7/14/01
9:19:22 PM

So Much for Early Warning...

Superpowers' fail-safe fails to materialize

By Peter Baker, Washington Post

MOSCOW - To prevent false alarms about missile launches with catastrophic consequences, the United States and Russia decided to build a joint nuclear early warning center to share information. They liked the idea so much that they announced it twice.

Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin first unveiled the plan to ''avert nuclear war by mistake,'' as Clinton put it, in September 1998. When Clinton came back here in June 2000, the two countries pulled out the news release again. ''A milestone in enhancing strategic security,'' said Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin.

Yet now, as the presidents of Russia and the United States prepare for another summit, this ''milestone'' remains nothing more than an abandoned kindergarten building surrounded by overgrown shrubbery on the outskirts of Moscow.

Planning for the early warning center has ground to a halt, stymied by conflicting priorities, geopolitics, and legal issues.

After Clinton and Yeltsin first agreed to the plan, the war in Kosovo the following spring soured Russia on the West and everything was put on hold for nearly a year. After relations thawed a bit, Clinton and Putin signed a memorandum of understanding last June to put it back on track.

But it became mired in details - Russians said their law required Americans to pay taxes on the equipment brought into the country and to assume liability for construction, while the US side did not want to set a precedent that would affect larger aid programs. More important, the project lost momentum in the lame-duck days of the Clinton administration and has remained frozen pending the Bush team's review of its Russia policy. The two sides have not met for months.

The three-year odyssey of the early warning center that wasn't offers a lesson in how good intentions can go awry when it comes to relations between the world's two major nuclear powers. The failure to establish the center underscores the limitations of international summitry and the difficulty of turning rhetoric into reality.

Presidents Bush and Putin will meet for the first time in Slovenia on Saturday with missile defense at the top of the agenda. But if the two countries cannot find a way to jointly build an $8 million center considered noncontroversial by both sides, collaboration on a hotly disputed $100 billion missile defense system promises to be far more problematic.

''This shows very clearly that if it's just a political ploy to make everybody look better, then nobody will move it forward,'' said Pavel Podvig, a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow. ''We are no longer in that mode where anything cooperative is such a great idea that all the bureaucracies would just clear away.''

Perhaps more ominously, in the view of arms control specialists, the stalemate over the early warning center leaves unaddressed a problem with potentially disastrous ramifications: Russia's huge blind spots in detecting missile launches. A mistaken warning could cause Russian leaders to launch their own missiles and trigger an unintended nuclear conflagration.

As it was, the joint warning center was seen by experts such as Podvig as an inadequate response to a serious problem, one that would be useful mostly if it served as a first step to a more meaningful solution. Critics asked whether Russians would really trust American data showing that the United States was not attacking.

Theodore Postol, a national security specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that initially he considered the joint plan not serious enough, but at least ''a good thing'' in the context of a broader approach to the issue. Now, given the result, he has come to see it as a propaganda tool by the Americans.

''This has just been a smoke screen to look like they're doing something when they're not,'' Postol said. ''I really lay this at the feet of the Americans because they have the resources.''

The notion of shared early warning information arose shortly after the end of the Cold War. In February 1992, just weeks after the collapse of the Soviet Union, US and Russian officials began discussing the creation of a center where each side would have access to data from the other.

The danger of misunderstanding became vividly evident in 1995 when Russian military officials briefly mistook the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket for a US intercontinental ballistic missile. Yeltsin was brought his black suitcase known as the ''nuclear football'' to make a decision about whether to retaliate, but the Russians came to conclude that they were not under attack.

The potential for trouble has only intensified since then with the deterioration of the Russian early warning system. Only two to four of the nine high-elliptical satellites that Russia had in orbit in 1995 are still functioning today, according to arms control experts, and at least seven hours a day Russia is blind to possible launches from US missile fields. Just last month, a fire at a ground control center cut off communications with several military satellites.

Russia built seven satellites to reestablish full coverage but has never launched them, apparently for lack of money.

The decision to build a Joint Data Exchange Center would create the first permanent US-Russian military facility, modeled on a temporary joint center established in Colorado to deal with the Year 2000 computer bug.

According to Pentagon briefing papers, the center would be staffed 24 hours a day by a detachment of 16 US officers joined by a similar number of Russians. US and Russian officers would sit back to back, each with computers linked to their respective early warning headquarters.

Officials picked a site for the facility, but today the building sits empty and unrenovated in a leafy residential neighborhood in Moscow. Instead of being in its operational test phase, as planned for this month on the way to a September opening, it serves mostly as a clandestine hangout for young beer drinkers.

This story ran on page A30 of the Boston Globe on 6/14/2001.

7/14/01
9:14:15 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

MAKAH GET MORE WHALING RIGHTS IN 2ND ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

By Drew Snider

WASHINGTON, DC, July 13, 2001 (ENS) - The Makah Indian Tribe of Washington State will get broader scope for their controversial whale hunt under a new Environmental Assessment released today by the National Marine Fisheries Service, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-13-02.html

WASHINGTON DC LANDLORD LIED ABOUT LEAD PAINT HAZARDS

WASHINGTON, DC, July 12, 2001 (ENS) - A Washington, DC area landlord has pleaded guilty to obstructing justice and making false statements to federal officials, in order to conceal his failure to notify tenants of the presence and hazards associated with lead based paint. The case is the first ever criminal prosecution in the United States related to lead hazard warnings that are required by the federal Lead Hazard Reduction Act of 1992.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-12-06.html

U.S. CONGRESS EMBROILED IN BATTLE OVER ENERGY PLANS

By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, July 13, 2001 (ENS) - President George W. Bush is facing a fierce battle in Congress over his long term energy plans for the United States. The President won a round this week when the Senate refused to block proposed oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but seems to be losing his fight to open national monuments to oil and natural gas exploration.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-13-06.html

U.S. GRAPPLES WITH BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS COMPLIANCE PROTOCOL

WASHINGTON, DC, July 12, 2001 (ENS) - The U.S. State Department's special negotiator for chemical and biological arms control says the Bush administration has "serious substantive concerns" with the existing text of a proposed protocol to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-12-01.html

BELGIUM SETS FORTH PRESIDENCY'S GREEN PRIORITIES

BRUSSELS, Belgium July 13, 2001 (ENS) - Belgian Environment Minister Magda Aelvoet laid out her plans for the country's six month presidency of the European Union Council of Environment Ministers Thursday. In an address to the European Parliament's Environment Committee, she promised a focus on measures to achieve "sustainable production and consumption patterns."

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-13-01.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JULY 12, 2001

Four Firefighters Killed in Washington Wildfire

Judge Halts Logging in Roadless Area

Diesel's Cancer Risk Dwarfs All Other Air Toxics

Petroleum Refiner Agrees to Cut Emissions

International Protection Headed for the Florida Keys

Greater Ship Safety Sought Along Olympic Coast

USGS Launches New Website for Nation's Water Data

Drought Can Increase Air Pollution

More Fulbright Ecology Scholarships Made Available

Critical Habitat Proposed for Carolina Heelsplitter

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-12-09.html

7/14/01
9:10:59 PM

TomPaine.com

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

Thomas Paine, The Crisis, 1776

Where does campaign finance reform go from here? This week TomPaine.com interviews two experts about the House imbroglio, and a New Yorker examines the behavior of his former congressman.

REPUBLICAN RETREAT BODES WELL FOR REFORMERS

Listen to an interview with Trevor Potter

"This is about as desperate as I have seen the House leadership," says Potter, a former Federal Election Commission chairman. He discusses yesterday's chaos surrounding the House campaign finance reform debate, and what it means for the bill's prospects. Hint: The ex-FEC chair, appointed by a Republican president, says the bill stands a better chance of passing than ever.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/13/index.html

WILL SHAYS-MEEHAN HURT MINORITIES?

Listen to an interview with Ron Faucheux

Some minority lawmakers say that banning soft money will make it harder to elect non-wealthy candidates. Mr. Faucheux, editor of Campaigns and Elections magazine, tells us how a soft money ban will affect voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/12/index.html

TomPaine.commentary: THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

by Mike Ryan

Need an example of why we should fix the way we pay for politics? Take a look at how former Representative Gerald Solomon helped General Electric. It would be utterly illegal for GE to contribute money to legislators who regulate pollution. But GE, with Mr. Solomon's help, got around the law.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/11/index.html

7/13/01
7:41:03 PM

INTERNATIONAL ACTION CAMP-AUGUST 18-24 2001

BE THERE: The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)/WISE-Amsterdam and Nuclear Free Great Lakes Campaign are sponsoring The International Conference for a Sustainable Energy Future: Confronting Nuclear Power with People Power. The event will begin with two days of workshops and speakers at DePaul University in Chicago (August 18-19) and then move to a campsite in Yorkville, Illinois, about 13 miles from the Dresden nuclear power complex, from August 20-24. The location is convenient to O'Hare International Airport.

LEARN, TEACH: The Action Camp will combine issues seminars, strategy sessions, organizational and tools development workshops, non-violence training, and actions. Key focus areas will be on radioactive waste transportation, globalization of the nuclear power industry, global climate change and nuclear power, sustainable energy, and the attempted resurgence of the atomic industry. We need to strategize and cooperate internationally if we are to stop new nuclear reactors and move toward a sustainable energy future. Non-violence and direct action trainings will be offered daily.

GATHER, GROW: We plan to bring the best and most active minds from across the U.S. and throughout the world to gather, plan, strategize, grow stronger. Our goal is to inspire and empower people with the tools and resolve to return to their communities and build a nuclear-free world. We invite activists, students, whistleblowers, and researchers from everywhere to join us. Confirmed participants will arrive from all across the U.S., Russia, Germany, Holland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Spain and Slovakia. Participants are also expected from Korea, Japan, South Africa and elsewhere.

