5/20/01
9:09:42 PM
LOVEARTH NETWORK
Forming A Unity Of One Percent To Stop Our Extinction
Connecting Through 1000 EcoHumanePolitical Websites
Our Mission Is For A Sustainable Future
Fill this new millennium with Peace and Love for yourself and all life.
Lovearth is an environmental organization that's been creating awareness since 1988. For the last 4 years we have concentrated on disseminating truthful information, empowering solutions and direct actions on environmental and humanitarian concerns via the Internet. Our intent is to form a unity of one percent to stop our extinction through our growing network of 1000 EcoHumanePolitical websites.
By reading two of our insightful studies, http://www.Rainforests.net
and http://www.Overpopulation.net
you will understand that we have past the point of sustainability. In 1984 the per capita grain output peaked at 755 pounds per person. Since 1984, grain output has fallen on average by .6 percent yearly. The 2000 per capita grain output was 686 pounds. Oceanic Fish catch peaked in 1989. Since then, the per capita oceanic fish catch has gone down by 10%. All 17 major oceanic fisheries are being fished at or beyond capacity and 9 are in a state of collapse. Our species relentless shortsighted destruction to all Earth ecosystems coupled with the outright slaughter to the web of life have left us at the extinction or life fork in the road in our evolution.
In December 1987, when the exponential growth of human population peaked, we entered the 25 year window where we will cross our species Omega point. That window will close for our dance on the stage of life if we break through the critical barrier of 10% virgin Rainforests area / 50% Species in December 2012.
For the sake of our future generations, we must immediately heed the inherent limits of Mother Earth and strive for a harmonious sustainability. The time is now for each and every one of us to fully understand and recognize that if we do not radically change our corporate driven consumptive and destructive way of life, we will go extinct. With love in every moment we must do the best we can to help others understand these logical facts and connect the dots to form a unity of one percent.
5/20/01
7:09:18 PM
Smoke and Mirrors
b John F. Borowski, Utne Reader
Florida's Orange County Convention Center is big. Big enough to hold the Sears Tower, if you laid it on its side. So big you could walk 10 miles and never leave the cement behemoth. A hulking structure like this was necessary to host the recent National Science Teachers Convention, the largest gathering of educators in the nation: more than 14,000 science teachers, and hundreds of exhibitors passing out armloads of pamphlets, packets, books, stickers, posters, and other goodies.
A handful of conservation groups were on hand offering teachers inspiration and information on how to teach about environmental issues, but they were clearly in the minority.
When I started teaching 20 years ago, I could not have imagined such a perverse display: industries and their front groups trying to justify everything from deforestation to the extinction of species
* The coal industry's Greening Earth Society passed out videos and teacher guides on the "fallacies" of global warming. * The "Temperate Forest Foundation" offered a video titled The Dynamic Forest, in which insects and fire hurt forests, but industry provides the needed remedies--with the help of chain saws. * The American Farm Bureau, avowed enemies of environmental education, propositioned teachers to reconsider the dangers of chemical herbicides and insecticides.
They were selling lies, and the teachers were buying--quickly filling their bags with curricula as corrosive as the pesticides that the Farm Bureau promotes. Where were the largest environmental groups to counter this frontal assault on environmental education? Where was the outcry of the educational community? Most Americans consider our public schools to be hallowed ground, where young people learn about the world through carefully chosen curriculum. Yet corporations now view schools as convenient locations for the dissemination of propaganda debunking environmental concerns.
Environmental education is under assault on two fronts. First, multinational corporations are designing and distributing environmental curricula that are professionally produced, easy to use, often free, and incredibly biased in favor of industry. Second, some of the most prominent conservative think tanks in America are mounting a well-funded attack on genuine environmental education.
Their objective is simple: protect industries that despoil the planet and put the brakes on the emergence of environmental awareness among young people. The spectrum of curricula is breathtaking and its shamelessness is overt. The American Nuclear Society provides "Let's Color and Do Activities with the Atoms Family." Materials I received from Exxon portray the Prince William Sound cleanup as a victory of technology, brushing over the cause of the disaster: the Exxon Valdez. But the most brazen miseducation campaign is carried out by the timber industry.
Big timber spends millions on so-called educational programs (which, of course, they generously donate to public schools). They offer hikes, presentations, and paid workshops for teachers. They distribute books, posters, videos, lesson plans, and other materials. Through the looking glass of big timber, old-growth forests become biological problems that require clear-cutting in order to survive. Logging companies are not cutting the forests, the propaganda explains, it is "managing" them, acting as their stewards--even saviors.
Truax, spun from Dr. Suess' conservationist classic The Lorax, is one of the "educational" materials distributed to schools produced by the Hardwood Forest Foundation and the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association. The colorful book, written and illustrated in the Suess style, chronicles Truax, a calm and thoughtful logger, who tries to explain the "facts" of forest management to the psychotic treehugger Guardbark.
Often, the very organizations that preach the gospel of environmental education are actually industry shills. They have earthy names but clandestine roots. The American Forest Foundation (AFF) has a list of co-sponsors, cooperators, and partners that includes some of the most egregious despoilers of our forests: Sierra Pacific Industries, champion of clear-cuts in California; The Pacific Lumber Company, loggers of the redwoods; MacMillan Bloedel Packaging; Willamette Industries; Boise Cascade Corporation. One AFF project, Project Learning Tree, which works to promote logging and industrial management of our nation's forest, has reached more than 500,000 teachers and some 25 million students from prekindergarten to 12th grade.
Surreptitious public relations campaigns and deceptive advertising are battling today for the hearts and minds of our children. And they're winning. The North America Association of Environmental Education (the largest environmental education group in the world) has endorsed Project Learning Tree. Parents and citizens in general must assume the role of frontline warriors if environmental education is to remain meaningful. They must demand that any curricula provided by corporate sources be reviewed, just as textbooks are reviewed prior to being adopted. They must challenge their local boards of education to keep schools free of corporate propaganda. They must study the materials children receive at school. Corporate PR campaigns in classrooms are reminiscent of tobacco companies' secretive strategy of peddling cigarettes to teens. Their effort must be brought into the full light of day.
5/20/01
7:03:32 PM
Bush Picks Industry Insiders to Fill Environmental Posts
WASHINGTON, May 9 - President Bush has filled several senior environment-related jobs in his administration with pro-business advocates who have worked on behalf of various industries in battles with the federal government, largely during the Clinton years.
Mr. Bush has announced his intent to nominate a mining industry lobbyist as the No. 2 person at the Interior Department. He has chosen a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association to be the department's chief lawyer.
His choice for No. 2 at the Environmental Protection Agency was a lobbyist for Monsanto, the chemical company now devoted to agribusiness. He wants as chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality a lawyer who represented General Electric in its fight with the E.P.A. over toxic waste sites.
Many of these candidates share a pro-property rights philosophy as well as a libertarian leaning, and conservatives find this just the right approach. Supporters also say that the individuals selected are deeply familiar with the issues that will come before them, and that they will know how to balance environmental protection and economic interests.
"We're real happy with the team that Bush is putting in," said Mike Hardiman, legislative director of the American Conservative Union.
"After eight years of the extremist, anti-people, anti-access policies of the Clinton administration and its overzealous application of the Endangered Species Act and the shutdown of recreational access to public lands as well as the commercial access, we're now going to have more of a balance," he said.
The list of intended nominees ==most have not been officially nominated ==is notable for the absence of picks from the environmental movement. Mr. Bush was considering John Turner, president of the Conservation Fund, for the No. 2 job at Interior, but Mr. Turner was dropped after strong opposition from Mr. Hardiman's group and others.
In Mr. Turner's place, Mr. Bush has nominated J. Steven Griles, a mining industry lobbyist who once worked in the Interior Department under James Watt, President Reagan's first Interior secretary.
"They are lawyers and lobbyists who built their careers by helping industry get out of environmental regulations," said Maria Weidner, policy advocate for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. "Now, assuming they're confirmed, they will be doing the same thing, only the taxpayers will be paying for it."
Business advocates assert that the industry credentials of the nominees does not necessarily foreshadow their approach in their new jobs.
William L. Kovacs, vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said that critics had portrayed the Bush team as anti-environment even as the president let stricter standards concerning diesel emissions and reporting on lead emissions go into effect.
"I don't think that just because these people worked for business, you can call them pro-business," Mr. Kovacs said. "They're not as clear- cut as the enviros would like to paint them."
Guided by the tone set at the top ==from Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to Gale A. Norton, the Interior secretary, and Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator ==these nominees will help determine what policies to advocate, what regulations to enforce and what litigation to pursue.
They replace Clinton loyalists who came largely from strong environmental backgrounds. When President Bill Clinton took office, for example, his Interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, was a former governor of Arizona but also head of the League of Conservation Voters. Mr. Babbitt put George Frampton, a former head of the Wilderness Society, in charge of fish, wildlife and parks; Mr. Frampton ended up in charge of the White House environmental council.
Now, some former Clinton officials ==many of whom work for environmental lobbying groups ==complain that the Bush team generally views the environment as resources to be mined, logged and drilled.
"Their collective orientation is clearly pro-development and pro-exploitation of public resources for the personal profit of various industries," said Dave Alberswerth, who worked at the Interior Department under Mr. Babbitt and is now at the Wilderness Society.
Some holdovers ==like Dale Bosworth, the new Forest Service chief, who was a regional forester in Montana ==have not drawn environmentalists' fire. And Mr. Bush has yet to name picks for a handful of key posts.
But many of those he has named at Interior, E.P.A. and other agencies with environmental oversight have corporate backgrounds and appear skeptical of the regulatory process. Most candidates declined to discuss their prospective roles before their Senate confirmation hearings.
