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Saturday, March 22, 2003
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Iraq marshes vanishing: "The United Nations has warned of a growing ecological catastrophe in southern Iraq. Satellite images show that less than 7% of the Mesopotamian marshes remain intact, the UN revealed at the World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan. The area where the rivers Tigris and Euphrates join in southern Iraq is thought by some to be the original site of the Garden of Eden. By 2000, it was estimated that 90% of the natural wetland had disappeared, through drainage works and dams upstream which restrict the flow of the rivers.
...Iraq says its engineering programmes were for reclaiming agricultural land and that it was running a relocation programme for the benefit of the marsh dwellers. But human rights groups and western governments accuse Baghdad of draining the marshes as a tactic of political repression. Tens of thousands of army deserters, political opponents and others sought shelter there in the 1990s, Human Rights Watch says.
The Iraqi regime began large-scale hydro-engineering projects in the marshes, building dams, canals and embankments. Water levels began to drop. In 1992 and 1993 reports emerged of a military campaign to flush out the wetlands. Refugees fleeing to Iran described artillery and aerial attacks on civilian areas, arrests and executions, mine-laying and the destruction of homes and properties.
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Tuesday, February 18, 2003
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The Weapon We Gave Iraq - Depleted Uranium: "Iraqi researchers say that the epicentre ("Ground Zero") for DU effects is around the city of Basra, in southern Iraq. It was here, in 1991, that U.S. and coalition jets ravaged the retreating Iraqi army, leaving behind the smoldering hulks of thousands of vehicles. The U.S. and British air forces expended an estimated 300 tonnes of depleted-uranium ammunition in and around this area; it has since been dubbed the "Highway of Death."
The preponderance of birth defects among children born in the Basra region over the past decade defies explanation....
Should U.S.-led forces again invade Iraq, and should Canadians join them (something that has not been ruled out by Defence Minister John McCallum), they would probably move from Kuwait straight up the Highway of Death to Basra. The aerosol from the depleted-uranium-coated shells has long since dissipated from the hulks of Iraqi vehicles along the road. But Iraqi scientists believe the particles remain in the desert sands. Uranium possesses a radioactive half-life of 200 million years; it would still pose a serious risk.
Despite increasing evidence linking DU to degenerative health disorders, the British and U.S. militaries steadfastly refuse to suspend their use of such weapons."
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Saturday, February 01, 2003
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Free speech struggle in Antarctica: "On Jan. 18, workers at McMurdo Station in Antarctica joined with millions of others around the world in protesting the war drive on Iraq. In red jackets, they formed a giant human peace sign on the ice against the backdrop of the towering Trans-Antarctic Range. WW3 REPORT sources at McMurdo report that moves to censure anti-war activities at the research base have precipitated a free speech struggle. "
See photo: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0119-02.htm
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Thursday, January 23, 2003
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Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn't need us. By Bill Joy, April 2000 "Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species."
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Saturday, December 28, 2002
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Rigorous Recycling: "Some 50.7 billion aluminum cans were tossed last year instead of being recycled... recycling of aluminum will dip below 50 percent this year, a rate not seen since 1986.... aluminum-can recycling is a bellwether for other kinds of recycling... because it's valuable, easy, and cheap to reuse."
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Ranchers Bristle as Gas Wells Loom on the Range: "no one questions the need for new sources of this clean-burning fossil fuel. What alarms ranchers, along with environmental groups, is the hugely disruptive process of getting gas out of all those wells. It is a 15-year-old drilling technique called coal-bed methane extraction, which can turn ranches and prairies into sprawling industrial zones, laced with wells, access roads, power lines, compressor stations and wastewater pits."
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Saturday, December 21, 2002
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Thursday, December 19, 2002
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A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy : "As American forces prepare to take on Iraq in a possible Gulf War II, analysts agree that the bad publicity and popular fears about depleted uranium (DU) use in the first Gulf War, and later in Kosovo and Afghanistan, have not dented Pentagon enthusiasm for its "silver bullet." US forces in Iraq will again deploy DU as their most effective - and most controversial - tank-busting bullet...
Another report by the British Atomic Energy Agency used an estimate of 40 tons of DU to create a hypothetical danger level, and predicted that that amount of DU - one-eighth of what actually was fired - could cause "500,000 potential deaths."
"I don't think we know if DU can be used safely, and until we know that, we shouldn't use it," says Chris Hellman, a senior analyst with Washington's Center for Defense Information."
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Wednesday, December 18, 2002
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NAFTA to Open Foodgates, Engulfing Rural Mexico: "on Jan. 1 tariffs on almost all agricultural imports from the United States will end. The looming deadline has consumed the attention of a nation where a quarter of the population lives in rural areas, and produced warnings about the possibility of unrest and increased migration across the Mexican countryside and into the United States, as millions of peasants are forced to abandon their tiny fields. In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers and their supporters have blocked highways and border crossings. They have temporarily shut down gas and electricity installations, and even burst into Congress on horseback."
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Monday, December 16, 2002
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Hydrogen: Empowering the People: JEREMY RIFKIN "While the fossil-fuel era enters its sunset years, a new energy regime is being born that has the potential to remake civilization along radically new lines--hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most basic and ubiquitous element in the universe. It never runs out and produces no harmful CO2 emissions when burned; the only byproducts are heat and pure water. That is why it's been called "the forever fuel." Hydrogen has the potential to end the world's reliance on oil."
