5/26/01
10:56:15 PM
As an encouragement to control population in the United States, continue to give a tax deduction for children but for only the first 2 claimed on the tax return. Child number three would negate the tax write off of child #2. Child number 4 would negate the write off of child number 1. Child number 5 would actually cause a tax increaseof 1/2 the write off amount and each subsequent child would be a tax increase of 1/2 the write off amount. There should also be a tax break for those who wait to have children until they are 25 years old. This would encourage people to go to college and become more financially prepared for raising children. The largest tax break should be for the youngest person and decrease in amount until 25 years old. If the person saved the money from each tax break for example at age 19 they received 500.00 and at 20 they received 400.00 and so on until 25 years old they would actually have enough money saved to pay for having the child. Or perhaps they could defer the tax refund until age 25 and receive 1 lump sum.
5/26/01
6:20:45 PM
June 10 -- Washington, D.C. Action – Rally To Stop Missile Defense
Join Project Abolition at the White House for a rally to stop the arms race. Lafayette Park Washington, DC Sunday, June 10, 2:00 PM
And in the halls of Congress Monday and Tuesday, June 11 and 12 Activist Training and Congressional Education Days Site for training to be announced
U.S. CONGRESS SWITCHBOARD 202-224-3121
Support above actions by calling June 11 and 12
For more information, visit:
http://www.projectabolition.org/
5/26/01
6:18:12 PM
Save Sea Life from USN sonar torture - New Deadline May 31 2001
Don't let the Navy blast marine mammals with dangerous sonar. The National Marine Fisheries Service could permit the Navy to blast the world's oceans -- and the whales, dolphins, and other marine life that live in them -- with deadly sonar. Your voice could make the difference -- write before the May 31 comment deadline. Act Now!
http://www.nrdcaction.org/index.asp?step=2&item=377
You can watch LFAS videos at:
http://www.dreamweaving.com/lfas/av
5/26/01
2:10:59 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
PERU PRESERVES UNTOUCHED ANDEAN RAINFOREST IN NEW NATIONAL PARK
LIMA, Peru, May 25, 2001 (ENS) - A 5,225 square mile stretch of pristine Andean rainforest in Peru became the world's newest national park this week. Slightly bigger than the state of Connecticut, the Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul lies in one of the last large areas of virgin forest and is still undeveloped and largely uninhabited.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-25-02.html
FRESH INITIATIVE TAKEN TO REFRESH NAIROBI RIVER
By Robert Otani
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 25, 2001 (ENS) - The Nairobi River, one of the most polluted rivers in Kenya, is the focus of an intense cleanup campaign by the United Nations Environment Programme which is headquartered in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi, through which the river runs.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-25-01.html
INFORMATION KEY FOR SAFE TRIPS TO THE BEACH
WASHINGTON, DC, May 25, 2001 (ENS) - Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is releasing almost $2 million in grants to coastal and Great Lakes states to improve monitoring and public notification of human health risks at beaches. And not a moment too soon - a new report out this week shows that variations in state water quality requirements and reporting standards mean that the public is often not informed about hazardous beach conditions.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-25-06.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 25, 2001
Bill Would Restrict Monument Designations
Ranch Donated to Grand Teton National Park
Environmental Terrorism Suspected in Two Northwestern Fires
Crescent Donates Conservation Easements in the Carolinas
3M Corp. Donates $200,000 for Clean School Buses
Shaking Plastics Makes Them Stronger
BLM Recognizes Volunteer Work on Public Lands
Pennsylvania, Lung Association Team Up for Clean Air
Testing a Tour Operator's Environmental Conscience
Think Blue, See Green
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-25-09.html
5/25/01
8:57:31 PM
Speak Out: Court's Marijuana Ruling Was No Surprise
by Shawn E. Glazer
The Supreme Court's decision on May 14 that marijuana "has no currently accepted medical use" was no surprise. The members of the Supreme Court, like the rest of America, have spent decades under the thrall of propaganda against the "evil weed." Following the Supreme Court's ruling, Norma Anderson, state senator from Lakewood, said, "I'm going to assume our law will also be overturned. I will not shed any tears. In fact, I'm quite gleeful." I am continually saddened that politicians like Anderson place political posturing above the health and comfort of the sickest among us.
As a physician I was initially taught about marijuana only in the category of drugs of abuse. It was lumped in with the far more dangerous drugs heroin and cocaine.
Once leaving the classroom, my own patients began to open my eyes. One of the first to admit to me to using marijuana was an AIDS-infected, soft-spoken mother of two. She brewed tea from the flowers and used it to combat the nausea that came with the drugs she had to take to stay alive. Concerned about her well-being and the safety of her children I urged her to stop and gave her prescriptions for marinol, a synthetic derivative of marijuana, and different anti-nausea drugs. Over the next few months she lost weight and the "T-cell" count that reflected the health of her immune system dropped dramatically. She could no longer hold down the medications she needed to live. I felt I had violated medicine's primary rule of "First do no harm." I relented on my discouragement of marijuana use for her. As she began to improve, I began to research the issue on my own.
There is evidence that marijuana can be helpful in a variety of ailments including glaucoma, the nausea and loss of appetite that people undergoing cancer and AIDs treatment suffer from, and muscle pain and spasms from diseases like multiple sclerosis. It has risks, certainly, but no more than many other commonly prescribed medications.
The harmful effects of marijuana have been grossly overstated to the general public. It does not drive people mad or cause instant addiction. I have never once seen or read of a death due to pure marijuana overdose while I have seen patients die from overdoses of several different prescription and over-the-counter medications.
Every day, doctors prescribe potentially addicting opiates such as codeine. In doing so they do not encourage drug abuse, alcoholism, or drunk driving. Similarly, as a society, we must distinguish between medical use and abuse of any substance.
When an elected official such as Sen. Anderson says she is "quite gleeful" about the defeat of medical marijuana legalization, one wonders why. Would she be gleeful to watch patients face a choice between the risk of jail or taking medicine that decreases pain and prolongs lives? I pray she never has to make such a decision in her own life.
We must look at who wins and who loses from keeping marijuana illegal. The winners include the pharmaceutical companies that synthesize less effective and more expensive medications. Also benefiting are law enforcement agencies, which seize property of marijuana users and keep the proceeds.
The losers are the critically ill and their families. Some, like the young woman above, are fortunate not to run afoul of the law. Others are not so lucky. Activist Peter McWilliams suffered from both cancer and AIDS. He kept in decent health with the use of marijuana as an anti-nausea medicine -- that is until drug enforcers arrested him and stopped him from taking marijuana. Peter then choked to death on his own vomit.
It is time as a society to make decisions on a higher level, decisions based on scientific research and respect for the individual. Like alcohol prohibition, marijuana prohibition has done more harm than good. Medical decisions belong in the laboratory and the exam room, not the courtroom.
Shawn E. Glazer is a metro Denver family-practice physician.
5/25/01
7:05:31 PM
Tour Of Alternative-Fuel Cars Turns More Heads
Emphasis on efficiency turns student effort into industry program
by Justin Pope -- Associated Press
PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- When the "Tour de Sol" started in 1989, its message of fuel efficiency fell on deaf ears.
Gas was cheap, alternative-fuel vehicles weren't available to the general public, and the ones being designed looked more like space ships than cars. It was mostly engineering geeks who came to see the annual parade of student-designed vehicles.
Things have changed, says organizer Mary Hazard, of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association
With record-high gas prices, average folks are paying more attention to energy-efficient vehicles traveling through the Northeast this week for the tour, now called the Great American Green Transportation Festival.
And unlike 1989, the automobile makers are here, such as Honda, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler. They're not only sprinkling research money, they're using the event as a way to show off designs and products.
Honda's Insight, for instance, debuted in 1999, and a few thousand have been sold. It gets 70 miles to the gallon, compared to the average 24.5 miles for 2001 models sold this year. It can travel from Washington, D.C., to Chicago on a single tank of gas.
Professor Darryl Dowty, who led a team of engineers from Central Connecticut State University to the event, knows students may no longer be on the cutting edge now that big automakers are investing money in fuel efficiency.
That's fine with him.
"I think they're going to beat us to the punch," said Dowty, standing beside the truck and a motorbike built by his team. Each was powered by a combination of batteries, solar energy and propane. "But that's good. That's our job, to get people who do this for a living to build these things."
The event moved to Greenfield on Thursday and finishes Saturday in Boston. Organizers and participants say it's about teaching the public, and cultivating high school and college students into a new generation of fuel efficiency engineers.
Honda spokesman Michael Tebo, who surveyed the 50 vehicles on display this year, said the technology is so young even the big carmakers need all the new ideas they can get.
"We're in transition in terms of what the next big technology is going to be, and these guys are trying all sorts of different things," Tebo said.
Among them are a two-seat electric car that can reach 90 mph, and an assortment of "neighborhood" vehicles that could be used for short trips through residential areas or to deliver commuters to mass transit points.
Some vehicles still have that space ship look, with a solar "sail" or an odd aerodynamic shape. But increasingly, the vehicles look like normal cars.
That's important to Rita Dorgan, a Massachusetts resident who visited the festival when it stopped this week in Pittsfield.
"Now with this gas problem that seems to be a perennial thing, we're now considering a more efficient vehicle," she said.