One of Mr. Bush's most influential choices would be John D. Graham as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. If confirmed, Mr. Graham, a Harvard professor who has argued that the costs of most environmental regulations exceed their benefits, would be in charge of reviewing all regulations proposed by federal agencies.
As he said in a 1996 speech at the Heritage Foundation, "environmental regulation should be depicted as an incredible intervention in the operation of society."
Mr. Bush has also said he would nominate Linda J. Fisher to be deputy administrator of the E.P.A. Most recently she headed the government affairs office at Monsanto. Ms. Fisher served at the E.P.A. in the Reagan and first Bush administrations as director of the office of pesticides and toxic substances; assistant administrator for policy, planning and evaluation; and as chief of staff.
Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, called her a "moderate, corporate-style Republican, not a hidebound conservative" and said Ms. Fisher was seen as "pretty reasonable by environmentalists" during her tenure as head of the agency's pesticide office.
"But afterward," he said, "she headed Monsanto's lobbying operation while the company was trying to head off any government oversight of genetically engineered crops."
Mr. Griles, the mining lobbyist picked as deputy Interior secretary, worked in the Reagan Interior department at a series of jobs, ending up as assistant secretary of lands and minerals management.
He then became an executive at the United Company, a coal, oil and gas development company. Until recently he was a lobbyist for National Environmental Strategies, with clients including the National Mining Association, Occidental Petroleum, Edison Electric and the Coalbed Methane Ad Hoc Committee.
John Grasser, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said that Mr. Griles's industry experience was an important asset for his new post. "You've got to get the people who understand the issues," he said.
And he disputed the complaint of environmentalists that the candidates were captives of industry. "When they get into these jobs, they have to walk somewhat of a middle line," Mr. Grasser said.
William Geary Myers 3d is Mr. Bush's choice to be solicitor for the Interior Department. As lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the Public Lands Council, Mr. Myers advocated pro-rancher positions. While most issues involved land access and water allocation, he also opposed reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone National Park and Idaho and supported the state of Montana in the killing of bison that wandered out of Yellowstone.
Mr. Myers said this week that as the potential lawyer for the department, "my primary clients will be the president and the secretary." He said he would not characterize himself as pro-industry or anti-industry.
For chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Mr. Bush has picked James Connaughton, a partner at Sidley & Austin, a law firm that advises corporate clients and trade groups on environmental law. He has represented General Electric and Atlantic Richfield in fights against the E.P.A. about cleanup of Superfund sites.
Mr. Bush's choice for assistant attorney general at the Justice Department for the environment and natural resources is Thomas Sansonetti, a lawyer from Wyoming who specializes in minerals and energy and is a member of the libertarian Federalist Society. As the solicitor at Interior in the first Bush administration, Mr. Sansonetti helped negotiate the Exxon Valdez oil-spill settlement.
Other Interior nominees include Bennet William Raley, a lawyer who has represented farm interests, as assistant secretary for water and science, and Lynn Scarlett, president of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian group, as assistant secretary for policy, management and budget.
"I don't like to tell people how to live their lives," Ms. Scarlett said. "If that means I'm gun-shy of mandates, where they'll undermine environmental performance, stifle innovation and heighten conflict, then I'll say so. But I think too often we judge environmentalism as being the equivalent of adherence to a particular statute rather than achieving specific results, and they're not the same thing."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/12/politics/12NOMI.html
5/20/01
7:00:18 PM
The newly announced Energy Policy of G.W.Bush
Dear friends of Life on our Planet,
On thursday May 17th on our British T.V. Channel 4 News, we saw the announcement that G.W.Bush is behaving in his usual maverick manner yet again and intends, in spite of our experiences in the past of "Three Mile Island" in the USA, Sellafield in the U.K. and Chernobyl in the then USSR, to set up a programme to build a large number of Nuclear Power Stations as well as to drill for oil and gas in the ecologically sensitive Alaskan Wilderness.
Is there no end to the potential for evil & destruction that he is manifesting?
His policies in the context of our Planet are worse than a virus in a computer and must be prevented by all possible means short of violence against persons.
We sincerely hope that militant action in the USA & across the Planet will bring to a halt this intended programme which needs to be stopped before the Nuclear Power Plants are built as once built, we are cursed with them for generations.
Contamination from nuclear accidents is shared by everyone everywhere - it was the spread of radioactive fall out from Chernobyl across much of Europe in 1986 that first motivated me to go beyond a "philosophy" of one humanity to more positive involvement in the means to unite us as one, sharing all, the bad & good!
If you wish to send a personal message to Mr Bush protesting about this his email address is president@whitehouse.gov . Has he not heard of "natural energy"?
So let us start now, before these policies are implemented, to think about what actions we can take to counteract this new potential threat to all the life of the Planet and the actual immediate threat to the flora and fauna of Alaska and do keep us informed, at the above email address of any such campaigns that you might already be thinking to put into operation which we will pass on to as many people as possible through our contacts!
Yours for a 100% "green" Planet and society
David Allen Stringer
International Coordinator, The Universal Alliance
universalalliance.org@tinyworld.co.uk
5/20/01
6:56:12 PM
ROLL YOUR OWN BLACKOUT
THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER THURSDAY EVENING JUNE 21st
7-10pm worldwide, all time zones
As an alternative to George W. Bush's energy policies and lack of emphasis on energy efficiency, conservation and alternative fuels, there will be a voluntary rolling blackout on the first day of summer, June 21 at 7pm - 10pm in any time zone (this will roll it across the planet). It's a simple protest and a symbolic act. Turn out your lights from 7pm-10pm on June 21. Unplug whatever you can unplug in your house. Light a candle to the Sungoddess, kiss and tell or not, take a stroll in the dark, invent ghost stories, anything that's not electronic - have fun in the dark.
Read the 1999 book "Natural Capitalism" by Paul Hawken (of "The Natural Step") and Amory Lovins (of The Rocky Mountain Institute) to learn that conservation and high efficiency technologies already ARE on-the-shelf. If implemented these revolutionary ideas would pay themselves off within 5 years, after which we'd be pumping far less greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and saving bucks to boot.
Forward this email as widely as possible, to your government represent atives and environmental contacts. Let them know we want global education, participation and funding in conservation, efficiency and alternative fuel efforts -- and an end to over exploitation and misuse of the earth's resources.
Anyone knows that the Cheney-Bush team is blowing smoke when they tell us that "... conservation can't help, it'll just be too expensive to implement those technologies..." While on the other hand, technology to develop and deploy weapons to blow incoming ICBMs out of the sky are easy to come by.
Wendy Strickland
Development Director Bluewater Network
300 Broadway #28
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 788-3666 x120
(415) 788-7324 fax
Bluewater Network is a national environmental organization aggressively confronting the root causes of climate change and fighting environmental damage from the shipping, oil, and motorized recreation industries.
Join Bluewater today at http://bluewaternetwork.org
5/20/01
6:34:27 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Alaskans ponder Bush's plans for pipeline, NPRA - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10886
US to decide soon on Calif fuel waiver - USDA's Veneman - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10876
FEATURE - Energy ads aim to shake old economy image - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10890
Aged pipeline suspected in Alaska inlet oil sheen - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10879
UPDATE - Democrat ad campaign targets Bush energy plan - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10880
US lawmakers want probe of Cheney's energy panel - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10889
Calif. sees energy savings in tonnes of cow manure - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10888
UPDATE - Bush looks at green in energy plan-critics see red - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10875
ANALYSIS - World's growing power needs hamper climate efforts - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10894
Greens warn Bush of opposition to come - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10881
FACTBOX - Dirty dozen chemicals targeted by UN conference - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10895
World ready to outlaw "dirty dozen" pollutants - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10884
UPDATE - Resource-poor Japan hails Bush energy plan - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10883
Cyanide spill leads to severe economic loss - study - HUNGARY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10877
Schroeder sees bright future for German gene study - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10887
UPDATE - Finland approves underground nuclear waste dump - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10882
EU says Bush energy plan disappointing on climate - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10893
UPDATE - HK continues poultry slaughter to stop flu spread - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10885
Canadian animal group blasts proposed seal cull - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10892
FACTBOX - Brazil energy plan penalizes big spenders - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10891
UPDATE - US energy plan a "crime" - Pacific activists - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10878
5/20/01
6:32:00 PM
STAR WARS RETURNS IS RELEASED
STAR WARS RETURNS, a video documentary exposing how the Bush administration is moving to make space a new arena of war<in violation of the intent of international law<has just been released by EnviroVideo: http://www.envirovideo.com
The documentary is being distributed in the U.S. and around the world. STAR WARS RETURNS is narrated and was written by investigative reporter and journalism Professor Karl Grossman, directed and edited by Emmy Award-winner Steve Jambeck and produced by Joan Flynn.
It presents U.S. military documents setting forth U.S. plans to control space and from space dominate the earth below. It reveals the multi-billion dollar U.S. development program now underway to produce space-based laser weapons, and that far more than ³missile defense² is involved. It also details the international opposition to the U.S. Star Wars program.
STAR WARS RETURNS explores the recently issued report of the Space Commission chaired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld which calls for U.S. power projection in, from and through space² and declares: In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on earth and in space.
U.S. Senator Bob Smith, who wrote the legislation establishing the Rumsfeld Space Commission, asserts in STAR WARS RETURNS about U.S. control of space: ³It is our manifest destiny. You know we went from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States of America settling the continent and they call that manifest destiny and the next continent if you will, the next frontier, is space and it goes on forever.
Others appearing in STAR WARS RETURNS are Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space; Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll (USN, ret.), vice president of the Center for Defense Information; Congressman Dennis Kucinich; physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva of India; Bill Sulzman, director of Citizens for Peace in Space; Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York; editor Loring Wirbel; and Regina Hagen, a Global Network director.