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Saturday, December 14, 2002
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'Dominion': The Most Compassionate Conservative: DOMINION The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. By Matthew Scully. '''Dominion'' is important in large measure because the author, an avowed conservative Republican and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is an unexpected defender of animals against the depredations of profit-driven corporations, swaggering, gun-loving hunters, proponents of renewed ''harvesting'' of whales and elephants and others who insist that all of nature is humanity's romper room, to play with, rearrange and plunder at will.'
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Friday, December 13, 2002
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New Kind of Dam Rises in Switzerland: To Hold Back the Land: Global warming: "Swiss scientists are studying landslides to determine which ones may have been caused by melting permafrost. One terrifying instance was in September in the Caucasus, in Russia. There, scientists say, 140 million cubic feet of rock layers, including a mass of ice, rock and ferns, snapped off and began a free fall down the the northern slope of Kazbek Mountain, gathering fresh mud, trees and rock until it hit the Kolka Glacier. A portion of the glacier sheared off and an estimated 2.1 billion cubic feet of snow, trees, ice, debris, rock, mud and water continued to rumble toward the bottom of the mountain. It landed in the Genaldon Gorge, near Karmadon, and killed about 140 people. The compressed avalanche dammed several lakes, including one whose water rose to flood level, threatening a second village."
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Tuesday, December 10, 2002
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The Land That War Protected: "a preserve carved from the [Korea] demilitarized zone could be the source for replenishing endangered plants and animals lost to development in both North and South. It could also serve as a laboratory to study nature's resilience. In little more than five decades, the natural world has reclaimed an area devastated by war. There is no comparable place on earth. However, the window of opportunity for preservation may be closing. In September the two Koreas signed an agreement to build two rail lines and adjacent highways through the zone. Efforts to remove mines have already begun. Roads are likely to follow, and thereafter harm to the environment."
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Rural America's new problem: handling sprawl | csmonitor.com: "Missouri... represents trends taking place around the country. Joplin and the state's three other smaller metro areas grew faster during the 1990s than the state's two largest metro areas - Kansas City and St. Louis - according to a new report on Missouri growth patterns released Sunday by the Brookings Institution in Washington. More telling, unincorporated, "open country" areas of the state saw population rise an average 12.3 percent. That's 50 percent faster than the population growth in Missouri's cities and towns... The result is a thinning and spreading of population that looks all too familiar to smart-growth advocates:"
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After Top Job at Yosemite, He's Hanging Up the Ranger Hat: "After 30 years with the National Park Service, Mr. Mihalic is at the top of his career in a high-visibility assignment, a member of the federal government's prestigious Senior Executive Service, and recently picked by the Bush administration as the next superintendent for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the country's most visited national park. But Mr. Mihalic is saying goodbye to it all. On Jan. 3, he will retire...
Mr. Mihalic said the Bush administration wanted him to push through two contentious proposals at Great Smoky. The proposals, a land swap and a road project, had long been opposed by the National Park Service because of environmental concerns but had been backed by some influential Republicans in North Carolina and Tennessee. "
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Monday, December 09, 2002
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Growing Poverty Is Shrinking Mexico's Rain Forest: "Five miles up a muddy trail from Emiliano Zapata, in southeastern Chiapas State, is Mexico's largest unpolluted lake, Laguna Miramar, and beyond that stands the last rain forest in Mexico. But today almost half a million poor people, speaking six different languages, live in that dying forest. For some here in Chiapas, the issue is turning from saving the trees to saving the people. A century of government reaching into this most remote corner of Mexico has left most citizens with next to nothing. "
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Use of Renewable Energy Took a Big Fall in 2001: "Consumption of energy from renewable sources, like the sun, the wind and biological fuels, fell sharply in 2001, the Department of Energy has reported. The department attributed much of the decline to a drought that cut generation of hydroelectric power by 23 percent. Such variations are natural. But in a report last month, the department's Energy Information Administration also said solar equipment was being retired faster than new equipment was being built."
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Grand Soviet Scheme for Sharing Water in Central Asia Is Foundering: "From the mountainous Chinese border to the Caspian Sea, the Soviet Union remade the two grand rivers of Central Asia, building 20,000 miles of canals, 45 dams and more than 80 reservoirs. The government turned sand and dust into one of the world's great cotton-growing regions. But the Soviet Union is long dead. And here in western Uzbekistan and in areas of its four neighbors, one of socialism's most grandiose schemes is being sundered by capitalism, nationalism and a legacy of waste. Without a bigger supply of water -- or better use of it -- an economic and social crisis seems to be awaiting the region of 58 million people"
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Thursday, December 05, 2002
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Wednesday, December 04, 2002
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Tuesday, December 03, 2002
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Can Global Warming Be Studied Too Much?: "Bush administration convenes a three-day meeting here to set its new agenda for research on climate change. But many climate experts who will attend say talking about more research will simply delay decisions that need to be made now to avert serious harm from global warming. President Bush has called for a decade of research before anything beyond voluntary measures is used to stem tailpipe and smokestack emissions of heat-trapping gases that scientists say are contributing to global warming.... But many climate experts say the perennial need for more study can no longer justify further delays in emission cuts. "
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Saturday, November 30, 2002
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'One World': The Moral and Practical Challenges of Globalization: "Peter Singer's timely and thoughtful book, ''One World: The Ethics of Globalization.'' A professor of bioethics at Princeton University and one of the most provocative philosophers of our time, Singer writes, ''How well we come through the era of globalization (perhaps whether we come through it at all) will depend on how we respond ethically to the idea that we live in one world.'' "
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Saturday, November 23, 2002
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Should churches convert drivers of SUVs? | csmonitor.com: "Economist Michelle White of University of California at San Diego calculated the effect of SUVs and light trucks on traffic safety. Many people purchase SUVs to make their families safer, but the cost is extremely high, Dr. White said in an interview. "My calculations suggested that for every accident involving a fatality that you avoided by buying a bigger vehicle, you cause 2 1/2 accidents involving fatalities for vehicles that you hit."
