLOBALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGY" CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK CITY: www.ifg.org.

Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies 466 Green Street, San Francisco, CA 94133 ph: 415-434-1403 email: rhayes@publicmediacenter.org subscribe to GENETICS CROSSROADS: teel@adax.com staff: Richard Hayes, Dr. Marcy Darnovsky, Rev. Douglas Hunt, Tania Simoncelli

2/2/01
10:56:43 AM

HOUSE BILL PROPOSES LIFTING BAN ON ASSASSINATIONS BUSH ADMINISTRATION WASTING NO TIME IN MOVING TOWARD WAR FOOTING

Armitage The Executioner

FTW 1/24/01 - HR 19, Introduced by Republican Georgia Congressman Bob Barr on January 3, 2001, the first day of the new 107th Congress, would legislatively repeal sections of three Executive Orders specifically prohibiting assassinations by the United States Government. Entitled the "Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001", the bill, submitted to the House International Relations Committee, would specifically nullify sections of three previous Executive Orders including one initiated by Ronald Reagan in 1981. It is interesting to note that acts of Congress are not required to nullify previous Executive Orders (EOs) which are, by definition, orders issued by the President and Commander in Chief to all federal employees (including military) under his authority. All that is necessary to reverse one EO is another EO. This is exactly what President George W. Bush did with respect to EOs issued by President Clinton on the environment in the last days of his administration.

Section 3 of HR 19 specifically states: "The following provisions of Executive orders shall have no further force or effect:

(1) Section 5(g) of Executive Order 11905. (2) Section 2-305 of Executive Order 12306. (3) Section 2.11 of Executive Order 12333." [By Ronald Reagan] Section 5 (g) of Executive Order 11905, signed by Gerald Ford on 2/18/76 specifically prohibited "political" assassination. Section 2-305 of Executive Order 12036, signed 1/24/78 by Jimmy Carter renewed the ban. Section 2.11 of Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan on 12/4/81 renewed the ban on assassinations, or conspiracy to commit assassinations, as part of a broader package which gave virtually complete control of the American National Security apparatus to then Vice President George H.W. Bush.

The full text of HR 19 may be viewed at http://thomas.loc.gov. Enter a search in the 107th Congress for 19 and it will take you straight to the bill.

The bold move, unreported and ignored by any major media, offers a chance for an early referendum on the new administration's full-speed run at a more violent and brutish foreign policy.

The current bill, introduced by staunch Bush supporter and Clinton impeachment leader Barr, indicates that the Bush administration is seeking to add legitimacy to the move by implying that Congress and the American people support the action. This can only mean that there is quite likely a list of people the Bush Administration wants to start killing fairly quickly. The appointment of career covert operative and Annapolis graduate Richard Armitage as Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell only underscores the clear message that the Bush Administration is sending to the world.

Armitage, who was denied a 1989 appointment as Assistant Secretary of State because of links to Iran-Contra and other scandals, served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan years. U.S. Government stipulations in the Oliver North trial specifically named Armitage as one of the DoD officials responsible for illegal transfers of weapons to Iran and the Contras. But Armitage's dirty past goes much deeper. A Vietnam veteran and graduate of Annapolis, Armitage's roots have been thoroughly intertwined with the likes of CIA veteran Ted Shackley, Richard Secord, Heine Aderholt, Elliot Abrams, Dewey Clarridge, Edwin Wilson and Tom Clines. All of these men have been directly linked to CIA covert operations, the drug trade, the abandonment of U.S. prisoners of War after Vietnam and/or Iran-Contra. Armitage has also been routinely discussed in FTW as a Bush-era covert functionary who has been linked to covert operations, drug smuggling and the expansion of organized crime operations in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East.

In 1986 a private dispute between POW activist Ross Perot and Armitage went public as photos of Armitage with a topless Vietnamese nightclub owner Nguyen O'Rourke brought allegations of gambling and prostitution very close to Armitage's doorstep. The stories went public when TIME and "The Boston Globe" wrote lengthy stories on the feud in 1986 and 1987. That scandal arose as a result of 1984 investigations by President Reagan's Commission on Organized Crime in which the photo and documentation of gambling charges and prostitution led directly to Armitage's close association with O'Rourke. Then LAPD Assistant Chief Jesse Brewer, a former Commanding Officer of this writer, served on the Reagan Commission.

The 1992 best-seller "Kiss The Boys Goodbye" by former "60 MINUTES" producer Monika Jensen-Stevenson details Armitage's role as Reagan point man on Vietnam POW-MIA issues and describes why Armitage has earned the enmity of many POW activists. However, in a 1995 interview with "The Washington Post", Colin Powell referred to Armitage as his "white son." This, notwithstanding the fact that the 6 foot, balding, power-lifter, now 56, can still bench press 300 or more pounds and reportedly "enjoys killing." William Tyree, Special Forces Veteran who has provided much reliable information and documentation to FTW in the past said, "Armitage used to 'sit ambush' on the trails in Laos and Cambodia. He liked it. Now when Powell, 'the dove,' sits down at a table with Armitage 'the killer' beside him the message will be that Armitage can reach across the table and deal with the other party on the spot." That message will not go unheard. [For more on Armitage we recommend using the search engine at www.copvcia.com and also at The Progressive Review, www.prorev.com.] There is reason to believe that a repeal of the assassination ban would lead to an immediate series of deaths. Remember, the Iran-Contra team is coming back to power with a vengeance.

The completion of a February 11, 1982 memorandum between Reagan Attorney General William French Smith and CIA Director Bill Casey removed any requirement for CIA to report drug trafficking by its agents, contractors and proprietary employees. Immediately thereafter cocaine consumption into the United States multiplied as imports rose from approximately 80 tons in 1982 to 600 tons by 1989.

[A copy of that memorandum, published by the CIA in 1998, is available in FTW's Extracts and Commentary on Volume II of the CIA Inspector General's Report" originally published on 10/8/98.]

There are no choices and this is no longer a convenient exercise of protected liberty. This is now a true struggle against tyranny. Call your Congressman. Call your local media. Call your neighbor. A loud enough uproar can stop this criminal move in its tracks. Silence can only invite bloodshed.

Special thanks to Mike Whybark and Jim Galasyn of Independent Media Centers for bringing this travesty to my attention. Please visit their site at http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=19541.

This message may be copied and reproduced in any "not-for-profit" mode so long as proper sourcing appears."

2/2/01
10:49:28 AM

FDA panel recommends banning blood from some former Europe residents

By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON (AP)

As a precaution against mad cow disease, anyone who lived or traveled in France, Portugal or Ireland for a total of 10 years since 1980 should be banned from donating blood in the United States, government advisers recommended Thursday.

People can catch the human version of mad cow disease by eating infected beef, but there's no proof they can then spread the illness through blood. Still, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration called the new blood-donor ban a prudent step as Europe's crisis over the disease continues to spread.

The FDA already bans anyone who spent at least six months in Britain between 1980 and 1996 from donating blood. That's because Britain is the epicenter of the mad cow scare: Tens of thousands of British cattle were infected with the brain- destroying illness in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and 91 Britons so far have been diagnosed with a human version caught from infected beef.

The question now is whether the FDA will accept the panel's advice, something it isn't required to do but usually does.

Nor does anyone know just how many Americans would be barred from donating blood if the new ban is accepted, although some estimates suggest the move would affect fewer than 1 percent of blood donors.

[ If the doctors blame it on Alzheimer's, there will be less panic and less lawsuits. So there is incentive to cover the whole thing up. It is more common than people know - even in America... ]

2/2/01
10:46:37 AM

Mad Cow Disease

by Steve Jacobson

BSE (Mad Cow disease) is a full-blown crisis in Germany. They had found about 10 sick cows by the time I left there last Saturday. Every day the news covers every aspect of the situation, from the plight of the farmers perhaps having to bear the cost of testing each animal, to the sausage packing houses closing, to McDonalds offering 30% off everything to keep people coming in, to the firing of two government officials who were responsible for allowing it to happen there, impact on slaughterhouses, how many people are ill in England and elsewhere, and the research to find how BSE becomes CJD, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. It is publicly discussed by many forums, all aspects of this crisis.

Shortly before coming home from Germany last Saturday, Terri informed me that there was found a sick herd of cows in Wisconsin, and that there was also found a sick herd of "managed" elk (game farm animals fed the mad cow feed) that had to be destroyed. I came home expecting to find news reports and heard the most fearful sound of all, SILENCE.

There must be a news blackout, because there is nothing to find in TV, radio, internet, or the papers I've seen. I remember hearing of a farmer that found Mad Cow in one of his animals in way up north Minnesota, and that he was going to sue for being sensationalized in the news. This was last September or October on National Public Radio or Minnesota Public Radio. Now I can't find mention of this news clip on their website either.

This should be front page, leading story, special expose material here. It is big enough that Red Cross is denying blood donations from visitors to England and other countries. See the attached clipping that KSTP forwarded by request but didn't have otherwise available on their website. Notice how they say that no BSE has been found in the USA.

You should stop eating all beef and dairy immediately, unless you can be assured that the animals were never given feed that contained ground up dead cows in it (a common practice that is the biggest cause of BSE spreading). To kill this bacteria (or is it a virus?) it has to be heated to 275 degrees F at 2 atmospheres, for 18 minutes. That takes a pressure cooker. They are not cooking the dead cows they grind up into the cow feed anywhere near this high, and thus the spread of the disease. Your McDonalds burger isn't cooked anywhere near that hot either, neither is cheese or milk or any other dairy / cow food product.

Just because they haven't proven the link from BSE to CJD doesn't mean there isn't one. Just because it isn't in the news doesn't mean we don't have to worry here. Be afraid, be very afraid that the news is censored in favor of big business, even if it means a possible epidemic of CJD. You can bet McDonalds doesn't want to offer 30% off everything here, nor any of the "American Beef/Cattle Growers Associations" wish to see a drop in sales.

The silence of this crisis is an indication that something is terribly wrong here in the USA. Germany had their heads up their behinds thinking it couldn't happen there. Now they are scrambling. It's time to cover your own behinds and do due diligence. Do research to prove me wrong, or find why the news is so silent, the extent of the outbreak, anything. Just be aware, educate yourself if information is available, and share it with those you care about.

It is easier to prevent Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease by not eating cow or elk, than to watch a loved one slowly die from it because there isn't a cure yet. I don't know if other bovines like goat or sheep are immune from it, they were mentioned in the German news but I couldn't follow the language well enough to know if they were getting sick too, but showed a farmer feeding sheep from bagged feed, the source of the spread of the disease there.

I hope I'm terribly off-base and that BSE isn't in this country. I hope no one I know gets ill because the news isn't informing the public of the potential. Please share with me and others this and any news you find in your own research and share it with others.

We'll all end up dead some day, but let it be by natural means, not for profit protection.

To your health, Steve Jacobson

2/1/01
1:29:47 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS)

http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

NEW PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT CLEANS HOUSE

By Michael Bengwayan

MANILA, Philippines, January 31, 2001 (ENS) - Alarmed by the worsening garbage problem in Manila which threatens to throw the country into a public health crisis, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has signed law which deals firmly with the mountains of trash in Metro Manila and is aimed at arresting similar problems throughout the country.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-04.html

ENVIRONMENT FIRST IN U.S. TRADE OUTREACH TO CHINA

WASHINGTON, DC, January 31, 2001 (ENS) - The environment, air and water pollution, energy development, and aviation safety are the top priorities as a U.S. federal agency reopens relations with China on a level closed since 1989.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-01.html

GROUPS SUE TO PROTECT NORTHWEST SALMON FROM PESTICIDES

SEATTLE, Washington, January 31, 2001 (ENS) - Commercial fishermen joined forces Tuesday with two environmental groups to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failure to protect salmon from the harmful effects of pesticides. The move came as the new EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman prepared to lead the agency.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-06.html

UK COUNTRYSIDE SCHEME GIVES BIRDS ROYAL TREATMENT

GLOUCESTERSHIRE, United Kingdom, January 31, 2001 (ENS) - Wild geese and swans wintering at one of Europe's most important wetland nature reserves are dining on specially grown, nutrient rich rye grass under a government scheme to encourage less intensive farming.

For full text and graphics, visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-11.html

INTERNATIONAL HELP SOUGHT FOR KENYAN WETLAND

LAKE NAIVASHA, Kenya, January 31, 2001 (ENS) - An international award bestowed on a group trying to protect Kenya's Lake Naivasha may not be enough to save the wetland from the effects of a dramatic rise in population and development along its fragile shores.

For full text and graphics, visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-10.html

UN THE STAGE FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY AND CLEAN TRANSPORT EXPO

NEW YORK, New York, February 1, 2001- (ENS) - A public exhibition of cutting edge energy and transportation technologies will be staged this April in New York outside the Secretariat Building of the United Nations. The expo will be a collaboration of industries and national governments.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-02.html

MIGRATORY MESSENGERS MOTIVATE BELIZE CONSERVATION FUNDING

DUBLIN, Ohio, January 31, 2001 (ENS) - The annual flight of migratory birds between Toledo, Belize in Central America and this town less than 100 miles from Toledo, Ohio has created a connection that is preserving a pristine tropical forest in Belize.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-03.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JANUARY 31, 2001

California Extends Operations Limit on Emergency Generators

Pacific Coral Reefs Get Ecosystem Based Management Plan

List Shows Fisheries that Affect Marine Mammals

Oyster Growers Seek New Approach to Control Shrimp

Hudson River Activists Rally Tonight

Everglades Volunteers Plant Cypress Trees

Environmental Leadership Workshops Supported by AT&T

Eco-Index Website Offers Conservation Information

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-31-09.html

SEND NEWS STORY TIPS TO news@ens-news.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DIESEL FORUM PRAISES MASSACHUSETTS' NEW TRUCK AND BUS EXHAUST SMOKE TESTING PROGRAM

BOSTON, MA January 31, -/E-Wire/-- A new Massachusetts truck and bus exhaust smoke testing program, which begins tomorrow, (2/1/01) has drawn support and praise from the Washington, DC - based Diesel Technology Forum, according to executive director Allen Schaeffer, who called the new regulation "a proven method to help improve air quality within the region."

/CONTACT: Ken Cynar, of Rowan & Blewitt Incorporated New York, 516/741-8877 ext. 26

/Web site: www.dieselforum.org

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/31Jan0105.html

TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Conservation Fellowships Offered in Montana

BOZEMAN, MT, Jan.31 -/E-Wire/-- The Kinship Conservation Institute (KCI) is an exciting new summer program offered by PERC (Political Economy Research Center). This month-long institute is designed to educate conservation leaders in the early stages of their careers on the prospects of using market approaches to solve environmental problems.

/CONTACT: Eric Noyes, Development Director, PERC, 406-587-9591, enoyes@perc.org/

/Web site: http://www.perc.org/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/31Jan0104.html

TO ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Harza Energy to Assist California Water Agencies With Power-Generation Solutions

CHICAGO, IL, Jan.31 -/E-Wire/-- In an effort to ensure the safety and continuity of California's water supply during the escalating energy crisis, the Association of California Water Agencies has signed an agreement with Harza Energy to make available the engineering and installation of Capstone MicroTurbine(TM) power systems to ACWA member facilities.