Also interviewed is Craig Eisendrath who as a U.S. State Department officer was central in drafting the Outer Space Treaty of 1967< the intent of which the U.S. is now preparing to violate, charges Eisendrath in STAR WARS RETURNS. It is the basic international law on space, ratified by most countries of the world, and sets space aside for peaceful purposes.
EnviroVideo has produced 175 television programs including the award-winning documentary NUKES IN SPACE: THE NUCLEARIZATION AND WEAPONIZATION OF THE HEAVENS.
Editors: For review copies of STAR WARS RETURNS call 718-318-8045.
5/20/01
6:22:10 PM
WHAT CAUSES BREAST CANCER?
Breast cancer kills 46,000 women in the U.S. each year. On average, each of these women has her life cut short by 20 years, for a total loss of about a million person-years of productive life each year. Of course this huge cost to society is heaped on even greater burdens, the personal anguish and suffering, the motherless children, the shattered families.
The medical establishment dominated by male doctors pretends that the breast cancer epidemic will one day be reversed by some miracle cure, which we have now been promised for 50 years. Until that miracle arrives, we are told, there is nothing to be done except slice off women's breasts, pump their bodies full of toxic chemicals to kill cancer cells, burn them with radiation, and bury our dead. Meanwhile, the normal public health approach primary prevention languishes without mention and without funding. We know what causes the vast majority of cancers: exposure to carcinogens. What would a normal public health approach entail? Reduce the burden of cancer by reducing our exposure to carcinogens. One key idea has defined public health for more than 100 years: PREVENTION. But with cancer, everything is different. In the case of cancer, prevention has been banished from polite discussion.
Now a new, fully-documented book[1], by physician Janette D. Sherman, poses a fundamental challenge to all the doctors and researchers and health bureaucrats who have turned their backs on cancer prevention: "If cancers are not caused by chemicals, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and ionizing radiation, what are the causes? How else can one explain the doubling, since 1940, of a woman's likelihood of developing breast cancer, increasing in tandem with prostate and childhood cancers?," Dr. Sherman asks.(pg. x) And if exposures are the problem, then ending exposures is the solution: "Actual prevention means eliminating factors that cause cancer in the first place."(pg. 31)
Dr. Sherman is a practicing physician who has treated 8000 patients over 30 years. Unlike most physicians, she possesses an extensive knowledge of chemistry. Furthermore, she has become a historian by examining a large body of medical and public health literature dating back to the 19th century. It is this unique combination -- of historical view, knowledge of chemistry, deep personal experience as a physician, and an ethical clarity that PRIMARY PREVENTION is the proper policy -- that makes this book important and compelling.
The book begins with two chapters emphasizing the similarities among all living things that are made up of cells including humans, animals and plants. Cells in every creature can go awry and start to grow uncontrollably, a definition of cancer. Because all cell-based creatures are so similar, what we learn from one can often tell us something useful about another. For example, when we learn from the Smithsonian Institution that sharks get cancer from swimming in waters contaminated with industrial chemicals, we learn (or SHOULD learn) something useful about our own vulnerability to exotic chemicals.(pg. 9)
Turning to breast cancer, Dr. Sherman lists the known "risk factors" the common characteristics shared by many women who get breast cancer: early menarche (age at which menstruation begins); late menopause (age at which menstruation ends); late childbirth and the birth of few or no children; no experience breast-feeding; obesity; high fat diet; being tall; having cancer of the ovaries or uterus; use of oral contraceptives; excessive use of alcohol.
"What is the message running through all of these 'risks?'" Dr. Sherman asks. "Hormones, hormones, and hormones. Hormones of the wrong kind, hormones too soon in a girl's life, hormones for too many years in a woman's life, too many chemicals with hormonal action, and too great a total hormonal load."(pg. 20)
Dr. Sherman then turns her focus to the one fully-established cause of breast (and other) cancers: ionizing radiation, from x-rays, and from nuclear power plant emissions and the radioactive fallout from A-bomb tests.
These, then, are the environmental factors that give rise to breast cancer: exposures to cancer-causing chemicals, to hormonally-active chemicals, and to ionizing radiation in air, food and water. How do we know the environment air, food, water and ionizing radiation plays an important role in causing breast cancer? Because when Asian women move from their homelands to the U.S., their breast cancer rate soars. There is something in the environment of the U.S. (and other western industrial countries) causing an epidemic of this hormone-related disease. The medical research establishment likes to call it "lifestyle factors" but it's really environment. Air, food, water, ionizing radiation.
With this basic information in hand, Dr. Sherman then describes historically and today the exposure of women in the U.S. to a flood of carcinogenic and hormonally active chemicals, plus ionizing radiation.
Take common pharmaceutical products, for example. Canadian researchers have demonstrated enhanced cancer growth in mice given daily HUMAN-EQUIVALENT doses of three commonly-used antihistamines, which are sold under the trade names Claritin, Histamil and Atarax.(pg. 21) Two years earlier the same researchers had reported breast cancer promotion in rodents fed clinically-relevant doses of antidepressant drugs, which are marketed as Elavil and Prozac.(pg. 21) Millions of women in the U.S. are taking these drugs today.
At least 5 million women in the U.S. are currently taking Premarin the most often-prescribed form of estrogen (female sex hormone), to ease the transition through menopause.(pg. 156) This is called "hormone replacement therapy" and it is routine, recommended medical practice in the U.S. A review of 51 studies of women taking hormone replacement therapy showed that those who never took hormones had a breast cancer rate ranging from 18 to 63 per 1000 women. Those who took hormones for five years showed an excess of 2 breast cancers per 1000 women; after 10 years of hormone therapy the excess breast cancer rate rose to 6 per 1000. The danger largely disappears 5 years after discontinuing use.
Hormones are big business. Despite evidence that synthetic hormones caused cancer in rodents and rabbits, American drug companies began selling synthetic hormones in 1934 in cosmetics, drugs, food additives, and animal feed. The best-known is DES (diethylstilbestrol) but there were and still are many others. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1938 published a study showing that DES caused breast cancer in rodents. Three years later, in 1941, NCI published a second study confirming that DES caused breast cancer in rodents. That year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved DES for commercial use in women.(pg. 91)
DES is 400 times as potent as natural estrogen and can be made for pennies per pill. It was therefore phenomenally profitable and researchers aggressively sought new uses. DES soon was being used to prevent miscarriages, as a "morning after" pill to prevent pregnancies, and as a breast-enlargement cream. It wasn't long before researchers discovered that they could make chickens, cows and pigs grow faster if they fed them hormones, and a huge new market for hormones opened up. As early as 1947, a hormonal effect was reported among U.S. women who ate chicken treated with growth hormones. (Chapter 7, note 55.) Between 1954 and 1973 three quarters of all beef cattle slaughtered in the U.S. grew fat on DES.
In 1971, human cancer from DES exposure was confirmed and in 1973 DES was banned from meat, so other growth hormones were substituted. Most recently, of course, the U.S. FDA has allowed the U.S. milk supply to be modified to increase the levels of a growth hormone (called IGF-1) known to stimulate growth of breast cells in women. (pg. 101)
Still today most U.S. beef, chickens and pigs are intentionally contaminated with growth hormones which is why Europeans refuse to allow the import of U.S. beef. European scientists are asking the same question that Dr. Sherman raises: "[H] ormones are administered to meat animals to promote growth and weight gain. Why should humans expect to not respond similarly to such chemical stimuli?"(pgs. 16-17)
Then of course there are dozens probably, in fact hundreds of household chemicals and industrial byproducts that are hormonally active: pesticides, cleansers, solvents, plasticizers, surfactants, dyes, cosmetics, PCBs, dioxins, and so forth, that interfere with, or mimic, naturally-occurring hormones. We are awash in these, at low levels, from conception until death.
How many growth-stimulating and cancer-promoting hormones can we ingest or absorb through our lungs and skin before we feel the effects? No one in authority is asking that crucial question, but Janette Sherman is asking it, pointedly, and armed to the teeth with scientific evidence.
Then there is radioactivity. In 1984, a study of Mormon families in Utah downwind from the nuclear tests in Nevada reported elevated numbers of breast cancers.(pg. 65) Girls who survived the bombing of Hiroshima are now dying in excessive numbers from breast cancer. Dr. John Gofman has reviewed 22 separate studies confirming unequivocally that exposure to ionizing radiation causes breast cancer. (See REHN #693.) Janette Sherman does a good job of summarizing ecological studies showing that women living near nuclear power plants suffer from elevated numbers of breast cancers. These studies, by their nature, are suggestive and not conclusive. but there is ample reason to believe that all nuclear power plants leak radioactivity routinely into local air and water and that any exposure to ionizing radiation increases a woman's danger of breast cancer. The only way to PREVENT this problem is to end nuclear power permanently.
Why has the U.S. turned its back on the preventive approach to cancer? Dr. Sherman returns to this question throughout her book. For example, in a devastating chapter on Tamoxifen (a known cancer-causing chemical now approved by U.S. FDA for use in women), she asks, "Why is our primary well-funded National Cancer Institute not devoting its efforts to primary prevention? Has breast cancer, like so many aspects of our culture, become just another business opportunity?"(pg. 149)
In the end, Dr. Sherman reaches a conclusion about that question: "There is a massing, in a few hands, of the control of production, distribution and use of pharmaceutical drugs and appliances; control of the sale and use of medical and laboratory tests; the consolidation and control of hospitals, nursing homes, and home care providers. We are no longer people who become sick. We have become markets. Is it any wonder that prevention receives so little attention? Cancer is a big and successful business!" (pg. 207)
And, finally: "Reflecting on the purpose of the corporation to sell products and services and maximize profits, it becomes apparent that prevention cannot be in the interest of the bottom line. What a sad and bitter realization," she concludes.(pg. 228)
Despite this sad and bitter conclusion, this is a powerful upbeat book about what citizens can and must do to end the epidemic of cancer that is sweeping the western world. If the truth shall set us free, this book is an important part of our collective liberation, freeing us from the lies and deceptions, the false promises of cancer cures always "just around the corner." Cancer is caused by exposure to carcinogens. The way to solve the cancer problem is to prevent exposures. This means we must end nuclear power, and demand clean food, water and air. Janette Sherman's contribution has been to give us a wealth of powerful evidence on which to act. Now it is up to us.