ACT! On August 23, we will target the Exelon-owned Dresden nuclear complex with a legal rally and non-violent action. Exelon-the largest nuclear utility in the United States--is a multi-national conglomerate owned by Unicom (formerly Commonwealth Edison), PECO Energy and British Energy; it is a symbol of the increasing globalization and consolidation of the nuclear industry. Exelon currently is the only U.S. utility that says it wants to build new atomic reactors.

CAMP INFO: The camp will provide three vegetarian/vegan meals daily. Full sanitiation facilities also will be provided. You should bring a sleeping bag and ground pad, a tent (unless you have pre-reserved room in a cabin) and other camping gear and eating utensils (note: no camp stoves please), a rainsuit or poncho, other personal items, some warm clothing (it can get cool on summer evenings), and a flashlight. Please do not bring, or expect to use, any alcohol or drugs (except by prescription) at the camp. Don't forget to bring a willingness to learn, to network, to organize and to participate. Expect to be challenged, expect to learn, expect to make a difference...

Check the NIRS' website http://www.nirs.org for schedule information, speakers lists and other updated news.

NOTE: NIRS has a very limited amount of funds available for scholarships for U.S. and Canadian activists. These can be used for transportation and/or to defray registration/food costs. If you want to come to the camp, and absolutely need some financial assistance, please contact Michael Mariotte at nirsnet@nirs.org. Please include your name, organization, how much money you would need and what it would be used for. Conference fees are $30 and $7/day for food.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

1424 16th Street NW

Washington, DC 20036. 202.328.0002

f: 202.462.2183

nirsnet@nirs.org

http://www.nirs.org

7/13/01
7:35:24 PM

BioDemocracy News #34 Agbiotech Aggression

By: Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association

July 2001 http://www.OrganicConsumers.org http://www.PureFood.org

Quote of the Month:

"Genetically modified food is viewed as unsafe by most [Americans], and the public wants warning labels on food, a new ABCNEWS.com poll finds. 52% believe such foods are unsafe, and an additional 13% are unsure about them.93% say the federal government should require labels on food saying whether it's been genetically modified . 57% also say they'd be less likely to buy foods labeled as genetically modified. The image problem of genetically modified food is underscored by contrast to organic foods. While only five percent of Americans say they'd be more likely to buy a food labeled as genetically modified, 52 percent say they'd be more likely to buy food that's labeled as having been raised organically."

Source: http://www.ABCNews.com 6/20/01

7/13/01
7:28:51 PM

The Nation

The drive for campaign-finance reform collasped yesterday when House Republicans stalled the measure indefinitely.

And besides having to watch Congress fail again to advance even the mild political reforms proposed by Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold, we are witnessing such epic cynicism in the Capitol that the people responsible for the failure seem to believe that if they spin hard enough, they can evade all responsibility.

Read John Nichols' latest dispatch from Washington for more details. Available now at:

http://www.thenation.com/thebeat

And dig into some recently archived installments of Nichols' web-only feature The Online Beat for a look at how Gary Condit is getting a free pass from moralizing right-wingers in Congress and why the Bush Administration is busy burning its bridges with the NAACP. Also available currently at:

http://www.thenation.com/thebeat

You can also find numerous new editorials, articles and columns on a wide-range of subjects from the July 23, 2001 issue of The Nation:

ROBERT DREYFUSS: Till Earth and Heaven Ring

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=dreyfuss

DIANA R. GORDON: Ashcroft Justice

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=gordon

NATION EDITORS: Milosovic on Trial

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=editors

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Israel Shahak, 1933-2001

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=hitchens

WILLIAM GREIDER: For Utilities, the Fix Is In

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=greider

ROANE CAREY: Letter From Palestine

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=carey

DAVID COLE: Scalia's Kind of Privacy

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=cole

JONATHAN SHAININ: Death On The Installment Plan

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010723&s=shainin

RECENT NATION ARTICLES:

And don't miss the host of recent articles of interest still available including Jason Vest on DynCorp's Drug Problem; Katrina vanden Heuvel's look at a possible blueprint for a progressive future; Patricia Williams on the execution of Timothy McVeigh; David Corn on Elliott Abrams; Christopher Hitchens on Henry Kissinger; Molly Ivins on George W. Bush and Victor Navasky on Cold War Ghosts. All accessible at:

http://www.thenation.com

7/13/01
7:04:10 PM

Simplistic Views Threaten Diversity

By David Suzuki

Last week I complimented Canada's Supreme Court for upholding a Quebec town's ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides and herbicides. It was the right move for several reasons, from the toxicity of the chemicals to the lack of proper testing to questions as to who should shoulder the burden of proof of their safety. Of course, another problem with the unrestricted use of pesticides is that they are nonspecific. Not all insects are pests. In fact, most are beneficial. Unfortunately, pesticides usually can't tell the difference, so they end up killing both wanted and unwanted insects. That is, until the insects become resistant and the cycle is repeated with a new chemical.

Managing ecological problems in such a simplistic way usually doesn't work very well, and not just for insects. On the plains of North America, for example, prairie dogs have been considered pests for a century. Much of their habitat was ploughed under to make way for agriculture. Furthermore, cattle ranchers felt that these rodents were competing with their livestock for food, so governments spent millions attempting to eliminate them with poisons. Today their numbers are less than one percent of their historic levels.

But in ecosystems everything is interconnected, so one species cannot be isolated and removed without causing unforeseen changes throughout the entire system. As the prairie dogs were killed off, for example, ferret populations plummeted because prairie dogs were their primary food source. Today the black-footed ferret has been extirpated from Canada and is one of the most endangered species in North America.

Ironically, recent studies have shown that prairie dogs are actually beneficial to the overall productivity and health of the grasslands. Studies by U.S. Forest Service biologist Dan Uresk, for example, have found that total plant production is 24 percent higher in areas inhabited by prairie dogs than in areas that are grazed by cattle. And in areas where both animals are present, plant biomass (the weight of plant material) is 13 percent higher over areas where just cattle are present. So contrary to popular belief, prairie dogs are actually good for both natural ecosystems and ranchers.

Next month, the U.S. Forest Service will release a new management plan for remaining U.S. grassland areas. Proposed changes to management methods could help bring back prairie dogs, along with ferrets and many species of birds and other animals that have not fared well due to overgrazing by cattle.

This sort of change represents an important shift in the way we "manage" ecosystems. For example, at one time it was assumed that if we streamlined ecosystems around human needs, they would be more productive. According to this reasoning, removing prairie dogs would make the grass grow faster and give the cattle more to eat. We now know that such simplified versions of ecosystems are wrong.

In fact, studies have shown that generally, the greater the diversity of plants and animals in an ecosystem, the more productive and stable it is. We are just beginning to understand this relationship, so some researchers have questioned it, suggesting that the conclusions of such studies may be a function of the experiment design, rather than of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function. An analysis of these studies last week in the journal Nature, however, found that this relationship is most likely an ecological phenomenon, not an experimental anomaly.

The more we learn about our ecosystems, the more alarming the current rate of biodiversity loss becomes. As we lose species and genetic diversity, ecosystems may become less stable, less productive, and less effective at providing services that people and other animals depend on — services such as cleansing water, filtering air, and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. If we want to ensure that these services are still viable for future generations, we must pursue more thoughtful ways of balancing immediate human needs with the complexities of the natural world.

Source: http://www.davidsuzuki.org

7/13/01
6:55:07 PM

A San Francisco radio station, KGO, will present more than $303,000 Friday to the family of a 10-year-old boy savagely mauled by three pit bulls last month.

The money was donated by the station's listeners. Shawn Jones suffered severe facial injuries in the attack and will need extensive reconstructive surgery. "The true credit goes to our listeners, whose generosity is apparent and overwhelming," said station President and General Manager Michael Luckoff. "... We hope this money will help in providing Shawn (Jones) with the care that he and his family will need."

7/13/01
6:49:24 PM

This sounds like a shaggy dog story, but Religion Today reports about Preta the prayerful pooch who goes to church every Sunday.

The publication quotes a Portuguese newspaper telling how every Sunday morning at 5, the dog leaves her owner's house in the small northern Lusitanian town of Sobrado and trots to the neighboring village of Ermesinde, some 8 miles away. She arrives at the local Catholic church just in time for the 7:30 Mass.

Preta saunters right up to the church's chancel and lies down by the side of the altar. When the congregants rise for the Kyrie or the Gospel lesson, so does she. When they sit down, she'll stretch out on the stone floor again.

After the blessing, Preta heads home, another 8 miles. That is, if nobody gives her a lift.

The newspaper reports the church is filled to capacity every Sunday, because everyone wants to see Preta.

7/13/01
6:48:51 PM

This sounds like a shaggy dog story, but Religion Today reports about Preta the prayerful pooch who goes to church every Sunday.

The publication quotes a Portuguese newspaper telling how every Sunday morning at 5, the dog leaves her owner's house in the small northern Lusitanian town of Sobrado and trots to the neighboring village of Ermesinde, some 8 miles away. She arrives at the local Catholic church just in time for the 7:30 Mass.

Preta saunters right up to the church's chancel and lies down by the side of the altar. When the congregants rise for the Kyrie or the Gospel lesson, so does she. When they sit down, she'll stretch out on the stone floor again.

After the blessing, Preta heads home, another 8 miles. That is, if nobody gives her a lift.

The newspaper reports the church is filled to capacity every Sunday, because everyone wants to see Preta.

7/13/01
5:47:24 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

NUCLEAR MURDER: AMERICA'S ATOMIC WAR AGAINST ITS CITIZENS AND WHY IT'S NOT OVER YET

by David Proctor, Boise Weekly

-- Mutant babies, astronomical cancer rates, government cover-ups, and other equally scary facts have come to light--just as a new push is underway to build more nuclear power plants and scrap weapons treaties.