This year's tour began just after President Bush unveiled his new energy plan. It calls for $4 million in tax credits to spur sales of hybrid gas-electric vehicles. Environmentalists have been cool to the overall proposal, complaining it emphasizes increasing energy supplies over conservation.
Despite progress in design and reducing cost, wide use of vehicles that run on electricity and alternative fuels is still years away. Cost and range are factors, though the Insight is down to about $19,000. The biggest challenge may be infrastructure - who would buy a car if its fuel can't be bought at the local station?
Another question is how much fuel is really saved by such vehicles. For instance, ethanol, which is made from corn, may burn cleaner in cars. But is it cleaner overall, if the fuel used by diesel tractors to harvest and transport the corn is considered?
That was a concern of Dorgan's husband, Robert, a retired engineer, who said he's suspicious of ethanol but understands the technology is still in its infancy.
"It doesn't make much sense," he said. "But sometimes, you have to do things that aren't sensible to get to the sensible."
Hazard says such concerns are valid, and says she points to the progress made in the 12 years since the tour began.
"The quality of the vehicles is light years beyond the quality of what we saw in the beginning," she says.
5/25/01
6:12:15 PM
WORLD RAINFOREST MOVEMENT
5/25/01
6:06:39 PM
Pollution Is Flushing Marine Life Down The Drain
by David Helvarg
This essay is adapted from Blue Frontier: Saving America's Living Seas.
Predictable but unreported impacts from this spring's flooding on the Mississippi River will be an expanded dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, more southern beach closures, and more dying coral in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Every day, some 32 billion gallons of agricultural, urban and industrial runoff (including oil, pesticides, and manure) pollutes America's marine environment. The pollution is suffocating our coastal bays and estuaries, poisoning marine mammals, and feeding outbreaks of stinging jellies and harmful algal blooms that contribute to some 7,000 beach closures a year.
Most of this is attributable to so-called nitrogen-rich nonpoint-source pollution, pollution from agricultural and other sources that follows down our rivers and watersheds and into the sea.
Nitrogen is essential for soil productivity, and can be supplied by animal waste and plant decay. But too much of a good thing can also be a bad thing, as anyone who's ever had a hangover will attest. According to various studies and recent reports in Science and Scientific American, synthetic, nitrogen-rich fertilizers developed after World War II, along with the burning of fossil fuels, doubled the global nitrogen cycle between 1960 and 1990.
Along with natural nitrogen found in air, soil and lightening, this added input is too much for the land to handle, and so the surplus is washed off into the world's rivers, estuaries and oceans where it ends up feeding giant algae blooms.
The most productive and diverse parts of America's seas, such as Florida's coral reefs, need clean, clear, low-nutrient waters to thrive. Algae, by contrast, loves farm waste and other nutrients, and in their presence, will bloom into a green, light-obscuring soup that sucks oxygen out of the water as it decays, killing off massive numbers of reef fish and suffocating living coral. Nutrient pollution from the Mississippi River, along with nutrient runoff from South Florida's federally subsidized sugar industry and coastal sprawl, eventually ends up on the reefs, according to scientists working on Aquarius, the world's last underwater research station, located some seven miles off (and 50 feet below the waters of) Key Largo, Fla.
Every spring, the Gulf of Mexico experiences a seasonal algae bloom that creates a huge dead zone, where there is so little dissolved oxygen in the water that no fish or bottom dwelling life can survive. First studied in the 1970s, this dead zone doubled in size following the great Mississippi flood of 1993. Since then, it's averaged more than 7,000 square miles, about the size of New Jersey, and is expected to again grow to monstrous proportions following this year's flood.
The Mississippi watershed drains 41 percent of the continental U.S. into the Gulf. The watershed includes 52 percent of U.S. farms that during the 1950s and '60s became increasingly dependent on synthetic chemicals. These commercial fertilizers and pesticides, promoted by the government, American Farm Bureau Federation, and Agricultural Chemicals Association (since renamed the American Crop Protection Association) boosted production, but undermined the long-term viability of the soil.
Today, as a result, corn farmers in states like Illinois and Iowa are caught up in a cycle of chemical dependence, applying 150 pounds of fertilizer per acre. Corporate feedlots for cattle, hogs, and chickens also generate tremendous amounts of largely unregulated methane, ammonia, and nitrogen. Every spring, rain and snowmelt delivers much of this nutrient-rich brew (along with urban and industrial runoff) into the Mississippi.
In North Carolina, corporate hog farming in flood plains has led to waste lagoons overflowing and poisoning coastal waters. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, storm drains and oily runoff from freeways, parking lots, homes, and businesses has forced beach closures and caused swimmer infections.
Flow Down in History
If history provides lessons, though, there is hope. The U.S. Clean Water Act could serve as a model for how to clean up our coasts. After its passage in 1972, many politicians realized that the new law wasn't just about plugging "point-source" industrial pipelines that were polluting America's waterways. It also provided them a chance to cut ribbons on new sewage plants and be seen as friends of public health and the environment.
As a result, Congress has been willing to allocate more than $40 billion in grants for new sewage systems over the last three decades. While more work still needs to be done, dramatic improvements have taken place. Water quality has been restored and wildlife and recreational opportunities expanded for thousands of the nation's lakes, rivers, and many coastal communities.
The Clean Water Act has shown us that realistic models of restoration are possible, and it holds out the hope of stemming the flow of nonpoint-source pollution, even as past gains under the act are being reversed by the poisonous nutrient-heavy flushing of our coasts.
Unfortunately the Bush administration has indicated it may put a freeze on new regulations by the U.S. EPA that place limits on nutrient runoff from large factory farms. If the administration were serious about encouraging more local and state input into federal decision-making, it would recognize the short-sightedness of this approach.
Why Did the Chicken Pollute the Bay?
On the Chesapeake Bay, meanwhile, states have moved ahead of the feds in demanding nutrient reduction. As a result, they're turning chicken waste into cheap energy.
In 1997, excess nutrients fed an outbreak of Pfiesteria piscicida in warm rivers feeding the Chesapeake Bay. Pfiesteria is a chameleon-like microbe that spends much of its time buried in the mud as a harmless cyst. It can also disguise itself as a green plant, or, given enough nutrients, turn into a deadly predator that can strip the flesh off fish in three minutes. Exposure to it at this stage can also cause lesions, vomiting, and severe nurological disorders in people. More than a dozen fishermen and biologists exposed to the bay's outbreak have suffered these effects.
Pfiesteria also cost Chesapeake fishermen $40 million in lost sales. It scared so many area residents that bordering states have joined together to try to reduce runoff by preserving land and regulating nutrient sources.
This has spurred some innovative approaches to dealing with the 800,000 tons of chicken manure generated every year on the bay's eastern shore, where some 600 million birds are raised.
A British firm wants to build a 40-megawatt power plant to burn chicken "litter," which is a mix of chicken manure, sawdust and wood chips. The ash would sell as fertilizer. Allen Family Farms is planning its own smaller 4-megawatt plant, and even Purdue is turning loose manure into fertilizer pellets for sale.
Local farmers, instead of spreading the waste on their land -- where it runs off into the bay -- are now signing contracts with the Brits to sell their chicken waste for up to $6 a ton. And the poultry industry, which just two years ago was lobbying against nutrient reduction laws, is now warning of a future chicken-waste shortage. The bay is proving that pollution prevention pays.
The Bush administration should look to Maryland's eastern shore for inspiration and stop being so, excuse the expression, chickenshit. Maybe then it would see that cleaning up our coastal waters and seas can be a chance for innovation, progress, and, yes, profit.
David Helvarg is an investigative journalist and author.
5/25/01
6:05:57 PM
WorldWatch Earth's 'vital signs': Good News And Bad
by John Donnelly – Boston Globe
WASHINGTON - The world's coral reefs are dying off at a rapid rate, 12 percent of bird species are threatened with extinction, malaria killed more than 1 million people last year, and over 1 billion people carry around too much weight.
Enough of the bad news.
Bicycle production is up globally. Wind power is soaring. And socially responsible investing has topped $2.16 trillion, or $1 out of every $8 professionally managed in the United States.
In its annual look at ''the trends that are shaping our future,'' Worldwatch yesterday released ''Vital Signs 2001,'' a book that gives an overall bleak view of what's happening on Earth. The nonprofit group's aim is that the stack of chilling statistics, now out for the 10th year, will inspire environment-friendly change from policymakers and individual consumers.
But hidden in the 192-page document are more than a few indicators of positive change afoot, including the key but little-known fact that carbon emissions globally fell for the third consecutive year.
Sure, it was only a 0.6 percent drop, but at least it didn't go up.
A close look at the numbers explain why global emissions can decrease even as the United States' emissions continue to rise - 13 percent above 1990 levels, largely due to consumers' love of larger vehicles. The European Union is 0.5 percent below 1990 levels and Japan is only 2.7 percent above the mark, reflecting improved energy efficiency. Another factor is a drop in energy use from Russia, stemming from its economic collapse.
Annual emissions globally, however, have quadrupled from 1950 levels.
''We have a lot of challenges out there,'' Michael Renner, project director of the book, said in an interview. ''But there also are some good signs. Just look at wind power.''