/CONTACT: Harza Engineering Co., Chicago, Natalie Holz, 312/831-3414 or Harza Energy LLC, Chicago Steve Chippas, 312/831-3500/

/Web site: http://www.microturbine.com /Web site: http://www.harzaenergyllc.com/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/31Jan0103.html

TO TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Put Your Business, Organization, and Yourself on the Great Map of the Outdoors:

Literally and Online at www.maptech.com Using MapServer's New My Maps Toolbox:

The Largest Collection of Free Topographic Maps and Charts for Land, Sea, and Air

GREENLAND, NH, Jan 31 -/E-Wire/-- Maptech adds a new dimension to its MapServer, the largest free, online mapping resource for maps and charts on land, sea, and air. The new My Maps feature is the ultimate "mapping show-off" system available to the public.

/CONTACT: Martin Fox, PR Manager 888-433-8500/Ext. 209 mfox@maptech.com Maptech, Inc., 655 Portsmouth Ave., Greenland, NH 03840/

/Web site: http://www.maptech.com/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/31Jan0102.html

TO STATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Fund for Animals Applauds Governor Tom Vilsack for Vetoing Dove Hunting Bill

DES MOINES, Iowa, Jan. 31 -/E-Wire/-- The Fund for Animals, a national animal protection organization with 200,000 members and supporters, many of whom live in Iowa, applauded Governor Tom Vilsack for vetoing legislation that would have opened the state's first sport hunting season on mourning doves since 1918. House File 43 passed the House and Senate by narrow margins, and Governor Vilsack vetoed the bill last night.

/CONTACT: Michael Markarian of the Fund for Animals, 301-585-2591 ext. 216/

/Web site: http://www.fund.org/

http://ens.lycos.com/ewire/Jan01/31Jan0101.html

SEND YOUR PRESS RELEASE ON E-WIRE -- 1-888-764-NEWS

2/1/01
3:55:14 AM

I have written a rock opera, "The Nihilistic Camel." It is designed to turn the hearts of the children towards the meaning of the earth.

Perhaps you might want to take a peek, help out, or otherwise join up:

MirroredEclipse@yahoo.com

1/31/01
8:56:06 PM

CLIMATE CHANGE: POLITICIANS MUST ACT NOW UN scientists issue dire warning

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned today that global climate change is likely to be much more severe than previously feared. Temperatures may rise by almost 6 degrees between 1990 and 2100.

Roger Higman, Climate Campaigner for Friends of the Earth International said: "This report makes grim reading. Man-made climate change is likely to be worse even than we previously feared. Everyone on the planet is at risk. The time for debating the science of climate change is over. The truth is now clear. But we have been desperately slow in moving from discussion to action.

Climate change should now be at the top of the world political agenda. In particular, the United States must end its long history of denial about the truth of climate change and resistance to effective action. President Bush must find a way to free himself from the fossil fuel lobby that paid so much money to get him elected. And European politicians must stop squabbling among themselves and put the pressure on the US to agree tough cuts in the burning of coal, oil and gas."

"If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, since whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth."

Chief Seattle, 1855

To read more on The Hague's failed climate change talks:

http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/mckibben111700.stm

1/31/01
8:53:25 PM

Bush Working to Reverse Food Safety Rules

Washington, D.C. - Only three days into his new job as President and of the United States, and George W. Bush is already rolling back health and safety initiatives that are widely supported by Americans. The Washington Post reported today that the new Bush Administration has wasted no time in attempting to turn back the clock on safety standards that protect families from potentially life-threatening contamination and food poisoning.

"Within only hours of taking office, Bush put potentially life-saving safety rules on hold," DNC National Chair Joe Andrew said. "Whether it's imposing new restrictions on women's right to choose or delaying new health, safety and environmental initiatives, Americans are starting to ask what happened to the 'compassionate' George W. Bush they saw on Inauguration Day."

According to the Post, "The regulations called for more stringent testing by plants producing hot dogs, ready-to-eat meats and cheeses to detect listeria bacteria." According to the FDA, listeria causes 2,500 serious illnesses and 500 deaths annually.

http://www.democrats.org/news/releases/rel012401.html

1/31/01
8:52:06 PM

Analysis finds Democrats had most invalid votes in Florida

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Florida voters whose ballots were found invalid because they punched more than one presidential candidate's name were three times more likely to have included Al Gore as one of their choices as George W. Bush, according to a ballot analysis by The Washington Post.

The Post reviewed computerized records for 2.7 million votes in eight of Florida's largest counties. While both the former vice president and the new president may have lost votes intended for them, Democratic voters may have been significantly more likely to have their ballots thrown out, the Post reported in its Saturday editions. Gore was among those chosen on 46,000 of the invalid ballots, while Bush's name was punched on 17,000. Republicans argued that on the discarded ballots, it is impossible to know who the voter wanted to select.

Bush won Florida by 537 votes out of about 6 million cast, giving him the state's 25 electoral votes and thus the national election. The Post said there were also indications that Democrats were more adversely affected by Palm Beach County's infamous ``butterfly ballot'' -- which listed presidential candidates on both the left and right sides.

The study found that the 8,000 Palm Beach voters whose ballots were discarded because they voted for Gore and another presidential candidate listed near Gore's name, voted at a rate of 10 to 1 Democratic in the U.S. Senate race. Palm Beach County is heavily Democratic.

1/31/01
8:50:32 PM

Bush's Ties To Monsanto

by Jim Ridgeway The Village Voice

One way conspiracy buffs can get a handle on the new Bush administration is by examining the many ties between the president's team and Monsanto, the big Missouri chemical company that promotes genetically engineered foods.

For starters, consider the fact that Bush Sr. appointed Clarence Thomas, a Monsanto attorney, to the Supreme Court. Thomas cast a key vote in the decision that handed the White House to George Jr.

In addition, John Ashcroft, Dubya's choice for attorney general, was the top recipient of Monsanto contributions during his losing reelection campaign for the U.S. Senate. While he was in the Senate, Ashcroft fought hard for Monsanto. He was active abroad in convincing hesitant nations to accept genetically engineered crops and is credited with persuading the British to push for European Union acceptance of Monsanto's Roundup Ready corn.

Other links include Donald Rumsfeld, the new secretary of defense, who was president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, now owned by Monsanto, and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, who was on the board of directors of Calgene Pharmaceuticals, another Monsanto affiliate.

Over at HHS, there's new secretary Tommy Thompson. While he was governor of Wisconsin, Thompson was a good friend to Monsanto and other biotech firms. He received $50,000 from biotech companies in his election campaign, and got the state to set up a $37 million biotech zone in Wisconsin.

http://www.purefood.org/monsanto/frankenbush.cfm 1-27-01

1/31/01
8:48:30 PM

Mad Cow Disease

By David Plotz

It has become very dangerous to be a pig in Europe. In the last several months, the mad cow disease hysteria that has paralyzed Britain since the mid-'90s has crossed the Channel. France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy, among other nations, have discovered cows infected with the disease in their herds. Beef consumption has plunged in the European Union, dropping 50 percent in Germany alone. Germans, French, and Belgians are baying for the blood of their politicians, who lied and claimed local livestock were mad cow free. Two German ministers have been drummed out of office. France is prosecuting a farmer for intentionally selling an infected cow to a supermarket chain. At least one insurer has started offering discounts to vegetarians.

Mad cow disease, officially Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, is a world-class horror. Eating meat infected with it seems to be the cause of "new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease" (nvCJD), an unbelievably gruesome, always fatal, brain-eating illness that has killed about 80 young Britons and a handful of other Europeans in the past five years. (See the sidebar below for a rather revolting explanation of how the epidemic started and why it jumped from Britain to the continent. Warning: includes bovine cannibalism.)

The United States has hardly blinked at the turmoil across the pond. No cases of BSE have been found here, we import no cow products from England, and the American agribusiness lobby keeps busy proclaiming the safety of American beef. Still, there is some cause for concern. The United States has banned blood donations by people who spent more than six months in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996. A BSE-like illness is rampant in Western elk and deer herds, and the United States has only a voluntary ban on feeding cows supplements made from other cows.

NvCJD has killed fewer than 100 people, and the much-anticipated mass epidemic, one scientist predicted 130,000 British deaths, does not seem to be materializing. The number of cases is rising, but slowly. So why should mad cow disease provoke such a frenzy?

Mad cow fits the classic profile of a disease likely to cause hysteria. Ebola, AIDS, and polio, three of the most flamboyant illnesses of the century, overshadowed deadlier but less flashy plagues, such as malaria, for several reasons. First, the hysteria-inducing illnesses usually affect young people and strike in particularly gruesome ways. Ebola causes massive bleeding from every orifice. AIDS is responsible for grotesque cancers and infections. Polio paralyzed young children.

Second, at the moment of the panic, before much is learned about the disease's origin, everyone seems vulnerable, and it's not clear that prevention is possible. Maybe an Ebola victim flew in from the Congo and breathed on you! Maybe your dentist is HIV-positive! And finally, the disease organism is new and weird and seems to have sprung from a dark, mysterious place. AIDS is a creepy mutating monkey virus. Ebola remains a riddle: The Hot Zone traces it to the bats in a spooky East African cave.

Mad cow is similarly vicious, unstoppable, and mysterious. It murders by driving its young victims insane, then melting their brains. It theoretically puts anyone who ever ate English beef at risk. It was spawned in the miasma of rendering plants and slaughterhouses, our own hell's kitchens. And the disease organism is a mystery. Some scientists say it is a new kind of infectious agent, a malicious, twisted protein called a "prion." Others blame a "slow virus," but they can't find it. Whatever it is, nobody has the vaguest idea how to kill it.

But perhaps the crucial reason mad cow grips Europe is its cultural resonance. Every culture gets the disease it deserves. Polio struck an America midway to urbanization: It was so threatening because it seemed vengeful confirmation that American cities were foul, murderous places. AIDS became an obsession because it nourished existing anxieties about the sexual revolution and gay rights.

Mad cow is a rage because it encapsulates the dreads and frets of today's Europe. Europe, unlike the United States, has been seized by fears of genetically modified food and scientific meddling in agriculture. Mad cow perfectly fulfills those fears. Corporate agriculture, by turning cows into cannibals, has made them killers. Nature is biting back.

Mad cow also heightens European suspicion of globalism. Europe is a continent of Naderites, and mad cow is their nightmare, a disease that has spread because of poorly regulated, corporate-dominated, transnational agriculture. Government lies have only magnified the belief that politicians are in cahoots with big business. The whitewashes in Britain, Germany, and France were vain efforts to protect national beef industries, efforts that both failed and increased mistrust of government.

Most of all, mad cow has come to exemplify what's worrisome about the European Union. The crisis reveals how porous the continent has become: Union means that everyone is connected in a web of business and agriculture. But those connections can be alarming.

Anti-union, nationalistic mutterings have been percolating for years, notably in England and France. Mad cow is turning muttering into real animus. The BSE panic is setting nation against nation in a way that Europe has not seen for decades. Most of the continent is enraged at Great Britain for spreading the disease. Britain, in turn, is almost gloating that the rest of Europe is mishandling the problem as badly as it did. Austria, which is disease-free, suspects that German cows are infecting its herds. Germany, France, England, and Italy are at each other's throats. Countries have issued beef bans and counterbans. Jon Cohen, author of Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine , says that mad cow is legitimizing centuries of distrust. "The French and the British are saying to each other, 'Just as we believed all along, you are poisonous to our culture.' "

The European Union probably won't collapse over mad cow, but it certainly looks more fragile. One small disease is sowing enough rage and consternation to undo what it has taken 50 years of cool diplomacy and economic self-interest to put together. Mad cow is proving what Freudians have known all along: When it comes to brain diseases, the id out-muscles the superego every time.

Sidebar

BSE arose in Britain during the mid-1980s, apparently jump-started by the cannibalistic practice of feeding cows protein supplements made from dead cows. BSE appears naturally in very rare cases. The disease was amplified when brain tissue from naturally infected cows was processed and fed to thousands of other beasts. (Some scientists still favor another, earlier theory: that BSE was caused when scrapie, a BSE-like illness in sheep, jumped the species barrier after cows were fed supplements made from dead sheep.) The British government denied for a decade that BSE endangered human health, but when young people started dying from nvCJD in 1995, Britons went bonkers, savaging the Tory government and public health officials (correctly) for their laxity. Britain has slaughtered millions of cows and cleaned up slaughtering and rendering practices in a mostly successful effort to suppress the disease. The number of bovine cases dropped from tens of thousands per year to about 1,000.

But BSE seems to have infiltrated the continent because of British foul play. Britain exported cannibal cow feed during the '90s, even after banning the feed at home. Still, the number of cases on the continent remains tiny compared to the U.K. epidemic: No European nation has found even 1,000 mad cows; Great Britain has had 180,000.

http://slate.msn.com/Assessment/01-01-26/Assessment.asp

1/31/01
8:41:39 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News February 1st, 2001

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

Senate bill aims to cut US oil imports to 50 pct - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9665

Senate energy bill seeks nuclear, electric incentives - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9666

Senators urge new US-Canada softwood lumber pact - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9667

UPDATE - US Senate confirms interior, EPA nominees - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9668

FACTBOX - Senate energy bill oil, natgas provisions - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9670

Syria's Assad issues decree to allow replacing old cars - SYRIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9672

DAVOS - McDonald's says it's no symbol of globalisation - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9669

Walkerton wary of reports of proposed settlement - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9663

Brazil's Petrobras to help clean up Galapagos spill - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9664

Truckers fear "unfair" boost to rail in EU paper - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9671

1/31/01
8:39:50 PM

Space War_Missile Defense news links

Putin creates new military space force http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010125174604.5q6vzp19.html

UPI news article Russia to test radar station in fall http://www.vny.com/cf/news/upidetail.cfm?QID=155555

Putin, Kuchma to discusscooperation in space http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010128005903.0l0rbqg4.html

Chirac warns NMD could kick off worldwide arms race http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010129204603.05v3ptzu.html

Putin strives for anti-missile pact The Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-76349,00.html

HUMANITY MUST KEEP SPACE FOR PEACE ....

Please sign "STOP STAR WARS" petition http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Jules/

Please support the Catholic Worker and Plowshares movements, and also:

http://www.eStarWars.net http://www.antiwar.com http://www.space4peace.org http://www.stopnato.org.uk http://www.dealert.com

Silence Trident and Project ELF.

Blessed are the nonviolent peacemakers.

1/31/01
8:36:09 PM

SENATORS WHO VOTED AGAINST NORTON

While most of President Bush's cabinet nominees sailed through confirmation, a solid block of Senators yesterday voted against Gale Norton's appointment as Interior Secretary, saying she's just too extreme. Although confirmed, she was opposed by 24 Senators.

THANK YOU! Your emails and calls to Congress -- and there were thousands and thousands of them -- ensured that your Senators stood up and took notice.

NOT AN EASY CONFIRMATION While some might be disappointed that Gale Norton ultimately was confirmed, it's important to remember that the Senate traditionally defers to Presidential cabinet nominations, even controversial ones like Gale Norton.