COUNTERPUNCH'S FAVORITE 100 NONFICTION BOOKS IN TRANSLATION, PUBLISHED SINCE 1900

by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch

-- In the summer heat, the thought of lounging with a book becomes even more appealing. Luckily, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair from the sassy political newsletter Counter Punch have done it again, compiling a list that covers topics as diverse as expeditions to the South Pole, the history of sexuality, and linguistics.

JORGE CASTANEDA, MINISTER OF DEMOCRACY

by James E. Garcia, PoliticoMagazine.com

-- How does a man go from being a super-radicalized, left-leaning iconoclast to working for Vincente Fox, a Mexican cross between Ronald Reagan and Lee Iacocca? James E. Garcia explains why Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda is worth watching.

Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch

7/13/01
5:46:56 PM

Also in yesterday's news released by associated press titled " Ancient Bones Found in Ethiopia; May Be Oldest Traces Of Human-like Life", suggest the 5.8 million year old human bones may be the missing link. The research team, led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the University of California at Berkeley said " the specimens revealed a primitive version of Ardipithecus ramidus, an early hominid species whose oldest known fossils were previously found in 4.4-million-year-old sediment in Ethiopia". He said with further research, the bones might turn out be a new species altogether. Well it just so happened I had scheduled Jack "Kewaunee" Lapseritis, Cryptozoologist and author of 'The Psychic Sasquatch' weeks ago for today's show. It couldn't have been better timing. Wait until you hear what he has to say. I asked him some very challenging questions. As you know I do my best to keep a firm foot in science while I bridge the gap to the esoteric.

http://www.unlimited-resources.com/bigfoot.html

7/13/01
5:46:14 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Shade grown coffee seeks 'green' spotlight in US market - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11542

Ontario Power cuts NOx emissions at Lakeview plant - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11561

Retailers seek to cash in on energy awareness - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11545

Senate panel cuts Yucca mountain waste site funds - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11553

Ethanol lobby hopes to lock in huge new market - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11543

US lawmaker pulls plan to raise fuel standards - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11539

UPDATE - US Senate backs offshore Florida oil deal - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11537

Premcor agrees to cut Illinois refinery pollution - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11536

CHRONOLOGY - The fight against global warming - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11550

New Zealand gets wind of greenhouse gas breakthrough - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11556

Kyoto treaty becomes a numbers game without the US - NETHERLANDS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11534

Future climate change could be sudden - scientists - NETHERLANDS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11544

Maldives calls for US support on global warming - MALDIVES http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11559

Recycle plan faces tough ride in German upper house - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11546

German wind energy capacity up 13.5 pct in H1 - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11554

EU wants Bush promise not to block climate talks - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11549

INTERVIEW - EU's Wallstrom fears US may wreck climate talks - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11560

Kyoto pact faces death or stay of execution in Bonn - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11551

FACTBOX - What is the Kyoto protocol? - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11547

FACTBOX - Where do the countries stand on Kyoto? - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11548

Critics oppose Quebec dolphin aquarium project - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11535

Brazil takes new crack at controversial nuke plant - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11540

Australia joins tiger protection group - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11552

Australia's dugongs in fight for survival - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11558

Parts of Asia face deadly climate changes and natural disasters - ASIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11541

7/13/01
5:30:33 PM

Public Citizen

Department of Energy Should Extend Deadline for Comments on Radioactive Metals Recycling

Comment Period on Scope of Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement Is Too Short

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Public Citizen has requested that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) extend its deadline to receive comments on a proposal that is critical in establishing how radioactively contaminated scrap metals will be disposed of. The current deadline for comments is Sept. 10, which allows the public only two months to examine what are highly complex issues.

The DOE on Thursday published a Notice of Intent for a document called a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), which is designed to examine alternatives for disposing of the contaminated materials. The notice lists various policy alternatives, all of which allow for the disposal of radioactively contaminated metals in unlicensed sanitary landfills, where they would be treated as "non-radioactive."

The PEIS also could permit the "unrestricted release of scrap metals from DOE radiological areas and scrap metals outside radiological areas that may have residual surface radioactivity." This would allow the metals to be recycled, where they could end up in any number of consumer and industrial products. It is highly unlikely that any such materials would be tracked or labeled, so consumers would be denied the opportunity to make informed choices and avoid any radiation hazards.

"All of these possible outcomes sound frighteningly similar to previous policies of the NRC, which attempted to assist the nuclear industry by eliminating some types of nuclear waste from regulatory control," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Although Congress wisely revoked those policies in 1992, it looks as though DOE is attempting to revive them by tinkering with the language and attaching various euphemisms to what is really the recycling of nuclear waste."

The Notice of Intent also announced that six public meetings are to be held around the country beginning at the end of July. This provides less than three weeks for concerned citizens who plan to participate to study the relevant issues and prepare accordingly.

"Considering the enormous impact such a policy could have, public participation must be taken seriously, and processes must be conducted with integrity, " Hauter wrote in a letter to Carolyn Huntoon, assistant secretary of the Department's Office of Environmental Management. "Unless corrected, the unacceptably short comment period will further erode public confidence in the department's handling of the dangerous materials of our nation's nuclear legacy."

The DOE was instructed in January by then-Secretary Bill Richardson to publish the Notice of Intent by March 20. However, by publishing it this week, the department in effect extended its own deadline by 114 days.

"If the agency can extend the deadline for itself, we certainly hope it will extend the same benefit to the public," said Dave Ritter, policy analyst for Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "The agency has all the resources, while the public does not. Further, people's summer schedules are irregular. And once the scope of this document is set, there's no going back. It's critical to get it right now, and the public should have at least until December to do that."

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.Citizen.org

A copy of Hauter's letter to the agency is available at

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/radmetal/July12LtrHuntoon.htm

7/12/01
8:01:20 PM

Public Citizen

Campaign Reformers Beat House Leadership

Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook

It is encouraging that a Republican-crafted ploy that would have threatened the passage of significant campaign finance reform has been defeated in the House of Representatives today. Thanks to the efforts of House Democrats and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), the rule that would have divided the reform amendment into twelve parts and required a separate vote on each one was confusing and rightfully voted down. Rather than face the threat of passing a bill they have never supported, the Republican leadership used sneaky tactics to deny Americans a cleaner, less corrupt government.

The defeat of this rule is a positive sign that a majority of the House is ready to pass significant campaign finance reform, but the Republican leaders have insured that the road to reform will be littered with more obstacles. Their true intentions were shown when, only minutes after the procedure was defeated, Speaker Hastert asserted that he didn't know when campaign finance would appear on the floor again, and that it was time for the House to move on with the rest of its legislative agenda.

It's shameful that this significant piece of legislation to give Americans better access to their government is threatened by a circle of Republican leaders. Congress must now do the right thing next week: adopt a fair procedure under which the bill may be voted upon, pass the legislation, and stop hoodwinking the American people.

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.Citizen.org

7/12/01
7:59:07 PM

The Nation

Stem cell research is among medicine's most promising fields of study. Because embryonic stem cells have the singular ability to evolve into any human organ or tissue, advances in this area may lead to bold new treatments--even cures--for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

But much of that progress lies in jeopardy as George W. Bush currently decides on whether to bar federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, urged to do so by far-right opponents of abortion. The benefits of this research are so obvious that even prominent antiabortion conservatives such as Senators Orrin Hatch and Strom Thurmond have come out in favor of continued federal funding, arguing that the microscopic cells do not constitute a human life and that it is crucial to support research that could potentially save tens of thousands of lives.

Bush, however, is paying close attention to Catholic and antiabortion groups who wish to eliminate federal funding for the experiments. He is expected to make a decision anytime in the next few weeks. In the meantime, please help keep the pressure on him and his advisors by sending an informed letter in support of embryonic stem cell research. Our Act Now! page provides all the details and relevant tools, as well as further information. Available at:

http://www.thenation.com/alert/actnow/

7/12/01
7:57:15 PM

Public Citizen

Mexican Truck Vote Goes Far in Protecting United States Motorists

Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook

Senate lawmakers today took a commendable and critical step toward ensuring the safety of American motorists by requiring inspections and audits of Mexican truck companies before they are certified to enter the United States.

Praise is due to Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Richard Shelby (D-Ala.) and other members of the Senate Appropriations Committee who confronted this difficult issue and passed an effective mandate to DOT to address the potential threats of unsafe Mexican trucks. These are essential because Mexico - unlike the United States and Canada - does not have mandatory safety standards in effect for large trucks.

The committee's measure: 1) requires a full safety audit of Mexican trucking firms before granting them a conditional operating certificate and a follow-up safety audit within 18 months before a permanent operating certificate is granted; 2) prohibits opening the border to Mexican trucks until a policy is in place to ensure that Mexican truckers comply with United States hours-of-service rules; 3) provides funding for 80 additional border inspectors; prohibits opening the border until border crossings have weigh scales and until there is an accessible database to allow for monitoring the safety performance of all Mexican firms applying for certificates to operate in the United States.

The House voted by an overwhelming majority to prohibit any funding to allow operating certificates for Mexican trucks. (A House committee previously rejected a proposal similar to today's measure.) By contrast, the provisions approved today are affirmative efforts to improve the safety of these vehicles, and we urge the full Senate to approve them.

It is also important to note that the NAFTA arbitration panel said that the United States is not required to treat applications from Mexican trucking firms in exactly the same manner as from United States or Canadian firms, as long as they are reviewed on a case-by-case basis and it is acknowledged that U.S. authorities are responsible for the safe operations of trucks within this country, whether the ownership of the trucks is United States, Canadian or Mexican.

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.Citizen.org

7/12/01
4:58:14 PM

Environmental Group Sues Over Discarded Arsenic Rule

By Environmental News Network

The Natural Resources Defense Council has filed a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's suspension of the new arsenic-in tap-water standard. Several U.S. senators have joined the conservation group in opposing the rule's suspension. In January, after two decades of work, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a new standard for the permitted amount of arsenic in tap water, reducing the existing standard of 50 parts per billion (ppb) by 80 percent. When President George W. Bush took office in February, he suspended the arsenic rule along with many other Clinton-era regulations and later called for a new round of studies that could lead to the complete disposal of the new arsenic standard.

