Earth Island Journal articles from March 2000

Earth Island Journal archives from March 2000

Dear Journal:.
March 22, 2000... Some Readers Were Bugged I found your Winter 1999-2000 issue of the Journal to be the most relevant, on-target, broadly scoped ecological publication I have encountered to date. I read it cover to cover, and clipped several pieces to...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
March 22, 2000... * The article "Climate change harms ocean life" in the Fall 1999 Journal was not written by Amy Mathews-Amos and Ewann A. Benson, as credited. It was compiled from information in a report authored by Mathews-Amos and Benson. The complete report...

Ebb & Flow.
March 22, 2000... The Y6B Baby BOSNIA -- Last October, the United Nations declared a newborn Bosnian baby, Adnan Nevic, the Six Billionth Human. It was a fleeting moment of glory for Adnan: Before the week was out, another 1.5 million new kids were added to...

Eco-Mole.
March 22, 2000... Chutzpah Award California Assembly Leader Republican Scott Baugh found a novel way to cut the soaring costs of political campaigning: You cheat. In 1995, when the Huntington Beach politician realized that he couldn't win an assembly seat on his...

Positive Notes.
March 22, 2000... A place to callhome In a cottage by the sea, groups of shiny-eyed children bussed in from inner-city homeless shelters find fun, tranquility and a temporary respite from crowds, noise and city traffic. A Home Away From Homelessness [HAFH, Fort...

Making Waves Earth Island in the News.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... Bluewater quiets waters Personal watercraft (jetskis) are no longer welcome in the waters of Marin County, the peninsula on the northern side of San Francisco's Golden Gate. County supervisors voted to ban the whiny two-stroke polluters after...

Keiko Moves to Wider Waters.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... Keiko, the orca star of Free Willy fame, continues his journey toward freedom. September 10, 1999 marked the first anniversary of Keiko's arrival in the cold waters of Iceland's Westman Islands. With each passing day, Keiko is behaving more...

Dolphin Freedom Victory in Curacao.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... In July, IMMP was alerted to a proposal for a dolphin swim program in Curacao. IMMP's Mark Berman recommended that anti-captivity activist Ric O'Barry (the original trainer of Flipper, the famous TV dolphin) conduct a forum in Curacao. We...

BRUTAL DOLPHIN SLAUGHTER CONTINUES IN JAPAN.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... On October 11-12, Japanese fishers in the port of Futo, in Sizuoka Prefecture, captured nearly 100 wild bottlenose dolphins. Six dolphins were sent to two aquariums. Two of these dolphins died in transit and were replaced by two other dolphins....

DEADLY SOUNDS.
March 22, 2000... Those funny guys who dream up projects for the US Navy have come up with a real rip-snorter. They want to send four ships around the world to blast the oceans with some of the loudest sounds ever produced. The rationale behind spending...

CPR in Kenya, Costa Rica.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... In 1993, Earth Island Institute Founder David Brower took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to announce the formation of a volunteer group of environmental activists that would travel the globe administering CPR -- Conservation,...

Saving the Chiru.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... XINING, CHINA -- The widespread poaching of Tibetan antelope in China first became apparent in the early 90s. The antelope, called "chiru" in Tibetan, is hunted for shahtoosh, its fine woolen undercoat. Experts estimate the chiru population at...

The Big Lie: Logging and Forest Fires.
March 22, 2000... It seems every time you turn around these days, there's some timber industry flack screaming about the need to increase deforestation on our national forests -- ostensibly to reduce the threat of catastrophic fires. We must "streamline"...

Bio Watch.
March 22, 2000... To Bee or Not To Bee UK -- The British scientific community was rocked by the discovery Last April that bees had carried pollen from genetically modified (GM) oilseed rape 4.5 kilometers from a farm test site. (Government standards require only...

Global Marketplace.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... Drawing a Line in the Sod US -- South Dakota farmers got fed up with agribusinesses swallowing up one family farm after another. In November 1998, 5g percent of the state's voters approved a constitutional amendment to ban corporations...

Around the World.
March 22, 2000... Robots Rule SWITZERLAND -- Unemployment is a problem for many world economies but, if you're a robot, the future couldn't be rosier. The UN Economic Commission for Europe reports that sales of industrial robots soared 101 percent globally...

Corporate Take-over of World's Nukes.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... US -- British Energy (BE), Britain's privatized nuclear energy conglomerate, has formed a US-based entity called Amergen. Under the banner of deregulation, Amergen has joined forces with Philadelphia Electric in an attempt to purchase 20 US...

Venezuela: America's Oil Pump.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... VENEZUELA -- Members of the Orinoco Oil Watch (OOW) have written to the White House asking President Clinton how he can square his promises to reduce US emissions of planet-warming industrial gases with his support for multinational oil...

The Filthy Rich Owe the Poor Billions.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... The world's industrial economies and their banks like to obsess about "Third World debt" but a report by the British charity Christian Aid argues that it's really the rich countries that are indebted to the poor. That's because, Christian...