Peter Montague
5/20/01
5:56:45 PM
The following is an open letter to the American public about the nation's energy future. The letter is from Scientists for a Sustainable Energy Future, a group of natural and social scientists who study the connections among energy, the environment, and society, and who are concerned with the direction of the nation's energy policy. The letter has more than 250 signatories, including members of the National Academy of Sciences and many of the nation's foremost experts on these subjects.
Cutler J. Cleveland
Professor and Director Center for Energy and Environmental Studies
Boston University
617.353.3083
cutler@bu.edu
http://www.bu.edu/cees/openletter.html
Scientists for a Sustainable Energy Future
An Open Letter to the American People
Dear Fellow Citizens,
We are natural and social scientists who study the connections among energy, the environment, and society. We write to you out of grave concern with the turn the nation's energy policy has taken. Decisions taken today about the supply and use of energy have far reaching implications for our economic prosperity and for the health of our environment. Since the first "energy crisis" almost thirty years ago, a large body of research in the nation's universities, national laboratories, think tanks, and private sector has produced large advances in our understanding of energy issues. We would like to share some of this information with you because the current direction of the nation's energy policy is inconsistent with much of this work.
Conventional forms of energy have grabbed the policy spotlight in recent months, but this emphasis is misplaced, and, ultimately, counterproductive. We produce slightly less than half of the oil we consume; by 2020 we will produce just 35 percent. Can a policy to encourage domestic oil extraction reduce dependence on imported oil and maintain the price of gasoline and home heating oil at reasonable levels? The simple answer is no, because the domestic oil resource base is depleted to the extent that large investments in drilling cannot generate a commensurate increase in oil supply. Extraction and proven reserves of oil have dropped considerably since their peaks in 1970 despite a massive drilling campaign in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Because domestic oil sources are more costly than overseas alternatives, incentives to encourage exploration and development will hurt the economy in the same way they did 20 years ago when the oil price shocks produced record rates of drilling. A large diversion of capital investment and profits to the oil industry ensued, but oil extraction continued to decline, as it has to this day. There is every reason to believe that the same scenario will play out if political decisions are made to promote domestic extraction.
Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration will not improve our energy security, nor will it have any impact on the price of gasoline. The economically recoverable amount of oil in the Refuge is just 152 days of supply for the nation. More importantly, if we started drilling in the Refuge today, the Department of Energy projects that by 2020 it could supply 1.4 million barrels per day. By then world oil production will be in the range of 100 million barrels per day. The Refuge would amount to about 1 percent of global oil supply, and thus have a trivial influence on the ability of oil exporters to influence prices.
Nuclear power faces formidable obstacles. Experience of the last several decades has shown that electricity from nuclear power plants is an expensive form of power when all public and private costs are considered. Nuclear power generates high level radioactive wastes that remain hazardous for thousands of years and increase the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation. These are high costs to impose on future generations. Even with improved reactor design, the safety of nuclear plants remains an important concern. Can these technological, economic, environmental, and public safety problems be overcome? This remains an open question. Further public support to help resolve these issues should not come at the expense of an aggressive campaign to develop energy conservation and renewable energy sources.
Conservation must be front and center in our energy future. Unfortunately, energy conservation is painted as a return to the Stone Age, conjuring images of people huddling in the cold of their living rooms in front of lifeless TVs. But in reality, just the opposite is the case. In the last twenty years some of the country's best scientists and engineers have produced great innovations in the efficient use of energy. Cars that get 70 or more miles per gallon, appliances that use half the energy they did ten years ago, lighting fixtures that last for years at a fraction of the energy cost, and new homes that heat and cool with modest amounts of energy are proven winners in energy and economic terms. Just a 3 mile-per-gallon increase in the fuel efficiency of SUVs alone would reduce U.S. oil consumption more than the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could supply. A study by five national laboratories concluded that a government-led efficiency program emphasizing research and incentives to adopt new technologies could reduce the growth in electricity demand by as much 47 percent. This would drastically reduce our need to build new power plants.
Many forms of renewable energy have enjoyed equally impressive advances. The cost of electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaics has plummeted in the last two decades, making power from these systems increasingly cost-competitive with conventional sources in some regions of the country. Compared to oil and coal, renewable energy produces small amounts of the pollutants that presently impair the health of people, degrade our lakes and forests, lower crop yields, and damage buildings, bridges, and other structures. Most notable is their near absence of greenhouse gases, pollutants that contribute to climate change.
On the subject of climate change, a lot of misinformation has obscured the scientific research. We want you to know these important and irrefutable facts. The overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate change have concluded that (1) the Earth is warming much faster than it has in previous centuries for which we can measure temperature change, and (2) human use of energy produces most of the greenhouse gases that contribute to this warming. In other words, climate change is real and directly related to present patterns of energy consumption. The costs of adjusting to a warmer world could be large and unpredictable, and they would be disproportionately borne by the poorer nations. Energy use in American homes, cars and factories has been a large source of greenhouse gases. We believe that this places a burden on the U.S. to lead the international effort to curb the release of these pollutants. Instead we have done just the opposite, thumbing our nose at the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, we are now viewed internationally as an environmental pariah. The U.S. must face its responsibility by engaging the international community on the climate change issue, and by reducing our emission of greenhouse gases. This means more energy from natural gas, renewable hydrogen and geothermal sources, and less coal and oil. Above all it calls for an accelerated development and adoption of energy conservation and renewable technologies. We also must lead the effort to help less fortunate nations find and fund the path of development that improves their quality of life with minimal de-stabilization of the Earth's climate.
There has been a lot of talk in Washington about the need for renewables and conservation, but action seriously lags behind the rhetoric. The budget submitted to Congress last month calls for a large cut in funding for these technologies while proposing greater incentives for conventional fuels. This would speed us in the direction opposite from one that would improve our energy security, reduce pollution, help stabilize the Earth's climate, and maximize our economic flexibility. We urge you to join us in the campaign for a sensible and sustainable energy future.
5/20/01
5:41:47 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
BACKLASH HITS BUSH ENERGY POLICY
WASHINGTON, DC, May 18, 2001 (ENS) - Criticisms of the Bush administration's National Energy Policy unveiled Thursday are being expressed by a wide range of citizens groups from across the political spectrum and around the world. Objections to its reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear power rather than renewables and conservation dominate the comments.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-18-02.html
UK ADMITS MILITARY PERSONNEL DELIBERATELY EXPOSED TO NUCLEAR TESTS
By Jim Green, Ph.D.
SYDNEY, Australia, May 18, 2001 (ENS) - The British government has admitted that military personnel were used in radiation experiments during the nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga in South Australia in the 1950s, but claims that clothing was being tested, not humans.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-18-04.html
MARSHLANDS OF THE TIGRIS-EUPHRATES DELTA 90 PERCENT GONE
WASHINGTON, DC, May 18, 2001 (ENS) - The once fertile crescent created by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is rapidly drying up. Drainage and damming has destroyed close to 90 percent of these Mesopotamian marshlands, according to thousands of previously unpublished satellite images donated today by the United States government to the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-18-01.html
FISH vs ELECTRICITY: A PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALANCING ACT
PORTLAND, Oregon, May 18, 2001 (ENS) - Endangered salmon and steelhead will get some additional help this month despite continuing drought in the Pacific Northwest. The Bonneville Power Administration said Wednesday that it is releasing a limited amount of water from behind two of its hydropower dams to help juvenile endangered salmon and steelhead travel downstream to the ocean.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-18-03.html
HOW CLEAN IS YOUR BEACH?
WASHINGTON, DC, May 18, 2001 (ENS) - As the country prepares to kick off beach season this coming Memorial Day weekend, the Clean Beaches Council today released its official list of beaches which have been certified for public safety and environmental quality. As in past years, the list includes both resort beaches and rural or undeveloped beaches, and highlights the benefits of protecting coastlines as public lands.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-18-06-html
GERMAN COURT ALLOWS AIRBUS FACTORY TO FILL IN WETLAND
HAMBURG, Germany, May 18, 2001 (ENS) - The German Federal Constitutional Court has declined to grant an injunction to stop the filling of Muehlenberger Loch, Europe's largest freshwater tidal mudflat, for the construction of an Airbus Industrie A380 production factory. Environmentalists worldwide mourned the loss.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-18-05.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 18, 2001
Sneak Attack Possible on Endangered Species Act
Callaway Fined $55,000 for Worker Retaliation
Mining Company Joins Fight Against Climate Change
National Biotechnology Week Enacted
EPA Approves State Plans To Reduce Smog
Sierra Club Reproaches Congress for Supporting Gag Rule
Disaster Declared in Puerto Rico
Interim Guidelines Issued for Field Trials
New York Grants Promote Alternatives to Pesticides
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-18-09.html
5/18/01
5:44:38 PM
5/18/01
5:39:06 PM
MOX nuclear waste reprocessing and the Roy Process
Dear Concerned Citizens,
Reprocessing nuclear waste with plutonium (MOX) for reuse as fuel for nuclear power plants, does not eliminate the generation of more high level nuclear waste.