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E.P.A. Says It Will Change Rules Governing Industrial Pollution: "Bush administration today announced the most sweeping move in a decade to loosen industrial air pollution rules. The administration said the changes would encourage plant improvements that would clean the air. But critics denounced the changes as a retreat from tougher rules now in place that require factories to make costly investments in pollution control equipment when they modernize."
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As Andean Glaciers Shrink, Water Worries Grow: "In a phenomenon scientists here and abroad call a calamity in the making, the glaciers of the central Andes are vanishing because of global warming driven at least in part by pollution. Their disappearance, scientists now say, is nearly unavoidable and could lead to water shortages in places like Bolivia and Peru that depend on glaciers and the rain and snow that fall on the mountains for water for drinking, irrigating fields and generating electricity... Scientists say that without the glaciers the region's natural water cycle will be disrupted. Glaciers release water in dry seasons and collect it in rainy ones. "It's a natural dam," said Lonnie Thompson, a research scientist at the Byrd Center who has studied Andean glaciers closely. "Some people refer to these glaciers as the world's water towers, and once they're dry, you lose that water."
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Wednesday, November 20, 2002
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Proud, patriotic & green | csmonitor.com: "In ads, articles, and websites, environmentalists have pulled a page from President Bush's patriotic playbook, selling their cause of energy conservation against a backdrop of national security."
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Wednesday, November 13, 2002
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Government Outlines Plan for Research on Warming: "Bush administration, saying there are still many uncertainties about threats posed by human-caused climate change, has outlined a broad, years-long research agenda on global warming. Among many other goals, the draft plan calls for new work to be completed in the next four years to clarify how much of the warming since 1950 has been caused by human actions like emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide or soot; to explain differing temperature trends in the upper and lower atmosphere; and to improve computer models that simulate climate and monitoring systems for tracking the real thing. Advertisement The proposal was lauded yesterday by industry officials and some scientists who have long questioned the mainstream view that global warming is mainly caused by people and poses big risks....Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton who has long advocated acting promptly to reduce emissions, said: "The plan veers off into emphasizing what we don't know at the expense of a thorough description of what we do know. If you strip away the rhetoric, there's a valuable agenda of research here to pursue. The danger is that while they're continuing to do the research, the window of opportunity to avoid dangerous global warming is closing." "
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Monday, November 11, 2002
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An Animal's Place: "The industrialization -- and dehumanization -- of American animal farming is a relatively new, evitable and local phenomenon: no other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to do it this way. Tail-docking and sow crates and beak-clipping would disappear overnight, and the days of slaughtering 400 head of cattle an hour would come to an end. For who could stand the sight? Yes, meat would get more expensive. We'd probably eat less of it, too, but maybe when we did eat animals, we'd eat them with the consciousness, ceremony and respect they deserve. "
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Saturday, October 05, 2002
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As Trees Die, Biologists Battle Back the fast-spreading new disease known as sudden oak death syndrome. .... The disease has already killed tens of thousands of trees in California and spread to 17 different species, including huckleberry, big leaf maples, rhododendrons and bay trees. Scientists have found it can also infect the northern red oak and pin oak, species that are widespread in the East and Midwest. Recently, the United States Forest Service declared large regions of the East, including the southern Appalachian Mountains, whose climate would probably suit the disease, as areas of high risk. In September, scientists reported that the disease was attacking the beloved redwood and the Douglas fir....... bay trees appear to be infected in leaves and nowhere else. More surprisingly, these leaves, whose only symptoms are small discolorations, are so full of spores that the laboratory machinery cannot detect the total number. ... The finding revealed bay trees, not oak trees, to be the unexpected, key disperser of the disease....
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Thursday, September 12, 2002
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A World That is Not Just Ours Two Veteran Conservationists Challenge Americans to Take the Lead in Preserving Wildlife.... "joined the Peace Corps in 1973, spent two years teaching in... Zaire, and fell in love with Africa. Even before their Peace Corps days ended, they knew they wanted to come back. Within a few years, they found their way to Rwanda and the mountain gorillas of the Parc National des Volcans.... “I was very content to be running the Africa programs, but meanwhile, I’m reading about spotted owls and wolves here in the United States. It seemed odd to me that we’re asking the world’s poorest people to live with tigers and elephants, but we won’t live with wolves. We’re asking other countries not to log while we knock down our own forests."
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Wednesday, August 21, 2002
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Blueberries and Huckleberries: "Whortleberry from the Anglo-Saxon and Bilberry from the Danish are European names for Blueberries, Fifteen or 20 species of them are found in North America. Most kinds bear fruit in clusters. There are also about 40 species of Huckleberries, all native to North America, but in some parts of the United States the name "huckleberry" is improperly used for both blueberries and true huckleberries. Other people mistakenly believe that blueberries always have blue or bluish fruit, and that all huckleberries are black or purplish black. However, there are dark-colored blueberries, and huckleberries that are distinctly blue, but there is a sure way to tell one from the other: blueberries have a large number of tiny soft seeds, whereas the huckleberries have 10 rather large, bony seeds."
