World Watch articles from November 1999

World Watch archives from November 1999

The New Flat Earth Society.
November 1, 1999... In May 1999, the popular U.S. business magazine, Forbes, published an article declaring that the Internet has become a major electricity consumer. Predicting that the power-hungry Internet would drive electricity demand skyward in the next...

Gravity and Levity.(political cartoons)
November 1, 1999... In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a cartoon by Mick Stevens shows a group of men sitting around an executive desk. Outside the window, the U.S. Capitol building and Washington Monument are visible - ne can see that these men are the leaders...

The tide turns in European food advertising.
November 1, 1999... A sea change has taken place in the way genetically modified foods are being presented to European consumers in major ad campaigns. Only a year or so ago, newspaper readers were being wooed by aggressive advertising from Monsanto and other...

Death sentence for a tropical forest.
November 1, 1999... The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has agreed to finance a controversial gas pipeline that will cut through the heart of eastern Bolivia's Chiquitano Forest, one of the world's largest remaining and most diverse tropical...

Giant pollution cloud hovers over Asia.
November 1, 1999... Scientists investigating the effects of pollutant particles on climate last March discovered a dense brown haze covering 9 million square kilometers - an area the size of the United States - over the Indian Ocean. The cloud, thought to have...

Action on the FRONT LINES.(non-governmental organizations)
November 1, 1999... Nongovernmental organizations around the world are proliferating at a phenomenal rate. Can these groups make up for government and corporate shortcomings? For months, the city of Seattle, Washington has been bracing itself for the World...

Challenging the WTO.(World Trade Organization)
November 1, 1999... Global trade rules threaten to undermine environmental laws of sovereign nations. But with those nations often beholden to their own trade-hungry corporations, it has fallen to nongovernmental organizations to make sure the WTO is accountable....

Fighting Pollution in Viet Nam.
November 1, 1999... A third of the world's people live under regimes that have little tolerance for NGOs, but many of them still find ways to take action in defense of their environment. How they do so may vary widely, however, in accordance with the kind of...