Instead of the typical fuel rod pile design, nuclear power plants could be retooled to use the transmutation of nuclear waste as a heat source to make steam and generate electric power. The Roy Process can transmute plutonium into non-radioactive lead and render all other nuclear waste isotopes stable by the same method. At the end of the cycle...there IS NO nuclear waste to worry about. What more could you ask for!
There should be a cost analysis done comparing technologies. Burying nuclear waste for 486,000 years, 20 half-lives of Pu239 and transmutation via the Roy Process. Dr. Roy told me before he died, "they will see someday....the Roy Process is the best way".
Regards,
Dennis F. Nester
theroyprocess@home.com
http://members.home.net/theroyprocess
5/18/01
5:23:55 PM
The Nation
The debacle of Election 2000 underscored for many the urgency of fundamental electoral reform in the United States.
One of the most powerful voices making the case against the Supreme Court decision that put George W. Bush in the White House was a legendary prosecutor previously known more for putting people behind bars than for progressive activism. But with his brilliant and courageous account of a crime committed by the highest court in the land, Vincent Bugliosi took his place in a special pantheon of patriots who refuse to remain silent. "None Dare Call It Treason," published in the February 5, 2001 issue of The Nation, drew the largest outpouring of letters and e-mail in the magazine's 136-year history, tapping a deep reservoir of outrage.
The original essay has now been turned into a paperback book, backed by updates and amplifications and supplemented with introductory essays by famed attorney Gerry Spence and columnist Molly Ivins. Published by Nation Books, "The Betrayal of America" has already made it into the Barnes & Noble top 100, a remarkable achievement for a heavy-hitting political polemic. It's very reasonably priced at $9.95! So buy a copy (or two or ten) today. They make great gifts. You can order online via The Nation Books site at:
http://www.nationbooks.org/index.shtml
SHAPING THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA: FROM VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT TO A VOTERS' BILL OF RIGHTS
Also of interest is an upcoming "Pro-Democracy Convention" taking place from June 29 - July 1 at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Organized by the New York based-Center for Constitutional Rights and co-sponsored by The Nation Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies, among many other groups, the event is being convened in response to the disenfranchisement of thousands, if not millions, of voters, in the recent Presidential election.
With the Voter's Bill of Rights as a primary focus, the National Pro-Democracy Convention will be a vehicle to galvanize the disparate constituencies and movements outraged by the flawed election into a permanent and sustained force for true democracy. The convention features speeches by Lani Guinier, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Ron Daniels, Margaret Fung, Cheri Honkala and John Anderson, among many others, and includes a training institute for activists, informational sessions on a range of relevant issues and workshops for brainstorming and networking.
To register or for more information go to:
MAKING EVERY VOTE COUNT:
Don't forget to check out The Nation/Institute for Policy Studies's special site devoted to electoral reform to see how you can help prevent future travesties like Election 2000. It features the Voter's Bill of Rights, investigative articles and reports, media and activist resources, legislative updates, an events calendar, a speaker's bureau and more. And it's constantly updated. At:
http://www.ips-dc.org/electoral/
NO RUSH TO JUDGES:
With the Bush Administration's conservative court-packing scheme now clearly on the table, The Nation is urging people to launch a missive attack on Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and the nine judiciary committee Democrats, demanding that they stand firm and block Bush's attempts to impose an overwhelming right-wing agenda on the nation's appellate bench for years to come.
Read "No Rush To Judges" for the full story on Bush's new US Circuit Court nominees at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010604&s=editors2
And please take a moment to blast off an informed letter imploring the appropriate Democrats to stiffen their resolve against Bush's appointments. You can choose a pre-written note that we've assembled to save you time that will automatically be sent to each of the nine relevant Dems and minority leader Daschle. Or personalize your own note to any or all of the committee members. You can find the letter and contact info at:
http://www.thenation.com/alert/actnow/
5/18/01
5:20:38 PM
The Inducements: Hybrid Cars Should Merit a Tax Credit, Report Says
by Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON, May 17 — People shopping for appliances could find that the canary-yellow energy-consumption stickers now on the front of every new refrigerator and air-conditioner will begin appearing on microwave ovens and clothes dryers as well.
Auto dealers could lure buyers with signs on some of the cars in their showrooms advising of thousands of dollars in tax credits. And people considering buying a house that uses solar energy, or adding that capability to their existing houses, might qualify for a tax credit, too.
Most of the report from the task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney is trickle-down energy policy, proposing inducements for corporations and even changes in foreign policy to try to lower prices, but there are a few proposals for direct impact. Not a one is completely new in character, but experts say one in particular might be more effective than previous efforts: tax help on cars that use less fuel.
Under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, signed by the president's father, the government offered tax inducements to buyers of vehicles that ran on natural gas, methanol and other "alternative fuels."
But that tax break did not help much because few of those vehicles were attractive to consumers, said Douglas I. Greenhaus, the director of environment, health and safety at the National Automobile Dealers Association. A tax credit on hybrid vehicles, as proposed in the Cheney report, might have more impact, Mr. Greenhaus said.
"The public is going to be much quicker to adopt these vehicles than those that required a totally different fueling system," he said. "I don't know exactly what proposal will work out in the end, but I see these things flourishing in the middle of this decade."
Hybrid vehicles now marketed by Toyota and Honda, and planned by many other manufacturers, are fueled only with gasoline. But they also carry electric motors and a small battery pack. The batteries are charged when the driver decelerates the car, and the wheels turn the motors, creating current that flows back into the batteries; when it is time to accelerate, the motors draw current from the batteries and help take the load off the gasoline engine.
The report recommends helping the industry get started by offering a credit from 2002 to 2007, but it does not say how big the credit should be; bills already introduced in Congress would offer $2,000 to $4,000. The Clinton administration had proposed credits for cars that got high mileage, but Congress did not go along.
At the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents major domestic carmakers and foreign companies alike, Gloria J. Bergquist, a spokeswoman, said, "What we're looking for is folks who are predisposed to buy one of these vehicles, the early adopters, and this is the added inducement for someone on the cusp."
A complication for the hybrids is that while the Japanese models are both small sedans, some companies plan hybrid sport utility vehicles. The result could be to help buyers of large vehicles cut their gasoline bills to levels similar to a sedan's, using tax dollars, a subsidy that environmentalists would not favor.
The Cheney report also calls for tax credits for buyers of fuel cell cars, which convert hydrogen to electricity through a chemical process, although the prospects for these vehicles are less certain.
For home appliances, the report suggests expanding product labeling to more products and increasing minimum efficiency standards "where technologically feasible and economically justified."
The Energy Department already has the authority to do that, under laws dating from the late 1980's, but the Bush administration has so far not been aggressive in using the strategy. It recently rolled back a last-minute standard from the Clinton administration to raise the efficiency of central air-conditioners by 30 percent; the new administration picked 20 percent instead.
Existing rules cover clothes washers, window air-conditioners, refrigerators, water heaters and a variety of other appliances. Dan W. Reicher, an assistant secretary of energy under President Bill Clinton, said that the appliances were chosen according that to their potential for improvement and that the ones listed in the Cheney report had such potential.
The report also recommends adding $300 million to help the poor pay their energy bills, and linking financing of the program to the price of oil and natural gas. It would also double money for improving insulation in the homes of poor people.
5/18/01
5:12:34 PM
The Standards: Fuel Economy for New Cars Is at Lowest Level Since '80
by KEITH BRADSHER
DETROIT, May 17 — The overall fuel economy of new cars and trucks sold in America, after improving slightly a year ago, has dropped back to the lowest levels since 1980, a new government report indicates.
President Bush's energy plan called today for improving fuel efficiency, so the report, from the Transportation Department, served to underscore that the auto industry is moving in the opposite direction.
The report estimates that the average fuel economy of all cars and light trucks sold in the 2001 model year will be 24.5 miles a gallon, the same as in 1999 and slightly below the 24.7 miles a gallon in the 2000 model year. The peak was 26.2 miles a gallon in 1987, before automakers began selling large numbers of gas- guzzling sport utility vehicles.
And those numbers exaggerate fuel economy, because automakers get extra credit for manufacturing vehicles that can run on either gasoline or nearly pure ethanol, even though few of those vehicles are thought to be fueled with ethanol by drivers.
Ford Motor and General Motors have increased their output of the so- called duel-fuel vehicles since 1999, though fewer than one service station in 1,000 sells the ethanol fuel.
Excluding the ethanol credit, the average gas mileage is now lower than in 1999 and at its lowest level since 1980.
Federal regulations require each automaker to produce cars with an average fuel economy of 27.5 miles a gallon. Light trucks — a category that includes sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans — must achieve an average of 20.7 miles a gallon. The lower standard for light trucks dates to the 1970's, when it mainly applied to pickups used by farmers and merchants.
According to the Transportation Department report, light trucks from G.M. and DaimlerChrysler were unable to meet even the more lenient standard. The average fuel economy of G.M.'s 2001 light trucks is 20.6 miles a gallon; DaimlerChrysler's average is 20.5 miles agallon.
Both companies planned to use credits from exceeding the standards in past years to avoid paying millions of dollars in fines for falling short in 2001.
Ford matched the government standard for light trucks, with an overall fuel economy of 20.7 miles a gallon. Most foreign automakers met the regulatory standards by comfortable margins. A few fairly low-volume foreign automakers, like BMW and Ferrari, missed the standards, as they do consistently, and will pay fines as part of the cost of doing business in the United States.
All the automakers' fuel economy figures are calculated using a special methodology that the government allows for regulatory purposes. This methodology produces results that are 18 percent higher than the gas mileage estimates posted on the window stickers of new automobiles. Many drivers complain that they have trouble matching even the window-sticker estimates.
G.M., Ford and DaimlerChrysler are producing close to a million dual- fuel minivans, pickup trucks and cars this year, at an extra cost of up to $200 a vehicle for the fuel sensors and stainless-steel fuel lines needed for ethanol.