Wind energy is still a bit player. It accounts for less than 1 percent of the world's electricity. But generating capacity increased 30 percent in the year 2000 over the previous year, and overall it provides 10 times as much electricty as it did in 1990. In Denmark, wind energy provides nearly 15 percent of the nation's electricity demands.
''It is just about ready to cross the threshold to competiveness in the United States,'' Renner said, citing a new project on a windy site near the Washington-Oregon border that will generate power at 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour - half the price of electricity paid by California recently for gas-fired energy.
Other positive signs:
A 22 percent increase globally in new bicycles made (95 million were produced in 1999, the latest year available, including 43 million made in China alone), reversing a three-year decline in output. The United States produced just 1.7 million new bikes in 1999, down from 6 million two years earlier, a trend reflecting the move of manufacturing to low-wage workers in Asia.
Between 1997 and 1999, total assets invested in firms based on social criteria increased by 77 percent, nearly twice the overall growth rate of professionally managed US funds; Europe has more than 220 social investment funds, up from 26 in the mid-1980s. The funds screen out several types of businesses, most notably the tobacco industry, which is absent from 96 percent of the US funds.
Consumer support for coffee grown in shady areas, which saves rainforests, has made it the most rapidly increasing segment of the market. Coffee labeled ''fair trade,'' which backs good working conditions for laborers, has an estimated 500,000 farmers producing coffee on about 400,000 hectares, or 4 percent of the global area.
Renner also believes that such well-publicized crises as the shortfall of energy in California and ''mad cow'' disease in Europe could change consumers' buying habits dramatically to the planet's benefit.
''Some of the lifestyles we choose embody the good life,'' he said. ''But some are not so good for personal health, as well as the planet's health. I'm from Germany and there are people I know who I thought would never question eating a sausage, and now they are asking themselves, `Should I really be eating meat?' ''
Meat consumption, though, is five times greater than 1950. The number of four-footed livestock is 60 percent higher than in 1961. The number of chickens have nearly quadrupled in 40 years, to 14.3 billion. The world now has 20 billion farm animals.
''Our appetite for meat, obviously, is still very high,'' Renner said.
Excerpts from the book can be read at http://www.WorldWatch.org
John Donnelly can be reached by e-mail at donnelly@globe.com
5/25/01
6:02:22 PM
US Scientists Praise New Peruvian National Park
CHICAGO - Peru yesterday created a national park bigger than the state of Connecticut and populated with a broad spectrum of species, some endangered and others still likely to be discovered, U.S. scientists said.
The 5,225-square-mile (13,530 sq km) Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul protects one of the last remaining large tracts of undeveloped, uninhabited rain forest. It is about 50 percent larger than Yellowstone National Park in the United States and ranges from lowland forest to 7,900-foot-high (2,400 metre) peaks.
Before the park was set aside, scientists from Peru and Chicago's Field Museum conducted a quick, 21-day biological inventory of the area's extraordinary biodiversity.
The scientists said they identified at least 28 previously undiscovered plant and animal species. They recorded just 1,600 of an estimated 6,000 different plants believed to be growing in the park, along with 500 bird species, 82 amphibian and reptile species, and 71 mammal species -13 of them endangered.
"The Cordillera Azul still offers the rare opportunity to act before habitat fragmentation and degradation forever transform the landscape," Debra Moskovits, director of The Field Museum's Environmental and Conservation Programs, said in a statement.
Scientists said the area was prized by loggers, but now has been preserved. The project was partially funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago, which also funds the so-called "genius grants" to people in many fields.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
5/25/01
6:01:46 PM
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
1. THE HUNGER STRIKES BACK Canada's Health Minister Allan Rock last week said the country would take a closer look at hazardous-waste concerns in Sydney, Canada, 17 days after the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, Elizabeth May, went on a hunger strike to call attention to the problem. May, who ended her strike by taking a bite out of an organic strawberry, said, "The levels of cancer in Sydney are the highest that have been documented anywhere in Canada. It also has a very high birth-defect rate." She attributes many of the heath problems in the Nova Scotia town to toxic waste that came from a steel mill, and she's written a book on the issue, describing Sydney as the Love Canal of Canada.
straight to the source: Vancouver Sun, John MacKie, 25 May 2001 <http://www.vancouversun.com/newsite/news/010525/5051220.html>
read it only in Grist Magazine: A week in the life of Elizabeth May, Sierra Club of Canada <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/may080700.stm?source=daily>
2. DEAD IN THE WATER An expanded dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and more dying coral off the Florida coast will be among the little-discussed environmental impacts of this spring's flooding of the Mississippi River, writes David Helvarg in Grist. The cause will be nitrogen-rich runoff from agricultural and other sources that flows down the river and into the sea. Every day, in fact, some 32 billion gallons of runoff pollute the U.S.'s marine environment, suffocating coastal bays and estuaries, poisoning mammals, and feeding outbreaks of harmful algal blooms. Yuck! Fortunately, some communities are working on ways to stop the flow to the sea. Read more on the Grist Magazine website.
read it only in Grist Magazine: Mississippi delta blues -- by David Helvarg <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books052401.stm?source=daily>
3. THE WISDOM OF CHAIRMAN WOW A Democratic U.S. Senate will pose a big challenge to President Bush's energy plan. When Sen. James Jeffords (R-Vt.) formally leaves the GOP in a week or so, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who opposes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and wants more money spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, will take over the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee from Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), a close friend of the oil industry. Meanwhile, Jeffords, who will reportedly chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is cosponsor of a bill to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Howard Gruenspecht, a scholar at the Resources for the Future think tank, said the switch in leadership means "climate change comes back."
straight to the source: New York Times, Robin Toner, 25 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/25/politics/25AGEN.html>
straight to the source: Washington Post, Peter Behr, 25 May 2001 <http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A73410-2001May24.html>
catch it only in Grist Magazine: A White House fuel-economy strategy -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha052201.stm?source=daily>
Get a free book and help out Grist! <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/signup/book_signup.asp?source=daily>
Whale of a time -- a review of A Whale Hunt -- in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books030701.stm?source=daily>
In search of a global-warming-solutions virus -- a day in the life of Adam Markham, Clean Air-Cool Planet <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/markham052401.stm?source=daily>
5/25/01
5:27:36 PM
Senate Switch FAQ
By Emily Yoffe
Vermont Sen. James Jeffords has switched from the Republican Party to independent. Is that a party?
No, it's the absence of party affiliation. Though it is usually referred to without capitalization, the Senate Historical Office puts a capital "I" after the name of independents for stylistic consistency with Democratic and Republican Party identification. There is a small third-party movement called the Independence Party, and during the presidential election it became a factor in the Florida vote because many people who thought they were registering as "independents" mistakenly registered as "Independence."
How many independents have served in the Senate?
Six. David Davis of Illinois, 1877-83; George W. Norris of Nebraska, 1937-43; Wayne L. Morse of Oregon, 1953-55; Harry F. Byrd Jr. of Virginia, 1971-83; Bob Smith of New Hampshire, for a few months in 1999; and Jeffords. All these people served time in the Senate as members of major parties as well. For example, the nomadic Morse was a Republican senator from 1945-53 and a Democratic one from 1955-69.
How many senators have switched party affiliation?
According to Explainer's beloved Senate Historical Office, 19 senators have switched since 1890. Prior to that, party affiliation was a more fluid concept and senators frequently changed affiliation or created new parties. Since the Jeffords business is causing so much fun, let's bring back some 19th-century parties such as Nullifier, Law and Order, Free Soil, Unconditional Unionist, Readjuster, Silver, and Liberal Republican (take that Trent Lott!).
Now that Jeffords has said he will affiliate with the Democrats, giving them the majority, what are the precise mechanisms by which majority status will switch?
It has never happened before in the history of the Senate that party control switched during a congressional session, so the details are being worked out now. Usually, when a new Congress is sworn in every two years, all this organizational business--such as selection of majority leader, committee chairmanships, and memberships--gets voted on and decided at the beginning of the session. How the Senate proceeds in this case will be precedent-setting and -shattering. The 83rd Congress, 1953-55, began divided with 48 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and one independent, allowing Republicans to have the majority. But the stress of such a situation must be great because during the subsequent two years, senators dropped like flies. Nine of them died, and numerical advantage actually shifted to the Democrats. But because no Senate has switched party control during a session, the Republicans continued to run things even though they became the minority party (yes, Trent, those were the days). But anticipating a possible high mortality rate, this year on Jan. 5, the Senate passed a resolution stating that if the numerical majority shifts, the winning party gets leadership of the Senate and also gets a numerical majority on committees, which are now split down the middle.
Is Majority Leader-To-Be Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., going to throw Trent Lott out of his majority leader office?
No. As party leaders, each gets a personal Senate office and a party-leader office. They will stay in the offices they now occupy, but the "Majority Leader" sign will move. ("Sen. Lott, please, sir, you have to let go of the sign, sir, please.")
Press reports say Jeffords will caucus with the Democrats. What does that mean?
It means he will affiliate himself with the Democratic Conference, the organizing committee for the party. The conference is where decisions on committee chairmanships and memberships get made. While this largely goes according to seniority--and by precedent, party switchers get to keep their seniority--the conference can also decide to overlook strict seniority and, say, reward a party-switcher with a coveted committee chairmanship. Both parties have dropped the formal use of the word "caucus," which came to carry with it a connotation of those secret, smoky rooms. The word "caucus" is of unknown origin, but there is some evidence it is derived from an Algonquian word for "advise."