But the fact that one-fourth of the Senate voted against Norton cannot be easily dismissed. In fact, that's considered a *huge* statement in Congress. Never before has a nominee for Interior Secretary -- or any other environmental appointment -- received so many "no" votes: the openly anti-environmental James Watt, Norton's one-time mentor, received only 12 against his confirmation in 1981.

Moreover, Norton's extremist record was exposed and she endured intense scrutiny from the media -- who are now educated about her pro-development agenda and certain to keep close watch of her actions as Secretary. In her confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy Committee, she was concerned enough about her radical record that she underwent a "confirmation conversion" and tried to refute extremist positions she has taken in the past.

NORTON FIRM ON HER PRO-INDUSTRY POSITIONS The reason so many Senators bucked the tradition and voted against Norton is because she remains staunchly in support of pro-development positions, such as opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. She also plans a review -- which we will fight -- of numerous Clinton Administration decisions that provide important environmental protections for public lands, for example, national monument designations, mining regulations, and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wilderness inventories in Alaska.

ON NOTICE The media, Congress, activists, and thousands of Americans are watching her now. The spotlight is on her as she tries to convince us, by deed rather than by word, that she is not another James Watt. All of us will be watching to see if she honors the conservation pledges she made during her confirmation hearing, including:

"... make the conservation of America's natural resources my top priority."

"... [ensure] that our nation's environmental laws for the protection of natural resources will be fully enforced ..."

"I will ... enforce the Endangered Species Act ..."

"The great wild places and unspoiled landscapes of this country are the common heritage of all Americans and we must both conserve them and manage them for Americans living today and for the Americans of the future, our children and our children's children. That is our goal."

SENATORS WHO VOTED AGAINST NORTON At the very least, these Senators, who were concerned enough about Norton's extremist positions to vote against her, deserve our thanks. You can send them a message from

http://www.senate.gov

Evan Bayh (IN) Joseph Biden, Jr. (DE) Barbara Boxer (CA) Max Cleland (GA) Hillary Clinton (NY) Jon Corzine (NJ) Mark Dayton (MN) Richard Durbin (IL) John Edwards (NC) Tom Harkin (IA) Ted Kennedy (MA) John Kerry (MA) Patrick Leahy (VT) Carl Levin (MI) Joseph Lieberman (CT) Barbara Mikulski (MD) Jack Reed (RI) John Rockefeller IV (WV) Paul Sarbanes (MD) Charles Schumer (NY) Debbie Stabenow (MI) Robert Torricelli (NJ) Paul Wellstone (MN) Ron Wyden (OR)

1/31/01
8:33:02 PM

STAND FOR JUSTICE REMEMBER THE PAST HONOR THE FALLEN

The American Indian Movement of Florida will hold a commemoration of the 27th Anniversary of the historic liberation of Wounded Knee, Oglala Lakota Nation on February 25th, 2001 from 1:00 P.M. to 5:30 P.M. at NORTH STRAUB PARK in Saint Petersburg, FL.

FREE CONCERT The event will include a concert by the band American Horse-which performed at the 15th Florida AIM Conference in Melbourne and recently released the CD "War Pony", Metalbelly and others. The program will also include statements by AIM members and statements of solidarity from other organizations.

Join us while we recognize those AIM members and supporters who have given their lives in the struggle for justice.

While this country honors those who fought and died in Vietnam, Korea, and WWII with holidays and memorials, there is no national memorial to remember and honor the countless Native Americans who died fighting for their homelands, their sovereignty and their people, either historically or contemporarily.

There are no walls remembering the millions of Native people who were killed by colonial settlers, or who died from disease and heartbreak, or who perished on the Long Walk. There is no day of mourning for the thousands who starved in the prisons and on reservations.

There are no memorials or holidays remembering the thousands of Native American women who were sterilized by the U.S. government. There are no apologies or days of rememberance for the thousands of Native American children who were stolen from their homes and "given" to white families, to be lost forever from their nations, their culture, and themselves.

There is no wall remembering the more than 300 Native Americans who have been murdered since 1970.

Stand with us while we remember them, and all who have gone before in this, the longest war.

There are difficult times ahead for indigenous people here and all around the globe, for Africans, for Asians and Latinos in this country, and for all the people of the Third World. This is an opportunity for us to enjoy some free music and Florida sunshine, and stand together and be strengthened by our solidarity, and our common commitment to self-determination and justice for all peoples.

We ask all friends and supporters who can, to please attend this event.

Thank You.

Rebecca Johns St. Petersburg Support Group Coordinator American Indian Movement of Florida 136 4th Street North, Suite 308 St. Petersburg, FL 33701 "The white man made us many promises, but he kept only one. He promised to take our land and he took it." - Mahpiya Luta, 1882

1/31/01
8:23:21 PM

DAILY GRIST

31 Jan 2001

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

1. GALE-FORCE WINS The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to confirm Gale Norton as Interior secretary and Christine Todd Whitman as top dog at the U.S. EPA. The 75-24 vote to approve Norton was a significant victory for President Bush, given the fervor with which environmental groups opposed her nomination. Norton has a long history of supporting the mining, grazing, and logging industries and challenging the country's most basic environmental laws. But in hearings before the Senate earlier this month, she toned down or disavowed some of her most extreme views from the past, such as the suggestion that property owners had a "right to pollute." GOP lawmakers and conservative groups said yesterday that enviros had overplayed their hand in trying to defeat the nomination. Enviros, however, claimed some victory because the 24 "no" votes were the highest against any Cabinet nominee since John Tower was rejected as Defense secretary under President Bush the Elder. Whitman, who has had some modest environmental successes as New Jersey governor, was approved 99-0.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 31 Jan 2001 <http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4662-2001Jan30.html>

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Elizabeth Shogren, 31 Jan 2001 <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environ/20010131/t000009128.html>

straight to the source: New York Times, James Risen, 31 Jan 200l <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/politics/31NORT.html>

2. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED Causing anti-globalization activists to cry foul, the World Trade Organization decided yesterday that it will hold its first top-level meetings since the infamous 1999 Battle in Seattle in Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation with a questionable human rights record and little history of public protest. In the past, the U.S. State Department has said that the Qatar government as a matter of practice "severely limits freedom of assembly." Qatar officials say they will permit demonstrations during the WTO meeting, but activists are dubious. The Qatari capital, Doha, where the meeting will occur, currently doesn't have enough hotel beds to accommodate the thousands of delegates, journalists, and WTO officials expected to attend, let alone protesters.

straight to the source: BBC News, 30 Jan 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1144000/1144362.stm>

straight to the source: Washington Post, Paul Blustein, 30 Jan 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64674-2001Jan29.html>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Making sense of the Battle in Seattle -- by Bill McKibben <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/mckibben120199.stm>

3. CRACK PIPE EPIDEMIC Betcha never knew that the U.S.'s system of water and sewage pipes and treatment plants is decaying and little money has been set aside to repair it. A-ha! Well, listen up. A report by the U.S. EPA concludes that the country will face a $23 billion shortfall each year for infrastructure needs by 2020. Ken Kirk, who heads the Association of Metropolitan Sewage Authorities, predicts, "Systems will break down, pipes will crack, there will be overflows of sewage." Experts recommend spending now to fix the situation, rather than waiting for problems to grow worse.

straight to the source: MSNBC, Reuters, Christina Ling, 27 Jan 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/522041.asp>

4. WHAT NERVE! Environmental groups and a commercial fishers group in the Northwest sued the U.S. EPA yesterday to protect salmon from small amounts of pesticides often found in rivers. The plaintiffs want the agency to review how pesticides might be harming the fish and to place tougher restrictions on pesticide use until the review is complete. Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey have detected low levels of pesticides in many of the region's rivers, and the National Marine Fisheries Service recently found that minute amounts of common pesticides can disturb the nervous system of salmon, jeopardizing their survival.

5. DAMMED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T Nearly 500 dams in the U.S. have been taken down over the past 15 years, opening up fish runs and flushing out rivers. Campaigns to remove large-scale dams in the West garner most of the media attention, but Steve Higgs of American Rivers says more progress is being made knocking down smaller dams in the East that are either defunct or no longer generate a significant amount of electricity. As a consequence, fish are returning to stretches of rivers that they hadn't visited in scores of years. However, lest you get too excited about this good news, consider this: In some cases, taking out the old dams can destroy wetland habitat used by migrating birds and send tons of polluted sediment rushing downstream. Bummer.

straight to the source: Christian Science Monitor, Patrik Jonsson, 30 Jan 2001 <http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/01/30/p3s1.htm>

Nary a drop to drink -- a review of "Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource" in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books010901.stm>

Reality TV bites -- the latest in the comic adventures of Zed, the last of his species <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/zed/zed011901.stm>

What a beauty! -- Navajo pageant winner is an enviro star -- in our Out on Limb column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/limb/limb012301.stm>

1/31/01
8:16:25 PM

FAIR

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Media analysis, critiques and news reports

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Award-Winning Reporter Resigns On-Air from Pacifica;

Calls for Campaign to Oust Network Leadership

January 31, 2001

In a dramatic on-air announcement, Juan Gonzalez, the co-host of the Pacifica Radio Network show "Democracy Now!," resigned this morning from the network. Citing harassment and muzzling of free speech, Gonzalez said that "the current management situation at Pacifica has become intolerable...the last straw being the Christmas Coup at this station, WBAI, last month"- a reference to the recent unexplained firings and bannings of top staff.

"I've come to the conclusion that the Pacifica board has been hijacked by a small clique that has more in common with modern-day corporate vultures than with working-class America," Gonzalez said.

Addressing his co-host at Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, Gonzalez continued: "You are a wonderful and committed journalist and you have been subjected to slanderous personal accusations and constant undermining of your efforts. And the board of Pacifica has tolerated it and, I think, even encouraged this."

Gonzalez ended his on-air resignation by announcing a "national corporate campaign" to oust the Pacifica Foundation's embattled new board leadership, which he accused of "illegally chang[ing] the Foundation's bylaws." He said the campaign would call on listeners, instead of donating to Pacifica, to contribute money to groups challenging the board's legitimacy and working to democratize the network.

Gonzalez said the current leadership group "does not respect free speech; it does not respect labor or civil rights; it doesn't even practice due process for its own managers."

Pacifica's Washington, D.C. station, WPFW, censored most of Gonzalez's statement, cutting away to taped programming.

Gonzalez, who has co-hosted "Democracy Now!" since 1996, is a staff columnist with the New York Daily News. He has won numerous awards, including a George Polk award. His latest book is "Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America" (Viking 2000). He was a founding member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

FAIR executive director Jeff Cohen commented: "Juan Gonzalez exemplifies the best in the Pacifica tradition-a journalist who tells the stories of the powerless and holds the powerful to account. As the two-year-long Pacifica crisis worsens and the network's survival is seriously in question, FAIR joins Gonzalez in calling for the national board leadership to step down. Whatever these individuals' intentions, unless there is a prompt and thorough transformation in Pacifica's national leadership, it is impossible to see Pacifica fulfilling its unique, historical mission."

For more information about Gonzalez and the campaign, call (212) 871-9322 or

email pacificacampaign@yahoo.com.

Juan Gonalez's letter of resignation is below.

To: Steve Yasko, Pacifica Director of National Programming CC: Pacifica Board of Directors From: Juan Gonzalez

Date: 1/31/01

Re: Resignation

This is to notify you that I am resigning as co-host of Democracy Now! effective immediately.

I take this action with much regret since, as you know, I have worked alongside host Amy Goodman from the show's inception nearly five years ago and am proud of the groundbreaking work we have done to establish a national radical news magazine. Even more important, I have listened to Pacifica programs for more than 30 years and understand the critical role the network has played in reporting important stories the corporate media ignored, thus helping to shape progressive thought and popular movements throughout the country.

But the current management situation at Pacifica has become intolerable, and despite my hope that the majority of the Pacifica Foundation board of directors would come to its senses, the situation has only gotten worse. The last straw was the Christmas coup at WBAI last month.

Quite simply, the Pacifica board has been hijacked by a small clique that has more in common with corporate vultures than with working-class America. That clique has illegally changed the Foundation's by-laws, and during the past two years it has methodically sought to squash dissent throughout the network -- first at KPFA, then at PNN news, then at Democracy Now!, and now at WBAI. This group does not respect free speech. It does not respect labor or civil rights. It does not even practice due process for its own managers. And it is now seeking to radically alter Pacifica's by-laws to pave the way for the selling of one or more stations.

Furthermore, this clique insults Pacifica's loyal and sophisticated listeners by asking them to finance its shenanigans with their donations.

Starting today, I will be joining other Pacifica listeners in a national corporate campaign that will not rest until every board member who has orchestrated this hijacking resigns and a new board is in place -- one that is democratically accountable to the network's listeners, community and staff.

Our campaign will call for listeners across the country to withhold donations to Pacifica in a mass referendum against your policies. Instead, we will urge them to contribute their money to a variety of groups around the country that are battling the Pacifica board -- including the legal fund for court suits which are currently challenging the board's legitimacy.

Mr. Murdock, Mr. Acosta, Mr. Palmer, you will soon find out that Pacifica is listener-sponsored radio.

1/31/01
7:56:54 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS)

http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

SENATE CONFIRMS BUSH'S KEY ENVIRONMENTAL CHOICES

By Brian Hansen

WASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2001 (ENS) - The U.S. Senate today registered its consent for two of President George W. Bush's key environmental policy advisors, as it voted to confirm Christine Todd Whitman as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Gale Norton as interior secretary.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-30-15.html

STUMPAGE SYSTEM BETRAYS B.C. FORESTS' TRUE WORTH

By Neville Judd

VANCOUVER, Canada, January 30, 2001 (ENS) - Forest companies are abusing British Columbia's timber appraisal system to boost their profits at the expense of the taxpayer, said a report published Monday.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-30-10.html

CALIFORNIA MANDATES ZERO EMISSION CARS

SACRAMENTO, California, January 30, 2001 (ENS) - Despite pressure from the auto industry, California air quality officials voted last week to require automakers to sell electric cars and other zero emissions vehicles in the state by 2003. The decision triggers similar legislation in Massachusetts, New York and Vermont, all of which have adopted California's clean air laws.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-30-06.html

GARBAGE: THE KILLER IN MANILA

By Michael Bengwayan

MANILA, Philippines January 30, 2001 (ENS) - Where do you put 8,000 tons of trash generated daily by this city's 12 million people? Nowhere. It piles up daily serving as breeding ground for flies, rats, mosquitos, bacteria and virus. Manila's hot, humid and polluted air is now full of the stench of trash decaying everywhere.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-30-02.html

EU PRESSED TO LABEL BIOTECH ANIMAL FEED

BRUSSELS, Belgium, January 30, 2001 (ENS) - Many Europeans do not want their cattle fed with meat and bonemeal nor with genetically modified grains. Environmental groups today demanded swift action from the European Union to require labelling of animal feeds containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-30-01.html

INDIA BOUND MERCURY SHIPMENT TURNS BACK TO UNITED STATES

By Neville Judd

BANGOR, Maine, January 30, 2001 (ENS) - Waste mercury on its way to India has been recalled to the United States by its owner amid growing protests in both countries.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-30-11.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JANUARY 30, 2001

Federal Funds Support Wildlife Refuge Expansions

Lawsuit Seeks Critical Habitat for Threatened Bull Trout

Oil Spill Threatens Washington's Yaquina River

Cleanup Begins on Rhode Island's Woonasquatucket River

Scientists Learning To Keep Tabs on Dioxin

New Sensors Conserve Power, Reduce Pollution

Leatherback Turtle From Costa Rica Visits Florida

EPA Office Opts for Recycled Paper

Don't Flush Those Fish

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-30-09.html

SEND NEWS STORY TIPS TO news@ens-news.com

NEWS ADVISORY -- TO BUSINESS, STATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Sustainable Development Conference to Feature Brian Nattrass, Author of 'The Natural Step for Business'

Dr. Brian Nattrass, author of The Natural Step for Business: Wealth, Ecology and the Evolutionary Corporation, will be the Keynote Speaker at the conference "Business Profiles in Sustainable Development," sponsored by the American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC) and the Environmental Business Action Coalition (EBAC) in February.