The government counts these vehicles as getting roughly triple the fuel economy that they achieve when burning gasoline. The automakers have used the extra mileage credits to sell more full-size sport utilities and pickups while meeting the federal standards for average fuel economy.
David Barthmuss, a General Motors spokesman, said the automaker wanted oil companies to sell more ethanol at service stations. Oil companies have resisted doing so, contending that ethanol can cause problems in their pipelines and is expensive to distribute by tanker truck.
Ford pledged last July to improve the average gas mileage of its sport utilities by 25 percent by 2005, without relying on extra ethanol credits. G.M. responded a week later by vowing to exceed Ford in the average fuel economy of sport utilities and of light trucks over all, also without ethanol credits. DaimlerChrysler said last month that it would keep pace with its main rivals in overall light truck fuel economy, but it had not taken a position on the use of ethanol credits to do so.
In the energy report he released today, President Bush called for improving fuel efficiency through the pursuit of new technologies and subsidies for the sale of hybrid vehicles that use a combination of gasoline and electric propulsion.
The report acknowledged that few dual-fuel vehicles were actually using ethanol, a type of alcohol produced from corn. The report praised the production of these vehicles, and said without elaboration that further study on ways to increase the actual use of ethanol was needed.
"Reforms to the federal alternative fuels program could promote alternative fuels use instead of mandating purchase of vehicles that ultimately run on petroleum fuels," the report said.
The administration report said the president would review fuel-economy standards in light of a report by the National Academy of Sciences that is due on July 1. Environmentalists have dismissed that report as unlikely to recommend significantly stiffer standards, because its authors include several people who have worked for the auto and oil industries but no environmentalists.
Told of the contents of today's Transportation Department report, Dan Becker, the energy and global warming director of the Sierra Club, said, "It's bad news for the environment that fuel economy has dropped, and it's now up to the president to raise fuel-economy standards that have languished for 12 years."
Mr. Becker also expressed skepticism whether subsidies for hybrid vehicles would do any good, pointing out that automakers could just use hybrid sales to offset the sale of other gas-guzzlers while still meeting federal standards.
The auto industry has been lobbying heavily in recent months for an extension of the ethanol credits, which are currently scheduled to expire in 2004. The legislation that authorized the credits a decade ago, which was strongly backed by farm- state lawmakers, called for the Transportation Department to send a report to Congress on the program by September 2000. The Clinton administration did not finish work on the report before leaving office, however, and the Bush administration has not yet named a new administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Transportation Department agency that must produce the report.
A department official who insisted on anonymity said the report would not be completed until after an administrator had been chosen and confirmed by the Senate.
5/18/01
5:08:31 PM
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
1. QUITOS NEVER PROSPER Major environmental groups in Ecuador, led by Fundacion Natura, banded together yesterday to announce their official opposition to a billion-dollar pipeline project that would double the country's crude oil output. Ecuador's Energy Ministry is expected to decide whether to grant the project an environmental permit early in June. The pipeline would go straight through the Mindo ecological reserve, an area 16 miles northwest of Quito that provides important bird habitat. International groups Greenpeace and Amazon Watch sent a letter this week to financiers J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup objecting to their involvement in the project.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 18 May 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10867>
do good: Take action to stop big oil in Ecuador <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/mining.stm#ecuador>
read it only in Grist Magazine: A week in the life of a pipeline opponent in Ecuador, Marta Echavarria, EcoDecision <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/echavarria011601.stm>
2. TINA TURNAROUND In what appears to be a big victory for environmentalists, the White House says it will retain the air-quality standards for ozone and particulate pollution that were set by the Clinton administration several years ago. In February, the U.S. Supreme rejected arguments by industry groups and affirmed the U.S. EPA's right to establish the standards. EPA spokesperson Tina Kreisher said the agency would defend the standards against another round of industry lawsuits.
straight to the source: USA Today, Traci Watson, 17 May 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-18-bush-air.htm>
3. PUTTING IT IN REVERSE The average fuel economy of new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. last year dropped to the lowest levels since 1980, according to a new report by the U.S. Transportation Department. President Bush's energy plan released yesterday calls for a review of fuel-economy standards once the National Academy of Sciences completes a study of the topic in July. But greenies aren't hopeful about the study because its authors include several people who worked for the auto and oil industries but no environmentalists. The energy plan also recommends a tax credit for consumers who buy gas-electric hybrid cars, but it doesn't specify how large the credit should be.
straight to the source: New York Times, Keith Bradsher, 18 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/18/politics/18FUEL.html>
straight to the source: New York Times, Matthew L. Wald, 18 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/18/politics/18CONS.html>
4. ROLL OUT THE BARRELS Did anyone expect such early international criticism of President Bush's energy plan? Yesterday, Jan Pronk, the head of U.N. talks on climate change and the Dutch environment minister, described the plan as a "disastrous development" that would "undoubtedly" lead to more greenhouse gas emissions. A press release issued by Friends of the Earth in the U.K. was titled "Bush to Planet Earth: Drop Dead." In the U.S., no surprise, Greenpeace dumped several tons of coal outside Vice President Dick Cheney's residence and blocked an entrance with empty oil barrels. Former President Carter wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post accusing the Bush administration of using "misinformation and scare tactics" to justify attacks on the environment.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Paul Casciato, 18 May 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10852>
straight to the source: Washington Post, Jimmy Carter, 17 May 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37159-2001May16.html>
read it only in Grist Magazine: Leaked memo says GOPers must "Carterize" the Dems to win support for their energy policy -- in our Muckraker column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/muck/muck051601.stm>
5. REDUCE, REUSE, CYCLE To commemorate Bike Commute Week in California, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown biked to City Hall yesterday, then took a limo ride back home for a shower. Eight members of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors also biked to work (no word on where they showered). Nationwide, less than 2 percent of Americans commute by bike, says the California Bike Coalition. But biking enthusiasts hope to change that. They are asking commuters around the country today to pollute less, put on their bike shorts, and head out to their jobs in recognition of National Bike to Work Day.
straight to the source: Knoxville News-Sentinel, Hayes Hickman, 17 May 2001 <http://www.knoxnews.com/news/traffic/29457.shtml>
Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:
Romancing Michael Douglas -- a day in the life of Laura Kriv, TechRocks <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/kriv051701.stm>
Barton finks -- Austin is losing the battle to protect the Barton Springs salamander -- in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/oko042401.stm>
As the worm turns -- or: how I learned to start vermicomposting and love the worm -- in our Main Dish column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/ness101100.stm>
5/18/01
4:54:03 PM
Misinformation and Scare Tactics
by Jimmy Carter
Thursday, May 17, 2001
It has been more than 20 years since our country developed a comprehensive energy policy. It is important for President Bush and Congress to take another look at this important issue, but not based on misleading statements made lately by high administration officials. These comments have distorted history and future needs.
I was governor of Georgia during the administration of Richard Nixon, when a combination of oil shortages and an OPEC boycott produced a real energy crisis in the United States. Five years later, the Iran-Iraq war shut off 4 million barrels of the world's daily oil supplies almost overnight, and the price of energy more than doubled in just 12 months. This caused a wave of inflation in all industrialized countries and created energy shortages. As before, there were long lines of vehicles at service stations, with drivers eager to pay even astronomical prices for available fuel.
No energy crisis exists now that equates in any way with those we faced in 1973 and 1979. World supplies are adequate and reasonably stable, price fluctuations are cyclical, reserves are plentiful, and automobiles aren't waiting in line at service stations. Exaggerated claims seem designed to promote some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental quality.
Also contrary to recent statements by top officials, a bipartisan Congress worked closely with me for four years to create a well-balanced approach to the problem. No influential person ever spoke "exclusively of conservation," and my administration never believed that "we could simply conserve or ration our way out of" any energy crisis. On the contrary, we emphasized both energy conservation and the increased production of oil, gas, coal and solar energy. Permanent laws were laboriously hammered out that brought an unprecedented commitment to efficient use of energy supplies. We mandated improved home insulation, energy savings in the design of industrial equipment and home appliances and a step-by-step increase in gas mileage of all automobiles manufactured in our country.
When I was inaugurated, American vehicles were averaging only 12 miles per gallon. Today, new cars reach more than twice this gas mileage, which would be much higher except for the failure to maintain the efficiency standards, beginning in the Reagan years. (Gas mileage has actually gone down during the past five years.)
Official statistics published by the departments of energy and labor reveal the facts: Since I signed the final energy bills in 1980, America's gross national product has increased by 90 percent, while total energy consumption went up only 26 percent. Our emphasis on coal and other sources of energy and improved efficiency has limited petroleum consumption to an increase of only 12 percent. During this time, non-energy prices have risen 2 1/2 times as much as energy prices, and gasoline prices have actually declined by 41 percent, in real terms and even including the temporary surge in the past two years.
Although these energy conservation decisions have been criticized as "a sign of [my] personal virtue," it is clear that the benefits have resulted from a commitment to improved technology, with extremely beneficial results for American consumers, business and commerce. Top executives in the oil industry should acknowledge their tremendous freedom to explore, extract and market oil and gas products that resulted from the decisions made by Congress during my term in Washington.
In fact, our most difficult legislative battle was over the deregulation of oil and gas prices, designed so that competitive prices would both discourage the waste of energy and promote exploration for new sources of petroleum products. At the end of 1980, every available drilling rig in the United States was being utilized at full capacity, and dependence on foreign imports was falling rapidly.
Despite these facts, some officials are using misinformation and scare tactics to justify such environmental atrocities as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which I signed in December 1980, approved 100 percent of the offshore areas and 95 percent of the potentially productive oil and mineral areas for exploration or for drilling. We excluded the wildlife refuge, confirming a decision first made by President Dwight Eisenhower, when Alaska became a state in 1959, to set aside this area as a precious natural heritage.