5/25/01
5:15:59 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
JEFFORDS DECLARES INDEPENDENCE, STYMIES BUSH AGENDA
By Cat Lazaroff
BURLINGTON, Vermont, May 24, 2001 (ENS) - As expected, Senator Jim Jeffords announced this morning he is leaving the Republican party and will align himself with the Senate's Democratic caucus. The move, which Jeffords delayed to permit smooth Senate passage of the massive Bush tax cut, swings power over Senate committees and the schedule of Senate legislation to the Democratic Party.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-24-06.html
NEVADANS GET HOW TO LESSON IN CONTESTING NUCLEAR WASTE SITE
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, May 24, 2001 (ENS) - Nevada residents learned this week exactly what they will have to do if they want to contest the controversial high-level radioactive waste repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-24-04.html
OIL RIGS JOSTLE SPERM WHALES IN THE GULF OF MEXICO
COLLEGE STATION, Texas, May 24, 2001 (ENS) - A breeding population of about 530 endangered sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico may be feeling the effects of an increase this year in deepwater oil and gas drilling in the Gulf.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-24-01.html
AUSTRALIA'S WILDLIFE TRADE BILL SETS NEW STANDARDS
CANBERRA, Australia, May 24, 2001 (ENS) - The Australian government introduced a bill that goes beyond Australia's international obligations in the management of wildlife trade.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-24-05.html
GLOBAL ENERGY FIRMS CLAIM GLOBAL WARMING MILESTONE
LONDON, United Kingdom, May 24, 2001 (ENS) - Global energy industry association the World Energy Council has claimed important progress in its efforts to show that voluntary action by industry can play an important role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But the evidence it advances contains some startling flaws.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-24-08.html
Lawsuit Challenges EPA's Mobile Source Air Pollution Rule
Studies Cast Doubt on Carbon Sequestration in Trees
Reverend Sharpton Jailed for Vieques Protest
Tiny Fly Could Combat Fire Ants
Energy Department Reviews Efficiency Research
Rocket Technology Could Produce Pollution Free Electricity
New Research May Reduce Renewable Fuel Costs
Dallas Urban Forest to be Cut Down
Paper Money Carries Load of Bacteria
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-24-09.html
5/25/01
4:52:09 PM
The Nation
EDITORIAL | May 28, 2001
Rogue Nation
News that the United States has been voted off the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN international drug monitoring board has elicited vows of revenge from conservatives in Congress. They threaten to withhold payment on the long-unpaid dues owed the UN. They blame our adversaries--China, Cuba, Sudan and others--for the insult. But the secret votes enabled allies as well as adversaries to vent their mounting exasperation with US policies. At the last session of the commission, the United States stood virtually alone as it opposed resolutions supporting lower-cost access to HIV/AIDS drugs, acknowledging a human right to adequate food and calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, while it continued to resist efforts to ban landmines.
The global outrage is by no means limited to US policies on the Human Rights Commission. In barely 100 days in office, the Bush Administration has declared the Kyoto accords on global warming dead, spurning eight years of work by 186 countries. It banned US support for any global organization that provides family planning or abortion services, even as an AIDS pandemic makes this a matter of life and death. It bade farewell to the antiballistic missile treaty, while slashing spending on nuclear safety aid for Russia. It casually bombed Iraq, helped shoot down a missionary's plane over Peru and enforced an illegal and irrational boycott of Cuba. It sabotaged promising talks between North and South Korea, publicly humiliating South Korea's Nobel prizewinning president, Kim Dae Jung. The nomination as UN ambassador of John Negroponte, former proconsul in Honduras during the illegal contra wars, is an insult. "There is a perception," said one diplomat in carefully parsed words, "that the US wants to go it alone."
Our lawless exceptionalism is a deeply rooted, bipartisan policy that didn't begin with the Bush Administration. Under previous Presidents, Democratic and Republican, Washington denounced state-sponsored terrorism while reserving the right to bomb a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan or unleash a contra army on Nicaragua. It condemned Iraq for invading Kuwait while reserving the right to invade Panama or bomb Serbia on its own writ. The United States advocated war crimes tribunals against foreign miscreants abroad while opposing an international criminal court that might hold our own officials accountable. Our leaders proclaim the value of law and democracy as they spurn the UN Security Council and ignore the World Court when their rulings don't suit them. The Senate refuses to ratify basic human rights treaties. The US international business community even opposes efforts to eliminate child labor. And of course, there are those UN dues, which make us the world's largest deadbeat.
Worse is yet to come. US policy is a direct reflection of its militarization and the belief that we police the world, we make the rules. The Bush Administration plans a major increase in military spending to finance new weapons to expand the US ability to "project" force around the globe--stealth bombers, drones, long-range missiles and worse. The tightly strung Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sounds increasingly like an out-of-date Dr. Strangelove as he pushes to open a new military front in space, shattering hopes of keeping the heavens a zone of peace.
As the hyperpower, with interests around the world, America has the largest stake in law and legitimacy. But the ingrained assumption that we are legislator, judge, jury and executioner mocks any notion of global order. From the laws of war to the laws of trade, it is increasingly clear that Washington believes international law applies only to the weak. The weak do what they must; the United States does what it will.
After the cold war, we labeled our potential adversaries "rogue nations"--violent, lawless, willing to trample the weak and ignore international law and morality to enforce their will. Now, in the vote at the UN, in the headlines of papers across Europe, in the planning of countries large and small, there is a growing consensus that the world's most destructive rogue nation is the most powerful country of them all.
This is not a role most Americans support. Public interest groups and concerned individuals will vigorously remind Congress of the widespread popular backing in this country for paying our UN dues, for global AIDS funding and other forms of international involvement. Unilateralism must be opposed in all its guises, from national missile "defense" to undermining efforts to curb global warming. The United States was founded on a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. Let's keep it that way.
5/25/01
4:46:54 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
CONSUMER CADETS
by George F. Will, Washington Post Online
-- What's this: =FCber capitalist George F. Will speaking out against the consumerism, most sacred of all American values? Writing on washingtonpost.com, this champion of free enterprise rails against the target marketing of students in schools.
REMEMBERING THE BEATS
Web site review by Collette Davidson, www.litkicks.com
Since 1994, litkicks.com has been devoted to highlighting some of the most notable "experimental literary movements" of our time, including Transcendental America and The Beat Generation. Learn about the birthplace of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac's first published novel, and Litkicks' annual poetry slam.
ROGUE NATION
The Nation
-- The ouster of the United States from two prominent United Nations committees - the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN international drug monitoring board - may seem like a slap in the face to Americans. Find out what's behind it.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
5/25/01
4:37:29 PM
You Can Stop Millions Of Hectares Of Tropical Rainforests From Destruction
You help is urgently need to convince the president of Peru to reject a bill that would gut a vital nationwide forest management law. The bill would put at risk millions of hectares of the richest and largest tracts of intact tropical rainforests in the world. These forests harbor threatened tree species of high-commercial value such as mahogany and cedar, and also provide habitat for wildlife such as the highly threatened jaguar, the harpy eagle, and the giant river otter.
Please go to http://takeaction.worldwildlife.org
to urge the president to reject the new bill. He only has until Friday, May 25 to do so; please act now.
World Wildlife Fund, working in collaboration with local partners in Peru, helped develop the current forestry law. This law will help end the unsustainable logging that has resulted in an alarming deforestation rate of 260,000 hectares per year in Peru.
The new law undermines the current provisions for encouraging sustainable forest management, overcoming illegal logging, combating extensive corruption, and stopping degradation and unsustainable harvesting, particularly of mahogany. Please act now to protect one of the world's most precious remaining tropical rain forests.
5/25/01
4:30:07 PM
The Killer in Your Yard
Each time you douse your lawn with pesticides, you could be poisoning birds, wildlife, even the neighbor's kids. Whenever the subject of pesticides comes up, it's easy to point a finger at farmers. But we homeowners, with our manicured lawns and exotic flower gardens, have nothing to be smug about. Each year we pour approximately 136 million pounds of pesticides on our homes, lawns, and gardens, which amounts to three times more per acre than the average farmer applies.
In fact, most of the wildlife pesticide poisonings reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency result from home use. According to the EPA's wildlife mortality incident database, just three of the chemicals commonly used in the garden and home--diazinon, chlorpyrifos, brodifacoum--kill thousands of birds each year. In the early 1990s two California metropolitan areas--the City of Davis and central Contra Costa County--discovered levels of diazinon and chlorpyrifos, high enough to harm aquatic organisms, in their storm-water systems. After testing, officials in both places determined that the greatest source of pesticides in local surface waters was single-family homes.
5/25/01
4:18:22 PM
Amnesty International
Brazil: Torture and impunity under international spotlight
Eleven years after Brazil ratified the Convention against Torture, the widespread and systematic practice of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment continues unabated and largely unpunished Amnesty International said today. The statement came as the Brazilian government prepares for its first appearance before the UN Committee against Torture in Geneva.
"The consistent failure to punish acts of torture committed by police and prison guards is conducive to more violations being committed," Amnesty International said, asking for an end to the impunity widely enjoyed by state officials responsible for human rights violations.