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Friday, July 26, 2002
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Back to the Drawing Board: WTC replacement designs: " The Lower Manhattan and Port Authority planners understood their obligation in the narrow sense: to serve their clients, forgetting their larger obligation to the people of New York. While they made much of designing for the millions who are expected to visit the memorial, they neglected the men, women and children who live and work and go to school and play in the area now and will do so in the future. Most significantly, the planners left out residential buildings from the site. "
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Thursday, July 11, 2002
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U.S. Law Imperils Colombia Coca Spraying: "Even as the Bush administration is trying to increase the aerial spraying of drug crops in Colombia with herbicides, an American law enacted in January threatens to disrupt the strategy and possibly even halt it. A little-noticed provision in the $15.4 billion spending measure for government operations abroad requires that the American-backed program to eradicate coca crops in Colombia must meet the same health and safety standards that would apply if the herbicides were being sprayed in the United States."
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Tuesday, July 09, 2002
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Aid for [Mexican] Farmers Helps Butterflies Too: "Working in eight different poor, rural communities around the butterfly's roosting grounds and with nearly no talk of monarchs, Alternare is succeeding by providing villagers with knowledge they actually want. The group is teaching farmers how to build a house of longer-lasting adobe using one tree rather than a faster-decomposing home that requires 25, how to farm without chemical fertilizers and how to keep this rugged land productive so farmers need not continually move to newly logged territory. While improving the farmers' lives, Alternare, by no coincidence, is improving the situation of the butterflies as well."
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Friday, July 05, 2002
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EPA says toxic sludge is good for fish: " The Army Corps of Engineers' dumping of toxic sludge into the Potomac River protects fish by forcing them to flee the polluted area and escape fishermen, according to an internal Environmental Protection Agency document."
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Wednesday, June 26, 2002
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The Poison Is Arsenic, and the Suspect Wood: "chromated copper arsenate, or C.C.A., the predominant wood preservative in the United States and the subject of an emerging body of product liability lawsuits around the country... prevents decay and repels termites. It also contains arsenic... The Environmental Protection Agency and manufacturers of treated wood advise consumers not to use wood with surface residue; to wear gloves, a dust mask and goggles while sawing; to saw outdoors; and never to burn the wood."
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Friday, June 14, 2002
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Activists Win Award in False Arrests: "Radical environmentalist Darryl Cherney said past targets of the FBI -- from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Hollywood radicals -- share in a court victory by him and another Earth First! activist over law enforcement officials. Twelve years after Cherney and Judi Bari were arrested in the bombing of their own car, they were awarded $4.4 million Tuesday in a federal suit claiming they were framed by Oakland police and FBI agents. After 17 days of deliberations, jurors awarded the money to Cherney and the estate of Bari, who died of cancer in 1997."
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Friday, May 31, 2002
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Bush's Decision on Oil Angers Californians: "President Bush sat next to his brother Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, and vowed to spend $235 million to buy a number of highly unpopular oil leases in a state where his brother is running for re-election and that handed him the presidency in 2000 by the slimmest of margins. Jeb Bush acknowledged that he would probably gain politically from the plan. But he and the president insisted that it was also sound policy because the move would protect beaches and wetlands. All of this has prompted officials in California, a heavily Democratic state that President Bush lost by a lopsided margin, to ask why saving their beaches and sensitive environment was not as high a priority, particularly since many here have been fighting offshore oil leases in the Santa Barbara area for decades."
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Thursday, May 30, 2002
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Data Is Found to be Lacking on Reactions of Chemicals: "review of 167 industrial accidents since 1980 in which chemical reactions caused deaths, injuries or serious damage, federal safety experts have found that more than half involved substances that are not regulated by worker safety and environmental agencies.... Without improvements in rules and practices, it will be hard to avoid more accidents and "adequately understand root causes and lessons learned" when one does occur, according to the report, which is to be released today."
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Tuesday, May 28, 2002
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What Makes a Glacier Go? Scientists Look Inside: "Enter a hole in the mountain resembling a sewer pipe. Don a hard hat, miner's light and rubber boots, and walk a mile as the tunnel slowly widens until it is big enough for a truck and is lighted by dim electric bulbs. Pass through a vast cement wall that in summer holds back a subterranean torrent. Find and climb the 79 wood steps that lead up through the tunnel roof. You are now at the bottom of the glacier. There are 700 feet of ice above you, and it all seems to be dripping down your neck. Fumble your way up 15 feet of slippery rock, gripping the ice walls for balance. At the top is a flat spot inside a shimmering wonderland. Long blades of ice â014 some glowing white in the work lamp, some filthy with gray glacial sediment â014 are coming at you from every direction. They are literally coming at you. This cave, just big enough for 10 people to stand in, did not exist two days before, and it will not exist in two more. It was carved out with a warm-water jet, and the ice, flowing like toothpaste at these depths, began pressing back in as soon as it was shut off."
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Saturday, May 25, 2002
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Japan Cuts Whaling Rights for Native Peoples of Arctic: "Frustrated by a string of defeats at the International Whaling Commission meeting here, Japan retaliated today, leading a successful movement to deny Alaska and Siberian native peoples a renewal of permission to hunt whales. It was the first time in the 56-year history of the commission that quotas allowing aboriginal subsistence whaling had been rejected.... Representatives of some of the world's largest environmental groups - rarely defenders of whaling - said they were shocked by what one called the callous politics of the Japanese move. Richard N. Mott, vice president for international policy at the World Wildlife Fund, said: ``Using native Arctic nations as pawns in a political battle between superpowers in unconscionable. It has done enormous damage to Japan's reputation.''"