/CONTACT: Media: Lee Herring, 202-347-7474, or lherring@acec.org; or Program: Sumita Singh, 202-347-7474, or ssingh@acec.org; both of American Consulting Engineers Council/

/Web site: http://www.acec.org/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0103.html

TO FOOD AND ENVIRONMENT EDITORS:

New Herbal Coffee Alternative Provides Health Benefits

WALLINGFORD, CT, Jan.30 -/E-Wire/-- HerbaCafeT, a new all natural, no calorie, caffeine-free coffee alternative, provides the taste of coffee without the side effects of caffeine. This scientifically developed, herbal blend offers health benefits including greater stamina, more alertness, and better weight control.

/CONTACT: Patrick Bremer, Public Relations, HerbaSway Laboratories, LLC, 346 Quinnipiac Street, Wallingford, CT 06492-4055, Phone: (860) 672-7322/

/Web site: http://www.HerbaSway.com http://www.HerbaCafe.com http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0102.html

TO BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

New Waste Manager Software(TM) Version 2.0 with WebComply(TM) Technology;

New Program Supports Generators, Brokers, Service Companies, and Transporters

TEMPE, Ariz., Jan. 30 -/E-Wire/-- Environmental Support Solutions (Environ.com) announced today that the newest release of its Waste Manager Software is now fully integrated with the Internet.

/CONTACT: Robin Suzelis of Environmental Support Solutions,

480-346-5524, robin_suzelis@environ.com/

/Web site: http://www.environ.com/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0101.html

TO BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

AT&T Donation Supports Environmental Workshop Series

NEW YORK, NY, Jan. 30 -/E-Wire/-- The Institute for Conservation Leadership ("Institute") will present its Excellence in Environmental Leadership workshop series for 2001. The workshop series is supported by a contribution from AT&T.

/CONTACT: Cynthia Neale of AT&T,

908-221-7249, or cneale@att.com/

/Web site: http://www.icl.org /Web site: http://www.att.com/ehs/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0106.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Over $5.5 Million to be Awarded to Counter Climate Change

PORTLAND, OR, Jan.30 -/E-Wire/-- The Climate Trust has teamed up with Seattle City Light to acquire reductions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions in a major effort to fight global warming. "Together we're requesting proposals for high-quality carbon offset projects that would not occur without our funding," said Diana Bodtker, The Climate Trust chair.

/CONTACT: Mike Burnett (503) 238-1915/

/Web site: http://www.climatetrust.org

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0108.htm

TO BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

AFS Completes Second Shipment to DaimlerChrysler Licensee, IDEM

CALGARY, Canada, Jan. 30 -/E-Wire/-- Alternative Fuel Systems Inc. (CDNX: ATF - news; 'AFS') announced today that it has shipped the second installment of Sparrow Systems worth $825,000 to DaimlerChrysler licensee, IDEM. The engine manufacturer will install the Sparrow IM Systems at the factory for sales to chassis manufacturers.

/CONTACT:Monica McLeod, Director - Investor Relations,

Phone: (403) 262-1833, Fax: (403) 237-7441,

Email: investor@afsglobal.com

To request a free copy of this organization's annual report, please go to

www.newswire.ca and click on reports@cnw.

/Web site: http://www.afsglobal.com/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0107.html

TO ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT EDITORS:

New Website to Help Reporters and the Public Link Up with Energy/Environmental Experts

-- Also Will Provide The Latest News, Information and Background on Renewable and Sustainable Energy Technologies

WASHINGTON, DC, Jan.30 -/E-Wire/-- A new website launched this week will help reporters and others instantly find experts on a wide range of energy issues from renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency to climate change. The site also provides information on new technologies that promise to transform the face of energy use in real, practical ways. Additionally, the site offers timely news on energy and related issues, weekly updates and links to breaking news.

/CONTACT: Jamie Shor, (202) 293-1001/

/Web site: http://www.sustainableenergy.org

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0108.htm

Corps to Consult with Advisory Council on Historic Preservation on Proposed Athens Power Plant

NEW YORK, NY, Jan. 30 -/E-Wire/-- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New York District announced today that it will consult with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) as it continues to process a request for construction and operation of a 1,080 megawatt, natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Athens, NY.

/CONTACT: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New York District Pete Shugert, 212/264-1722/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0107.html

TO BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Earth Search Sciences Collects Images in Florida Over Citrus Groves and the Everglades

KALISPELL, Mont., Jan. 30 -/E-Wire/-- Earth Search Sciences, Inc. (ESSI)(OTCBB:EDIS - news), (http://www.earthsearch.com), today announced that Eco Probe, Inc. a wholly owned subsidiary of Earth Search Sciences, Inc., has flown over parts of the Florida Everglades in an effort to identify weed species which are overrunning the park.

/CONTACT: Earth Search Sciences Chuck Eubank or Tim Monroe, 406 751-5200

earthsrch@aol.com/

/Web site: www.earthsearch.com/

http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/30Jan0105.html

SEND YOUR PRESS RELEASE ON E-WIRE -- 1-888-764-NEWS

1/31/01
7:45:45 PM

U.S. Senate Confirms Interior, EPA Nominees

By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate confirmed Gale Norton as interior secretary and Christine Todd Whitman (news - web sites) as Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) chief on Tuesday, clearing the way for a final showdown over President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s hotly contested choice for attorney general.

Moving swiftly to complete Bush's Cabinet, the Senate voted 75-24 in favor of Norton despite fierce opposition from environmental groups, a key Democratic constituency. As expected, New Jersey Gov. Whitman won unanimous Senate backing to head the EPA.

The lopsided votes were a setback for environmental groups, which charged that Bush's nominees would roll back wildlife protections put in place by the Clinton administration.

Republicans countered that Norton and Whitman would enforce the law while ushering in a new approach to land conservation aimed at protecting wildlife as well as industry, and ensuring that the nation has adequate energy supplies.

"This is a time for change," said Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. ''We don't need more of the last eight years. We need somebody who will balance it better so we won't have the kind of crisis that'soccurring in California in all of America.''

With the Norton and Whitman nominations out of the way, the Senate turned its attention to Bush's most controversial nominee -- John Ashcroft (news - web sites), an ardent conservative and a hero to the religious right, to be attorney general.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-8 on Tuesday to sent the nomination to the full Senate for anticipated confirmation.

Norton Under Fire

A former Libertarian who was elected in 1990 as Colorado's attorney general, Norton will be the first woman to lead the Interior Department, responsible for managing nearly half a billion acres (200 million hectares) of federal land.

Outraged by her nomination, environmental groups led by Sierra Club launched a television, radio and newspaper advertising campaign deriding Norton as an ``anti-environmental extremist.'' They said Norton was ill-fit for the Interior post because of her previous opposition to the Endangered Species Act and her ties to logging, grazing and mining interests.

Confronted by Democrats at her confirmation hearing, Norton defended her environmental credentials, calling herself a ''passionate conservationist'' and assuring senators she was "fully committed" to enforcing U.S. environmental laws.

"I am both a conservative and a conservationist. I see no conflict there," Norton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee before it voted 18-2 to confirm her.

In the end few senators spoke out against Norton, and the Energy Committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, echoed the sentiments of many of nominee's early critics when he promised to "take Gale Norton at her word."

At the helm of the Interior Department, Norton was expected to lead the charge to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas drilling. Norton has also promised to review regulations and conservation actions taken by the Clinton administration to protect public lands and reduce industrial emissions.

Norton's opponents said they feared the worst for public lands. "I hope that I am wrong. But I want to say today that I believe that the record of this administration will amount to a rather direct assault on environmental protection," Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota said. Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope called Norton's confirmation a "natural disaster" and urged Congress to "keep close tabs" on her actions.

Less Opposition To Whitman

Compared to the campaign mounted against Norton, there was little organized opposition to Whitman's nomination, though green groups initially criticized her for cutting New Jersey's environmental budget and reducing fines against polluters.

In line with comments by Norton, Whitman promised tough enforcement of EPA regulations that affect businesses ranging from car makers to livestock farmers. Likewise, Whitman, who became the first woman governor of New Jersey in 1994 and was reelected in 1998, promised to review fuel rules aimed at curbing sooty particles spewed from diesel-powered trucks.

"You can have a clean environment and a strong economy, and Gov. Whitman has proven that," said Senate Environment Committee Chairman Robert Smith, a New Hampshire Republican.

After the vote, senators opened debate on Ashcroft. Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi said he was confident Ashcroft would be confirmed despite stiff opposition from a range of liberal groups. Bush's choice for U.S. trade representative, Robert Zoellick, could also win Senate backing this week, completing Bush's Cabinet.

The Senate has already confirmed Colin Powell (news - web sites) as secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense and Paul O'Neill as treasury secretary.

The Senate has also confirmed: Elaine Chao as labor secretary, Tommy Thompson as secretary of health and human services, Norman Mineta as transportation secretary, Don Evans as commerce secretary, Spencer Abraham as energy secretary, Ann Veneman as agriculture secretary, Roderick Paige as education secretary, Mel Martinez as housing secretary and Anthony Principi as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010130/pl/congress_cabinet_dc_6.html

1/31/01
7:42:19 PM

World Environment News

January 31st, 2001 from Planet Ark

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

AEP to install emissions control gear on W.Va. plants - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9653

US Senate to confirm interior, EPA nominees - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9659

USTR nominee faces questions on labor, environment - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9660

Calif. exhausts emergency energy fund - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9661

DAVOS - Greens, carmakers discuss emissions, but no deal - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9654

Finnish power usage up 1.7 pct in 2000 - report - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9656

Nuclear waste shipment to arrive in Japan on Feb 20 - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9657

WWF asks Hungary to convert farms back to wetlands - HUNGARY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9655

Marine life to bounce back from Galapagos oil spill - ECUADOR http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9662

Australia queries plan to map Barrier Reef for oil - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9658

1/30/01
5:26:16 PM

Greetings fellow Sarasota Greens,

Our next General Meeting is on Thursday, February 1st, 7:00 pm at Pam and Wayne's house located at 629 Payne Parkway, it is directly behind Sarasota Ford at the corner of 301 and 41, just north of Sarasota High School. We will start promptly and follow the attached agenda so please plan on being there. For future planning, we have agreed to meet the first Thursday of

every month and the third Wednesday of every month.

Please note that on Saturday, Feb. 3, a group of us will be attending the statewide meeting for the Greens in St. Pete. We will be meeting at the Sudakoff Center parking lot at New College at 8:30am and will depart at 8:45am. The meeting is scheduled to last from 10:00am to 6:00pm. It should be a great opportunity to meet other Greens who worked on the Nader campaign and who are now working to build the Florida Green Party.

Also, on Feb. 10, we will be setting up a Sarasota Green Party table at the Michio Kaku lecture sponsored by WMNF. The event will take place at the Falk Theater at the University of Tampa. All those who wish to attend, please meet at Sudakoff at 4:00pm to carpool up there.

Feel free to call Nick or Heidi 349-1547 if you have any questions.

For those coming to the General meeting, please print the attached Agenda and bring it on Thursday. For those who can't open the attachment, we have copied and pasted it below.

SARASOTA COUNTY GREEN PARTY 2-1-01 GENERAL MEETING AGENDA

7:00 - 7:05 WELCOME & INTRODUCTIONS

7:05 - 7:15 ANNOUNCEMENTS

7:15 - 7:30 RATIFICATION OF THE BYLAWS

7:35 - 7:40 REPORT FROM INNAUGURATION PROTEST IN TALLAHASSEE

7:40 - 7:45 DISCUSSION ABOUT MICHIO KAKU EVENT

7:45 - 8:15 COMMITTEE REPORTS/ SCHEDULE NEXT MEETING POLITICAL SOCIAL JUSTICE ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIA MEMBERSHIP & FUNDING

8:15 - 8:25 MEMBERSHIP DUES DISCUSSION & DECISION

8:25 - 8:35 SECRETARY & TREASURER DISCUSSION

8:35 - 8:45 DISCUSSION ON FUTURE PUBLIC MEETING PLACE

8:45 - 9:00 NEW BUSINESS

http://wwwSarasotaGreenParty.org

1/30/01
5:21:40 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

http://www.gristmagazine.com

1. YEAR OF THE SNAKE OIL SALESMAN President Bush said yesterday that he was "deeply concerned" that the energy crisis in California was "spreading beyond the California borders." The thing to do about it, he said, was to make it far easier for companies to drill for oil and gas and to build new power plants. "And a good place to look is going to be ANWR," Bush said, referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. He said he would push for legislation to open the refuge to drilling and consider granting waivers to states to allow older coal-powered power plants to operate even if they violated clean air standards. (Note: Gov. Gray Davis (D) of crisis-stricken California has said that his state can resolve its problem without significant waivers, but other states have long sought such exemptions.) Bush named Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of oil services company Halliburton, to head a task force that would study ways to boost oil drilling and energy production.

straight to the source: New York Times, Joseph Kahn and David E. Sanger, 30 Jan 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/30/politics/30ENER.html>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: How many licks does it take to get to the center of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha082500.stm>

2. MS. EARTH Outfitted in moccasins and traditional dresses, the four contestants in the 49th Miss Navajo Nation Pageant last fall demonstrated a dazzling array of cultural skills. They discussed, in Navajo, the Treaty of 1868. They carded and spun wool, and they displayed rugs they had woven. They prepared fry bread from scratch over an open fire of their own making. Just about the only things the contestants didn't do was to exhibit their bodies in bikinis and evening gowns. The winner? Twenty-four-year-old Karletta Chief -- who just happens to also be an enviro superstar. Read more on the Grist Magazine website.

read it only in Grist Magazine: What a beauty! -- in our Out on a Limb section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/limb/limb012301.stm>

3. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN Russia's environmental resources are being "plundered" and the current government has only made the problem worse, says Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the 81-year-old Nobel Prize winner. In a newspaper column last week, the writer criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for abolishing the country's environmental protection and forestry agencies and shifting their responsibilities to the extraction-happy Natural Resources Ministry. Enviros are also protesting a plan that came to light last week that would let Japan ship radioactive waste from Europe to Japan through Russia's northern seas.

straight to the source: Toronto Globe and Mail, Geoffrey York, 27 Jan 2001 <http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Environment/20010127/URUSSM.html>

straight to the source: Moscow Times, 25 Jan 2001 <http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2001/01/25/011.html>

