World Watch articles from November 2003

World Watch archives from November 2003

The economics of wellbeing.(Editorial)
November 1, 2003... The UN Environment Programme recently announced that the world's consumer class has reached a new high of 1.7 billion--more than one of every four humans on Earth--with almost half of them residing in the developing world. While economists may...

Let them eat "cakewalk".(Note From A Worldwatcher)
November 1, 2003... So, we are in an age of fear. Fear can be healthy (when it inhibits our teenagers from drag-racing 110 miles an hour into bridge abutments, for example), but as a chronic state of mind it is debilitating. In recent years, liberal...

Wind power could easily replace nuclear.(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... I took the data from your "World's largest wind farm planned for Iowa" (Environmental Intelligence, July/August), which states that "the project would have the capacity to supply electricity to 85,000 homes when completed," and I made the...

Easter Island, Tikopia, and the choices we have.(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... In "What Is Sustainability, Anyway?" (September/October 2003), Thomas Prugh and Erik Assadourian invite us to learn from the awful lessons of Easter Island, where the inhabitants overharvested the trees, deforested the island, ceased being able...

It's not how many we are, it's how we're organized.(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Thomas Prugh and Erik Assadourian make a strong case fur a reduction in the human footprint upon the Earth. As they point out, "BounD' is taken for granted, especially by those societies in which the hallucination of limitless wealth is...

Why farm animals at all?(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Concluding a very interesting and informative article on some of the horrors of factory farming in the developing world (May/June), Danielle Nierenberg concludes: "Preserving prosperous family farms and their landscapes, and raising healthy,...

UN, not U.S., controls Iraq's oil revenue.(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... This is in response to your criticism of my earlier letter wherein I state that the war in Iraq is not about oil. I am in good company in that view with Daniel Yergin, author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning book The Prize, a history of the world...

Don't import trouble, export population control.(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Population growth is not "one of the most significant drivers of environmental change" (Letters, July/August), it is the primary driver of destruction. Until it is reversed, worsening inequality in income, wealth, and social power cannot be...

Don't be a dittohead.(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Much of what passes as news in the corporate media intentionally diverts the public mind from major problems of the day--and from the solutions. There's also an army of right-wing radio hosts, PR firms, and neocon think tanks deliberately...

What one night on the town could buy.(From Readers)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... As I walked across the middle of New York's Times Square last Saturday night, being dazzled by the lights on Broadway and trying not to become a hood ornament on some fast-moving limo, I saw a headline on an electronic banner about the World...

Ozone layer making tentative improvements.(Environmental Intelligence)
November 1, 2003... Two recent studies indicate that the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 treaty designed to protect the eroded stratospheric ozone layer, is finally beginning to work. Because it takes time for harmful chemicals to migrate up through the atmosphere to...

Scientists of 74 countries call for ban on genetically engineered food.(Environmental Intelligence)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... An "Open Letter from World Scientists to All Governments Concerning Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)," first submitted by scientists of 56 countries to the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999, continues to circulate and...

New fund extends reach of Kyoto Protocol.(Environmental Intelligence)
November 1, 2003... The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol has been extended to more intimately include developing countries in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF), launched in July by the World...

Hydrogen economy's effects on stratospheric ozone disputed.(Environmental Intelligence)
November 1, 2003... In July, scientists from NASA, Georgia Tech, the University of Wisconsin, and Hampton University in Virginia announced a notable slowing in the rate of destruction of the ozone layer. While not a reversal of the thinning, the detected change is...

Equator Principles set bank responsibility standards.(Environmental Intelligence)
November 1, 2003... In June, the international finance community unveiled the Equator Principles, a set of voluntary environmental and social responsibility guidelines designed to shape development projects around the world. The principles are based on policies...

23 African countries face food emergencies.(Environmental Intelligence)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... At least 25 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are in urgent need of food aid, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). About half of them are in Ethiopia. Another 5.5 million are in Zimbabwe, and 1.9 million are in Sudan....

Chemicals in water supplies produce feminizing effects, lower sperm quality.(Environmental Intelligence)
November 1, 2003... Adding to a growing body of research on the impacts of endocrine disrupting compounds in freshwater, two recent studies have confirmed previously suspected effects of estrogen-mimicking chemicals on humans and wildlife. One study, led by Karen...

Biodiversity hotspots threatened by human population growth.(Updates)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... World Population Awareness reports that human population is growing more rapidly in 19 of the world's 25 biodiversity hotspots than in the world as a whole. According to a joint report by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Washington,...

Increasing Earth's protected areas.(Updates)
November 1, 2003... Representatives of 154 nations, meeting for the World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa in September, agreed on a strategy to increase the amount of protected marine and coastal area, very little of which is currently included in the...

Ozone hole may be largest ever.(Updates)
November 1, 2003... Ozone-depleting chemicals in the upper atmosphere are projected to decline sharply in coming years, but in the mean time the damage done by these chemicals may be peaking. Australian scientists reported in August that by the end of 2003, the...

Arsenic in drinking water.(Updates)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The poisoning of groundwater by arsenic leaching is now a major health threat not only in Bangladesh but in 16 other countries where World Health Organization limits for arsenic have been exceeded. The rising risk results from a growing...

A little rocket fuel with your salad?
November 1, 2003... I SPENT TWO DECADES living in Southern California, during which time I married, fathered a child, got divorced, and became a single parent. I finally left the Golden State in 1989, taking my young son with me because I was concerned about his...

Messing with the Mekong.
November 1, 2003... The day after arriving at Laotian river port of Huay Xai, my friend and I left our guesthouse at sunrise and walked down the street to the main pier. The boat landing, a crumbling concrete ramp about 50 feet long, was already bustling....

Gary Gardner: the challenges of contradiction.(World Watch First-Person)
November 1, 2003... I clambered aboard the Ocean Monarch, a Greek passenger ship that would be my home for a week on the Baltic Sea last June, I told myself that the dissonance gnawing at me could be the gateway to some deeper truth. Environmentalists and cruise...

And counting.(Between The Lines ... a Website tracks the costs of U.S. occupation of Iraq)
November 1, 2003... ... AND COUNTING Here's the home page of a website guaranteed to raise your blood pressure--a running count of the estimated costs of the Iraq War, and some of the alternative ways the money that war has consumed could have been used instead....

Hubris on the Yangtze.(Matters Of Scale)(Three Gorges Dam)
November 1, 2003... Height of the Washington Monument, the tallest 555 FEET structure in the U.S. capital Height of the new Three Gorges Dam in China, 575 FEET which is wider Cubic meters of concrete used to build...