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Friday, May 24, 2002
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Wanted: Ladybug Tenants: ""We've done quite a bit of research on releasing lady beetles and what we find is about 95% you release fly away within 12 hours," Flint of UC Davis said. "But if you have a high aphid population, a small percentage of them will stick around and clean up the plant." The cost of buying the ladybugs was just slightly less than... $20 "
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Thursday, May 23, 2002
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Council Tracks Oil Pollution Causes: "-- Leaking oil tankers produce dramatic photos, but a new study says the vast majority of the human-related petroleum released into U.S. coastal waters comes from consumers, not the ships that carry the oil. The National Research Council reported Thursday that about 29 million gallons of oil enters the oceans around North America each year as a result of human activities. Of that, the largest share, 15.6 million gallons, comes from rivers and runoff, largely from such things as street runoff, industrial waste, municipal wastewater and wastewater from refineries. In addition, 1.6 million gallons of the pollution comes from recreational vessels, where two-stroke engines that mix oil and gas are often used in personal watercraft and as outboard engines."
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Monday, May 20, 2002
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Lady Beetle, HYG-2002-98: "How to Attract Native Beetles Grow pollen and vector flowers (angelica, dill); grow grains and allow weeds (dandelion, wild carrot, yarrow). Wheast is a combination of whey and yeast that can be sprayed on plants to attract lady beetles (wheast is an artificial diet). Protect egg clusters, larvae, and pupae on plants. To conserve lady beetles, use only selective pesticides. "
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Thursday, May 09, 2002
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House Backs Plan to Store Atomic Waste in Nevada: "While Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, said adoption of the Yucca Mountain site would enable Nevada to reclaim its "nuclear heritage," Representative Berkley said Nevadans wanted none of that heritage because the government lied to them in the 1950's when it told them there was no danger from atomic bomb tests. She said that many Nevadans had died of cancer and that the government was now "asking us to trust them like our parents and grandparents did." "
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Tuesday, May 07, 2002
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Dry High Plains Are Blowing Away, Again: "The soil is on the move again in the High Plains, drifting over a swath of the American midsection calcified by drought. For some, it is reviving memories of a time when the world seemed to blow away. There have been serious droughts here before, some as fierce as the dry spells of the 1930's. But this drought is among the worst, and in some counties, particularly in the northern plains, it is the most devastating in more than a century."
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Dams, and Politics, Channel Flow of the Mighty Missouri River: "By the end of this month, the Army Corps of Engineers will decide whether to alter flows in the Missouri. But no matter what the corps decides, there will be challenges in the courts and a long-running battle will continue in Congress among influential lawmakers representing far ends of the 2,341-mile-long river. In Congressional disputes over the Missouri, parochialism almost always trumps party loyalty and political ideology. The hundreds of biologists, hydrologists and other river experts who assembled here in April agreed that the scientific debate about how best to rescue the Missouri had been over for years — and the restoration of seasonal river flows had won."
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Tuesday, April 30, 2002
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From Tree-Hugger to Terrorist: " Almost two years ago, he and an accomplice were caught after they firebombed a Chevrolet dealership in Eugene, Ore. He says he did it to punish carmakers and consumers for their love affair with the gas-hogging S.U.V. Although the pair never claimed the bombing on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front (E.L.F.) -- the eco-terror group that has inflicted, along with its ally the Animal Liberation Front (A.L.F.), more than $43 million in damage on farmers, scientists, foresters, universities, housing developers and business owners -- their crime fit the profile of a classic E.L.F. action. " - long piece in NYT Magazine
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Monday, April 29, 2002
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Nuclear Waste Move Spews Political Fallout in 2 States: "heavily armed convoy of trucks is to begin rolling from Colorado to a government fortress near here along the Savannah River. It will carry the first shipment of 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium once aimed at the Soviet Union. After it arrives, the plutonium is to be converted to fuel for nuclear power plants. But a number of arms control advocates and Democratic politicians here say a principal purpose of the shipment is to enhance the re-election prospects of Senator Wayne Allard, a Republican from Colorado who is campaigning on his efforts to rid his state of plutonium. Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, a Democrat, has been trying for months to get the shipments delayed"
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The Heat Before the Cold: " global warming could actually bring colder temperatures to some highly populated areas like Eastern North America and Western Europe."
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Study Sees 6,000 Deaths From Power Plants: "A study prepared by a private contractor estimates that pollution from more than 80 power plants owned by eight electric utilities will cause nearly 6,000 premature deaths in the year 2007. The number is lower than the estimated number of deaths by pollution now because the air is getting cleaner, but the utility industry still cast doubt on the study's credibility."
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Wednesday, April 24, 2002
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U.S. Forces Out Head of Chemical Arms Agency: "The firing of Mr. Bustani follows the removal last week of Robert Watson, a British-born climatologist who had been outspoken on the threat of global warming, as the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was removed after pressure from Washington and at least one American oil company."
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Monday, April 08, 2002
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Journal Raises Doubts on Biotech Study: "Five months after publishing a report that Mexican native corn was contaminated with genetically engineered DNA, the journal Nature made the highly unusual move yesterday of announcing that it should not have published the work.... The original study alarmed environmentalists because the native corn varieties had been collected from a region considered to be the world's center of diversity for corn... The conclusion of contamination has largely remained unchallenged. Instead, scientists have focused their criticism on data suggesting that genetically engineered DNA might behave in unexpected ways, scattering around the genome -- something that opponents of so-called FrankenDNA have feared. It is that suggestion, and dissatisfaction with the quality of the work, that have caused ink to be poured and mud to be slung."