4. NEVER SAY NADER AGAIN? Ralph Nader is getting the cold shoulder from Democrats on Capitol Hill, and some liberal activists have stopped contributing to the groups he founded. For example, Joan Claybrook, president of the Nader group Public Citizen, said that members of Congress were refusing to work with her group. Polls have shown that about half of the people who voted for Nader in presidential race would have voted for Al Gore had Nader not run, while only 20 percent would have voted for Bush. That means that Nader might have cost Gore the states of New Hampshire and Florida -- and the presidency. Nader has asked Marcus Raskin of the Institute for Policy Studies, an anti-globalization think tank, to try to make peace with Democrats, enviros, and other lefties.

straight to the source: USA Today, Tom Squitieri, 30 Jan 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010130/3027035s.htm>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Mathletics -- both Gore and Nader could have won with this more sensible election system -- in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho120500.stm>

5. REEF IT ALONE Australian Environment Minister Robert Hill put oil exploration in the Great Barrier Reef on hold this week, citing concerns that the testing might harm whales. Geologic exploration company TGS NOPEC had plans to conduct seismic testing some 30 miles from the reef, part of which is a U.N. World Heritage Site and breeding area for humpback whales. Hill has asked the state of Queensland to complete an environmental assessment of the project to help determine whether oil exploration should continue.

straight to the source: Melbourne Age, 30 Jan 2001 <http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/0101/30/A17587-2001Jan30.shtml>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: Whale antics -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha011601.stm>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

Bottoms up or tops down? -- should locals be more involved in public lands decisions? -- by Rocky Barker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho011701.stm>

Easement does it -- Maine woods emerge as ground zero for a grand land conservation experiment -- in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/curtis010801.stm>

The man conservatives are afraid of on the Bush enviro team -- in our Muckraker column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/muck/muck011601.stm#hen>

1/30/01
3:26:03 PM

Public Citizen

Bush Delay of Critical Consumer, Worker and Environmental Safeguards Has Wide-Ranging Implications

Public Citizen Releases Compilation of Safety Standards Effected

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Public Citizen today released a compilation of crucial consumer, worker and environmental protections that were recently approved by the Clinton administration but delayed by the incoming Bush administration. The delay could be detrimental to the environment, people's health and our natural resources, Public Citizen has concluded. Further, the safety standards that are in limbo could be dramatically altered before being allowed to take effect.

President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., issued a memo on Jan. 20, 2001, to federal agency heads in which he postponed for 60 days the effective date of any new regulation that has been published in the Federal Register and has not yet taken effect, so long as a deadline for the rule is not statutorily or judicially mandated. This would affect scores of new safety standards approved by Clinton agency heads in recent months, including at least 12 rules that would make major improvements in protecting the public, workers and the environment, according to Public Citizen's report, "Public Safeguards at Risk!"

The Card memo also requires agencies to withdraw new safety standards that had been signed and sent to the Office of Federal Register for publication but had not been published prior to the issuance of the memo. The report identifies at least three standards affected by this requirement: Environmental Protection Agency rules to improve air quality and eliminate haze, and require monitoring of the environmental and health effects of genetically modified crops, and a proposed Agriculture Department rule requiring packagers of hot dogs and ready-to-eat meats to test for the dangerous Listeria pathogen.

"No law gives Mr. Card the authority to stay rules that have been signed, sealed, delivered and published," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. "It's urgent that these protections, which represent years of work by agency experts, move forward. If industry groups object to any final standards they can petition for reconsideration, not use their financial connections to the Bush administration to try to rescind, delay, defang or derail these standards."

The Public Citizen report also documents 12 "Safeguards to Watch," regulations that are so named because they are key to public health and the environment but are likely to be strongly opposed by industry groups, which are sure to use their close connections to the Bush administration to try to derail them.

"The Card memo is just the opening skirmish in what we expect to be a protracted war between special interests and the public's interest under the Bush administration," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. "We anticipate a return to the ways of the former Reagan and Bush I administrations, when important safeguards proposed by the agencies were sent into an OMB [Office of Management and Budget] 'black hole,' where they were delayed for years, eviscerated or buried under the guise of administration 'review.' "

The report identifies many of the uncertainties and legal issues raised by the Card memo. For instance, Public Citizen questions whether there is legal authority for the president, or his chief of staff, to order an across-the-board 60-day freeze of the effective date of standards promulgated by agency heads.

Safeguards Affected by the Card Memorandum

· Control of Deadly Microorganisms in Food · Genetically Modified Crops · National Organics Standards · Clean Air in National Parks · Protection of Federal Forests · Energy Conservation · Arsenic in Drinking Water · Public's Right-to-Know about Industrial Releases of Toxic Lead · Pollution from Diesel Engines · Protecting Wetlands · Lead Poisoning in Children · Snowmobiles in National Parks · HMO Protections for Medicaid Patients · Workplace Dangers · Mine Safety

Safeguards to Watch

· Juice Safety · Quality of Poultry · Large-Scale Factory Farm Pollution · Medical Privacy · Protecting Patients in Gene Therapy · Ergonomics Protections · Injury Tracking and Reporting · Protections for Medical Professionals · Protection from Tuberculosis · Prevention of Deadly Vehicle Fires · Reducing Head and Neck Injuries in Crashes · Protections to Prevent Tire and Other Defects

Public Citizen is a consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. A complete copy of the report is available at

http://www.citizen.org/congress/regs-/regsdelay.htm

1/30/01
12:32:17 PM

Space Is Playing Field For Newest War Game

Air Force Exercise Shows Shift in Focus

By Thomas E. Ricks

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, January 29, 2001

SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Last week, the possibility of war in space moved from pure science fiction created in Hollywood to realistic planning done here by the Air Force.

Spurred by the increased reliance of the U.S. military and the U.S. economy on satellites, and facing a new secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is more focused on space than his predecessors were, the Air Force's Space Warfare Center here staged the military's first major war game to focus on space as the primary theater of operations, rather than just a supporting arena for combat on earth. The scenario was growing tension between the United States and China in 2017.

"We never really play space," Maj. Gen. William R. Looney III said. "The purpose of this game was to focus on how we really would act in space."

The unprecedented game, involving 250 participants playing for five days on an isolated, super-secure base on the high plains east of Colorado Springs, was the most visible manifestation of a little-noticed but major shift in the armed forces over the last decade.

The Gulf War showed the U.S. military for the first time how important space could be to its combat operations -- for communications, for the transmission of imagery and even for using global positioning satellites to tell ground troops where they are. The end of the Cold War allowed many satellites to be shifted from being used primarily for monitoring Soviet nuclear facilities to supporting the field operations of the U.S. military.

But military thinkers began to worry that this new reliance on space was creating new vulnerabilities. Suddenly, one of the best ways to disrupt a U.S. offensive against Iraq, for example, appeared to be jamming the satellites on which the Americans relied or blowing up the ground station back in the United States that controlled the satellites transmitting targeting data.

In response, the Air Force over the last year focused more on space -- not just how to operate there, but how to protect operations and attack others in space. It established a new "space operations directorate" at Air Force headquarters, started a new Space Warfare School and activated two new units: the 76th Space Control Squadron, whose name is really a euphemism for fighting in space, and the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, whose mission is to probe the U.S. military for new vulnerabilities.

All those steps come as Rumsfeld, who just finished leading a congressional commission on space and national security issues, takes over the top job at the Pentagon. Among other things, his commission's report hinted that if the Air Force doesn't get more serious about space, the Pentagon should consider establishing a new "Space Corps."

So, perhaps to show that it is giving space its due, the Air Force held its first space war game here, and even invited reporters inside for a few hours. The players worked in a huge building behind two sets of security checkpoints, the second of which features two motion detectors, four surveillance cameras and a double-fenced gate with a "vehicle entrapment area."

Yet officials were notably jumpy about discussing specifics with the reporters they brought in. "We're doing something a little unprecedented, bringing press into the middle of a classified war game," said Col. Robert E. Ryals, deputy commander of the Space Warfare Center here.

The U.S. military has a long tradition of conducting war games, not so much to predict whether a war will occur, but to figure out how to use new weapons, how to best organize the military and how political considerations might shape the conduct of war.

After World War II, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz commented that the war in the Pacific had been gamed so frequently at the Naval War College during the 1930s that "nothing that happened during the war was a surprise -- absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics towards the end of the war. We had not visualized these."

Last week's space war game was set in 2017, with country "Red" massing its forces for a possible attack on its small neighbor, "Brown," which then asked "Blue" for help. Officials described "Red" only as a "near-peer competitor," but participants said Red was China and Blue was the United States. When asked directly about this, Lt. Col. Donald Miles, an Air Force spokesman, said, "We don't talk about countries."

Going with the conventional wisdom in the U.S. military, the game assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based lasers that could temporarily dazzle or permanently blind the optics of satellites.

The Blue side also had a National Missile Defense system, as well as reusable space planes that could be launched to quickly place new satellites in orbit or repair and refuel ones already there. Veiled comments made by some participants indicated that both sides also possessed the ability to attack each others' computers -- in military parlance, "offensive information warfare capabilities" -- but no one would discuss those.

On Monday, as the game began, no conflict had occurred -- or was even inevitable. As Red threatened its neighbor Brown, the first major question that Blue faced was whether to stage a "show of force" in space, akin to sending aircraft carriers to the waters off a regional hot spot.

On Day Two of the game, Blue decided to show force by launching more surveillance and communications satellites, making it harder for Red to stage an early knockout attack -- that is, a successful Pearl Harbor.

Space gives the United States "more opportunities to demonstrate resolve" without using force, said Maj. Gen. Lance L. Smith, who played the role of commander of a Blue military task force. Asked whether that included taking over Red's broadcast satellites, he said: "Those are the kind of options."

On Day Three of the game, privately owned foreign satellites became a key issue. The Blue side asked the foreign firms not to provide services to Red. In response, Red tried to buy up all available services to constrain the U.S. military, which relies heavily on commercial satellites for many of its communications. Red offered to pay far more than is customary. Blue then said it would top Red's offer. The eight people playing the foreign firms responded that they would honor their contracts, which left Blue worried and unhappy.

Robert Hegstrom, the game's director, concluded that "dealing with third-party commercial providers is going to be a priority for CincSpace" -- the U.S. commander for space operations.

Another lesson of the early friction between Blue and Red was that the Pentagon should prepare plans for what to do if it picks up indications that an adversary is getting ready to shoot blinding laser beams at commercial satellites operated by U.S. firms. Among other things, one official said, the government could tell the American companies to close the "shutters" over the optics on those satellites.

For four days, the two sides tiptoed up to the edge of war, but never actually fired a shot. They did come close: At one point, the Red military prepared a plan to fire dozens of nonnuclear missiles at U.S. military installations in Hawaii and Alaska. They calculated that those missiles would use up all the shots the United States had in its missile defense arsenal -- and thereby leave the U.S. homeland open to being hit by subsequent missiles.

But the players found that "theater missile defense" -- that is, coverage of a region, usually by U.S. Navy warships -- bolstered deterrence in two ways, by making it harder for Red to attack deployed U.S. forces, and by encouraging U.S. allies to stay in the coalition, which would keep them under the protective umbrella of those ships.

Red also launched cyberattacks on U.S. computers, said Miles, the Air Force spokesman, who declined to provide details.

Officials were unusually tight-lipped about what actually happened in the game but were willing to describe some of their conclusions.

Not surprisingly, they found that many of the weapons on the Air Force's drawing boards -- missile defenses, anti-satellite lasers and "reusable space planes" -- could have a useful role in deterring future wars by discouraging adversaries from thinking they can preemptively knock out the United States.

"With a robust force, we can absorb some losses before [the situation] becomes critical," said Hegstrom, the game director. But, he said, with the "thin" space presence the United States will have in 2017 if current trends continue, "it becomes critical to respond almost immediately." Thus a future president might be backed into escalating quickly, launching preemptive strikes against enemy weapons that could attack key U.S. satellites. "Space surprised us a bit" in how much it might help boost deterrence of a future war, said retired Air Force Gen. Thomas S. Moorman Jr., who played part of the Blue team's political leadership. "It turns out that space gives you a lot of options before you have to go to conflict."

But generally the players came up with more questions than answers, both about how deterrence might work in the 21st century and how to employ the new weapons the Air Force is contemplating.

"We know what deterrence was with 'mutually assured destruction' during the Cold War," said Brig. Gen. Douglas Richardson, commander of the Space Warfare Center. "But what is deterrence in information warfare?"

Likewise, said Maj. John Gentry, who played a staff member on the Blue force, the small attack satellites that both sides possessed are only barely understood. "A lot more thinking will have to go into the microsatellite, the concept of operations about how to use it," he said.

"I hate to use the word 'paradigm,' but mind-set changes are happening here," added Maj. George Vogen, who helped run the game. "This is the next step in seeing the growth of space into its own right."

1/30/01
12:29:32 PM

Public Citizen Calls on Consumers to Boycott Metal-Wicked Candles

CPSC Process Too Slow to Protect Consumers From Lead Exposure

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- To avoid exposure to hazardous levels of lead, consumers should stop buying candles with metal wicks and should not burn the ones they have, Public Citizen said today. Burning lead-wicked candles for three hours can lead to average air lead concentrations ranging from 10 to 36 times higher than permitted by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to research conducted last year by Public Citizen and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last July.

"Because there is no reliable way to know whether a candle with a metal wick contains lead, the only way to ensure that you are not exposed to lead from candles is to simply not buy metal-wicked candles," said Dr. Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "If you have bought such candles, we urge you not to light them or to return them to the store unless there is clear proof that they do not contain significant quantities of lead."

In 1973, Public Citizen petitioned the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to ban lead-wicked candles. The agency denied the petition, relying instead on a voluntary agreement with the candle industry to stop making lead-wicked candles. By the late 1970s, however, the manufacture and sale of lead-wicked candles resumed, exposing millions of children to the well-documented neurological and developmental dangers of lead.

Consequently, on Feb. 24, 2000, Public Citizen again petitioned the CPSC to ban lead-wicked candles and order a recall of all metal-wicked candles. On Dec. 13, 2000, CPSC staff members recommended that lead-wicked candles be banned. The staff did not address the issue of a recall. CPSC commissioners will meet at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 30, at the CPSC offices at 4330 East-West Highway in Bethesda, Maryland, to consider the staff's recommendation.

Even if the CPSC votes to grant Public Citizen's petition, it could still be years before the rulemaking process is completed. In a Jan. 25 letter, Public Citizen urged the CPSC to speed up the process.

"Lead in candles is a completely unnecessary and avoidable source of lead poisoning," said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "There can be no excuse for snail's-pace rulemaking or for leaving these hazardous products on the market in the meantime."

A copy of Public Citizen's Jan. 25 letter to the CSPC is available at

http://www.citizen.org/PUBLICATIONS/1554.htm

Public Citizen's Feb. 24, 2000, petition to the CSPC can be viewed at

http://www.citizen.org/hrg/PUBLICATIONS/1510.htm

Subscribers to the Journal of the American Medical Association can view the JAMA article at

http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v284n2/ffull/jlt0712-6.html

1/30/01
12:25:00 PM

Public Citizen

It's Greed, Stupid!