"The Bush EPA's suspension of the arsenic is a distressing, unscientific, and illegal threat to the health of millions of Americans," said Erik Olson, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "There is no excuse for delaying or weakening the standard just finalized in January of this year."

Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Harry Reid of Nevada, both Democrats, are among the legislators who have announced their support of NRDC's suit. They indicated that they will file an amicus curae (friend of the court) brief in support of NRDC's effort to overturn the arsenic rule's suspension.

The NRDC's lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., circuit, dismisses the EPA's argument that, although the agency has suspended the rule, it has not violated the law's requirement that the updated standard must be in place by June 22, 2001.

Other key claims in the litigation are that the EPA unlawfully reversed its position on the arsenic rule without scientific or legal justification and that the agency violated procedural and substantive requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act and Administrative Procedure Act in suspending the arsenic rule.

Although the Bush administration says it will issue the new standard next year and ensure that it is enforced in 2006, the EPA has failed to respond to arguments from water utilities. The EPA states that agency officials will be unable to implement the suspended rule in this compressed time frame.

The environmentalists' lawsuit argues that the EPA's suspension of the "right to know" provisions of the arsenic rule have been violated. The right-to-know rule requires water utilities to notify the public no later than July 2002 of the level of arsenic in their water and the health implications of drinking arsenic in their tap water. Suspension and review of the arsenic standard will delay and undermine public health protection, the lawsuit claims.

After 25 years of delays, at least three missed statutory deadlines, and broken promises to update an outdated standard, the government is unlikely to honor its promises of expeditious action, the NRDC warns.

The EPA made a legal finding in its January 2001 rule that it would take water systems five years to comply with a new arsenic standard. The agency is likely to face stiff legal challenges from industry if it tries to cut this five-year compliance period or if it issues a new arsenic standard in 2002 and seeks to require compliance within four years.

The arsenic standard that the EPA issued in January would have lowered the maximum allowable level of arsenic in tap water from the current standard of 50 parts per billion, which was established in 1942, to 10 ppb. That is the same standard adopted by the World Health Organization and the European Union a few years ago.

NRDC and other public health advocates believe that the EPA should have lowered the standard for arsenic in drinking water to 3 ppb.

The EPA proposed a 5 ppb standard in June 2000 but increased it to 10 ppb last January in response to industry pressure.

The NRDC's Olson noted that the EPA took more than two decades to develop this rule, and Congress has repeatedly ordered the agency to update the standard during the last 25 years. In 1996, Congress ordered EPA action on arsenic for the third time, making January 2001 the deadline for a new standard. An appropriations rider in the fall of 2000 extended the deadline to June 22, 2001.

In February 2000, the NRDC issued a report documenting widespread exposure to arsenic in tap water across the nation. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) then published a study reaching a similar conclusion, with a national map showing arsenic occurrence in ground water.

"Unfortunately, President Bush apparently won't listen to reason or scientific evidence," Olson said, "so NRDC is left with no choice but to sue."

Source: http://www.enn.com

7/12/01
4:48:01 PM

Public Citizen

Hospitals in Nearly Every State Violate Federal Patient Dumping Law, Study Shows

527 Hospitals Violated Law Regarding Screening, Treating ER Patients

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Hospitals in nearly every state in recent years have violated a federal law prohibiting them from dumping patients, leading to people with medical emergencies being improperly screened or refused treatment altogether, a new Public Citizen report has found.

In its sixth in a series of reports on patient dumping, Public Citizen found that 527 hospitals violated the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). That law contains rules that virtually all hospitals in the United States must follow regarding the provision of emergency medical services. When a hospital emergency department denies medical screening or stabilizing treatment, or if it inappropriately transfers an individual whose condition is not stable, the hospital is "dumping" the patient. Taking data from all six reports into account, more than one in five hospitals throughout the country have violated the law since it was passed. The report concludes that most hospital staff are familiar with the law but break it anyway.

"It's distressing that this law has been in place for 15 years, and hospitals are still flaunting it," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "The government needs to do more to force hospitals to comply. People shouldn't be denied desperately needed emergency medical care when they go to a hospital. Failing to impose fines on most hospitals violating the law amounts to an invitation to dump sick patients."

Most of the violations cited in the current report were confirmed in 1997, 1998 and 1999, although a few were confirmed in 1996 and 2000. Not all the hospitals violating the act actually dumped patients; some violations were administrative in nature, involving such things as omitting documentation or failing to post signs spelling out patients' rights. The report lists the name of each hospital, the nature of the violation and any fines assessed against the hospital. Of the 500 hospitals that had confirmed violations in 1997, 1998 and 1999 and were eligible to be fined, only 85 (17 percent) had been fined as of April 2001.

According to records reviewed by Public Citizen, hospitals in 46 states as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico were cited for violations. States with no confirmed violations were Delaware, Hawaii, New Mexico and Wyoming. Consumers wishing to find out which hospitals in their state violated the law can visit

http://www.Citizen.org

go to "Questionable Hospitals," click on a map of the United States and select their state. A copy of the report is also posted there.

Among the report's key findings:

For-profit hospitals had a significantly higher rate of violation (1.7 times higher) than not-for- profit hospitals.

Up to a third of surveyed emergency room registration staff recently told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General that patients might be asked for insurance information before a screening is provided or while it is taking place, and 35 percent said they contact health plans for authorization of screening exams at some point. These actions violate the law if they delay treatment.

Hospitals are being fined more than in previous years. Civil money penalties increased from $130,000 in fiscal 1988 to more than $1 million in each of 1998, 1999 and 2000. However, the amounts paid are still paltry compared to a hospital's overall budget and do nothing to discourage hospitals from turning needy patients into the streets. Worse, most hospitals with confirmed violations are not fined.

"The sad truth is that it's cheaper for a hospital to break the law and pay a fine than to treat an uninsured patient," Wolfe said. "Hospitals know that the risk of getting caught is low, and even if they are caught, the risk of being fined is even lower and the fines are minuscule compared to hospitals' operating budgets."

Some of the more egregious examples of patient dumping include:

A mentally retarded patient was brought by ambulance to Mercy Hospital in Merced, Calif., with symptoms of abdominal distress and shortness of breath. An on-call surgeon repeatedly refused to come to the hospital to treat the patient, who subsequently suffered a cardiac arrhythmia and died despite a resuscitation attempt. Documentation revealed that the surgeon made disparaging remarks about the man's mental retardation, including the statement that "no one would miss him if he died." The man had lived in a board-and-care home for 15 years. As of April 2001, the hospital had not been fined.

A woman who went to Baptist Hospital in Miami, Fla., was found to have a large mass in her lower abdomen and an elevated white blood cell count, indicating she might have an infection. She was admitted for surgery, but before it occurred, the surgeon asked her for a deposit. The woman said she didn't have the money, so the surgeon ordered the patient to be discharged. She left without receiving treatment. As of April 2001, the hospital had not been fined.

A patient went to the emergency room of Houston Medical Center in Warner Robbins, Ga., vomiting blood and complaining of a loss of appetite and a swollen and painful stomach. The patient's symptoms indicated blood loss. He was treated with an IV solution, given prescriptions and discharged. An ambulance returned him to the ER about five hours later, at which point he was in full cardiac arrest and died six minutes later. As of April 2001, the hospital had not been fined.

Friends of a 15-year-old boy who had been shot in the abdomen dragged him into an alley next to Ravenswood Medical Center in Chicago and asked the hospital emergency room staff for help. The staff refused to go out to treat him or bring him into the hospital. After staff refused requests of police officers who repeatedly asked ER staff to come out and help, a police officer wheeled the boy into the ER in a wheelchair. Despite resuscitation efforts, the boy died. The hospital was fined $40,000.

While the records reviewed by Public Citizen generally don't reflect the reason a patient was dumped, often it is because the patient was uninsured, Wolfe said. The law prohibits emergency room personnel from delaying screening or treatment to ask whether a patient has insurance, but personnel still do. Further, some HMOs require pre-authorization for exams or treatment, and some HMOs refuse to pay for emergency room treatment later if the patient is found not to have a condition that constitutes an emergency. This often means the hospital gets stuck with the bill, providing hospitals with a deadly incentive to dump uninsured or poor patients.

Federal legislation or new federal regulations could help, Wolfe said. The EMTALA could be amended to create liability for insurers that require pre-authorization or that refuse to reimburse hospitals for emergency screening and treatment.

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.Citizen.org

7/12/01
4:43:38 PM

Shame on Seattle: The Death Penalty Fr Pooping

By Jackie Alan Giuliano

This time of year, the Sun visits Seattle, Washington more and more each day, sparkling off the lakes and streams as residents and visitors enjoy warm, crisp air. Tourists flock to the city and there are festivals nearly every day. But this time of year also brings a stain - a blood stain - to the Emerald city as thousands of majestic Canada Geese are rounded up and murdered. Their capital offense: they have defecated on parks, golf courses and private property.

I discuss these shameful killings in this week's Healing Our World commentary, on the Environment News Service at

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-06g.html

As the former manager of the 534 acre Discovery Park, Seattle's largest park, I often observed the Parks Department ignoring the challenge to develop a meaningful solution to complex problems. They usually took the quickest, easiest path possible in order to silence the few, often affluent, vocal individuals who have the ear of Department management.

Video footage of a recent kill at Seattle's Gas Works Park showed the absolute callousness displayed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture workers and the confusion and stress that the geese endured. One hundred geese were roughly handled, captured, and stuffed into death chambers that were too small for them. One can only imagine the terror endured by these peaceful animals.

Unfortunately, Seattle is not alone in these atrocities. Similar kills are going on in many states.

Please join me, the Humane Society of the United States, and the Northwest Animal Rights Network in protesting this atrocity, no matter where you live. My commentary will tell you who to contact to voice your outrage.