Those who advocate drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to meet current needs are careful to conceal the facts that almost none of the electricity in energy-troubled California is generated from oil.
It is important for private citizens and organizations to know the facts and to join in the coming debates -- so we can continue the policies of the late 1970s: a careful balance between production and conservation.
Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta.
5/18/01
4:34:10 PM
Stop Japanese Whaling Tell the Japanese Government to Stop Whaling Yes, whales are STILL being killed. In fact, right now, there are Japanese whalers on their way to the North Pacific to kill 160 of these great creatures. Against the policies of the International Whaling Commission, the Japanese government has allowed the commercial killing of whales to continue. How? By misrepresenting commercial whaling as "scientific" research. Please help us to finally put an end to this senseless killing. We treasure the seas, and sea life, and know that you do too!
Send a letter by fax to Shunji Yanai, Ambassador of Japan and ask that he stop the whale hunt! Just go to:
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/bin/actionframe.pl?action_id=48
You can also ask President Bush to support the protection of these great whales by visiting:
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/save/alerts/japanwhales.htm
5/18/01
4:31:38 PM
Collateral Damage
by William Saletan
One week from today—assuming that the government doesn't unearth documents that were never shown to his lawyers—Juan Raul Garza will become the first federal inmate executed in the United States since 1963. Garza's death was scheduled for last December, but President Clinton postponed it because of concerns about ethnic bias in the application of the death penalty. That reprieve moved a more attractive target to the front of the line: Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was supposed to be the poster boy for resuming federal executions. None of the usual complaints about capital punishment applied to him. As George Will put it, "He's guilty. He's not remorseful about having killed 20 more people than were killed in the Gulf War. He's white. He's well-represented. He's sane. And it was premeditated."
But an unfunny thing happened on the way to the needle. A week before McVeigh's execution date, the government coughed up 3,000 pages of newly discovered FBI documents that should have been shown to his lawyers before his trial. Suddenly, the privileges that were supposed to make McVeigh a poster boy for capital punishment made him a poster boy for its perils. If the nation's top law enforcement agency, in the biggest investigation in U.S. history, can fail to turn over evidence to a white defendant with a $15 million legal team, critics argued, imagine what evidence local cops and prosecutors are failing to turn over to poor black and Latino defendants every day.
Reporters and editorial writers, who overwhelmingly oppose capital punishment, are helping anti-death-penalty groups connect the McVeigh case to other developments that cast doubt on the reliability of the criminal justice system. In Oklahoma, investigators are reviewing 23 cases in which defendants were sent to death row based in part on evidence submitted by a police chemist whose testimony in one case has since been discredited by DNA analysis. Eleven of those 23 defendants have already been executed. Altogether, 87 condemned prisoners have been freed in the last two decades. One of the protesters at McVeigh's execution site this week was an Alabama man whose murder conviction was overturned because missing evidence turned up seven years after his arrest. The buried documents in the McVeigh case play right into this story. "Delay Re-Energizes Death Penalty Debate," crows the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Death-Penalty Opponents Say Mix-Ups Are Nothing New," says the Orlando Sentinel. "McVeigh Errors Raise Doubts About Other Capital Cases," warns a USA Today editorial, echoing the New York Times and Washington Post.
Ordinarily, anti-death-penalty activists and their allies in the media can't win, since the public supports capital punishment by a 2-to-1 margin. Until last week, the debate over the McVeigh execution was even more lopsided: In a USA Today poll taken in late April, more than half of those who claimed to oppose capital punishment in principle nevertheless said McVeigh should be killed. But when the debate turns to the reliability of the criminal justice system and the possibility that innocent people might be executed, the death penalty is vulnerable to losing its majority support. Two-thirds of respondents in a recent Washington Post survey said that innocent people are sometimes put to death. In a Newsweek poll taken last Thursday and Friday, 39 percent of respondents said that reports of wrongful capital murder convictions based on errors in crime labs have had a "major effect" on their attitudes toward the death penalty. And while only 8 percent said the discovery of buried documents in the McVeigh case raised doubts about his guilt, 16 percent said it made them less supportive of capital punishment in general.
How have President George W. Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and FBI Director Louis Freeh reacted to this threat? By changing the subject back to McVeigh's guilt. "Career attorneys at the Department of Justice are confident that these documents do not create any reasonable doubt about McVeigh's guilt, nor do they contradict his admission of guilt for the crime," Ashcroft declared last Friday. Bush made the same point in a press conference later that afternoon, and Freeh delivered similar assurances to a House committee yesterday. In McVeigh's case, the assurances are well-founded. The evidence against him, including multiple confessions, is overwhelming. And the newly disclosed documents, by all accounts, pertain not to his guilt but to fruitless leads involving others who might have helped him.
But what about the possibility that similar errors in other cases have concealed more crucial evidence from defendants who were less clearly guilty? To this, Bush, Ashcroft, and Freeh reply that the McVeigh case demonstrates the system's ability to correct itself.
"Today proved why [the system] is healthy," Bush argued Friday. "When [we] found that documents hadn't been given to the defense attorney … we delayed until Mr. McVeigh's attorneys have a chance to look at the documents." In his testimony yesterday, Freeh insisted, "We did get it right. … FBI personnel discovered [the records] on their own initiative [and] came forward to stop the execution at the 11th hour. … The process worked by correcting a flaw."
Notice how Bush and Freeh shift the discussion from the error to the correction. It's true that in the McVeigh case the error was followed by a correction. But that sequence is hardly logically necessary. In fact, according to Freeh, the documents that came out six days before McVeigh's execution didn't turn up until the FBI issued its 16th directive ordering field offices to cough up everything related to the case. Why should the public believe that in other capital cases, when the system loses documents, it recovers them in time? Bush, Freeh, and Ashcroft don't answer that question. They simply confine the death penalty discussion to the McVeigh case—while confining the discussion of the McVeigh case, in turn, to what went right in the end.
Likewise, their observation that the documents don't exonerate McVeigh is a shell game. Freeh didn't know what was in the documents until a week before McVeigh's execution date. Ashcroft still didn't know what was in them when he asserted last Friday that they wouldn't clear McVeigh. "The trial attorneys and those attorneys that have handled the matter on appeal in the Justice Department have reviewed the documents, and that is the basis for my representation," he told reporters. Saying that the documents turned out not to be relevant is like saying that the chamber that was in firing position when you put the pistol to your head turned out to be empty.
When asked to consider the obvious implication—that the next chamber might turn out to be loaded—Bush and Freeh refuse to be pulled off-message. At his press conference Friday, Bush was asked about the possibility that some of the men sent to death row by the Oklahoma City police chemist might have been innocent. "Well, in this case …" Bush began, steering the conversation back to McVeigh. As for a reporter's observation that the lost documents "could have been discovered days after" McVeigh's execution rather than before it, Bush shrugged, "You bring up a hypothetical, but that's not the way it happened." Yesterday, when Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., asked Freeh about the risk of executing an innocent person, Freeh replied, "There is no danger that an innocent Timothy McVeigh is going to be punished." In exasperation, Kennedy shot back, "I'm not asking about Timothy McVeigh. I'm talking about the process, sir." Freeh responded by discussing how well "the process" worked in what were supposed to be the last two weeks of McVeigh's life.
There's no proof that the United States has executed an innocent person. While it's possible that the lax handling of investigative records in the McVeigh case illustrates a systemic problem that has led to fatal injustice in other cases, that inference remains, for the time being, just a question. "Are we going to learn next week that there are yet more documents?" McVeigh's co-counsel, Nathan Chambers, asked Sunday. "Are we going to learn after an execution that there's more documents?" For that matter, added Phil Donahue, "We have 3,700 people on death row—3,700. How many of their boxes have been lost?" Those are good questions. It would be nice if the president and his law enforcement officials tried to answer them.
5/18/01
4:03:21 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
MAN AGAINST NATURE
by Kandace Power Graves, Gambit Weekly
Gambit Weekly presents a well-balanced piece about the changing role of holistic and alternative medicine in the detecting and treating of allergies.
PROGRAM LINKS VOLUNTEERS TO WORLD NETWORK
International Volunteer Programs Association
--The nonprofit International Volunteer Programs Association offers this resource/archival starting point for potential overseas volunteers, interns, and workers--complete with information, advice, and rationalization for the full spectrum of world travelers.
EX-CONS HELP EX-CONS EASE INTO LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE
by Alexandra Marks, Christian Science Monitor
-- In Harlem, New York, a new group embraces the out-of-fashion notion of criminal rehabilitation. Exodus Transitional Community helps ex-offenders acclimate to life off the streets.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
5/18/01
3:56:32 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
BUSH ENERGY POLICY EXPANDS NUCLEAR, OIL DRILLING, RENEWABLES
WASHINGTON, DC, May 17, 2001 (ENS) - The Bush administration's National Energy Policy Development Group headed by Vice President Richard Cheney issued a policy today that puts environmental issues front and center.