Debunking the 10 Myths of Utility Deregulation

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Proponents of deregulation have developed a repertoire of excuses for why electricity deregulation is failing miserably. Rather than admitting that a speculative market for a life-sustaining commodity such as electricity does not work, they have cultivated such myths as, "California just didn't deregulate enough."

In fact, if the retail price for electricity was completely deregulated as the industry suggests, the average consumer's electric bill would be $600, rather than the approximately $55 charged before deregulation, according to Public Citizen's calculations.

This is just one of ten myths debunked by a Public Citizen report released today.

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/restructuring/deregreport012601.htm

The report examines in detail arguments that deregulation proponents are making and explains why these contentions are false.

"Already, consumers and small businesses have been hijacked because California's deregulation law, which has allowed so-called 'free market' forces to reign in California's electricity market, has allowed power suppliers to rake in billions in excess profits," Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said.

By both exerting market power and manipulating the next day's spot market for electricity, these suppliers keep electricity supplies low and prices high, for instance by employing unscheduled power plant closings. They have created a crisis in California that may drive the state into a recession and has done nothing to ensure that consumers have affordable, reliable electricity.

In keeping with their long-range business plans to dramatically expand sales, power suppliers blame the current problems on too few power plants. Their solution is to repeal power plant and transmission line siting laws and to suspend environmental regulations that protect people's health, so that they can engage in a building frenzy.

"If the power suppliers selling electricity in California have their way and retail prices for this important commodity are left to the vagaries of the market, the average consumer could be paying 12 times more for electricity than they were before deregulation," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.

The myths include:

· Prices are high because California's strict environmental standards have slowed power plant construction. In fact, there is currently more than enough capacity to meet maximum demands. Power demand during four of the past six months in California was lower than during the same period in 1999. However, power producers under deregulation have strong incentives not to run plants at full capacity or to shut them down altogether to manipulate prices. Even so, since April 1999, the state's Energy Commission has approved nine major new power plant projects, six of which are under construction.

· The purpose of deregulation was to lower costs for consumers. To the contrary, deregulation has resulted in higher prices for consumers. Even if long-term contracts are entered into with suppliers, as is being discussed by state officials, consumers will still be paying an average of three times more for the price of electricity than they would have under sensible regulation.

· Deregulation is good for the environment. Market forces driving deregulation will only encourage cost-cutting measures that will result in more pollution. In fact, deregulation creates incentives to produce power from the cheapest source - dirty coal plants. Suppliers want to continue operating these older plants as long as possible, because it costs less than building new, more efficient plants. (The new plants being proposed would run in addition to existing plants.) Deregulation thus provides no incentive for conservation, which produces no profits for power producers.

· California's energy crisis is best resolved through state, not federal, actions. Under the deregulation law, California's utilities sold most of their fossil fuel power plants to out-of-state power wholesalers who are profiting at the expense of consumers. To remedy this situation requires federal action. The best short-term solution for the crisis would be for the federal government to impose cost-based rates on these power suppliers, who now are charging utilities outrageous prices and far more than utilities are permitted to charge consumers. The federal government is the sole entity with the power to do this. This action would give California time to thoughtfully restructure its electric industry.

· California's utilities are close to bankruptcy and need to be bailed out. In fact, the utilities' parent companies have spent billions on buying other assets in recent months. They should be forced to sell off these assets before having the state - and therefore, the taxpayers - assume the burden and future risk for utility debts.

· Electricity deregulation is working in other states. In other states that have deregulated, like Pennsylvania, the temporary protections that made deregulation legislation politically viable for passage are still in effect. Pennsylvania's utilities have a regulated rate for electricity that new suppliers must beat to be competitive. Over the next few years, as these protections are sunset, we will see many states follow in California's footsteps if deregulation is not canceled.

1/30/01
12:13:34 PM

THE TOP 10 PRONUCLEAR ARGUMENTS...ANSWERED

By Dr. John Gofman

ARGUMENT 1: We receive more radiation sitting in our living rooms than is given off by nuclear power plants. A brick wall puts out 3.5 millirems of radiation per year but a nuclear power plant releases only 0.3 millirem in the same time period. In fact you can stand right next to a nuclear power plant and receive no radiation at all.

GOFMAN: First let me agree that certain building materials do give off enough radiation doses to deserve consideration. Let me also agree that there is a very low dose of radiation emitted at the fenceline of a nuclear power plant that is functioning normally If this were not the case, workers couldn't park their cars nearby or even approach such utilities at all. However, the "no dose at fenceline" statement doesn't consider the radiation people can receive from the entire nuclear power fuel cycle. We need to take into account all of the steps that make up the atomic energy process including the production of mountains of uranium tailings (unshielded piles that are continuously releasing radioactive radon) . . . the inventory of radioactive poisons--such as cesium 137 strontium 90 and iodine 131--that "leak" or "puff" into the atmosphere when a power plant is not functioning normally . . . the quantities of radioactive wastes being moved in fallible vehicles that can (and do) leak . . . and the so-called burial sites which have also been shown to leak and spread their material into the environment at large.

Now let's come to the claim that a nuclear power plant itself releases only 3/10 of a millirem per year. Were that radiation dose--coupled of course with other fuel cycle emissions--truly always so small I would hardly waste my time concerning myself with the hazards of nuclear power. But the proof that advocates of this energy source have no confidence whatsoever in their estimate of the plants' releases lies in their behavior with respect to the legal radiation standards.

As late as 1979, nuclear power plants were, legally, allowed to bombard the public with 170 millirems per year. When my colleague Arthur Tamplin and I proposed a tenfold reduction in that standard, the nuclear industry and pronuclear government agencies fought us tooth and nail. Now it has to be regarded as the acme of strange behavior for an industry to say, "Look, we're never going to give you more than 3/10 of a millirem per year" . . . and then demand that the permissible standard remain more than 500 times as high as that limit! So I would say that as long as the industry fights against reducing legal standards to a level comparable to the 3/10 millirem per year that nuclear power advocates claim is the maximum dose per plant, any member of the public can dismiss such ludicrously low estimates. (The legal standard was changed in 1979. It now permits 25 millirems per year of ionizing radiation to be passed on to the general public, under normal operating conditions! The Catch-22 here is that if anything occurs to make the operating conditions "abnormal", a nuclear facility is permitted to release an increased--and unrestricted--quantity of radiation.)

ARGUMENT 2: People living in high altitude cities, such as Denver, receive twice as much natural radiation as do those living at low altitudes . . . yet the residents of such cosmically bombarded locales don't display double the average incidence of cancer.

GOFMAN: The answer to this favorite pronuclear argument is that the cosmic radiation hitting the people in Denver probably does cause an increase in the number of cancer cases per capita. (One should not expect to find twice as many cases of cancer, of course, because radiation is not the only cause of the disease.) But to statistically demonstrate such a reality, we would first have to know [1] that the medical reporting of disease categories was equally accurate in that city and the sea-level community to which Denver was being compared, [2] that the people who are considered "at risk" in both communities had all lived at the same location all their lives, and [3] that any other carcinogenic factors--aside from background radiation--were identical in both areas. (Undoubtedly they would not be identical.) The fact is that no expert in the field of vital statistics would be prepared to contest the point that Denver residents may be experiencing an increased cancer incidence rate as a result of cosmic radiation . . . when compared with otherwise equivalent people at sea level.

ARGUMENT 3: A chest X-ray exposes a person to 50 millirems of radiation, and a coast-to-coast jet flight gives one a dose of 5 millirems. But the spokespersons of the antinuclear "movement" don't complain about those hazards.

GOFMAN: An individual has the right to choose to accept the radiation received by flying coast to coast or by having a chest X-ray . . . in exchange for a perceived benefit for him- or herself. (The dose received from a variety of medical X-rays is high enough, though, that I would not recommend undergoing such examinations unless the procedures are required in order to make an accurate diagnosis of a potentially fatal disease.)

But nuclear power does not offer a voluntary choice . . . the radiation released by nuclear power is imposed upon people. Indeed, atomic power represents the use of an entire population as involuntary guinea pigs in a gigantic game of Russian roulette . . . the results of which could be an epidemic of cancer, leukemia, and genetic disease. And there would be no justification for such an involuntary imposition of risk even if the majority of the people in a country voted in favor of nuclear power . . . because the majority has no right to risk committing genocide against the minority.

ARGUMENT 4: The genetic dangers often cited by antinuclear activists are obviously exaggerated, because not even the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II produced any harmful genetic effects.

GOFMAN: I've often heard the statement that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki data show that no genetic damage results from radiation, so I went out of my way to analyze, very carefully, those particular scientific papers . . . and I was astounded to discover that the findings in that study were exactly the opposite of what is being claimed! The often quoted Neel-Kato-Schull study examined dominant genetic diseases that are expected to cause death in early life among children under 17 years of age, and definitely indicated that ionizing radiation increased the incidence of such diseases. The Neel-Kato-Schull findings were significant at what is called the "5% level", which means there's one chance in 20 that the findings were the result of chance . . . and 19 chances out of 20 that the findings were correct. Now the scientists who did this work decided that--considering the delicacy of the matter--they didn't want to trumpet their results around . . . so they concluded in their paper that they found "no clear effects" (my italics).

Well, they had indeed found that radiation has an effect on the incidence of genetic damage, at the 5% level of significance. But--by twisting the words in their summary--they provided pronuclear advocates with the opportunity to grab at the statement that "no effect was clearly observed" and then to jump to the fraudulent conclusion that "no effect exists". The Japanese evidence certainly does not prove the absence of genetic effects of radiation.

ARGUMENT 5: Antinuclear advocates exaggerate the dangers of plutonium. After all, the substance is easily safeguarded because it's produced in very small quantities. Furthermore, other dangerous poisons--like lead, which has an infinite half-life--are continually being spewed into the environment.

GOFMAN: Plutonium has to be one of the most dangerous carcinogens that I know of. In fact, I believe that my own estimates of its toxicity--figures that are thousands of times higher than those of "official" estimating bodies--may well be understated. And--although nuclear advocates claim that the carcinogen is now made in relatively small quantities--if we develop an industry involving reprocessing fuel rods (which must surely come to pass if we commit ourselves to the nuclear energy route), society will be handling millions of kilograms of plutonium. Under such circumstances, in order to avoid a lung cancer epidemic, the containment of this plutonium will have to be 99.9999% perfect . . . in other words, they'll have to safely guard all but one part in a million! And yes, lead does have an infinite half-life and may be injuring the brains of many, many children . . . particularly those in urban environments. However, pointing to the dangers of another damaging pollutant to justify creating plutonium is the equivalent of arguing that if others are committing murder, then additional homicide is justified!

The correct assessment involves the realization that if we're letting the lead industry get away with dangerous pollution, we should do something about the lead industry . . . and not promote still another dangerous violation of human rights and health.

ARGUMENT 6: If all U.S. power were nuclear in origin, the radioactive waste produced would amount to only the size of one aspirin tablet per person per year.

GOFMAN: The important concern here, of course, is not only the amount of poison, but its toxicity. A fully developed nuclear industry would produce more than enough hazardous substances to kill everyone on the earth many times over. So the real issue is not whether each citizen's "share" of such materials occupies the size of a football field, a garage, or an aspirin . . . but whether one hundredth, one ten-thousandth, or one millionth of the accumulated poisons will escape. If the cumulative amount that is released is anything like one-thousandth of the little "aspirins" nuclear proponents speak about, we'll have one giant "headache": a cancer and leukemia epidemic that will make all of history's advances in public health care seem trivial.

ARGUMENT 7: Antinuclear activists often complain that the potential damage caused by atomic power isn't covered by any insurance companies. But the reason such businesses haven't insured the industry is simply that they have no actuarial experience on which to base their rates.

GOFMAN: Yes, the insurance companies have said, "We don't know the safety of nuclear power plants, so we won't insure them." For this reason, Congress passed--and twice renewed--the Price Anderson Act, a law that relieves the nuclear power industry of any liability claims beyond $560 million (a small sum in the event of a major catastrophe). Congress has also decreed that the taxpayers would, in effect, reimburse the nuclear industries for $460 million of that $560 million! MY ITALICS HERE- THIS SUM IS NOW[1/30/2001] $9.43 BILLION. STILL NOT REMOTELY CLOSE TO THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE THEY WOULD INFLICT- SEE: http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/crac.html

The insurance companies are smart . . . they don't know the risks, so they won't insure. Does that mean it would be a good idea for you to "bet your life" on nuclear power? If the utilities were sincere about the safety claims that they make publicly, they would agree to repeal the Price-Anderson Act and say, "We'll put our assets on the line and insure each other." None of the power companies has done so . . . which should tell you what they really think about the safety of their plants.

ARGUMENT 8: Nuclear power supplies 13% of our country's electricity today. If Industry is denied that energy, many jobs will surely be lost.

GOFMAN: The relationship of employment to energy is a very complex matter. If you simply shut off the electricity serving a specific factory tomorrow, then of course the people working there will be out of work. On the other hand, the long range increased use of electricity in factories often results in more mechanization and a decrease in the number of humans required to conduct the businesses' activities.

Furthermore, there's little reason to believe that the method of energy production affects employment . . . though many solar advocates claim that "their" energy source will produce more jobs per dollar than most other power alternatives. And as for any possible energy--not jobs--shortage that could occur if we were to abandon atomic power (nuclear plants do produce 13% of our electricity, but that amounts to only 3% of our total annual energy consumption) . . . the American Institute of Architects has calculated, in two carefully researched reports, that we could work up to a 26% saving in America's projected energy use by 1990 (which would be equivalent to the production of about 430 giant nuclear plants) simply by putting conventional technology to work to make our buildings energy-efficient.

ARGUMENT 9: The question of the risks of nuclear power is a deeply technical issue that only well-informed scientists, in that specific field, can understand . . . and the majority of such people support nuclear power.

GOFMAN: I have several things to say in response to that one! First, by simply using common sense, the layman will often behave far more intelligently than would a Ph.D. The ordinary man-in-the-street can look at the amount of radioactivity that would be produced in a full-scale nuclear industry and realize that containing such toxins to 99.9999% perfection day in, day out, year in, and year out--when one considers all the possible human and machine fallibilities--is impossible. But the expert who looks at a computer printout based on the perfect execution of a string of single operations and then concludes that the toxins can be contained to one part in a million is, to my way of thinking, the person who's behaving like an idiot. Let me now address the idea that the majority of qualified scientists support nuclear power. When considering this statement, you should first realize that the U.S. government funds about half of the research in this country. And, as I can tell you from my own personal experience, the government doesn't like results that disagree with its policies. Therefore, many scientists are publicly silent on nuclear power, or declare that the issue is too controversial to take a stance on, when privately they will admit their reservations.

Most important, though, scientific truth is not a popularity contest. Throughout history, almost every step forward in science was resisted by the majority of contemporary scientists. When most people thought that our earth was the center of the universe, the planet was traveling through space just as it's doing today . . . even though the "vast preponderance" of scientific opinion was steadfastly against such an idea. So remember: No matter how many votes a scientific committee may cast . . . the truth of nature remains unchanged.