We like animals when it is convenient, when they don't get our shoes dirty. Shame on the City of Seattle and its Parks Department for killing these beautiful creatures because they do not have the will or the heart to seek non-lethal solutions. Shame on us as a society if we dare to put animals to death because they mess up our lawns.

I wish you peace in examining your own relationship to the natural world around and pray that compassion in your heart sets the tone for your actions.

http://www.healingourworld.com

7/12/01
4:37:51 PM

U.N. Effort to Cut Arms Traffic Meets a U.S. Rebuff

By Barbara Crossette

NITED NATIONS, July 9 — The Bush administration, which has already pulled away from a range of international treaties, warned today that it would not join a pact to curtail the international flow of illegal small arms if it infringed on the American right to own guns.

Speaking to the opening session of a conference on the trafficking of weapons that fuel increasingly brutal civil wars and expanding networks of organized crime, John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, invoked the Second Amendment.

"The United States believes that the responsible use of firearms is a legitimate aspect of national life," he said. "Like many countries, the United States has a cultural tradition of hunting and sport shooting." Americans, he said, do not find all guns "problematic."

The bluntness of his remarks surprised some other delegates to the two-week conference. But the American reluctance to expand gun controls internationally is shared by other countries, among them China, India and Russia, diplomats said.

United Nations officials insist that this conference is not about taking guns away from Americans, but about keeping hundreds of millions of weapons out of the hands of child soldiers and pickup armies, often in the poorest countries.

But the meeting has set off a reaction in the United States among those opposed to gun control. The United Nations has received scores of angry letters and faxes and has collected some strongly worded press releases and posters from groups concerned about the issue.

Last week, Jayantha Dhanapala, the under secretary general for disarmament, announced the publication of a booklet called "Setting the Record Straight," which was intended to allay American fears.

But a widening gap between Europe and the United States over how broad an agreement is needed to combat the spread of weapons — along with charges from officials and private groups represented here that plenty of legal American guns are finding their way into crime and combat around the world — has heightened American sensitivity.

Representative Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who is also on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association, rejected United Nations efforts to calm the gun lobby. He is attending the conference as an official observer.

"You look at this," Mr. Barr said, holding up a working paper at a news conference, "and there are a number of areas very explicitly set forth that could very well be used to directly involve the United Nations in domestic firearms policy."

The United Nations estimates that there are more than 500 million small arms in the world. It says 40 percent to 60 percent of them have been acquired illegally — on the black market, by bartering commodities like diamonds or through deals that obscure or lie about the source or destination of the weapons.

There is no legally accepted definition of small arms or light weapons, though the United Nations tried in 1997 to describe them collectively as "any weapon that can be fired, maintained and transported by one person."

Such arms include pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars and some missiles. They are the hallmarks of contemporary warfare, which is often irregularly organized and generally hardest on civilian populations.

Some regions of the world have created their own treaties or agreements on controlling small arms. The Organization of American States, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Organization of African Unity all have agreements, though these have not stopped arms flowing into guerrilla wars. The United Nations conference now in session is the first attempt to find a global agreement.

Mr. Bolton defended the record of the United States in controlling its own exports and asked that other nations be equally vigilant. In his speech, he said the plan of action being discussed could constrain legal arms manufacturing and trade and said calls for anti-gun campaigns by international organizations should be removed from the plan.

He objected to mandatory reviews of progress on curtailing the illegal arms trade, and he rejected any provisions that could prohibit private ownership of small arms. "The United States will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures abrogating the constitutional right to bear arms," he said.

At a news conference, Mr. Bolton, a former executive vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization in Washington, cautioned against viewing the conference and its plan of action, which would not be legally binding, as merely exploratory. "From little acorns, bad treaties grow," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/10/world/10ARMS.html

7/12/01
4:03:17 PM

HE'S A HERO AND HE PLAYS ONE IN THE MOVIES, TOO

It was Indiana Jones -- er, Harrison Ford -- to the rescue. For the second time in a year, the actor flew his helicopter into the Wyoming backcountry for a rescue -- this time for a missing Boy Scout in a forest just south of Yellowstone National Park.

Ford -- who has a ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo. -- joined a search for the missing scout who had wandered off a trail Monday and spent a night shivering as rain pelted the area. CBS News reports that after two hours of flying Tuesday, Ford, 58, and another searcher spotted 13-year-old Cody Clawson. He landed nearby to whisk the soggy, cold, tired and hungry scout to safety.

Last July, Ford plucked an Idaho Falls, Idaho, hiker off Table Mountain in Teton County, Wyo., after altitude sickness and dehydration left her sick and unable to climb down. Ford picked her up and flew her to a Driggs, Idaho, hospital.

7/12/01
11:58:49 AM

Pentagon Report Reveals Flaws In Missile Defense

By John F. Tierney

Not too long ago, the Pentagon's purchase of $400 hammers and $640 toilets raised eyebrows in Congress and among the public. Yet few people claimed those deluxe hammers couldn't cleanly hit their targets - most likely overpriced nails. And the toilets were said to flush with exquisite efficiency.

Not so the Pentagon's latest folly - an obscenely expensive but flawed missile defense system the Bush administration appears determined to deploy as early as 2004, even though the individual who was charged with evaluating its readiness has declared that it will not be ready, even in a limited form, until 2011.

Philip Coyle, formerly the Pentagon's chief civilian test evaluator, testified last September at a hearing before the national security subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform, of which I am a member. Coyle outlined the findings of a report he prepared during the National Missile Defense Deployment Readiness Review a month earlier. I asked him to provide his report, which is unclassified, to the subcommittee. Neither he nor Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the missile defense program, expressed reservations about making the report public. The subcommittee voted unanimously to make the report part of the hearing record.

Finally pried free two weeks ago - after eight months, six official requests, threats of subpoenas, a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from 55 House Democrats, and over the continuing objections of Pentagon officials - the report confirms the glaring deficiencies in the testing program that Coyle raised last September.

The report describes a phenomenon in simulation exercises called ''phantom tracks'' in which interceptors were accidentally launched against missiles that did not exist. Although operators attempted to take emergency actions to override these launches, they failed every time. The system ''simply was not behaving according to operator actions.''

Coyle concluded that the system's effectiveness is not yet proven, even in the most elementary sense. In fact, according to his report, the program is so immature that ''a rigorous assessment of potential system performance cannot be made.''

Yet the Pentagon has no plans to test basic elements of the system, not even to conduct flight tests with more than a single missile, even though the Pentagon concedes that multiple engagements are the most likely scenario. The testing program also ignores widely available decoys that adversaries would find simple to implement.''

The report describes how flight tests are being dumbed down to ensure the public perception of success. The Pentagon, for example, is reducing the number of decoys, operators are relying on artificially ''canned'' scenarios, and interceptors are being given advance information they won't have in real engagements. Even with these ''adjustments,'' the program has experienced embarrassing failures.

Significantly, the report finds that the system can't defend against accidental or unauthorized launches from major nuclear powers, as originally envisioned. The Pentagon has been backtracking on this issue and no longer considers it a key goal.

Despite these warnings, President Bush proposes accelerating deployment and spending $3 billion more for all missile defense next year - a 57 percent increase. The Pentagon will move to deploy a ''rudimentary'' system, even before this limited and flawed testing is complete, just to build ''something'' by the politically significant date of 2004.

As Congress examines the president's missile defense program, and as the administration begins testing components of the system this weekend, I submit that the 52 recommendations in the Coyle report should be the minimum standard by which the new program is evaluated. And the Pentagon's ''you-can't-handle-the-truth'' attitude that kept this report bottled up for eight months must give way to a constructive and reasoned public dialogue based on full disclosure and honest information.

Absent that, the Pentagon might consider those $640 toilets as a more reliable way to dispose of the $200 billion to $300 billion that this flawed system could cost our nation.

John F. Tierney of Massachusetts is a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives.

Source: http://www.Boston.com

7/12/01
11:53:30 AM

Star Wars

The battle is taking shape against the militarization of space. Your involvement and support for the planning of 13 October Actions is critical. This battle, if we will make a difference, will require as many world citizens as possible to unite with the Global Network and 181 Endorsing Organizations for actions at 64 sites worldwide so far. The following items describe Star Wars efforts in both directions. Regarding item 3, thanks to Frida Berrigan and the Brandywine Peace Community for their inspirational efforts in Pennsylvania!

For more information on plans for October 13 visit

http://www.space4peace.org.

7/12/01
11:47:49 AM

One Big Happy Channel?

By Eric Boehlert, Salon

Pomp and circumstance ruled at the signing into law of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Held inside the rotunda of the Library of Congress, a bill-signing first, the ceremony featured an array of bipartisan legislators praising the comprehensive package. Newly appointed Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich heralded the act as a jobs and knowledge bill. Vice President Al Gore stressed how public interest was central to the telecommunications revolution.

After speaking by videoconference with students at Calvin Coolidge High School in Washington, Gore watched as President Clinton signed the bill using the same pen President Eisenhower did in 1957 to sign the bill that created the interstate highway system, which had been written by ex-Sen. Gore, D-Tenn., the vice president's father. Clinton then used a digital pen to sign an electronic copy to be posted on the Internet.

In his remarks that day Clinton boasted that the "landmark legislation fulfills my administration's promise to reform our telecommunications laws in a manner that leads to competition and private investment, promotes universal service and provides for flexible government regulation."

Five years later nobody doubts that the law was indeed a landmark -- not only because congressional efforts to update the country's vast communications industries for the first time since the 1930s had themselves dragged on through the '80s and well into the '90s but also because the Telecom Act, as it became known, unleashed unprecedented deregulation and media consolidation, among the most pronounced in American history. Nowhere has that consolidation been more acutely felt than in radio --where just two companies, Clear Channel and Infinity, now dominate the nation's commercial radio stations. The result, many longtime radio industry observers feel, has been the degradation of commercial radio as a creative, independent medium.