Amnesty International continues to document the consistent use of brutal acts of torture by state officials at the point of arrest, in police stations and in prisons and juvenile detention centres. Torture is regularly used as a means to extract confessions, to dominate, humiliate and control those in detention, or increasingly to extort money or serve the criminal interests of corrupt police officials. For some members of the police, often under trained and under resourced, extracting confessions under torture has become a de facto replacement for professional and scientific methods of investigation.
More details on this and other human rights violations at
including their 2000 Annual Report at
http://www.web.amnesty.org/web/ar2000web.nsf/
5/25/01
4:16:03 PM
Neil Watkins World Bank Bonds Boycott campaign Center for Economic Justice
1830 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 4th floor
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: (202) 299-0020 Fax: (202) 299-0021
Web: http://www.worldbankboycott.org
5/25/01
4:04:32 PM
IMF'S FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION
How crises, failures, and suffering finally drove a Presidential adviser to the wrong side of the barricades
by Gregory Palast The Observer (UK)
It was like a scene out of Le Carré: the brilliant agent comes in from the cold and, in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of an ideology gone rotten.
But this was a far bigger catch than some used-up Cold War spy. The former apparatchik was Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank. The new world economic order was his theory come to life.
He was in Washington for the big confab of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing meetings of ministers and central bankers, he was outside the police cordons. The World Bank fired Stiglitz two years ago. He was not allowed a quiet retirement: he was excommunicated purely for expressing mild dissent from globalisation World Bank-style.
Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.
And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'.
Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.
But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.
Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.
Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.
And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if it's a corrupt election." '
Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.
Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.
After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.
Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.
And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.
'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.
At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.
The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' - as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.
There are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.
And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests - with cold accuracy - that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.
That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.
The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side - for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.
A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.
Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.
In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.
Stiglitz has two concerns about the IMF/World Bank plans. First, he says, because the plans are devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, never open for discourse or dissent, they 'undermine democracy'. Second, they don't work. Under the guiding hand of IMF structural 'assistance' Africa's income dropped by 23%.
Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, Botswana. Their trick? 'They told the IMF to go packing.' Stiglitz proposes radical land reform: an attack on the 50% crop rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide.
Why didn't the World Bank and IMF follow his advice?
'If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda.'
Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises, failures, and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo.
'It's a little like the Middle Ages,' says the economist, 'When the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.'
Maybe it's time to remove the bloodsuckers.
5/25/01
3:36:52 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Shift seen in Argentine biotech stance - US attache - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10960
UPDATE - Senate change could pull Bush to left on trade - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10961
New York, Connecticut sue EPA over car pollution rule - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10962
US drivers show little faith in new energy plan - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10963
UPDATE - Green group takes UK to court over nuclear plant - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10955
FEATURE - Hybrid electric vehicle seen as clean but slow - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10958
UPDATE - NZ officials warn rat poison could linger in ocean - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10957
Nepal sherpas clear 4.3T of trash from Mt. Everest - NEPAL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10956
Navistar unit calls on Pemex to clean up diesel - MEXICO http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10964
Lithuania mulls underground gas storage schemes - LITHUANIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10959
Noranda, Hewlett-Packard plan new recycling plant - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10965
5/25/01
3:34:27 PM
The Nation
Earlier today Sen. James Jeffords bolted the Republican Party and declared himself an independent, giving Democrats control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1994.
As David Corn writes in the new issue of The Nation, the "Jeffords move, perhaps partly caused by heavy-handed Bush/GOP tactics, including threats made against dairy price supports for Vermont farmers, shows that the Republicans have a hard time being anything other than a party of the right."
And in the latest installment of The Online Beat, John Nichols adds some useful historical context to today's debate over Jeffords's jump.
Read both of these just-filed pieces currently:
DAVID CORN: The Jeffords Jump
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=corn20010523
JOHN NICHOLS: The Online Beat -- Ending The Elegant Incognito
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat
STATE'S SECRET WAR IN THE ANDES:
In a web-only exclusive, investigative reporter Jason Vest examines a murky corner of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida's Brevard County and finds the gateway to the U.S. government's private war in the South American Andes. And, as Vest shows, what the State Department is up to in Florida has little to do with the art of genteel diplomacy and everything to do with lethal combat. Read the full story at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=vest20010523
NO RUSH TO JUDGES:
With the Bush Administration's appellate court-packing scheme clearly on the table, The Nation is urging people to launch a missive attack on Senate majority 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, now the majority party in the Senate, to stiffen their resolve against Bush's appointments. You can find the letter and contact info at:
http://www.thenation.com/alert/actnow/
RECENT NATION ARTICLES:
And also still available are numerous recent articles of interest, including The Nation editors on Bush's first 100 days; Christopher Hitchens and Jonathan Schell on Bob Kerrey's alleged war crimes; Maude Barlow on the FTAA protests; Eileen Stillwaggon on AIDS and poverty in Africa; Amy Bach on some problems with legal aid; William Greider on global sweatshops and Eric Alterman, Alec Dubro and Peter Kornbluh on tainted Bush appointee Otto Reich. All accessible at:
5/25/01
3:25:20 PM
Organic crop certifiers decry transgenic contamination
That was the gist of declarations by two organic agriculture organizations to describe the effect of transgenic crop production on organic farming. As is the case with conventional soy, corn, and canola, organic crops have tested positive for the presence of foreign genetic material because of cross-pollination, seed stock contamination. The inability to segregate transgenic crops from their organic and conventional counterparts during harvest, handling, transport and milling is also responsible for contamination.
The Organic Federation of Australia declared that contamination from transgenic crops in the United States has spread to such a degree that it cannot verify the purity of imported organic ingredients.
Farm Verified Organic seconded that assertion. A press release from the North Dakota certification agency stated: "the GM pollution of American commodities is now so pervasive, we believe it is not possible for farmers in North America to source seed free from it."
"The widespread adoption of GM crops in the U.S. makes it difficult to ensure that grain is not being contaminated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as it is handled and transported from the field to the end customer. Industry insiders even question whether the foundation (parent) seed for non-GM varieties can meet a 1% purity level," according to the November 2000 edition of Farmindustrynews.com.
David Gould, a member of the certification committee of Farm Verified Organic, discussed the contamination situation with Cropchoice in February.
"Our investigations thus far from the 2000 harvest lead us to believe that virtually all of the seed corn in the United states is contaminated with at least a trace of genetically engineered material, and often more," Gould said. "Even the organic lots are showing traces of biotech varieties."
He pointed out the now familiar StarLink corn fiasco. Iowa farmers planted 1 percent of their crop with StarLink. By harvest time, 50 percent registered positive for the genetically engineered variety.
Since his preferred option of a ban on transgenic crops probably won't happen soon, Gould favors establishment of a maximum tolerance level for genetically modified organisms in organic crops. Currently, there is no universal standard. In the case of corn, he said that if organic certifiers insisted on 0 percent contamination, "we shouldn't certify any corn."
At the same time, he worries that propagating transgenic crops year after year will lead to the presence of more and more foreign genes in organic and conventional varieties. This in turn, would mean raising the tolerance levels. Whether the organic stamp of approval would then become something of a joke is open to debate.
But one should remember that organic standards have to do with production, not purity, said Annie Kirschenmann, of Farm Verified Organic. This means that testing for any kind of residue, be it from pesticide or genetic drift, is not part of determining whether to certify a farm as organic.
5/24/01
4:23:58 PM
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
1. RATS. Officials are conducting tests off the northern coast of New Zealand's South Island -- one of the world's most well-known feeding grounds for whales, dolphins, and seals -- after a trailer filled with 18 tons of deadly rat poison crashed and fell into the sea. Dead fish and eels have already washed up along the coastline. The country's Department of Conservation said smaller animals, like birds, may be more at risk than whales and dolphins because the larger animals would have to eat a heck of a lot of the rat poison to be harmed.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 24 May 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10931>
2. VERMONTY HAUL Explaining his motivation to leave the Republican Party and become an Independent, U.S. Sen. James Jeffords (Vt.) this morning listed "energy and the environment" as two of the "fundamental issues" where he disagreed most strongly with President Bush. Jeffords is known as an environmentalist and was one of six founders of the Congressional Solar Energy Coalition. Reports are that Jeffords will be the next chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under an agreement with the new Democratic leadership. If so, Jeffords, with an 81 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters in the last session of Congress (the second highest rating among all Republicans), would replace Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.), who received a 6 percent rating.
straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 24 May 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/577803.asp>
straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin and Helen Dewar, 24 May 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A67686-2001May23.html>
straight to the source: New York Times, Philip Shenon, 24 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/24/politics/24CHAI.html>
straight to scorecard: League of Conservation Voters <http://scorecard.lcv.org/>
3. GIVING CLIMATE CHANGE THE BYRD No where do the words "climate change" or "greenhouse gases" appear in President Bush's energy plan. A group of 250 scientists is circulating a letter to the public arguing that it is wrong to shape an energy policy around coal, oil, and nuclear energy and that "conservation must be front and center in our energy future." Even unexpected folks in Congress, like Sen. Robert Byrd, Democrat from the coal stronghold of West Virginia, are getting fed up with the Bush administration's head-in-the-sand approach to climate change. Read more on the Grist Magazine website.
straight to the source: TomPaine.com <http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/05/22/1.html>
do good: Watch a silly video and tell Bush to stop monkeying around with the country's energy policies <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/climate.stm?source=daily#plan>
4. GREASED LIGHTNING The first gas station in a major city to sell vegetable fuel for diesel cars and trucks opened yesterday in San Francisco. A similar station also opened in Sparks, Nev. The biodiesel fuel is made from recycled vegetable oil from restaurants or from soybean oil. The fuel doesn't cut back on nitrogen oxide emissions, but it does avoid the carbon monoxide problems and the cloud of particulates that come from burning diesel. Vehicles using biodiesel experience a small drop in fuel economy, and give off the scent of french fries. Teri Shore, from the enviro group Bluewater Network, said biodiesel could help with the U.S.'s energy problems: "Instead of mining in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, we can mine the nation's supplies of restaurant grease."