ARGUMENT 10: Every activity--including driving a car--is risky. It's impossible to have a risk-free society. Consequently the benefits of an action must be weighed against its hazards . . . and nuclear power's benefits outweigh its risks.

GOFMAN: It is absolutely true that we cannot have a risk-free society. And, since that's the case, we should recognize that those who produce hazards for others must be fully prepared to take the financial consequences of the risks. This rule does hold true among individuals, and a corporation or the government should not be allowed to assume the right--which individuals do not have--to aggress against others. Yet nuclear power is currently absolved from the responsibilities of its actions by the Price-Anderson Act. Moreover, the entire concept of a benefit vs. risk doctrine is immoral. There is no benefit to society that can justify the forcible imposition of risks or threats to life upon individuals. Indeed, there is a straight path from accepting the benefit vs. risk doctrine for society as a whole to the philosophy we saw epitomized in Nazi Germany.

Lastly, let me sum up my replies to all of the arguments presented here by reminding people that the nuclear power question is fundamentally a human rights issue. People have the right not to be aggressed against and used as guinea pigs in a massive human experiment. However a concern for human rights must not be equated with a craven fear of progress or challenge! Humanity has faced very difficult problems and perilous situations in the past, and shown great ingenuity in devising systems that can minimize dangers in a fashion which results in only voluntary risks being taken. But such things have to be done in a sensible way, without coercion, and with each party or industry involved taking the responsibility for his, her, or its actions.

Radiation and Human Health, by John W. Gofman, M.D. Ph.D. R&HH (available starting October 1, 1981) is a practical book which can make a positive contribution to the health of those who use it, and especially to the health of their children, who are the most sensitive to radiation injury. The book provides necessary information for making recurring personal and family decisions about voluntary exposures to medical, dental, and occupational radiation. 928 pages, hardcover, $29.95 prepaid. CNR pays for packing and shipping. Tax on Californians: $1.80. Committee for Nuclear Responsibility P.O. Box 421993, San Francisco, CA 94142

This document is available electronically at:

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/top10args.html (HTML format) http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/top10args.txt (ascii TEXT)

1/30/01
12:01:55 PM

World Environment News January 30th, 2001 from Planet Ark

Here are today's Reuters 'World Environment News' headlines, proudly brought to you by Planet Ark.

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

WRAPUP Proposals swirl as Calif. power crisis grinds on - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9646

US groups object to Qatar as host for WTO talks - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9648

FEATURE - Little "easy" US oil and gas left up for grabs - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9650

Taiwan anti-nuclear protester sets himself on fire - TAIWAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9644

FEATURE - Environment a priority for EU president Sweden - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9643

Seaweed farmers cry foul over Japan land project - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9652

India quake causes oil spill near Kandla port - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9651

Ecuador tourism could slump post-Galapagos spill - ECUADOR http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9647

UPDATE - Galapagos tanker to remain in harbor, become reef - ECUADOR http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9649

UPDATE - Protesters invade "anti-Davos" forum in Brazil - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9645

1/30/01
11:59:58 AM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS) http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

BUSH ENERGY PLAN ELECTRIFIES ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

By Brian Hansen

WASHINGTON, DC, January 29, 2001 (ENS) - Taking a cue from the Bush administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has temporarily relaxed a series of federal clean air regulations in an effort to ameliorate the electricity shortage that continues the plague the state of California.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-15.html

DEATH TOLL CLIMBS IN INDIA'S WORST EARTHQUAKE

AHMEDABAD, India, January 29, 2001 (ENS) - At least 25,000 people have died and many thousands more are critically injured and missing as a result of an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter Scale that shook western India on Friday, India's 52nd Republic Day.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-01.html

MAD COW DISEASE CALLED INTERNATIONAL THREAT

ROME, Italy, January 29, 2001 (ENS) - The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is warning countries around the world - not just those in Western Europe - about the risk of mad cow disease. The Organization recommends adoption of surveillance and monitoring systems to detect the disease in cattle herds, meat industries and animal feed operations.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-08.html

FOURTEEN RIGHT WHALE CALVES SIGHTED IN U.S. WATERS

WOODS HOLE, Massachusetts, January 29, 2001 (ENS) - Teams of biologists surveying ocean waters off Florida and Georgia have sighted at least 14 right whale calves in the last two months. This is more new right whales than the scientists observed in the previous three years combined.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-06.html

UK LIFE QUALITY INDEX FINDS ENVIRONMENT IN FLUX

LONDON, United Kingdom, January 29, 2001 (ENS) - The UK's first annual report on sustainable development has good news and bad for the environment.

"Achieving a Better Quality of Life" was published last week and focuses on 15 indicators of sustainable development. These include everyday concerns like housing development, health, jobs, air quality, educational achievement, wildlife and economic prosperity.

For full text and graphics, visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-11.html

SETTLEMENT REQUIRES BOATERS TO BRAKE FOR MANATEES

MIAMI, Florida, January 29, 2001 (ENS) Florida's endangered manatee population received a welcome boost last week in a landmark legal settlement reached in principle between conservationists and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The agreement will slow down boats in manatee habitat, reducing the risk of collisions between the rare mammals and boat propellers.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-07.html

SHELL UNDER FIRE FOR PAKISTAN PARK PIPELINE

KARACHI, Pakistan, January 29, 2001 (ENS) - Environmentalists have taken multinational oil giant Shell to court over its plans to build a pipeline for mineral and gas exploration in Pakistan's Kirthar National Park.

For full text and graphics, visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-10.html

MISSION ANTARCTICA VOLUNTEER DIES EN ROUTE

BRISTOL, United Kingdom, January 28, 2001 (ENS) - A woman from Bristol on her way to Antarctica on a month long environmental cleanup mission has died 150 miles before reaching the frozen continent.

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-28-01.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JANUARY 29, 2001

$4 Million Supports Family Planning and Environmental Management

Weyerhaeuser Gets International Environmental Certification

Keeping Invasive Plants Out Of Forest Fragments

High Tech Monitoring Targets Blue Crab Migration

Fishers, Feds to Conduct Joint Monkfish Survey

Long Island Encourages Individuals to Generate Power

Yellowstone Searched for CO2 Eating Microbes

FedEx To Deliver Cleaner Vehicles

For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-09.html

SEND NEWS STORY TIPS TO news@ens-news.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Canada Leads the World In Adopting Independent Audits of Sustainable Forest Practices

MONTREAL, Canada, Jan.29 -/E-Wire/-- Canadian forest products companies are driving an explosive growth in third party audits of sustainable forest practices (certification), offering the largest area of certified forest of any country in the world.

/CONTACT: Richard Descarries, Director, Media Relations, Tel: 514-861-8813, Cell: 514-219-5494/

/Web Site: www.open.doors.cppa.ca/

For Full Text Visit: http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/29Jan0104.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Hans Rausing Returns to the Packaging Industry

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, Jan.29 -/E-Wire/-- Hans Rausing, formerly chief executive officer and chairman of the Tetra Pak and Tetra Laval group, is becoming a principal investor in the EcoLean group.

/CONTACT: Mats Harborn, telephone +46-42 26 86 89, +46-70 602 43 02/

/Web Site: www.ecolean.com/

For Full Text Visit: http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/29Jan0105.html

TO FOREIGN AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Netscaler President and CEO Encourages Silicon Valley Business Leaders to Raise Relief For Indian Earthquake Victims

Santa Clara, Calif., Jan 29 -/E-Wire/-- B.V. Jagadeesh, president and CEO of NetScaler Inc., a leading Internet infrastructure company, has announced the commitment of its employees to support relief efforts for victims of the devastating earthquake in Gujarat, India and encouraged the Silicon Valley business community to follow suit.

/CONTACT: Donna Loughlin NetScaler Inc. ZNA Communications (408) 982-5807 or (831) 425-1581 CELL/(408) 393-5575

brigid@zna.com or dloughlin@zna.com/

/Web site: http://www.netscaler.com/

For Full Text Visit: http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/29Jan0103.html

TO BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Solpower Appoints Environmental Technolgies, Inc. National Distributor For SP34E

PHOENIX AZ, Jan. 29 -/E-Wire/-- Solpower Corporation (OTCBB:SLPW - news) is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with Environmental Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:EVTC - news) to distribute SP34E(TM) on a national basis.

/CONTACT: Solpower Corporation Jim Hirst or Mark Robinson, 888/289-8866/

/Web site: http://www.solpower.com/

For Full Text Visit: http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/29Jan0102.html

TO BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

EVTC, Inc. Announces New Brand And Newest Market for Its On-Site Refrigerant Services

Full Circle Unveils Nth Degree(SM), Its On-Site Refrigerant Solution And Announces Plans to Make Atlanta Its 11th Market Served

FORT WORTH, Texas, Jan. 29 -/E-Wire/-- EVTC, Inc. t/a Environmental Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: EVTC) announced today that it has re-branded its on-site services, which will now be known as Full Circle's - Nth Degree(SM). The new Nth Degree(SM) brand is part of Full Circle's continuing enhancement and integration of Refrigerant Management Services, Inc., the on-site refrigerant services group acquired by EVTC in May of 2000.

/CONTACT: EVTC Investor Relations, 817-759-8900, or fax, 817-759-8901, or ir@evtc.com /

/Web site: http://www.evtc.com/

For Full Text Visit: http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Jan01/29Jan0101.html

SEND YOUR PRESS RELEASE ON E-WIRE -- 1-888-764-NEWS

1/30/01
11:54:45 AM

IOWA GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2001

SENATE AGRICULTURE COMMITTEE REPORTS

Final Bill Action: SENATE FILE 61 (SSB 1031), a bill for an act relating to industrial hemp, by providing for its production, harvesting, and marketing.

Approved by Agriculture Committee - January 23, 2001.

Final Vote: Ayes: 12 Nays: 1

FINDINGS. The general assembly finds that a trend exists among states to consider the economic importance of industrial hemp, which is a major crop in other nations. Industrial hemp historically has contributed to the economic welfare of this country, and is a renewable natural resource manufactured for textiles, pulp, paper, oil, building materials, and other products. The purpose of this Act is to promote the economy of this state by promoting industrial hemp as a viable crop.

1/29/01
5:51:09 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

DID YOU EVER KNOW THAT WE'RE YOUR HERO? Vote for Grist (please) to receive the Alternet award for "new media hero" <http://www.alternet.org/heroes/>

1. TANK GOODNESS Thankfully, the oil spill in the Galapagos has caused only minimal damage to wildlife, enviros say. The oil tanker Jessica ran aground about 550 yards off the Ecuadorean archipelago and spilled about 185,000 gallons of fuel, but ocean currents have helped the clean-up effort and carried most of the fuel away from the islands, which were first made famous by Charles Darwin. The U.S. Coast Guard, which has sent a team down to Ecuador to help with the spill, said yesterday that it will be impossible to move the tanker and that over time the tanker will become an artificial reef and habitat for marine life. The Ecuadorean government has promised to tighten lax safety standards for tankers in the future, but enviros are dubious.

straight to the source: San Jose Mercury News, Associated Press, Gonzalo Solano, 28 Jan 2001 <http://cgi.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/galapagos28.htm>

straight to the source: New York Times, Larry Rohter, 27 Jan 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/27/world/27GALA.html>

2. GIANT SUCKING SOUNDS I Detroit, you suck!, say enviros, furious that American automakers aren't moving quickly on clean cars. Bush, you suck!, say others, pointing to the car-friendly White House. Enviros, you suck!, say still others, upset that greenies are touting clean cars as a solution. Read more on the Grist Magazine website -- and tell us which group you think sucks most and what you think should be done about the car problem.

read it only in Grist Magazine: Road rage -- in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho012601.stm>

3. GIANT SUCKING SOUNDS II The first widespread application of hydrogen fuel-cell technology might not be in cars but in vacuum cleaners. Industry giant Electrolux said last week that it is close to developing a fuel-cell vacuum that would be lighter than conventional models, much quieter, and, of course, free of a power cord. Big advances in pollution reduction are expected when automakers and energy companies begin using fuel cells on commercial scale, but such changes might be 10 years down the road. In one test project in Portland, methane collected from the decomposing waste from a sewage plant is providing hydrogen to power a fuel cell that creates enough electricity for more than 100 homes a year.

straight to the source: MSNBC, Miguel Llanos, 25 Jan 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/521465.asp>

4. MONTANA: MAX HAS MONEY, ENVIROS ARE A PAIN Montana Republicans are gearing up to make the state's enviro laws much more friendly to industry groups, arguing that the laws have hurt the state's economy and cost jobs in the mining, logging, and energy industries. The effort is likely to succeed because Republicans have the majority in both legislative chambers and the state's new governor, Republican Gov. Judy Matz, is helping to lead the charge. Enviros say that tourism and recreation -- both dependent on strong environmental protections -- are fueling economic growth in the state. Elsewhere in the West, Oregon's strong land-use laws are under assault. Voters there last fall passed the country's most sweeping measure requiring the government to compensate private property owners for limits on the use of their land.

straight to the source: New York Times, Michael Janofsky, 28 Jan 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/28/politics/28MONT.html>

5. ARGY BARGY A pile of trash that has been floating at sea for 15 years may have finally found a home in Florida. The pile -- which began as 14,000 tons of municipal waste from Philadelphia in 1986 -- has been rejected by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Singapore, as well as the states of Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia. Some portion of the pile was disposed of in Haiti, while other parts seemed to have been dumped illegally into the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Florida officials have given tentative approval to incinerate the remaining 3,000 tons, but environmentalists and locals are protesting the plan, saying the waste contains toxic metals.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 28 Jan 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9636>

straight to source: Long Island Newsday, Associated Press, 27 Jan 2001 <http://www.newsday.com/ap/national/ap906.htm>

Slick-rock chicks -- a week in the life of Susan Tixier of Great Old Broads for Wilderness <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/tixier012601.stm>

Nice package -- the solution to excess packaging -- and other gems from assorted magazines in our Best of the Rest section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/best/best012601.stm>

The refrigerator strikes back -- breakthroughs in energy-efficient appliances -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha012201.stm>

1/29/01
5:50:46 PM

More on Saving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Hi Folks....

So, as you may be aware, President Clinton DID send a bill to Congress before he left office asking for preservation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that Bush's regime would so love to drill into oblivion. But that Bill will undoubtedly die a quiet death unless the public makes a mighty roar.

This site offers a petition to the President and Congress urging them NOT to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, our most magnificent wildlife sanctuary.

http://www.savearcticrefuge.org

1/29/01
5:50:22 PM

Defenders of Wildlife

If you only help one environmental cause this year, please make it this one! Be sure to forward the petition to your friends!

Help us stop the big international oil companies from drilling in the heart of America's most magnificent wildlife sanctuary, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Often called "America's Serengeti," the Refuge is home to caribou, musk oxen, polar bears, wolves, arctic foxes, millions of migratory birds and hundreds of other animals. Oil drilling, construction activity and oil spills would inflict terrible damage on the fragile arctic ecosystem and kill wildlife. The Refuge is also America's most important onshore polar bear nursery ground. Polar bears would likely be driven from their dens by the onslaught of aircraft, ships, trucks, road and pipeline construction, and drilling -- possibly leaving their cubs to die. Oil development risks another massive oil spill like the Exxon Valdez disaster. It simply isn't worth six months' oil that wouldn't reach market for 10 years or more.