But Clear Channel and Infinity are also raking in the cash. So now the question is, who's next? Because just across the broadcast spectrum, big owners in the television industry are looking at what happened to radio and licking their lips. If they get their way, the same thing that happened to radio may well happen to TV: more consolidation, more homogenization and, of course, more profits for the few at the top.

In late 1995, when the Telecom Act was being assembled, it was most often portrayed by its backers as a way to allow Baby Bell phone companies to get into the long-distance business, promote competition, introduce the V-chip to parents, police Internet porn and deregulate cable rates. Indeed, the Telecom Act's laundry list of initiatives covered nearly 200 pages of legislation. Down toward the bottom of that list, though, was a provision, one that received very little public attention (Clinton never even mentioned it during his extended remarks at the bill signing), that lifted all ownership limits for radio station broadcasters nationwide -- and allowed them to operate as many as eight signals in the country's largest markets.

To describe the new law's sweeping implications for radio as "radical" would be an understatement. Prior to this law, tightly regulated broadcasters could own just 40 stations nationally, and only two in a given market. Years earlier, those limits had been relaxed, very cautiously, by the Federal Communications Commission. But suddenly, without the FCC's input or any public hearings, the kind of sweeping deregulation that most broadcasters hadn't even fantasized about two years earlier was ushered in overnight.

"We were watching the vote come down in a hotel room in '95 and we were high-fiving each other," recalls the former head of a major radio group, who requested anonymity. "We knew the multiple-station deals we'd been working on would come to fruition."

Over at Jacor Communications, billionaire investor Sam Zell, who got into the radio business in the early '90s with an eye on the coming consolidation, was pounding on the desk of his CEO, Randy Michaels, telling him to start buying stations immediately. Michaels did. And so did lots of other deep-pocketed investors. Since the passage of the Telecom Act, 10,000 radio station transactions worth approximately $100 billion have taken place, according to BIA Financial Network. Consequently, there are 1,100 fewer station owners in the business today, down nearly 30 percent since 1996. The largest operator, Clear Channel Communications (whose radio chief is Michaels), owns nearly 1,200 stations. (According to this consolidation chart, Clear Channel today consists of what were once 70 separate broadcast companies.)

In theory, the Telecom Act was supposed to allow scores of aggressive radio companies to acquire a couple of hundred stations each and cash in on efficiencies of scale. And that did happen within months of the act's signing. But it didn't stop there. Spurred on by a flood of Wall Street investment money, a handful of conglomerates simply kept acquiring until they had essentially carved up the dial.

"Some of the mega-mergers took my breath away," says Susan Ness, who became an FCC commissioner in 1994 and left her post this spring. "You have a situation today where two companies basically control the major markets."

Those two companies -- Clear Channel and Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting -- together control one-third of all radio advertising revenue; in some individual markets their stations command nearly 90 percent of the ad dollars.

Today, radio is a much more lucrative, successful business than it was before the Telecom Act (thanks in part to an unprecedented number of commercials jammed into each hour). So from a purely economic perspective, there has been some benefit from deregulation. Back in 1991, thanks to fragmented ownership and a brutal media recession, 59 percent of all radio stations in America were losing money, according to a National Association of Broadcasters report.

"There wasn't a bank in America that would lend you money to buy a radio station," says longtime radio broker Gary Stevens, who recalls selling a Boston FM around that time for $9 million. The station today would go for at least $90 million.

The accelerated consolidation can be seen as a sign of strength. "As an economist, that signals to me how significant the efficiencies are," says Mark Fratrik, vice president at BIA. "The market tells you a lot of information."

But even in light of the depressed market for radio stations in the early '90s, was the removal of all ownership caps warranted? Surely a more measured raising of caps could have strengthened the economic health of radio without giving control of the entire medium to the highest bidder.

According to critics, local competition has all but vanished from radio in the wake of a consolidation that Congress did not anticipate. That consolidation, in turn, has cleared the way for listless, homogenized and automated programming, along with a near abandonment of local news, all in the name of rampant cost cutting. (One 25-year radio veteran, and current Clear Channel station executive, estimates the Telecom Act has eliminated nearly 10,000 radio-related jobs.) "It's been fabulous for shareholders, but terrible for listeners and employees," says a former broadcast group chief. "I wanted to see radio deregulation. But I think Telecom has done a disservice to what was once a great business."

"The unintended consequences [of the act] have changed irrecoverably the face of radio," says Ness, the former FCC commissioner.

The irony is that even though radio deregulation was an "afterthought" in the Telecom Act, as Stevens puts it, no other communications industry has been so dramatically affected by the legislation. And far from being viewed as a mistake by the leaders of other communications industries, it is seen as a role model.

Has deregulation helped or hurt radio? The answer to that question could have profound implications outside the world of AM and FM. That's because some of the nation's largest television station owners, as well as newspaper publishers, are lobbying Congress for the same type of sweeping deregulation radio got in the Telecom Act.

Many of the provisions currently eyed by TV station owners and newspaper publishers, such as allowing broadcasters to own stations and newspapers in the same market, as well as a lifting of the cap on the number of individual TV stations one company can own, were part of the original telecom bill. But they were taken out at the last minute to appease the White House's objections about unfair media concentration. (At the time, Clinton told aides that if the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which did not support him, had been allowed to own TV stations as well, he never would have been elected governor.)

Now, five years later, and with a new Republican administration signaling its eagerness to usher in further media consolidation, those exact same deregulatory provisions are back on the table on Capitol Hill and at the Federal Communications Commission.

If successful, the current deregulation push would represent "the most aggressive media consolidation initiative ever taken by a democracy," says Reed Hundt, appointed by President Clinton to the position of FCC chairman. Hundt served during the time of the telecom's bill passage and was opposed to lifting radio's ownership caps.

Some analysts and regulators suggest that before any further ownership relaxation occurs in TV, the effects of radio deregulation need to be closely examined.

"Deregulation without reasoned justification is nothing more than deregulation for its own sake. We have already been down that road and we have seen the troubling results in the radio marketplace," wrote Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., in a recent Washington Post Op-Ed piece. "Let us not repeat the mistakes that led to the rapid consolidation in radio in the marketplace for TV programming."

Additionally, in contrast to 1995, when the National Association of Broadcasters lobbied strenuously in favor of radio deregulation, a major internal rift now divides TV broadcasters on the question of whether ownership caps should be lifted. Basically, the networks and the larger station groups, with an eye to owning more profitable affiliates, badly want the caps lifted. The medium- and smaller-sized broadcast companies do not. (Most, as a rule, are highly profitable, offering a sharp contrast to the position of independent radio stations in the early '90s.)

The NAB has sided with the smaller broadcasters; and NBC, CBS and Fox have quit the trade group in protest over the issue. But the smaller broadcasters are alarmed by what they see in the radio insustry.

"Radio is the ultimate example of what can happen if you change the ownership caps," says Jerry Waldron, an attorney representing a group called Network Affiliated Stations Alliance (NASA), which opposes lifting ownership caps.

Former FCC chairman Hundt agrees. "Radio is the model. That's the harbinger for what's going to happen to TV."

According to the Telecom Act, broadcast companies are allowed to own television stations that reach 35 percent of the American viewing audience, but no more. For instance, Paxson Communications operates smaller-market stations, and owns 60 TV signals, according to BIA. CBS, NBC and ABC, though, whose owned-and-operated affiliates are in major markets, have just 16, 13 and 10 stations, respectively. The Telecom Act increased the maximum viewing-audience percentage from 25 to 35 percent. The deregulatory push now is to raise that cap again, to at least 50 percent.

NASA station members oppose raising the cap for two main reasons: They're afraid of losing local control of programming to national networks, and they're afraid of being bought up by larger competitors. "That debate is falling on more receptive ears on Capitol Hill," says Mark O'Brien, executive vice president of BIA. "Whenever you invent something you hypothesize what's going to happen, [as was done with] radio deregulation. When you do it the second time [with TV], it's a matter of looking at what happened the first time."

Hollings, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, is scheduled to hold a hearing on media consolidation during the third week of July. Thanks to the recent party switch of Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., those hearings will have a much different tone than they would if the former chairman, a fierce media deregulatory proponent, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., were overseeing the proceedings.

Nonetheless, new FCC chairman Michael Powell (whose Senate patron is McCain) has expressed support for lifting the cap beyond 35 percent, recently couching the issue in a freedom-of-speech context. "There is something offensive to First Amendment values about that limitation," he told an audience of NAB members. (However, Powell's commitment to the First Amendment is somewhat contradictory -- earlier in June, the FCC startled some music industry executives, not to mention First Amendment activists, when it fined a pop radio station in Colorado $7,000 for playing an edited, or cleaned-up, version of an Eminem rap song.)

For now, the question of ownership caps is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. There, Viacom is contesting a similar ownership cap for cable companies. In the spring, the court ruled that the 30 percent cap for cable was arbitrary and seemed to have been "plucked out of thin air." Hearings for that case begin in the fall, with a possible ruling by year's end. Powell has signaled he'll await the outcome of that case before proceeding with any FCC action on TV ownership limits.

NASA members insist that the very notion of locally controlled television is at stake in that case. In a blistering complaint filed with the FCC, NASA detailed how time and again networks have tried to hamper independently owned affiliates from breaking away from network programming, even for additional local news, a presidential debate or a charity telethon. (According to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, virtually none of the networks' owned-and-operated local affiliates air the association's telethon.)

Network executives at ABC, CBS and NBC declined to discuss the ownership cap issue.

Independent radio advocates often complain that conglomeration leads to poor quality programming. This is not an argument one hears in the current TV regulatory debate. Indeed, some critics say that local TV programming, such as the six o'clock news, is dismal already.