HOG NATION: US Wallows in Obesity.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... Last October, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that obesity has become an epidemic -- claiming 250,000 to 374,000 lives each year and making cellulite the second-leading killer of...

The Right Livelihood Awards.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... The Right Livelihood Awards, often referred to as "Alternative Nobel Prizes," have been presented in the Swedish Parliament since 1979 "to honor and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us...

Earth Day 2000.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... The environmental movement is the most successful social movement in American history. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent cleaning up the air, water and land. Scores of federal and state laws have fundamentally changed the ground...

A "Blue Flash" Hits Tokai-mura.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... On September 30, 1999, employees at JCO Ltd. Uranium processing plant in Tokai, Ibaraki, Japan were exposed to a potentially lethal burst of radiation when a batch of enriched uranium they were handling bare-handed began to undergo a nuclear...

The War of Oil and Diamonds.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Angola has been engulfed in civil war since 1975, when it gained independence from Portugal. Over the last ten years, Angola's civil war has killed an estimated 500,000 people and forced two million Angolans from their homes. Angolan government...

GoldBusters.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... Life, land, clean water and dean air are more precious than gold. Gold mining damages landscapes, habitats, biodiversity, and human health. Mining pumps vast amounts of water from aquifers, depleting local water supplies. Gold mines...

The Unpalatable Prawn.
March 22, 2000... US consumers ate about one billion pounds of shrimp in 1998 -- 695,000 pounds of it imported. Over the past 15 years, imports of farmed shrimp have increased phenomenally, it is now a $3 billion-a-year industry. US consumption drives a...

A Farewell to Salmon?
March 22, 2000... The small brown, battered fish found in most breeding farms barely resemble the long silvery torpedoes we know as the aristocratic Atlantic salmon.... Farm fish, the marine equivalent of domesticated cattle, are being bred in ever greater...

Water Wars, Water Cures.
March 22, 2000... FOUR DISTURBING FACTS: * All the Earth's drinkable water could fit inside a cube-shaped tank measuring only 95 miles on a side. * This reserve is shrinking because of pollution. * Some 1.2 billion people alive today lack ready access to clean...

Hanging in the Balance.
March 22, 2000... On November 3, 1998, 57.5 percent of California voters said yes to Proposition 4, a grassroots initiative that banned several wildlife traps and poisons. Citing their "cruel and indiscriminate" effects, Proposition 4 outlawed both the steel-jaw...

A Global War on Animals.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... Representatives of 175 nations -- including the US -- have endorsed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). They will meet in Nairobi in May to draft guidelines for blocking the spread of "invasive species." The CBD is set...

Reclaiming Our Native Earth.
March 22, 2000... The last 150 years have seen a great holocaust. There have been more species lost in the past 150 years than since the Ice Age. During the same time, Indigenous peoples have been disappearing from the face of the Earth. More than 2,000 nations...

Nuclear Waste ... and Native Land.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... What weighs thirty tons, has as much radiation as 200 Hiroshima bombs, and is projected to pass within a half-mile of your home? The answer: A canister of high-level radioactive waste, traveling from one of 109 aging US nuclear powerplants to...

Behind the WTO Riots: The US Prepares for War in the Cities.(World Trade Organization)
March 22, 2000... In March 1999, the US Marine Corps staged a practice invasion of the San Francisco Bay Area with a fleet of five battleships, gigantic LCAC hovercraft, dozens of helicopters, hundreds of combat-equipped Marines and 6,000 sailors. For four...

Astro-Imperialism: War in Space.
March 22, 2000... We have only a narrow window to prevent an arms race in space. The US military is seeking to base weapons in orbit to "control space" [Winter-Spring '99 EIJ]. Vision for 2020, a 1998 government report, explains that the role of the United...

Undercover: Deep Inside a Spacefighters' Conference.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... On April 28, I bought a $50 ticket to the 36th Space Congress: Countdown to the Millennium, held al Cape Canaveral. The meeting was sponsored by NASA, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and the Air Force. Brig. Gen. Randy Starbuck, Commander of the...

US Plans for "Weather Wars" in 25 Years.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... "In 2025, US aerospace forces can `own the weather' by capitalizing on emerging technologies," proclaims an October 9, 1997 report from the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The swelling human population already has put the planet's...

A Grandmother Walks for America.(Brief Article)(Transcript)
March 22, 2000... On New Year's Day 1999, 89-year-old Doris Haddock began a 1,800-mile walk across the US, determined to reach Washington DC on January 24, 2000, her 90th birthday. Known to her 11 great-grandchildren as "Granny D," Haddock averaged 10 miles a...

Out on a Limb.(Brief Article)(Transcript)
March 22, 2000... On December 10, 1997, 23-year-old Julia "Butterfly" Hilt climbed to the top of a 200-foot-tall redwood in northern California, For 738 days crud nights she weathered sun, wind, fog and rain, vowing to protect the tree she calls "Luna" from...

Offerings to Luna.(Poem)
March 22, 2000... A tree a life so many years gone by history bound in each new ring and every scar I lay nestled in Her arms I listen to all She has to say She speaks to me through my bare feet... my hands She speaks to...