To stop Big Oil, we need your help to demand that President Bush and Congress NOT allow drilling in the Arctic Refuge. If we're to save the Refuge, we need to make this the biggest Internet environmental petition ever. We need millions of people to call for the Refuge to be protected from the devastation caused by oil drilling. Insist that President Bush and Congress NOT allow drilling in this unique Arctic wilderness -- one of the few truly wild places left. We should no more allow drilling here than in Yellowstone Park or the Grand Canyon.

We've created a special animated video at the cutting edge of Internet technology, to assist the campaign to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

To view the video and take action, click here: http://www.savearcticrefuge.org/video

-or-

To take action without viewing the video, click here: http://www.savearcticrefuge.org

Whichever you do, please forward the message to friends and family who share your desire to protect the environment. With millions of petitions, our collective voice will be heard by decision-makers in Washington.

To subscribe, visit Defenders' website at http://www.defenders.org/den or send an e-mail to denlines@defenders.org Wuth the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

1/29/01
5:49:55 PM

Public Citizen

Bush Prescription Drug Proposal Would Not Help Most Seniors in Need

States Would Get Blank Check, But No Guarantees for Seniors Who Lack Drug Coverage

WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Bush's prescription drug proposal would fail to help most seniors who lack prescription drug coverage and would give states a blank check with no guarantee that seniors will get the help they need, Public Citizen said today.

Bush is expected to send his prescription drug proposal to Congress today. Based on the plan Bush announced during his campaign, his so-called "Immediate Helping Hand" proposal would provide $48 billion over four years to support state-based programs to help low-income seniors with the cost of prescription drugs.

"The President's 'Immediate Helping Hand' proposal is missing a bunch of fingers," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. "Instead of working through the existing, successful Medicare program, it gives a blank check to the states, with few guarantees that seniors will get access to the prescription drugs they need. It also would do too little to control the high cost of prescription drugs."

Public Citizen opposes Bush's plan because:

· It would force most seniors to wait for benefits. More than half of all seniors with incomes over 175 percent of poverty and out-of-pocket drug costs under $6,000 in a year would receive no immediate benefits. A single person with $15,000 a year in income (slightly over 175 percent of the poverty level) would need to spend at least $6,000 in out-of-pocket drug costs, or 40 percent of their income, to get any assistance through Bush's plan.

· It doesn't provide coverage through Medicare, so it will fail to reach millions of seniors. Medicare successfully extends coverage for hospital and physician services to almost all seniors (94 percent). Existing state-based, low-income programs enroll only a minority of seniors in need. Nationally, fewer than 800,000 of eight million low-income seniors are enrolled in the 14-state pharmacy assistance programs that are now operational. These low enrollment rates are the result of poor outreach efforts on the part of states and the refusal of seniors to sign up for what they consider to be charity programs for the poor. Clearly, making prescription drug coverage available through Medicare, which has proven so successful at enrolling the elderly, would be a much better solution.

· Benefits are uncertain for those enrolled. The Bush proposal allows states substantial flexibility in setting the benefit level for their plans. It is unclear if states' plans would cover all necessary medications and what sort of deductibles, co-payments and caps they would impose. There is a wide range among the states that currently offer some form of assistance to low-income seniors.

· Only one percent of Medicare beneficiaries would receive direct compensation for their high drug costs. Just one percent of Medicare beneficiaries spend more than $6,000 a year out-of-pocket on prescription drugs. This is the threshold seniors must meet under Bush's plan to receive compensation for some prescription drug costs from the federal government.

· States may take up to three years to create programs. Setting up a new program would require states to pass enabling legislation, hire and train new staff, and educate beneficiaries about the new program. Experience with the implementation of the Children's Health Insurance Plan indicates that bringing a new program on-line can take up to three years. Benefits could be made available to seniors much more quickly and reliably if they were provided through the already existing Medicare program.

The Bush administration has described Bush's proposal as a "transitional" program that is to be replaced with an equally flawed plan to make prescription drug insurance available to Medicare beneficiaries through the private market. A more complete analysis of Bush's prescription drug plans can be found at:

www.citizen.org/congress/drugs/bushstateplan.html.

1/29/01
5:45:37 PM

World Environment News - January 29th, 2001 from Planet Ark

Here are today's Reuters 'World Environment News' headlines, proudly brought to you by Planet Ark.

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

Calif. wind power producers enjoy high prices but aren't paid - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9630

Coral reef exposes worst El Ninos ever are now - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9638

FEATURE - Aging water, sewer systems drain US cities - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9637

Unwanted garbage may, at last, find Fla. home - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9636

Oil industry lobbies to open federal lands to gas exploration - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9635

Bush to Bush - Don't drill off Florida - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9634

Calif. regulators seek new energy-savings actions - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9633

New York State earmarks nearly $50 million for wind power - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9632

NY raises taxes to fund energy conservation programs - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9631

Calif. forges ahead with low-emissions auto rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9618

US seeks more time to prepare for climate talks - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9628

Florida takes step to save endangered manatee - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9626

New England moves to preserve red crab - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9625

Drying bogs pose pollution threat - magazine - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9629

S.African seaweed symposium looks to the future - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9619

Panama Canal partially blocked after tanker leaks oil - PANAMA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9622

Greenpeace uses riot police van in nuclear protest - NETHERLANDS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9623

Indonesia forces buses, taxis to use natural gas - INDONESIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9624

EU takes Ireland to court over water pollution - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9621

EU lawmakers set 10-year plan for environment - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9639

UPDATE - Ecuador oil pipeline bursts, spills oil into river - ECUADOR http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9620

Canadian smelters say they will cut toxic emmissions - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9640

Brazil to asses environmental impact on Amazon - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9627

Rio prosecutors sue Petrobras for Jan 2000 oil spill - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9642

FEATURE - Sharks in Sydney-feeding frenzy or media frenzy? - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9641

1/29/01
5:44:41 PM

The EarthAction Network consists of over 1,800 citizen groups in more than 152 countries. Our purpose is to enable thousands of organizations, citizens, journalists and parliamentarians to act together simultaneously around the world on critical global issues. EarthAction produces an Action Kit eight to twelve times a year which is distributed to our Partner Organizations for use in mobilising their members to take action on important global issues. Partnership in the EarthAction Network is offered to citizen groups free of charge-however, groups that have the resources are asked to contribute US$30 to $100 per year. Individuals may also join the EarthAction Network for US$15 per year.

EarthAction International Offices:

EarthAction 30 Cottage Street Amherst, MA 01002, USA Tel. 1-413-549 8118 Fax. 1-413-549 0544 email: amherst@earthaction.org

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE "ea-alert-eng" MAILING LIST

Send an email to: majordomo@oneworld.org With the following command in the body of the message:

Subscribe ea-alert-eng youremail@yourdomain

1/29/01
5:43:25 PM

Oppose Ashcroft Update: Pass the Petition Along!

Circulate Until: Febuary 3, 2001

(1) Pass the Petition Along! (2) Take Action Now! (3) About Us / Subscription Information (4) Please Support Our Efforts

(1) PASS THE PETITION ALONG!

You amaze us once again! On January 23rd we delivered more than 130,000 petitions to Capitol Hill, and we plan to make a follow-up delivery next week of new signatures. Now is the time to pass on the petition to your friends, family and colleagues. It is important that Senators hear from their constituents. Senator Feinstein (D-CA) received more than 28,000 petitions on the day that she announced her opposition to John Ashcroft's confirmation. We would like to be able to deliver similar numbers to the other Senators on the Committee who have yet to take a position. Please ask everyone you know who cares about civil rights and equal opportunity to sign the petition by visiting: http://www.OpposeAshcroft.com To see pictures of last week's delivery, visit: http://www.OpposeAshcroft.com/press/ash_010123.phtml If you know of a rally in your area or would like to organize an event, please contact us so we can add it to our calendar. http://www.opposeashcroft.com/action/local.phtml

(2) TAKE ACTION NOW!

You still have time to make a difference! The Judiciary Committee vote will not take place before the last week in January. Please take time to call the members of the Committee and voice your opposition to the John Ashcroft's confirmation.

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEMBERS / PHONE NUMBERS

Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT) Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT) Chairman Ranking Member 202/224-5251 202/224-4242

Sen. Strom Thurmond (SC) Sen. Edward Kennedy (MA) 202/224-5972 202/224-4543

Sen. Charles Grassley (IA) Sen. Joseph Biden, Jr. (DE) 202/224-3744 202/224-5042

Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) Sen. Herb Kohl (WI) 202/224-4254 202/224-5653

Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ) Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA) 202/224-4521 202/224-3841

Sen. Mike DeWine (OH) Sen. Russell Feingold (WI) 202/224-2315 202/224-5323

Sen. Jeff Sessions (AL) Sen. Charles Schumer (NY) 202/224-4124 202/224-6542

Sen. Bob Smith (NH) Sen. Richard Durbin (IL) 202/224-2841 202/224-2152

Sen. Sam Brownback (KS) Sen. Maria Cantwell (WA) 202/224-6521 202/224-3441

People For the American Way will run newspaper ads nationwide and in Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana and Connecticut. THANK YOU FOR TAKING ACTION!

(3) ABOUT PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY / SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

People For the American Way organizes and mobilizes Americans to fight for fairness, justice, civil rights and the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. PFAW monitors the Religious Right at the local, state and national levels, lobbies for progressive legislation, and helps build communities of activists.

To join our email Activist Network, please go to: http://www.pfaw.org/activist/

You received this email because you signed the petition at http://www.opposeashcroft.com and indicated you would like to stay

1/29/01
5:42:26 PM

Unnatural Disaster

Deregulated California utilities are electrocuting the public. Ohio is next

by Harvey Wasserman

Electric utility deregulation has become a spectacular catastrophe, starting in California and stretching deep into our economic and ecological future, here in Ohio and nationwide.

To keep it simple, we'll start with the top 10 truths about this unnatural disaster:

1. There is no electric supply shortage threatening California (or the nation), only a series of complex, cynical manipulations that have ramped prices sky high, yielding enormous profits for a few distributors and generators.

2. The deregulation bill at the root of this crisis was drafted by the California utilities now facing bankruptcy and was rammed through the California legislature (unanimously, in 1996) by the utilities' own lobbyists.

3. The Natural Resources Defense Council, through its chief energy spokesperson Ralph Cavanagh, and with support from the Energy Foundation, played a key role in drafting, passing and then defending that bill.

4. But the California bill's catastrophic outcome was accurately predicted in intricate detail by a wide range of grassroots, consumer and environmental groups that challenged the deregulatory scheme in a 1998 statewide referendum.

5. The utilities now screaming for help spent at least $40 million to defeat the referendum that would have saved the state and nation from the current crisis.

6. The utilities now screaming for help walked off with more than $20 billion in "stranded cost" bailouts as part of deregulation, but nobody seems to be able to account for where the money went, nor is there a concrete plan for getting that money back.

7. The consuming public would gain, not lose, if the utilities now threatening to go bankrupt actually did go bankrupt, and the public then took over the utilities.

8. The public-owned utilities that supply Los Angeles and Sacramento are prospering in the midst of this crisis, proving once again that public power is the answer to the nation's long-term energy needs.

9. Those municipal utilities are deeply invested in energy efficiency and renewable sources (wind and solar), which has provided them with a stable supply in the midst of the crisis.

10. Any new electricity production added to the state and national grid should come from wind, which is the cheapest and fastest-to-build new power source, and from solar power, which can be installed on rooftops and at industrial sites, freeing homeowners and businesses from the lethal fluctuation of monopoly manipulations.

The core of the California power crisis is simple: The utilities got greedy. They thought they were taking the electricity business into a brave and profitable new millennium. Instead, they threw it back to a chaotic old century.

In the 1880s, when Thomas Edison and others first made electricity a salable commodity, rampant competition created chaos. Wires were strung everywhere, power plants popped up in bad places, service was abominable.

But as the Morgans and Rockefellers inevitably swooped in to create stable monopolies, the public rebelled against price gouging and centralized private control. The barons who gobbled up the revolutionary new technology were confronted with the threat of being taken over by angry consumers.

So Samuel Insull, the godfather of the new industry, came up with a compromise--regulation. From 1907 through 1920, virtually every state established its own regulatory commission to set rates and monitor growth and service in the electric power business. But the state commissions were rapidly taken over by the utilities themselves, and there were extensive flaws in the scheme, most notably its propensity to encourage the construction of massively expensive, inefficient and dirty power plants.

Along the way, massive abuses brought on the New Deal installation of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other national controls. Since then, state and federal regulation has provided the nation with a relatively stable and reliable electric supply system. It has been stodgy and short on technical innovation. It has also stemmed the tide of public power, which still, where it's in place, provides cheaper and more reliable electricity than private investor-owned utilities, regulated or otherwise. And, in fact, regulation is still in place in 27 states. Though Texas has insisted on deregulating in the midst of the California debacle, the chaos in the Golden State has pretty much stopped what looked like a national avalanche of state deregulations.

In California, the disaster has taken the form of a mafia-style shakedown. As a price for ending regulation, the utilities demanded a $28.5 billion "stranded cost" bailout for their bad investments, most importantly their obsolete, superexpensive nuclear power plants (in Ohio the "stranded cost" tab has been more like $9 billion).

What happened to that money, nobody seems to know. Southern California Edison invested at least $5 billion in Asia; Pacific Gas & Electric bought up much of the power generation in New England and upstate New York. But in a huge shell game, the California utilities shifted those assets to their parent companies, while leaving their distribution companies to flirt with bankruptcy--and to get hundreds of millions more dollars in public subsidies.

And, as usual, the state is just handing over this money while demanding nothing in return. The power generators, the allegedly bankrupt utilities and dozens of sharp operators manipulating the utility grid are all making out like bandits while blackouts roll through California.

They're also using the "power shortage" as an excuse to demand construction of more fossil fuel and nuclear generators, burning natural gas, oil and coal and trying to revive the atomic energy industry, all to the detriment of the public and the environment, but all certain to generate gigantic profits for the very people causing the crisis.

Here, instead, is what should happen:

The public should take direct ownership of the utilities, which have clearly failed. The system should be controlled on a municipal basis, as in Sacramento and Los Angeles and, hopefully, soon in San Francisco and other cities, towns and counties across the state and nation.

No new fossil fuel or nuke plants should be built. All new construction money should go to building windmills, solar panels and increasing efficiency. Wind is the cheapest and fastest to build form of new generating capacity in the world today. Solar photovoltaic panels should be generating electricity atop virtually every rooftop in the nation, starting with all new construction. All water should also be heated by the sun, again starting with new construction.

All this work should be done with union labor, starting with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has been training its labor force for just such a conversion.

The California crisis is not one of supply, it's one of manipulation by an obsolete private utility industry and a fleet of cynical power generators. The solution is not to feed them still more warehouses full of money. The solution is to take them over, make them directly responsible to the public that owns them, and switch them over to wind, solar and increased efficiency.

They say electric deregulation will be different here in Ohio. But the basic structure for corporate theft has been put in place here as well and the solutions are ultimately also the same.

Harvey Wasserman NonukesHW@aol.com