But others fear that local news programming could get even worse. "Look at the radio group that helped lead the fight to lowball costs and introduce national content -- it's Infinity," says Robert McChesney, communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He notes that Infinity was run by renowned cost-cutter Mel Karmazin, who is now president of Viacom, the owner of CBS. With any additional TV consolidation, you can bet Karmazin's "not going to be pumping money into the Little Rock newsroom," says McChesney.

The bigger TV consolidation debate, though, centers on the affiliates' "right to reject" provision. According to the FCC, that provision allows them to pass up network programming "that the licensee feels to be unsatisfactory or contrary to the public interest," or to air "any program which in the station's opinion is of greater local or national importance."

Networks as a rule want their affiliates nationwide to carry as much network programming as possible, which boosts the networks' ratings. But sometimes affiliates simply don't want to air rating dogs, like NBC's XFL prime-time football league. Other times it's more about local choice, such as being forced to air major league playoff games rather than presidential debates. Independently owned affiliates insist that the "right to reject" provision has become a hollow one -- with some networks leveling punitive fines for preemptions or threatening to terminate a station's network affiliation -- and would become virtually nonexistent with further ownership consolidation.

If the networks are able to own more and more affiliates, the ability for local stations to control any of their programming would essentially disappear. Instead of local programmers deciding what should go on the air, the decisions would all be made by the network, with affiliates acting merely as storefronts.

If left unchecked, or even accelerated by deregulation, "the nation's local network-affiliated television stations will ultimately be transformed into mere passive conduits for their networks' national programming," reads the NASA statement.

In a word, says NASA attorney Waldron, "homogenization."

Sound familiar? That's the same complaint being leveled about today's consolidated radio.

Radio has "become homogenized. Radio is not as alive, not as immediate. Because what's happened in large markets is [that] you have two large players divide up the [music] formats so they're not competing head to head anymore," says former FCC commissioner Ness. She suggests that consolidation has eliminated competition. Clinton himself, in a speech this month to broadcasters, expressed "mixed feelings" about the Telecom Act's impact on radio, noting there has been "more consolidation than we wanted."

So how did all this happen? How did the Telecommunications Act ignite a radio deregulation revolution that some jealous TV broadcasters now want to duplicate?

The quick and easy excuse is to blame it all on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Or, more specifically, on the success of the 1994 Republican revolution, which is often credited to -- or blamed on -- Hillary Clinton's healthcare fiasco. Because literally within hours of capturing control of the House of Representatives, legislative leaders, led by Newt Gingrich, began working on sweeping new media deregulation legislation. Gingrich's affiliated think tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, even put together the "Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," a veritable call to arms for telecommunications deregulation.

"Losing the House in '94 was without question a seminal moment in the political history of the media," says former FCC chairman Hundt.

As the New York Times reported in early '95, broadcast "lobbyists have seldom met more receptive lawmakers. Committee Republicans have held numerous meetings with industry executives since January, at which they implored companies to offer suggestions about the ways that Congress could help them."

The version of the telecom bill that originally passed easily in the House offers ample proof of the New York Times' report. That version would have allowed one company to own the only cable television system in a market, the only daily newspaper, a TV signal and every local radio station.

But oddly enough, as the telecom bill was being debated, advocates of radio's deregulation ended up benefiting from its devalued status as a serious news and information provider. So while the more extreme reductions in ownership caps on television and newspaper ownership in the House-passed bill were removed in the final version, radio deregulation sailed through.

"Radio is not regarded as having the same role in the political debate; that's why a lot of people on both sides of the aisle just felt it wasn't an important topic," says Hundt.

Radio station broker Steven agrees: "Politicians only care about TV news dissemination; they want that finger on that button. We've made the case that radio offers such a minimal service of information flow, politicians were not worried about it and let us go."

Radio broadcasters were also aided by the NAB's stealth lobbying campaign, which purposely kept the radio ownership issue off the radar as the Baby Bells and cable companies grabbed most of the Telecom Act attention. "The NAB knew to lay low," says one source familiar with the trade association's strategy at the time. "The secret was not to be out front and center on it. If there had been a separate radio deregulation bill, it wouldn't have passed. There would have been hearings, and a real hue and cry."

If you listen today, there is an audible hue and cry. It's just coming five years late.

Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon

Source: http://www.Salon.com

7/12/01
10:47:32 AM

A Pollution-Free Car in Every Garage

By Peter Castles, Chico News and Review

It sounds too good to be true -- an automotive power source that efficiently converts a limitless supply of chemical energy into electricity without producing smog-causing emissions.

But more and more, hydrogen fuel-cell-powered vehicles are being touted as The Answer. To our everyday air quality problems. To the long-term threat that continued burning of fossil fuels poses to the environment and our atmosphere. To skyrocketing gasoline prices, the dwindling supply of petroleum, and America's shaky dependence on foreign oil.

The nascent fuel cell technology appears so promising that many in the automotive and energy industries are already claiming it's just a matter of time before hydrogen becomes the fuel of choice for motor vehicles. A recent article in Popular Science magazine went so far as to opine that the fuel cell might represent the "biggest leap in automotive history -- a practical replacement for the internal combustion engine."

Whoa! Have we discovered a path to energy Nirvana here? Are we finally poised to wean our petrochemically dependent society off the parched and withered teat of Mother Earth's shrinking hydrocarbon deposits, from which we've so selfishly gulped all these years?

After countless false starts and half-hearted efforts to incorporate cleaner, renewable alternative fuels into the energy mix, perhaps we are finally due for some real and lasting change. If it's any indication, fuel cell politics has already made some strange bedfellows, as major automakers and energy corporations find themselves collaborating in earnest with regulators, technology manufacturers and clean-air advocates to develop this cheap and enormously abundant source of power.

But while there are certainly many respected voices who think that fuel cells are positioned to change the face of transportation, most also admit that, as with any groundbreaking technology, there are significant hurdles to clear before hydrogen-powered vehicles gain widespread viability.

So what are fuel cells and how do they work? Simply put, fuel cells combine hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity -- without combustion. Compared to the complexities of the internal-combustion engine, the process of producing energy with the fuel cell is remarkably straightforward. The fuel cell has no moving parts and relies on the most ubiquitous substance in the universe, hydrogen, as its power source. The result is clean energy with no nasty emissions. The only waste is heat and water.

The hydrogen fuel cell concept is no real marvel of science -- in fact, the first fuel cell device was created way back in 1839 by British inventor Sir William Grove. But practical applications remained elusive until the 1960s, when NASA began developing the technology to power equipment onboard its spacecraft. Today, fuel cells continue to provide electricity (and even potable water) for the space shuttle.

Only recently has the technology advanced into the realm of viability for vehicle use. Initially, developing fuel cells for transportation purposes involved bulky and expensive prototypes limited by the techniques of producing and storing hydrogen. But exponential advances in technology and design have brought rapid reductions in the size of the power plants, yielding new models that now feature nearly as much usable interior space as conventional cars.

"The technology has undergone a dramatic curve of improvements. You can liken it to the computer revolution, in that fuel cells have become smaller but much more powerful," says Joe Irvin, spokesman for the Fuel Cell Partnership, a California-based collaborative of automakers, government agencies, manufacturers, and energy companies that comprises the world's foremost test center for fuel-cell-powered vehicles.

Although most fuel cells being tested in vehicles are powered by pure hydrogen, which is stored onboard in secure tanks, engineers are also considering the possibility of installing reformer systems that produce hydrogen from carbon-based fuel sources such as gasoline and methanol.

But if we want fuel cells to run cleanly, why power them with polluting fossil fuels? The answer to that question reveals the most significant challenge facing fuel cell vehicles today.

Though fuel cell vehicles are nearly a market reality, with some automakers projected to roll out limited numbers as early as 2004, the fueling infrastructure needed to service larger numbers will take years, perhaps decades, to establish.

That's why many believe the most likely route for commercialization of fuel cells will be through fleet vehicles. A shift to hydrogen for city buses and delivery trucks would help reduce the cost of manufacturing fuel cells while helping to win public acceptance.

"The first step is going to be fleet use, where you can install a central fueling station to handle many vehicles," says Irvin. Already, hydrogen buses cruise the streets of Chicago and Vancouver.

In the meantime, the first generation of fuel cell passenger cars will most likely use onboard reformers that produce hydrogen from some type of "transition fuel," one that does not necessarily live up to the full potential of clean hydrogen energy.

Nevertheless, this transition approach would allow drivers to fuel up on gasoline or methanol at existing gas stations. And, according to a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report, onboard fuel processors -- even those using gasoline -- represent a major advance in reduction of pollutants over conventional vehicles.

Part of the Fuel Cell Partnership's mission is to explore the different fuel options and test the cars' performance under a wide variety of conditions. But if there is a favored fueling choice, nobody is tipping his hand.

"Hydrogen is the mother's milk of the fuel cell," says Irvin. "But if you want to get fuel cells in front of the consumer early, than to do so might mean using a familiar fuel that is cost-effective in terms of distribution."

But will carmakers really follow through on their promises to deliver cleaner transportation choices to the car-buying public? To some extent, they have no choice but to. Prompted by air quality mandates, car manufacturers are committed to developing models that prove commercially viable.

"Fuel cell vehicles present the opportunity for what we call 'sustainable mobility,'" says Irvin. "It's a way to affordably preserve our concept of a mobile society with much less impact on the environment."

Once infrastructure is in place, the cost of filling up with hydrogen should be much more affordable than gasoline -- and nowhere near as vulnerable to the wild price fluctuations that distinguish the global petroleum market. DOE has said that producing hydrogen for fuel cell use today would cost the equivalent of $1.92 per gallon, about the same as a gallon of gas here in California. That figure would certainly go down as the technology grows and consumer use expands.

Filling up with hydrogen is easy and safe. And, while making fuel cell vehicles safe for the road is no slam-dunk, safety is not considered an obstacle to commercialization. In fact, most experts agree that hydrogen can be at least as safe as today's fuels.