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Jane Kay, 23 May 2001 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/05/23/MN110637.DTL>
5. TREES DON'T SUCK After all that talk, it seems forests might not do such a great job sucking carbon dioxide emissions out of the air, according to two studies published today in the journal Nature. During negotiations over a climate change treaty, the U.S. and Canada have made a big to-do about the potential for forests to act as carbon sinks, arguing that countries should get credit for reducing greenhouse gas emissions if they have big forest reserves or plant new trees. But Duke University researchers in one of the studies exposed pine trees to elevated levels of CO2 and found that after an initial growth spurt, the trees grew more slowly and didn't absorb as much carbon as expected. In the second study, researchers from Duke and Bowdoin College found that carbon returns to the atmosphere, rather than being incorporated into soil, as organic material in the soil around trees decomposes.
straight to the source: CNN.com, Associated Press, 23 May 2001 <http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/05/23/forest.carbon.ap/index.html>
straight to the source: New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin, 24 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/24/science/24FORE.html>
Spin the bottle -- Perrier didn't reckon on an angry citizenry when it looked to expand into the Midwest -- in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/ness052101.stm?source=daily>
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed -- Adam Markham, Clean Air-Cool Planet <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/markham052301.stm?source=daily>
That '70s show -- 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?source=daily>
5/24/01
4:17:04 PM
WILD ALERT
Never say never. Three years after losing a battle in Congress to build a $30 million road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness in Alaska -- and receiving $37 million for alternatives in the process -- supporters of the road have forced the Army Corps of Engineers to consider the road in a new proposal. It was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. Send your comments to the Corps by June 4 –
http://www.wilderness.org/ccc/alaska/izembek.htm
SPECTACULAR WILDERNESS
The spectacular Izembek National Wildlife Refuge lies at the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Designated a "Wetland of International Importance" and including federally designated Wilderness, it provides important seasonal habitat for many waterfowl, including the entire population of Pacific Black Brant, half of the world's Steller's Eiders (a threatened species), Emperor Geese, Tundra Swans, and Harlequin Ducks. It also prime habitat for brown bears, caribou, and salmon.
CONGRESS HAS SAID NO TO THE ROAD
You may remember a big fight in Congress several years ago about a $30 million road through the remote Wilderness of the Izembek Refuge. Thanks to the outrage of thousands of Americans, Congress decided not to build this harmful road connecting the villages of King Cove and Cold Bay, and instead gave the local government (the Aleutians East Borough) $37.5 million for road, ferry, airport, and medical improvements.
The law passed at the time states: "in no instance may any part of such road, dock, marine facilities or equipment enter or pass over any land within the Congressionally-designated wilderness in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge." Section 353, FY 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act.
$37.5 MILLION ISN'T ENOUGH
But now, the Aleutians East Borough wants to re-open this hard-won compromise and take another look at building a road through the Izembek Refuge's federally-designated Wilderness. Using their political muscle, they have forced the US Army Corps of Engineers to include several alternatives in an upcoming King Cove Access Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that require a road through the Wilderness.
TAKE ACTION
The US Army Corps is taking "scoping" comments on a total of 14 alternatives for the EIS, but only through *June 4.* Your comments are needed urgently. Send a pre-written letter today from
http://www.wilderness.org/ccc/alaska/izembek.htm
or send them directly. Tell the Army Corps:
- In submitting scoping comments on the King Cove Access EIS, you are concerned about the important waterfowl, Wilderness, and wetlands of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, which belongs to *all* Americans.
- Eliminate all alternatives which require a road through the Izembek Refuge or Wilderness. Such alternatives clearly violate the intent of Congress.
- Avoid the Kinzarof Lagoon, which is important to many waterfowl species and other wildlife and would be damaged by road access and hovercraft traffic.
- Choose the alternative which connects Lenard Harbor and Cold Bay with a conventional ferry.
- Don't waste any more US taxpayer dollars on harmful roads that have no place in National Wildlife Refuges or Wilderness areas.
Send your comments to:
Ms. Kathleen Kuna
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, CO-R
Post Office Box 898, Anchorage, AK 99506-0898
FAX: (907) 753-5567
EMAIL: Kingcove.comments@poa02.usace.army.mil
5/24/01
4:13:43 PM
by Ken Ritter / Associated Press
LAS VEGAS -- Tourists in 1950s Las Vegas donned sunglasses to watch nuclear mushroom clouds over the horizon at the Nevada Test Site.
Today, the city and state fear the prospect of trucks and railroad cars hauling radioactive waste past Las Vegas' glittering new gambling palaces to the Test Site.
"One accident, no matter how minor, could create hysteria," the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce says in its stand against the federal government's proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
Last week, President Bush called for a national nuclear waste repository as part of his energy plan. Bush also called for licensing new reactors and speeding the relicensing of existing plants to ease the nation's power woes.
The president did not specifically name Yucca Mountain, but the reference sent shivers through the ranks of those fighting plans to store the nation's nuclear refuse 1,000 feet beneath a wind-swept ridge, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas on the western edge of the Test Site.
"There should be no expansion of nuclear power until we have a way to dispose of the waste for years to come without harming the public," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a lobbying group opposed to the Yucca Mountain project.
Since 1987, Yucca Mountain has been the only site studied to become the graveyard for the nation's 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive research waste.
After $7 billion worth of study and testing, approval of the Energy Department project is at least a year away. The earliest the first load of waste could arrive is 2010. The project is expected to cost $58 billion over 100 years.
But things are happening on many fronts.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding meetings this week in Las Vegas and the rural community of Pahrump to talk about a construction permit for the site.
The Energy Department is taking public comment before forwarding its recommendation next year to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Abraham will make a recommendation to Bush. If Nevada opposes it, as expected, the decision will be sent to Congress.
Meanwhile, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Public Works, has been holding up Bush administration nominations to environmental and public works posts until the Environmental Protection Agency sets radiation standards for the site.
The city and state are usually conservative and business-friendly. They went for Bush in November. But few support the Yucca Mountain plan. And Nevada's entire four-member congressional delegation is against it.
Dusty Las Vegas of 1950 had fewer than 25,000 residents. Today, there are 1.3 million people living in and around Las Vegas, the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country. The city draws 30 million visitors a year to its casinos and other attractions.
5/24/01
4:10:33 PM
Med Crews Feel Unprepared for Nuke Shipments
by Wren Propp
Albuquerque Journal Journal Staff Writer
Anti-nuclear waste activists in New Mexico on Monday tied a survey showing emergency medical workers felt inadequately trained to handle radioactive accidents to federal plans for the shipping of nuclear materials to Nevada.
"Our survey results show that the emergency responders need more training, equipment and written policies and procedures," said Joni Arends, waste programs director for Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety.
Arends and Lisa Gue, a policy analyst for a national watchdog group called Public Citizen, said at a news conference in Santa Fe that New Mexico is ill-prepared to serve as part of a transportation route for high-level radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Results of a 1999 survey of 236 emergency medical workers by the state Department of Health - released Monday - show the "first responders" to any nuclear accident along the route to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant feel uncertain about their training and equipment, Arends said.
"The most important thing about releasing this survey at this point in time is that we're concerned about the potential of more nuclear waste coming through the state to (Nevada)," Arends said.
Attention to Yucca Mountain, outside of Las Vegas, Nev., intensified last week when President Bush called for a national nuclear waste repository as part of his energy plan, according to the Associated Press.
Yucca Mountain is the only site studied in the past 14 years as a final resting place for 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive research waste, the AP reported. The first shipment could arrive by 2010; approval by the U.S. Department of Energy is at least a year away.
Gue warned that New Mexico could become one of 43 states through which nuclear waste bound to Yucca Mountain is transported.
"We need to send a clear message that Yucca Mountain is an unsuitable site for an unsuitable project," Gue said Monday.
A similar survey of New Mexico emergency medical workers will be performed in July.
The survey was mailed to 2,000 emergency medical personnel who work along the route traveled by trucks hauling waste to WIPP. About 236 of those surveyed returned their responses in addressed, stamped envelopes.
The survey showed:
* About 45 percent of the emergency medical workers along the WIPP route - including firefighters and emergency medical technicians - are volunteers.
* While nearly 100 percent said they knew that free training was available for handling emergencies along the route, only 27 percent said they had participated in a WIPP-related drill or exercise as part of their training.
* Only 28 percent said they felt adequately trained to handle a patient who had been contaminated with radioactive waste. About 61 percent said they expected to personally respond to a radioactive materials accidents.
