World Watch articles from May 2003

World Watch archives from May 2003

U.S. democracy: will the last one out please turn off the lights? (Editorial).
May 1, 2003... democracy n. l.a. Government by the people. (Webster's Third New International Dictionary) Ever-lower voter turnout in U.S. elections is a perennial story. Now comes study, reported in the Washington Post in February, that actually...

"It's not about oil"! (Note From a World Watcher).
May 1, 2003... The U.S. government has a smoothly-scripted response to the notion that its plan to. assault Iraq was motivated by a desire to seize control of Middle Eastern oil. That notion, says the script, is foolish and petulant--not to be taken...

From readers.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... Science-Based Policy in an Imperfect World In an interview in your March/April 2003 issue ("Long Range Forecast"), Robert Watson, former chief of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said, "I believe that national and...

Canadian fish farms spread disease to wild salmon. (Environmental Intelligence).(British Columbia's pink salmon threatened)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... On the west coast of Canada, aquaculture is big business--farmed salmon is the province of British Columbia's largest legal export crop. Back in 1995, British Columbia banned new fish farms because of concerns about their effects on the...

Emissions trading begins. (Environmental Intelligence).(Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced the launch of their greenhouse gas trading market)
May 1, 2003... In January 2003, officials from the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced the launch of their greenhouse gas (GHG) trading market. The exchange, which is expected to be operational this spring, is an attempt by the city of Chicago and some...

As migration grows, immigrants face greater barriers. (Environmental Intelligence).(report by United Nations Population Division)
May 1, 2003... An estimated 175 million people lived outside their country of birth in 2000, according to a new report by the United Nations Population Division. That is more than double the number who did so in 1970. Regionally, Europe hosts the largest...

European wind energy production reaches new highs. (Environmental Intelligence).(use of wind power in Germany, Spain, Denmark and the UK)
May 1, 2003... Europeans installed more than $5.8 billion worth of wind power technology last year, ending 2002 with nearly 23,700 megawatts (MW) of wind energy capacity, an increase of 33 percent over 2001. Europe now has almost three-fourths of the world's...

Study reveals sari cloth filtration reduces cholera. (Environmental Intelligence).
May 1, 2003... Filtering water with a folded piece of old cloth before drinking it cuts the rate of cholera contraction by half, according to a three-year study in 65 Bangladeshi villages published in January 2003 in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the...

Arsenic in Bangladesh. (Updates).(groundwater contamination affects irrigated crops)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... The problem of arsenic contamination of ground water in Bangladesh has spread to crops irrigated by the water. Researchers from the University of Aberdeen found that arsenic levels in rice are proportional to the level of contamination of the...

Bhopal disaster. (Updates).(Union Carbide Corporation, India)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... New evidence contradicts the longstanding claims of Union Carbide Corporation (now part of Dow Chemical) that it was not responsible for the design failures that led to the 1984 Bhopal disaster that killed 20,000 people. Internal company...

The Lomborg scam. (Updates).
May 1, 2003... Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistician who gained worldwide attention for his book claiming that environmentalists exaggerate or distort their reports of environmental decline, was formally cited for "scientific dishonesty" by his own country's...

Global population. (Updates).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... The United Nations Population Division projects that world population in 2050 will be 8.9 billion, according to the medium variant. This downward revision of 400 million from projections last made in 2000 results partly from the increasing...

Factory farming in the developing world: in some critical respects, this is not progress at all.
May 1, 2003... Walking through Bobby Inocencio's farm in the hills of Rizal province in the Philippines is like taking a step back to a simpler time. Hundreds of chickens (a cross between native Filipino chickens and a French breed) roam around freely in...

The argument for local food: at an unimposing diner in Vermont, a revolution is taking place.(Farmers Diner)
May 1, 2003... Stop in at the Farmers Diner in Barre, Vermont, and you have landed in the middle of a revolution, although you might not see it at first glance. It's about what you'd expect in a town known for quarrying granite and carving tombstones and...

Between the lines.(War toys and video games)
May 1, 2003... Web page This page appeared on the JC Penney website last year. The ad for a toy called "Forward Command Post" features an American soldier standing in a bombed-out house. It's an example of the growing collaboration, in recent years, between...

The New Clear Threat. (Essay).(nuclear waste poses long term threat to safety and international security)(Related article: Richard Lugar, on Increasing Security by Expanding NonproliFeration)(Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program)
May 1, 2003... A hundred millennia from now, perhaps a new civilization will have arisen atop the remains of the civilization we now know. And as this new society explores the land and its secrets, at the base of what we call Yucca Mountain, Nevada, it may...

Matters of scale: trouble in the pipeline.(environmental and social aspects of petroleum industry)
May 1, 2003... MATTERS OF SCALE Trouble in the Pipeline Area of Israel 2 MILLION HECTARES Area of reindeer pasture in Russia destroyed by oil pollutants and fires in recent years 22...

The art of recycling.(in China)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... In Haikou, China, a man transports plastic containers and bottles for recycling. With its 1.2 billion people and booming urban economy, China is generating gargantuan quantities of consumer waste. About half of the country's plastic waste is...