What about vehicle cost? Once enough units are built to establish an acceptable economy of scale, cost won't be an issue. Studies by Ford and General Motors conclude that fuel cell motors eventually could be built for about the same price as an internal-combustion engine.

And performance? So far, the cars being tested seem to be proving the technology can provide good performance in a variety of conventional passenger models, including compacts, SUVs and minivans.

Irvin says fuel cell vehicles may eventually run twice as far between fuelings as current automobiles. "The automakers are confident they will get exceptional range," he says. "It may take some time, but with the efficiency of fuel cells, we could see about a 50 percent improvement or even a potential doubling of the ranges that we're used to, so you might get 600-700 miles per fueling."

So when will significant numbers of fuel-cell-powered vehicles ride on our roads and highways? Forecasts estimate that Americans will see some form of mass production (more than 100,000 vehicles) well before 2010.

With the auto industry, mass transit agencies and technology companies all working to make hydrogen vehicles a reality, where else can help be found? Well, don't look now, but even Big Oil is jumping on the fuel cell bandwagon.

It wasn't long ago that oil executives were openly deriding the notion that fuel cells could ever replace the internal-combustion engine. Now, the world's oil giants -- aware that this new technology could someday put them out of business -- have joined in the hunt for the perfect fuel cell solution.

Hmm, maybe for once it's too good not to be true.

7/12/01
10:44:31 AM

It Can Happen Here

by Sheldon Rampton, E Magazine

As infections go, mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease don't have much in common. Mad cow disease is hard to transmit, takes years to incubate in an infected animal and is almost impossible to detect until symptoms emerge late in the course of the infection. Foot-and-mouth, by comparison, is one of the most contagious animal diseases known. Unlike mad cow disease, which is hard to spread but always fatal, foot-and-mouth disease spreads quickly but rarely even kills animals and is considered harmless to human beings.

The fact that both diseases have emerged in the United Kingdom is mostly a matter of British bad luck. But both have something to teach us about the virtues of precaution. Diseases of livestock and people lurk in hidden crevices of the world, and the very technologies that we celebrate as emblems of modern progress can also serve as vehicles for transforming those diseases into epidemics. Just as AIDS spread throughout the world thanks in part to the speed and ease of modern travel, other diseases are cropping up with increasing frequency as a result of factors including increasing urbanization of wildlife habitats and intensive livestock farming practices.

Origins of an Epidemic

The recent British outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease began in early February on a farm in Northumberland, England's most northerly county. By February 25, most of the country had been declared a contaminated area. Its spread was assisted on February 13 when 40 sheep were purchased in Northumberland and shipped to Devon, a county on England's southwest peninsula. By the time the outbreak was identified as foot-and-mouth disease, consignments of sheep and pigs had already been shipped from infected areas throughout the country and to other parts of Europe. By March 1, the number of detected cases had reached 30, with new outbreaks occurring in Ireland and Scotland. Europe started slaughtering animals imported from Britain as soon as the epidemic became apparent, but by then, antibodies to foot-and-mouth were already being found in Germany. By March 21, nearly 400 cases had been detected, and the army had been called in to help with the disposal of carcasses as thousands of animals were slaughtered in an effort to eradicate the disease.

Europe will spend billions of dollars bringing this particular outbreak under control. But outbreaks of foot-and-mouth have risen throughout the world, due to activities that spread the disease, such as illegal smuggling of animals, international tourism and the globalization of trade. "The last two years have been among the worst on record, with more than 60 countries experiencing outbreaks, including many which have not had one in generations," reports the Guardian of London. Examples include Taiwan, Korea, Brazil and South Africa, as well as an outbreak last year in Japan that was traced back to diseased straw imported from China via Russia.

Unlike foot-and-mouth disease, which has vexed farmers for centuries, mad cow disease is a recent phenomenon created by technical innovations in agricultural production itself. The innovation that caused it was actually quite simple. In order to dispose of slaughtered animal parts that have no commercial value, the meat industry put them through a "rendering" process that consisted of grinding them up and cooking them in large vats to produce a product called "meat and bone meal" that was then fed back to other animals. This created what was essentially a cannibalistic feeding loop, as cows consumed the remains of other cows, sheep were fed to sheep, pigs to pigs, chickens to chickens and so forth.

Common sense might dictate that this practice is a bad idea, but the scientists and farmers who used this material genuinely believed it would be safe. What they didn't realize was that this feeding loop was also an amplification loop through which mad cow disease -- something that had never even been detected prior to the 1980s -- would become a devastating epidemic that has so far killed more than 170,000 cattle and began to kill human beings in 1996. To date, nearly 100 people have died, presumably from eating infected beef, and scientific projections for the eventual death toll in Europe range from a few hundred to 100,000.

Renderers like to point out that they deserve credit for helping to dispose of large quantities of animal waste that would otherwise putrefy and create a massive disposal problem. But modern large-scale agribusiness has created a problem that it only partially manages to solve. Even today, notwithstanding the nightmare that mad cow disease has meant for Europe, the U.S. meat industry and regulatory agencies have failed to take all the precautions needed to protect animal and human health. Europe has adopted tough regulations that ban the use of animal meat and blood in livestock feed.

Inadequate Protection

The U.S. has adopted regulations too, but with glaring holes. In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confiscated two flocks of sheep imported from Europe, which they believe may have been exposed to mad cow disease. Unfortunately, U.S. agencies continue to rely heavily on attempts to interdict foreign imports that may carry the disease, while winking and nodding at practices that could cause equally devastating homegrown equivalents to emerge. It is still legal in the U.S., for example, to feed rendered cows to pigs, whose remains are fed in turn back to cows. And it is still perfectly legal to use cow blood in cattle feed, a practice banned in Europe. The regulations that do exist are limply enforced. Bovine meat and bone meal is supposed to be labeled, "Do not feed to cows," but a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigation found that hundreds of feed makers are violating the law.

Modern feedlot farming, which force-feeds animals "scientifically blended rations" designed to maximize growth and minimize costs, has also introduced a variety of other practices that threaten to spread diseases. In addition to the rendered remains of their cousins, livestock today consume a variety of substances that are quite different from the grass and hay on which they conventionally have been nurtured, including industrial wastes, such as sawdust, wood chips, twigs, ground-up newspapers, cement dust from kilns and even treated manure and sewage sludge from municipal composting plants. This may not make particularly appetizing reading as you are about to sit down to dinner, but from industry's perspective, there is no harm in it. These materials help cut down on costs, dispose of wastes and translate into benefits for the consumer in the form of lower prices for your Chicken McNuggets.

As far as industry is concerned, there is no proof that these practices are dangerous, so why should they hesitate? But scientific research is still lacking in regards to the risks associated with these practices. No one knows how the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease arrived in England, but it got there anyway. No one knew in advance that feeding livestock rendered meat and bone meal would cause an epidemic of mad cow disease, but it did. And no one knows today whether the introduction of genetically modified organisms into our food supply will create previously unknown allergies or other health problems in the people who consume them.

An International Problem

What we do know is that illnesses stemming from modern agriculture seem to be a growing problem worldwide. In October of last year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that increasing movements of people, animals and animal products for trade are leading to a greater spread of animal diseases across national borders. It noted that a number of livestock diseases have been diagnosed for the first time outside their "normal" areas of origin -- sometimes thousands of miles away. In Yemen, close to the Saudia Arabian border, some 100 people have died from the first known outbreak of Rift Valley fever outside Africa. Outbreaks of bluetongue disease, a viral disease of sheep, have been reported in Bulgaria and Sardinia, locations where the disease was previously unknown. In addition to mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease, the United Kingdom saw an outbreak of classical swine fever, a disease believed to have been eradicated in the UK many years ago. The recent infection is thought to have been introduced through imported meat products.

Foodborne diseases among people also appear to be rising. In 1990, the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences attributed the increase to "automated food processing, increased reliance on fast foods, greater use of prepackaged foods and microwave ovens, urbanization, public naivete about food production and slaughter methods and lack of knowledge about the hygienic precautions required at all stages of food handling." The foodborne nature of many illnesses often goes unrecognized by the victims, but government agencies have estimated that as many as 81 million cases of foodborne illness occur in this country each year, accounting for approximately 9,000 deaths.

The most common killers are not exotic diseases like mad cow disease, which the USDA has yet to detect in the U.S. They include E.coli O157:H7, Salmonella typhimurium and Listeria monocytogenes -- bacteria that have become ubiquitous in the human food supply. Severe forms of E. coli food poisoning, often originating from fast food, kill 500 people a year.

Salmonella, which causes an intense flu-like illness that can be fatal, has been linked to the consumption of eggs, poultry, milk and dairy products and a variety of other foods. The FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition estimates that two to four million cases of salmonellosis occur every year in the U.S. The Center says, "[Salmonella] isolations from humans have shown a dramatic rise in the past decade, particularly in the northeast United States (six-fold or more)."

Listeria, which can cause fatal blood poisoning, miscarriages in pregnant women and meningitis, is believed to spread through ready-to-eat foods such as hot dogs, luncheon meats or cold cuts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 2,000 people in the U.S. come down with serious cases of listeriosis each year, which is responsible for approximately 500 deaths.

The benefits of modern agricultural innovation are evident. The cost, however, is that we are performing a massive global experiment with ourselves and our children as the test subjects.

Sheldon Rampton edits PR Watch and is the co-author, with John Stauber, of "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" and "Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future."

Source: http://www.emagazine.com

7/12/01
10:39:29 AM

Growing Population Stamps Heavy Ecological Footprint

NEW YORK, New York, July 11, 2001 (ENS) - Right now, on World Population Day, the number of people on Earth is estimated at 6,169,232,446 and climbing. In the three minutes it may take a reader to finish this article, the world's population will have increased by 438 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Speaking on the occasion of World Population Day, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan linked the growing population to ecological stress on the planet's resources. Calling attention to deforestation, pollution a