* Only 25 percent believe they have adequate equipment to respond to accidents involving hazardous and radioactive materials.
State agencies offer twice-yearly exercises to help emergency workers along the WIPP route - which runs from Raton to Carlsbad - to prepare for real accidents, said Bill Mackie, coordinator of the New Mexico Radioactive Waste Consultation Task Force.
Waste expected at Yucca Mountain carries a higher health risk than the WIPP waste. If New Mexico becomes part of the route of waste to Nevada, training will be stepped up, Mackie said.
5/24/01
4:07:32 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
JEFFORDS COULD HAND SENATE POWER BACK TO THE DEMOCRATS
By Cat Lazaroff
WASHINGTON, DC, May 23, 2001 (ENS) - Sometime tomorrow, the political landscape in Washington, DC is likely to change dramatically. Senator James Jeffords, a Vermont Republican, is expected to announce that he has abandoned the Republican Party - giving the Democrats control of the Senate and throwing a major roadblock before the Bush administration agenda.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-23-07.html
RECYCLING PROGRAM KEEPS COMPUTERS OUT OF LANDFILLS
PALO ALTO, California, May 22, 2001 (ENS) - A new service that allows U.S. consumers and businesses to conveniently recycle unwanted computers and equipment from any manufacturer without adding to landfills was announced by computer maker Hewlett-Packard on Monday.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-23-06.html
FINLAND 1ST IN EUROPE TO OK PERMANENT NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL STUDY
HELSINKI, Finland, May 23, 2001 (ENS) - Finland took an important step toward securing long term, underground storage of high level nuclear waste on Friday, when the Finnish Parliament approved a plan to build a test facility in Olkiluoto, Eurajoki on the country's west coast. If all goes according to schedule, it could be expanded into a larger, permanent disposal site.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-23-04.html
AUSTRALIAN BUDGET EXTENDS NATURAL HERITAGE TRUST BY A$1 BILLION
CANBERRA, Australia, May 23, 2001 (ENS) - The Australian government has set aside more than A$1.62 billion for environmental conservation and management in a budget tabled in the House of Commons last night. The budget posts a cash surplus of A$1.5 billion and will cut taxes next year by over $5 billion.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-23-03.html
ENDANGERED SEA TURTLES BUTCHERED ON THE BEACHES OF TOBAGO
BLACK ROCK, Tobago, May 22, 2001 (ENS) - Conflicting laws governing the protection of critically endangered sea turtles in Trinidad and Tobago have created a loophole that allows poachers to slaughter the giant turtles for their meat when they come up on island beaches to lay their eggs.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-23-01.html
5/24/01
3:53:12 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Appeals court vows quick ruling in US forest case - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10942
US Energy Dept. to review research programs - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10948
Green payments may gain if Senate's leadership shifts - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10947
Toyota delivers gas/electric vehicles to Denver - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10946
US groups say Calif. power bill would dirty air - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10945
US advisory panel urges Outer Shelf drilling - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10944
US scientists praise new Peruvian national park - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10943
Most Californians now favor nuclear power - poll - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10939
US utilities form alliance to curb carbon dioxide emissions - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10934
New York, groups to sue EPA over mobile pollution rule - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10932
Radical environmentalists linked to arson attacks - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10933
Exxon Mobil to appeal $1 bln Louisiana radiation fine - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10936
London council first buyer of fuel cell vehicle - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10940
Scientists query future power of "carbon sinks" - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10935
UPDATE - Canada leads world in ratifying toxic chemicals pact - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10950
UPDATE - EU, US talk on environment but stay deadlocked - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10951
Spain to steer EU in grassroots view of recycling - SPAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10952
Norway needs more waste energy units - report - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10938
NZ officials await tests after rat poison spill - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10931
Radioactive material leak at Japan nuclear reactor - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10937
UPDATE - Japan government asks for understanding on MOX use - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10941
Brazil ups alcohol in gasoline to 22 pct on May 31 - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10954
EU says some states could coordinate green taxes - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10949
CORRECTED - Australia's penguins all rugged up for winter - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10953
5/23/01
6:13:54 PM
Earth Policy Institute
DUST BOWL THREATENING CHINA'S FUTURE
by Lester R. Brown
On April 18, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, reported that a huge dust storm from northern China had reached the United States "blanketing areas from Canada to Arizona with a layer of dust." They reported that along the foothills of the Rockies the mountains were obscured by the dust from China.
This dust storm did not come as a surprise. On March 10, 2001, The People's Daily reported that the season's first dust storm-one of the earliest on record-had hit Beijing. These dust storms, coupled with those of last year, were among the worst in memory, signaling a widespread deterioration of the rangeland and cropland in the country's vast northwest.
These huge dust plumes routinely travel hundreds of miles to populous cities in northeastern China, including Beijing, obscuring the sun, reducing visibility, slowing traffic, and closing airports. Reports of residents in eastern cities caulking windows with old rags to keep out the dust are reminiscent of the U.S. dust bowl of the 1930s. Eastward moving winds often carry soil from China's northwest to North Korea, South Korea, and Japan, countries that regularly complain about dust clouds that both filter out the sunlight and cover everything with dust. Responding to pressures from their constituents, a group of 15 legislators from Japan and 8 from South Korea are organizing a tri-national committee with Chinese lawmakers to devise a strategy to combat the dust.
News reports typically attribute the dust storms to the drought of the last three years, but the drought is simply bringing a fast-deteriorating situation into focus. Human pressure on the land in northwestern China is excessive. There are too many people, too many cattle and sheep, and too many plows. Feeding 1.3 billion people, a population nearly five times that of the United States, is not an easy matter.
In addition to local pressures on resources, a decision in Beijing in 1994 to require that all cropland used for construction be offset by land reclaimed elsewhere has helped create the ecological disaster that is now unfolding. In an article in Land Use Policy, Chinese geographers Hong Yang and Xiubein Li describe the environmental effects of this offset policy. The fast-growing coastal provinces, such as Guandong, Shandong, Xheijiang, and Jiangsu, which are losing cropland to urban expansion and industrial construction, are paying other provinces to plow new land to offset their losses. This provided an initial economic windfall for provinces in the northwest, such as Inner Mongolia (which led the way with a 22-percent cropland expansion), Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang.
As the northwestern provinces, already suffering from overplowing and overgrazing, plowed ever more marginal land, wind erosion intensified. Now accelerating wind erosion of soil and the resulting land abandonment are forcing people to migrate eastward, not unlike the U.S. westward migration from the southern Great Plains to California during the Dust Bowl years.
While plows are clearing land, expanding livestock populations are denuding the land of vegetation. Following economic reforms in 1978 and the removal of controls on the size of herds and flocks that collectives could maintain, livestock populations grew rapidly. Today China has 127 million cattle compared with 98 million in the United States. Its flock of 279 million sheep and goats compares with only 9 million in the United States.
In Gonge County in eastern Quinghai Province, the number of sheep that local grasslands can sustain is estimated at 3.7 million, but by the end of 1998, sheep numbers there had reached 5.5 million, far beyond the land's carrying capacity. The result is fast-deteriorating grassland, desertification, and the formation of sand dunes. In the New York Times, Beijing Bureau Chief Erik Eckholm writes that "the rising sands are part of a new desert forming here on the eastern edge of the Quinghai-Tibet Plateau, a legendary stretch once known for grass reaching as high as a horse's belly and home for centuries to ethnic Tibetan herders." Official estimates show 900 square miles (2,330 square kilometers) of land going to desert each year. An area several times as large is suffering a decline in productivity as it is degraded by overuse.
In addition to the direct damage from overplowing and overgrazing, the northern half of China is literally drying out as rainfall declines and aquifers are depleted by overpumping. Water tables are falling almost everywhere, gradually altering the region's hydrology. As water tables fall, springs dry up, streams no longer flow, lakes disappear, and rivers run dry. U.S. satellites, which have been monitoring land use in China for some 30 years, show that literally thousands of lakes in the North have disappeared.
Deforestation in southern and eastern China is reducing the moisture transported inland from the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Yellow Sea, writes Wang Hongchang, a Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Where land is forested, the water is held and evaporates to be carried further inland. When tree cover is removed, the initial rainfall from the inland-moving, moisture-laden air simply runs off and returns to the sea. As this recycling of rainfall inland is weakened by deforestation, rainfall in the interior is declining. Reversing this degradation means stabilizing population and planting trees everywhere possible to help recycle rainfall inland. It means converting highly erodible cropland back to grassland or woodland, reducing the livestock population, and planting tree shelter belts across the windswept areas of cropland, as U.S. farmers did to end dust storms in the 1930s.
In addition, another interesting option now presents itself-the use of wind turbines as windbreaks to reduce wind speed and soil erosion. With the cost of wind-generated electricity now competitive with that generated from fossil fuels, constructing rows of wind turbines in strategic areas to slow the wind could greatly reduce the erosion of soil. This also affords an opportunity to phase out the use of wood for fuel, thus lightening the pressure on forests.
The economics are extraordinarily attractive. In the U.S. Great Plains, under conditions similar to China's northwest, a large advanced design wind turbine occupying a tenth of a hectare of land can produce $100,000 worth of electricity per year. This source of rural economic regeneration fits in nicely with China's plan to develop the impoverished northwest.