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Thursday, April 04, 2002
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Deciphering Contradictory Antarctic Climate Patterns: "Antarctica's role in climate and the oceans is largely a story of ice. Ninety percent of the world's ice lies either on the continent, in ice sheets that are on average 1.3 miles thick, or in sheets that have flowed offshore to form floating platforms of ice along the coast, hundreds to thousands of feet thick. The largest of these, the Ross Ice Shelf, covers 200,000 square miles, an area about the size of France."
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Monday, April 01, 2002
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Words From The Wise: "[Scott] Nearing's criticisms and conclusions about war, profit-making, pollution and politics led him to become the practical conservationist who was associated with the "back to the land" movement. As the war on terrorism is expands, it's worth returning to Nearing's writing and his model of living in harmony with nature. The words of this great teacher still ring strong in my ears, as does the image of an old man continuing to chop his own wood to heat his house. Rereading Nearing inspires and reminds me: the struggle against American war-making that he began 80 years ago endures -- one which I remain committed to continue during this new century. "
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Saturday, March 30, 2002
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Pentagon Seeks Exemption From Environmental Laws: "Concerned that several environmental laws are interfering with the military's ability to train soldiers and develop weapons, the Pentagon is seeking a Congressional exemption from an array of measures that have protected endangered species and their habitats for years."
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Plastic Recycling Is a Work in Progress. At first glance, plastics recycling looks like an economic and environmental success story. Yet few companies have achieved the economies of scale that could make recycling pay.
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Oil Company Proves Bush Wrong On Climate Change: "BP chief executive John Browne announced that his company had met its self-imposed target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- nearly eight years ahead of schedule, and at no net cost to the company. It was Browne who, five years earlier at Stanford, had sent shock waves through the energy industry by announcing that his company had decided that the risks of climate change justified precautionary action. "
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Thursday, March 28, 2002
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New Plan Redesigns Plumbing of Everglades: "Day and night, water managers type and click, banking or moving water through 1,800 miles of canals and gates and pipes and valves. But the system was built to serve people. Nature has mostly been an afterthought. "
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Bush Energy Order Wording Mirrors Oil Lobby's Proposal : "The similarity was identified yesterday by the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups that forced Monday's disclosure of Energy Department documents. The NRDC said the wording was unusually expansive. "The oil companies seem to be putting words in our president's mouth," "
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Tuesday, March 26, 2002
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Timber Company Reduces Cutting of Old-Growth Trees: "But some timber companies find it unlikely that a few cancellations will have much influence on the way they harvest wood. Indeed, some loggers say homeowners' appetite for moldings, decks and other details carved from old trees like redwood has never been harder to satisfy"
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Energy Chief Met Envoys From Industry: "first wave of documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force today. The papers showed that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, a member of the panel, met with three dozen energy industry representatives but with no consumer or conservation groups in preparing the national energy strategy last year."
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Missouri: Stop Studying and Do Something!: "Missouri River ecosystem is in a significant state of decline. There's been a lot of degradation of the ecological properties of the system. There's ample scientific evidence to credibly demonstrate that and there doesn't need to be any more research done to make that credible. The most important thing is to undertake some immediate action."
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Saturday, March 23, 2002
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A Bias Toward Waste: "vehicles will also allow manufacturers to exploit a loophole in the government's outdated fuel economy standards to sell inefficient -- if highly profitable -- cars. The Senate had a chance last week to tighten these standards and do something meaningful about global warming and the country's dependence on foreign oil. It surrendered instead to a fear campaign mounted by the companies and the United Automobile Workers"
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Friday, March 22, 2002
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Lead Company Agrees to Buy Homes. The owner of the nation's largest lead smelter has agreed to buy 160 nearby homes to protect the community's children from pollution. By The Associated Press.
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Disease stalks new megacities: "Two leading British development groups gave warning yesterday that sanitation in many of the world's cities is in crisis and will dramatically worsen with the continuing growth of cities and slums. Poor sanitation.. has become a development scandal: 2.5 billion people, 40% of the world's population, lack access to even the most minimal toilet facilities and up to 6,000 children a day die from water-borne diseases which could be eradicated cheaply and quickly"
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Files Detail Debate in E.P.A. on Clean Air: "White House and the energy industry have pushed the agency to revise a regulation that compels companies, mostly power plants and oil refineries, to modernize pollution control equipment when they upgrade their plants. The industry has argued that the regulation, called new source review, is onerous and contradictory."
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Law Revises Standards for Scientific Study: "a little-noticed law called the Data Quality Act, signed in the waning days of the Clinton administration, has set off a fierce debate over how best to weigh health and environmental risks. The law -- supported, and largely written, by industry-backed groups -- requires the government for the first time to set standards for the quality of scientific information and statistics used and disseminated by federal agencies. It would create a system in every government agency under which anyone could point out errors in documents and regulations. If the complaints were borne out, the agency would have to expunge the data from government Web sites and publications. More broadly, opponents of the new law say that while nobody wants the government to issue flawed data, the new process could undermine valid regulations and stifle government efforts to convey information on issues like climate change and cancer risks."