The proposed policy would expand the role of nuclear power, open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, limit toxic emissions from power plants and offer new tax incentives for the development of renewable energy.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-17-02.html
INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS COMMIT TO ECO-FRIENDLY FINANCIAL PRACTICES
PARIS, France, May 17, 2001 (ENS) - Environmentally damaging subsidies and tax exemptions to agriculture and energy are on their way out in the world's most developed nations.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-17-01.html
SHARK TO SATELLITE, I'M IN THE TASMAN SEA
MELBOURNE, Australia, May 17, 2001 (ENS) - Australian marine biologists are using satellites to monitor a young white shark in Australia's southeast in a project that they hope will shed more light on the behavior of sharks as a species.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-17-03.html
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: VOTE KENYAN GOVERNMENT OUT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SINS
By Tom Osanjo
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 17, 2001 (ENS) - The Presbyterian Church wants Kenyans to vote out the current government in the coming general election for its failure to take stronger action against pollution and the destruction of water catchment areas.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-17-04.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 17, 2001
Greenpeace Dumps Coal on Cheney's Lawn
Dalai Lama Honors Three Environmentalists as Heroes of Compassion
Florida Gets Federal Funds to Fight Wildfires
New Volcano Observatory Memorializes Mount St. Helen's Geologist
Tour de Sol: The Great American Green Transportat Festival
Coal Mining Equipment Emissions Regulated
Indiana Citizens Clean Brine from Old Oil Production Sites
Sun's Intensity Cycles Tied to Maya's Demise
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-17-09.html
5/18/01
3:36:11 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
UN environment official says sanctions poor tool - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10864
EPA to issue final report on dioxin study - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10868
Bush's credits for hybrids hailed, details wanted - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10874
GM gives $10 million for endangered Brazil forest - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10863
W.House says nuclear reactors in US could double - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10861
FACTBOX - Bush plan has oil, coal, nuclear options - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10860
UPDATE - Greenpeace dumps coal outside Cheney home - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10859
UPDATE - Keep ethanol tax credit, encourage biomass - W.House - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10857
BPA to spill some water to help Northwest salmon - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10853
WRAPUP - Environmentalists say US energy plans disastrous - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10852
Liver cancer deaths in England, Wales double - study - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10873
UK bungling gene crop trials - animal welfare group - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10872
Sweden's energy agency advocates more windpower - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10871
South African coelacanth search halted by authorities - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10870
Bush plan 'disastrous' for climate - UN climate chief - NETHERLANDS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10858
China's Zhu backs Maldives on global warming - MALDIVES http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10866
Japan village prepares for nuclear referendum - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10856
Japan consumed tonnes of whale in 2000 - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10855
Germany's MVV to invest in more biomass plants - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10865
UPDATE - US "no" to Kyoto clouds OECD ecology meet - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10869
Finnish lawmakers seen approving nuclear waste dump - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10862
Environmental opposition to Ecuador pipeline intensifies - ECUADOR http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10867
HK won't rule out more bird slaughter to curb flu - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10854
5/18/01
3:34:16 PM
NUCLEAR TERRORISM
http://www.tmia.com/sabter.html
5/18/01
3:25:51 PM
Chemical Warfare In Your Body And The Boardroom Even with increasing activism, a recent ban on some of the more dangerous persistent organic pollutants, and the airing of Trade Secrets, Bill Moyers' chemical industry exposé, there are still too many chemicals in the environment and the companies responsible are still trying to thwart efforts to do anything about it. Our latest evidence comes in the form of a CDC report outlining chemical contamination of our bodies and a look at industry attempts to block dioxin regulations.
A new government study has "officially" confirmed the presence of chemical contaminants in the bodies of average Americans. The National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, examined the blood and urine of 3,800 subjects and found a wide variety of industrial, agricultural and consumer chemicals in most of the tested samples. The 27 identified chemicals included mercury, cadmium, organophosphate pesticides, and phthalates, a compound used to soften plastics, emulsify soaps and carry fragrances among many other things. Among the list are substances linked to a variety of human diseases including cancer, birth defects, and developmental and reproductive disorders.
The report is the first to academically ascertain that average citizens now carry a burden of unhealthy toxic substances in their body tissues. Previously, in the absence of concrete contrary evidence, many experts had believed that such chronic contamination was largely limited to workers in industries that manufactured or used toxic materials.
The report, however, also contained some good news. Thanks to government regulations, blood levels of lead and nicotine (from second-hand smoke) were shown to have declined dramatically when compared to previous data providing proof that strong regulations can easily reduce environmental health risks.
Behind Closed Doors, a new report from the Center for Health and Environmental Justice, is something else entirely. This new document, a defacto companion to Trade Secrets, examines how the chemical industry has "methodically and strategically attempted to influence policy makers and... mislead the public about the health impacts of dioxin."
According to the report, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the Chlorine Chemistry Council (CCC) have been engaged in a full scale, behind-the-scenes campaign to hide the links between dioxin and cancer and other health problems, and stop any and all efforts to regulate this dangerous chemical. This organized assault on public health and proposals intended to protect it has included efforts to gut regulations involving restrictions or elimination of dioxins; manipulate EPA peer reviews of dioxin data; stall the official EPA assessment of dioxin; influence the language of the recent POP treaty; and oppose local anti-dioxin community initiatives.
The CHEJ report outlines such a blatant and blatantly immoral conspiracy to withhold the truth and protect profits at the expense of ourselves and our children that even we were taken aback. It's a crucial bit of reading that shows just how far the newly self-professed 'kinder and gentler' chemical industry will go to protect its toxic interests.
For more information about the new CDC report visit
For more information about Behind Closed Doors visit
http://www.chej.org/BCDReport.html
And in the event you missed it the first time around, be sure to read our list of tips to protect yourself and your family from dioxins and other organochlorine pollutants. You'll find it in one of our first issues of the Non-Toxic Times archived for your continued good health at
http://www.seventhgen.com/html/no3.html#breast
5/18/01
3:18:50 PM
Global Warming / Kyoto Protocol News
News on the Global Warming Front
GLOBAL WARMING FORECAST TO HIT AUSTRALIA HARD
Australia will be hotter and drier in coming decades according to the latest climate change estimates of the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the government's research branch. Read More...
EUROPEAN COMPLIANCE WITH KYOTO PROTOCOL DEEMED AFFORDABLE
The European Union could cut its greenhouse gas emissions in line with Kyoto Protocol commitments at an annual cost of under 0.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product, says a study released by the European Commission. The estimated cost is considerably lower than previous figures and will strengthen the European Union's hand in the global argument over the "affordability" of responding aggressively to climate change. Read More...
GLOBAL WARMING TRIGGERS PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING
Climate change could have a far-reaching impact on health patterns in the United States, according to a recent assessment by a broad coalition of scientists from academia, government and private industry. Read More...
UN CLIMATE BOSS SEEKS EARLY DRAFT ON POLLUTION PACT
The head of the U.N. forum on climate change said Wednesday he would consult with several countries to help draft an outline pact on cutting global warming gases in the run-up to a July U.N. conference in Bonn. Read More...
5/18/01
3:12:43 PM
Nader Blasts Cheney On Energy Policy WASHINGTON, DC, "Vice President Dick Cheney is a dinosaur living in the age of mammals," says one of the candidates for U.S. president last fall.
Ralph Nader was responding to Cheney's comments to media in Toronto, at which he said that "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy" and then called for safeguards to the environment by making greater use of nuclear power.
Nader, who ran for the Green Party and is an environmentalist, also criticized Cheney for his support of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and called on the American people to "wean themselves from the economically and environmentally costly energy policies that keep taxpayers, consumers and environmentalists hooked on oil coal and nuclear power."
"Federal policy over the past century has largely failed to promote an energy system based on safe, secure, economically affordable, and environmentally benign energy sources," he says. The tax code, budget appropriations and regulatory processes have been used to subsidize dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power, with the result of "increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests, and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril of climate change and radioactive waste dumps."
"There is an alternative," he concludes. "Three decades of detailed assessments, on-the-ground results, and research and development innovations in the energy-consuming devices used in our buildings, vehicles and industries undeniably show that energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies are superior energy options for society. They offer a present and future path that is economically attractive, safe and secure from large-scale or long-term risks or threats to public health, future generations, and the environment."
"But embarking on that path requires overcoming the power of the oil, nuclear and other conventional fuel industries to which both the Republicans and Democrats are indentured," he concludes. "President Bush could establish the United States as the model for other countries by adopting a sustainable energy policy that includes ... a robust federal research and development program in sustainable renewable energy sources, so that the energy-independence promises of wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy are finally realized."
His proposal includes an increase in automobile fuel efficiency standards, stronger efficiency standards for appliances and mandatory energy performance building codes. electricity policies that promote efficient use of electricity through net metering and other requirements, and an employee transition assistance fund and job-retraining program for displaced coal miners.
"Our country has more problems than it deserves and more solutions than it uses," he says. "It is time for the United States to stop letting Exxon-Mobil, Peabody Coal and Westinghouse shape our energy policy and for our misguided elected officials to adopt an energy strategy based on clean renewable energy and conservation."
5/18/01
3:06:02 PM
WILD ALERT
The Bush Administration's new energy plan, released today, won't help consumers, but will open up some of America's best wilderness areas to oil and gas drilling. It will do *nothing* to reduce high energy prices, won't provide more electricity anytime soon, and will devastate our public wildlands.
Go to http://www.wilderness.org/energy/ to tell Pres. Bush that we need an energy policy that protects our environment and promotes conservation and renewable energy.
A LOSE-LOSE PROPOSITION Even the Bush Administration admits their energy plan will provide no price breaks at the gas station this summer, nor will it reduce the cost of cooling or heating our homes. But what it will do is increase air pollution and threaten our most wild places with oil and gas drilling, like our newest National Monuments, roadless areas within our National Forests, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Opening up our wilderness areas to drilling won't satisfy our energy demands. Analysis of data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) shows that there's only a *15-day* supply of oil for our nation in our newest national monuments managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The same analysis shows a mere 7-day supply of natural gas from those same monuments. National Forest roadless areas contain less than half of one percent of the total oil and gas resources in the U.S. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has less than a 6-month supply of oil, according to the USGS.
MEANWHILE, OIL COMPANY PROFITS SKYROCKET Last year ExxonMobil reaped a record 18 *billion* dollars in profits, up more than 120 percent. There is absolutely no good reason to drill the last of America's pristine wild lands, except to keep handing the oil industry