Reversing desertification will require a huge effort, but if the dust bowl continues to spread, it will not only undermine the economy, but it will also trigger a massive migration eastward. The options are clear: Reduce livestock populations to a sustainable level or face heavy livestock losses as grassland turns to desert. Return highly erodible cropland to grassland or lose all of the land's productive capacity as it turns to desert. Construct windbreaks with a combination of trees and, where feasible, wind turbines, to slow the wind or face even more soil losses and dust storms.
If China cannot quickly arrest the trends of deterioration, the growth of the dust bowl could acquire an irreversible momentum. What is at stake is not just China's soil, but its future.
Additional data and information sources at http://www.earth-policy.org
5/23/01
4:59:07 PM
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
1. HOW DO WE SLEEP WHILE OUR LABS ARE BURNING? Federal authorities believe that two fires in the Northwest may have been set early on Monday by environmentalists opposed to genetic engineering. The arson at the University of Washington in Seattle appeared targeted at research to make genetically engineered trees more commercially viable, but authorities said the fire mostly destroyed or damaged work on endangered species, wetlands restoration, and urban forestry and gardening. Managers of an Oregon poplar nursery -- where arsonists set fires and left the spray-painted words "You cannot control what is wild" and "ELF" -- said they did not grow genetically engineered trees there, though the land used to be owned by a university genetics group. In the past, the Earth Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for arson and vandalism against the Vail ski resort in Colorado, a lumber yard in Oregon, and housing developments on Long Island.
straight to the source: New York Times, Sam Howe Verhovek and Carol Kaesuk Yoon, 23 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/23/science/23TREE.html>
straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Candace Heckman, 23 May 2001 <http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/24253_fire23.shtml>
read it only in Grist Magazine: A book review about the Vail fires <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books021901.stm?source=daily>
2. SPIN THE BOTTLE Escape to Wisconsin. Play in our lakes, fish our rivers, and cavort in the famously kitschy water parks of Wisconsin Dells. Just don't try to take a drop of water home with you. This, at least, is the stern message being sent by thousands of Wisconsin citizens to Perrier, the world's largest bottler of designer water. For the last few years, Perrier has been a-dowsin', seeking a Midwestern source for its Ice Mountain label. Government agencies have welcomed the company with open arms -- but Perrier didn't expect to encounter an angry and mobilized citizenry. Read more on the Grist Magazine website.
read it only in Grist Magazine: Spin the bottle -- in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/ness052101.stm?source=daily>
3. WITH A KNICK-KNACK, SARAWACK Elsewhere in Malaysia, the $5 billion, 2,400-megawatt Bakun Dam project is slated to flood a rainforest area the size of Singapore. The government says the dam is needed to help spur economic development and bring new industry to the 2 million residents of Sarawak, the country's largest state. But opponents say the dam will displace thousands of tribal minorities and destroy the habitat of 100 endangered species. Some 10,000 of Borneo's 200,000 indigenous peoples have already been forced off their ancestral lands to make way for the dam. Sarawak originally contained 21 million acres of rainforest; less than 1.2 million acres now remain and some observers expect those acres to be logged within five years.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Reese Erlich, 22 May 2001 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/05/22/MN153147.DTL>
5. POP THE CORKS Delegates from 127 countries yesterday formally moved to adopt a treaty to ban or reduce the use of 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs), chemicals such as PCBs and pesticides that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and genetic abnormalities in humans and wildlife. The treaty will be signed by delegates in Stockholm, Sweden, today, but it still must be ratified by at least 50 governments to take effect, a process that could take several years. Canada became the first country to ratify the treaty today. The gathering in Stockholm hasn't been as cheery as one might expect, as European Union officials have continued to criticize the U.S. for backing out of the Kyoto treaty on climate change and for pursuing an energy plan that promotes increased use of coal and oil.
straight to the source: USA Today, Associated Press, 22 May 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-22-un-chemicals.htm>
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Eva Sohlman and Alister Doyle, 23 May 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10918>
do good: Take action to ask for an even tougher chemical policy in Europe <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/toxic.stm?source=daily#europe>
6. THEY'VE GOT BALLS Vice President Dick Cheney was greeted by two standing ovations from the crowd yesterday at the annual conference sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute. Cheney is the architect of the Bush administration energy plan, which calls for increased use of nuclear power in the U.S. In celebration of the change of heart in Washington, D.C., where the nuclear industry had been on the outs for years, conference organizers gave out super balls that glow in the dark (no joke). Christian Poindexter, a nuclear power executive, said, "In my wildest dreams, when I was over at the White House in March, I couldn't imagine them getting so behind us."
do good: Watch a silly video and tell Bush to stop monkeying around with the country's energy policies <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/climate.stm?source=daily#plan>
Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:
A White House fuel-economy strategy -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha052201.stm?source=daily>
Vermont without maple syrup? -- Adam Markham, Clean Air-Cool Planet <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/markham052201.stm?source=daily>
U sexy Mother Nature -- 10 ways to phatten up environmentalism -- satire in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho050401.stm?source=daily>
5/23/01
4:17:12 PM
The Nation
"Stop The New Arms Race" is the call being put out by Project Abolition in response to George W. Bush's renewed interest (and investment) in the preposterous "Star Wars" missile defense scheme.
Despite being a major military boondoggle and likely leading to a US pull-out of the ABM Treaty, "Star Wars" is being pushed, in large part, by the fact that it's a terrific corporate welfare device. "Star Wars" spending was greased by the more than forty million dollars spent in campaign contributions and lobbying over the previous two years by weapons contractors set to profit handsomely by government investment in strategic missile defense.
In the 1980s, a movement of concerned citizens effectively voiced opposition to Ronald Reagan's nuclear arms build-up, highlighted by national actions on June 12, 1982, including a march and rally of more than one million people in New York City's Central Park. Now Project Abolition is calling on people to re-mobilize against George W. Bush's clear determination to take us back in time to a period of irresponsible U.S. nuclear unilaterialism.
A coalition of numerous groups, including The Nation Institute, Project Abolition was founded in 1999 to increase public awareness of nuclear danger and to build grassroots support in the United States for the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Energized by the increasing threats of the new administration, PA is staging a march and rally in Washington, DC on Sunday June 10. Among the many speakers will be Nation Institute Fellow and renown anti-nuclear writer and activist Jonathan Schell. Please consider coming out for what should be the start of sustained pressure on the government to stem U.S. nuclear adventurism.
Lafayette Park (just across the street from the White House) Washington, DC Sunday, June 10, 2:00pm
For more information, including details on special activist and lobbying training being conducted by PA, call 401-276-0377 or go to:
And check out these two Nation pieces for background info on this new incarnation of "Star Wars" and how it is actually just one layer of a much larger scheme to "control" space and "dominate" the earth:
KARL GROSSMAN AND JUDITH LONG: Lost In Space
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010604&s=grossman
WILLIAM HARTUNG and MICHELLE CIARROCCA: Star Wars II: Here We Go Again
http://past.thenation.com/issue/000619/0619hartung.shtml
5/23/01
3:37:24 PM
MediaChannel.org
AFFILIATE SPOTLIGHT: AFRICAN MEDIA
Five MediaChannel affiliates discuss their initiatives, the advantages of new technology and the challenges of struggling democracies.
http://www.mediachannel.org/affiliates/spotlight/02-front.shtml
UPDATED! THE GLOBAL NEWS INDEX
*Bookmark This!* Links to more than 1,000 newspapers and news sites from 150 countries. As transnational media companies grow and international coverage shrinks, you can locate the local story anywhere.
http://www.mediachannel.org/links/links-frameset.html
NEWS DISSECTOR: PROPAGANDA IN THE VISUAL AGE
Can pictures lie? They do and they have — throughout history. In this archived column, Danny Schechter looks at the impact of photojournalism in an age when you can't always believe what you see.
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/propaganda.shtml
MEDIA READER
The best media about the media. MediaChannel's international, biweekly, multimedia magazine
*Why Hollywood Movies Suck
*Concentration In Canada
*Kill Radio's Free Chaos
And much, much more... Plus: Streaming audio and video
http://www.mediachannel.org/news/mediareader
DAILY MEDIA NEWS
Breaking news stories about the media internationally, from mainstream and alternative sources.
http://www.mediachannel.org/news/today/
ACTIVISTS PUSH PARLIAMENT
An alliance of 30 British organizations is betting that "virtual voting" and "viral marketing" can end world poverty and promote human rights.
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#ukelection
THE ANIMATOR'S CRUSADE: POPULARITY'S PRICE
As more people watched Al Sacui's mesmerizing Web movie, his bandwidth use increased. When he was sent a $16,000 bill, he began this illustrated diary accusing his hosting company of fraud.
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#tnosepilot
BROADCAST POWER IN AFRICA
Ten years after the United Nation's landmark declaration promoting an "independent and pluralistic" African press, the 2001 Windhoek Charter demands action to protect broadcasting in the public interest.
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#charter
IN THE FACE OF DEATH
The Courage in Journalism Award honors women who have faced rape, bombings and jail to bring the truth to light.
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#courage
5/23/01
3:14:18 PM
1.3 Billion People Killed, Maimed, Sickened By Atmpospheric Testing And Nuclear Plants
"VICTIMS OF THE NUCLEAR AGE" Up to 1,300 million people have been killed, maimed