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Tuesday, March 19, 2002
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St. Louis : Chemicals turn up in well near old nuclear fuel plant: "Officials with Westinghouse Electric Co. have warned 18 homeowners who live near what used to be a nuclear fuel plant in Jefferson County that their drinking water might be contaminated. Company officials said Monday that a well tested last week showed traces of trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene. The chemicals were used as cleaning agents at the facility in Hematite, about 35 miles south of St. Louis, in the 1950s and 1960s. Westinghouse bought the plant about two years ago. The finding, at a home about a half-mile south of the plant, follows an announcement last month that contaminants had surfaced in another well north of the plant."
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St. Louis : Proposed asphalt plant would face tough scrutiny: "even if the asphalt facility met minimum standards, it would add to the pollution burden faced by residents of nearby neighborhoods. "There's no reason for them to place a dangerous facility in a low-income neighborhood so they can build roads in West County," Berg said. "North St. Louis already has a disproportionate share of air polluting facilities." The plant would be the second asphalt producer in the city,"
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Friday, March 15, 2002
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ANWR and Peas: "the Senate voted down a proposal by John Kerry and John McCain to raise mileage standards on automobiles. ... What prevailed was an alliance between conservatives who hate the very idea of conservation, on one side, and union leaders trying to demonstrate their influence by making politicians jump. It's the same alliance that, last summer, led the House to support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) by a surprisingly large margin....The surprise is that this dishonest anti-conservationism got crucial support from the United Auto Workers. There's no good reason to think that higher efficiency standards would actually cost any automobile worker jobs"
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Thursday, March 14, 2002
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Jim Hightower: DUMPING TOXIC TRASH ON POOR NATIONS - "Technically, says the [computer] industry, the discarded electronics are not dumped, but "recycled." In reality what happens is that poor Asians are paid a pittance to scavenge various metals and other resellable compounds out of these machines. Indeed, about 100,000 people -- including thousands of children -- in Guiya [China] toil in the midst of piles of electronic trash, smelting circuit boards, using acid to extract traces of gold, dumping cathode ray tubes filled with lead, opening toner cartridges by hand to brush the toxic toner into buckets, and burning plastic components. Guiyu's groundwater is now so polluted that the people have to truck in water for human use. "
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Monday, March 11, 2002
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Talk of New Drilling Raises Doubts on Alaska Pipeline: "In 1999, six employees of the company who did not give their names wrote to federal officials arguing that neglect and maintenance cuts on the pipeline could lead to disaster. "It won't be a single gasket, or valve, or wire, or procedure, or person that will cause the catastrophe," wrote the employees, who said they all had at least 10 years of experience on the pipeline. "It will be a combination of small, perhaps seemingly inconsequential events and conditions that will lead to the accident that we're all dreading and powerless to prevent." "
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Thursday, March 07, 2002
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Landscapes Under Siege: "memo reminded the state office [of US Interior Dept] that "when an application for permission to drill comes in the door," that work should be "their number 1 priority." With pressure like this, it is little wonder that Utah's land managers are moving so fast that they trip over the law."
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Novelist Arundhati Roy Convicted of Contempt: "jailed Wednesday after the Supreme Court convicted her of criminal contempt for suggesting it was trying to ``silence criticism'' of its approval of a hydroelectric project."
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Tuesday, March 05, 2002
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Energy Dept. Sued Over Nuclear Waste: "a proposal to abandon radioactive waste that has been buried in storage tanks, a practice environmentalists say could threaten water resources. The tanks, buried at sites in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina, held millions of gallons of liquid acid used to reprocess spent fuel rods until the late 1990s"
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Study Ties Lung Cancer, Air Pollution: " Long-term exposure to the air pollution in some of America's biggest metropolitan areas significantly raises the risk of dying from lung cancer and is about as dangerous as living with a smoker"
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Russia's [concerns]... About U.S. Chickens: "warnings from Russian officials that much of American poultry -- loaded with antibiotics, stuffed with hormones and preservatives and generally unnatural -- presents an unacceptable threat to Russian health. Others suspect the minister may be reacting to pressure from Russian farmers, who are battling a deluge of cheap American chickens. "
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Friday, March 01, 2002
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Two Thousand Acres: " the House version of the Bush-Cheney energy plan ... promises that "surface acreage covered by production and support facilities" will not exceed 2,000 acres. It's a reassuring picture: a tiny enclave of development, practically lost in the Arctic vastness. But that picture is a fraud. "
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Top G.O.P. Donors in Energy Industry Met Cheney Panel: "Eighteen of the energy industry's top 25 financial contributors to the Republican Party advised Vice President Dick Cheney's national energy task force last year, according to interviews and election records. "
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Thursday, February 28, 2002
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Judge Orders Release of Energy Panel's Files: "In a setback to the Bush administration, a federal judge has ordered the Energy Department to release thousands of documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney's national energy task force. The judge, Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court here, ordered the department to turn over 7,584 pages of records that the Natural Resources Defense Council had sought in April under a Freedom of Information Act request."
