World Watch articles from March 2003

World Watch archives from March 2003

Jeopardizing a blueprint for reproductive health.(USA only opponent of Cairo Program of Action)(Editorial)
March 1, 2003... At a regional population conference held in Bangkok last December, the United States cast a lone vote against language in a key United Nations document--the Program of Action adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and...

Rubbernecking the commons. (Note From a Worldwatcher).(small acts of social responsibility add up)
March 1, 2003... It's a familiar question, one that environmental authorities are often asked by frustrated folks to whom they have just delivered yet another grim lecture about the precariousness of life on our ever more crowded, depleted, and polluted planet:...

From readers.
March 1, 2003... The Threat to Mexican Corn The article "Risking Corn, Risking Culture" (November/December 2002) fails to mention the intensive research that CIMMYT (the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) has conducted to help Mexican...

Microchips are tiny, but their environmental footprint is heavy. (Environmental Intelligence).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... A single 2-gram computer microchip requires 630 times its weight in chemicals and fossil fuels to be produced and used, according to a new study published in the December 10, 2002 issue of Environmental Science and Technology. The report, the...

The first fuel-cell cars hit the road. (Environmental Intelligence).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... For the first time, ordinary drivers have been given keys to the cars of the future. In late 2002, Honda and Toyota delivered eight fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) to the Japanese government, the city of Los Angeles, and the University of California...

Study finds nearly half the Earth is still wilderness. (Environmental Intelligence).
March 1, 2003... Despite a century of mounting environmental threats, 46 percent of the Earth's land area remains largely intact wilderness, according to a new report by Washington, D.C.-based Conservation International (CI). The comprehensive study--a...

Waste from disposable phones to be curtailed. (Environmental Intelligence).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... The cellular telephone industry is cooperating with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to ensure safer disposal of the metals, plastics, and nickel-cadmium batteries contained in cellular phones. The initiative does not yet include...

Long-range forecast.(world climate change)(Interview)
March 1, 2003... Among the thousands of scientists who have studied the onset of global warming, there is one--the chief of the 191 -nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)--who ought to be in a better position to speak definitively on this...

A new security threat: HIV/AIDS in the military.
March 1, 2003... Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 2001, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell likened the HIV/AIDS epidemic to a war that destroys countries and destabilizes regions: "I was a soldier. But I know of no enemy in war more insidious...

Who cares about AIDS?(International AIDS Trust)(Interview)
March 1, 2003... Last November, Worldwatch staff researcher Radhika Sarin talked with former U.S. AIDS Czar Sandra Thurman, non' head of the International AIDS Trust, about the difficulties caused by widespread cultural taboos and a backward-looking or...

Because the Earth needs a good lawyer. (Book Review).(achieving justice between unequal adversaries)(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Tom Turner, Justice on Earth: EarthJustice and the People It Has Served (Whit River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2002). A recent cartoon in The New Yorker depicts a man who has just arrived in Hell and is being briefed....

Matters of scale.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... MATTERS OF SCALE Fat of the Land Fat in one foil-packaged 6 GRAMS restaurant serving of butter Fat in one Burger King "Whopper" 40 GRAMS Amount of Global-warming carbon 3 KG dioxide...

Mapping the nature of diversity: a landmark project reveals a remarkable correspondence between indigenous land use and the survival of natural areas.
March 1, 2003... Maps may be famously variable in accuracy, but generally speaking they are no more "objective" than are movies, novels, speeches, or paintings. Even if painstakingly accurate, they heavily reflect the interests of those who paid to have them...