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Wednesday, February 27, 2002
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Make Wells, Not War: "Bangladesh ... millions of lives could be saved for as little as $20 a pop... . In that impoverished South Asian nation, an estimated 35 to 70 million people are drinking arsenic-contaminated water. A 2001 report published by the World Health Organization called it "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history." In some areas, the water is more than 50 times what WHO deems healthy. Arsenic exposure leads to lung, bladder, and kidney cancer after two decades, not to mention diabetes and heart disease. In some villages the majority of the population already suffers from disfiguring skin lesions from prolonged exposure to arsenic. As an environmental disaster it dwarfs Chernobyl and Bhopal. The arsenic is naturally occurring. Ironically, the fact that so many people are drinking the poisoned water now is the result of an otherwise successful development initiative over the last two decades. "
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For Democrats, a Continental Divide on Guns: "Jim Posewitz, a retired biologist for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks who is a respected writer of books on the ethics and legacy of hunting, said labeling Democrats as antigun "has taken away from a more important issue," the growing threats to close off access to public lands for hunting and the need to conserve wildlife. "There is irony in this," said Mr. Posewitz, who has no political affiliation. The Democrats, he said, are stronger supporters of keeping access to public lands and preserving wildlife, while leading Republicans in Montana, he said, have abandoned the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and pushed to close access to public lands and turn hunting into a rich man's sport on private game farms. "A lot of people who hunt only hear the charges that the Democrats will take away their guns," Mr. Posewitz said. "And so they overlook the bigger question.""
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In Corn's Cradle, U.S. Imports Bury Family Farms: ""Corn growing has basically collapsed in Mexico," Carlos Heredia Zubieta, an economist and a member of Mexico's Congress, said in a recent speech to an American audience. "The flood of imports of basic grains has ravaged the countryside, so the corn growers are here instead of working in the fields." The facts are stark. Since Nafta took effect eight years ago, imports of corn to Mexico from the United States have increased nearly eighteenfold, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. The imports will probably keep growing for the next six years as the final phases of Nafta take effect. In the United States, corn growers receive billions of dollars a year in subsidies from Congress, much of it going to huge agribusiness operations. That policy fuels huge surpluses and pushes corn prices down.....One unforeseen result of the collapse of corn farming, Mr. Nadal warns, will be the loss of genetically unique kinds of corn. As imports grow and farmers give up their fields, he said, ancient varieties like the succulent blue corn used for tortillas may be endangered. Some may already be lost, he said. "
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Tuesday, February 26, 2002
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Monday, February 25, 2002
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Web Site Helped Change Farm Policy: "www.ewg.org, operated by the Environmental Working Group, a small nonprofit organization with the simple idea that the taxpayers who underwrite $20 billion a year in farm subsidies have the right to know who gets the money."
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Bush Proposing to Shift Burden of Toxic Cleanups to Taxpayers: "Under pressure from the chemical and oil industries, Congress let the corporate taxes expire in 1995. Without them, the trust fund dwindled, from a high of $3.8 billion in 1996 to a projected $28 million next year. President Bush did not reauthorize the taxes last year in his first budget, and his proposed budget for 2003 explicitly states that he will not do so."
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NRDC: Nation of Poisons: David Corn - "America has elected to live with various poisons in order to have more and cheaper goods and power. The potential hazards to people and the environment posed by these substances -- and by their manufacture, storage, and transportation in large quantities -- were often dismissed. This country, like many others, tolerated the assorted costs: environment-damaging spills, increased cancers, occupational injuries, the buildup of toxic wastes that could not be permanently and safely disposed of. On September 11, the price of this relationship with toxics went up."
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Sunday, February 24, 2002
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DANGER IN THE ATTIC: "Hundreds ... have died from exposure to asbestos in Zonolite, which can be found in millions of homes across the country. But the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal health and safety groups ... have failed to warn the public about the potential hazard in their homes. Zonolite came from ore in a now-closed 80-year-old vermiculite mine that was owned since 1963 by W.R. Grace & Co. in Libby, Mont, ... where hundreds of miners and their relatives have died of asbestos-related diseases."
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Friday, February 22, 2002
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The NRC: What, me worry - The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "The NRC's principal interest is in assisting the industry, keeping regulatory burdens and expenses to a bare minimum, and helping to jumpstart the nuclear enterprise. But the risk of terrorist attack at one or more nuclear plants is simply too great to allow this failed agency and the industry it allegedly regulates to continue to ignore the need to provide reasonable protection. The industry's short-term economic or political concerns pale in comparison to the damage that would occur if attackers turn the nation's reactors into radiological weapons."
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Wednesday, February 20, 2002
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Drought on East Coast Raises Worries of Water Rationing: "Hydrologists know that the full effect of the drought will not be felt for five more weeks, when lawns, trees and crops begin to search for moisture in the dry earth. But botanists, wildlife experts and farmers are already taking sharp notice."
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Monday, February 18, 2002
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Restarting Afghan Cycle of Agriculture: "Much of the seed brought in for the project will come from collections made in Afghanistan in the early 1970's, as part of an international effort to safeguard samples of crop varieties. Many important plants originated in Afghanistan, including carrots and chickpeas. Dr. Beltagy says the crisis in Afghanistan illustrates the value of maintaining these dispersed genetic repositories. Afghanistan's own plant gene bank, stored in its agricultural headquarters in Kabul, was destroyed in 1992 as rival factions ransacked the city; more recently, a severe drought depleted Afghan farmers' remaining stocks of seed."
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Storm in Mexico Devastates Monarch Butterfly Colonies: "Because forest trees can act as an umbrella against the rain and a blanket that can retain heat, scientists and conservationists have been warning for years that the thinning of the forests in the relatively small area they have chosen for their habitats could threaten the butterflies by increasing their exposure to these elements. And an earlier study showed that in the last 30 years, nearly half the prime forest in the area had been degraded or destroyed. Dr. Brower said that he believed the loss of forests had contributed to the die-off. But Dr. Taylor suggested the that storm was so severe it might have taken its huge toll even with the cover of intact forests."
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