Earth Island Journal articles from September 1998

Earth Island Journal archives from September 1998

David Brower: on the blue planet. (Blue Planet Prize)(Cover Story)
September 22, 1998... The Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan has chosen the recipients of the Seventh Blue Planet Prize. The Prize is presented annually to two recipients whose achievements have contributed to the resolution of global environmental problems. Mikhail L....

Environmental education.
September 22, 1998... In 1987, the United Church of Christ's Commission on Racial Justice published a report documenting the disproportionate number of toxic sites and polluting industries in communities of color. Although further studies showed alarmingly high...

Is there gas in your glass? (methyl tertiary-butyl ether)
September 22, 1998... Until recently, municipal water agencies maintained that two-stroke motors posed no safety risk to public reservoirs. Water districts have assured the public that water intake valves were too deep to pick up the contaminants that spill from...

Mitsubishi/ESSA causes sea turtle deaths. (Exportadora de Sal)
September 22, 1998... In early January, fishermen in Baja, Mexico reported that nearly 300 endangered Black Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas agassizi) had washed-up dead on the shores of Ojo de Liebre Lagoon since mid-December. A simultaneous die-off of mollusks, sardines...

Global fashion threatens rare Tibetan antelope.
September 22, 1998... The high grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau, known as the Chang Tang, appear to stretch limitlessly in every direction, devoid of fences, bounded only by snowcapped mountains and a turquoise sky. In springtime, herds of Tibetan antelope that...

Stop the national forest rip-off.
September 22, 1998... One hundred years ago Congress did a terrible thing. Under industry pressure, an appropriations "rider" was attached to an Interior Department spending bill, opening the country's national forests to logging for the first time. Prior to that,...

Powerline project threatens Amazonia. (Venezuela)
September 22, 1998... VENEZUELA -- In August, more than 1,200 Amazon Indian residents, representing five tribes from south Venezuela's Imataca and Gran Sabana regions, blocked traffic along the nearly finished Road 174 BR "wideway" -- the only highway connecting...

Silenced science: Arctic ozone loss.
September 22, 1998... Vital information on environmental change is being withheld from the public by the print and broad cast media. Eight related empirical studies concerning drastically reduced springtime Arctic ozone appeared in the November 1997 issue of...

Earth Island joins move to dissolve Unocal. (Earth Island Journal)
September 22, 1998... On September 10, attorneys for the International Law Project for Human, Economic and Environmental Defense (HEED) filed a petition with California's Attorney General to start proceedings to revoke the charter of the Union Oil Company of...

No nukes for North Korea.
September 22, 1998... SEOUL -- In February 1998, Green Korea United submitted a proposal to the Transition Committee for incoming South Korea President Kim Dae Jung, suggesting major changes to the project to supply North Korea with two nuclear power plants. We...

A green dawn in Aichi.
September 22, 1998... JAPAN -- For years, Japan has tended to ignore its wildlife and its environmentalists. One example is Hirofumi Yamashita, winner of this year's Goldman Prize, who fought for 20 years to save the Isahaya Wetlands in Kyushu, the main migratory bird...

Tobacco, pesticides and suicides.
September 22, 1998... BRAZIL -- The 1997/1998 season was one of the worst to date for tobacco farmers in the tobacco-growing region of southern Parana. Excessive El Nino rainfall caused crop failures and tobacco companies are paying lower prices for storm-damaged...

Cotton, pesticides and suicides.
September 22, 1998... INDIA -- Death has walked through the village and the dying crop whispers a dirge for the body of Kaselte Sammiah, a poor cotton farmer who committed suicide in the village of Sitarampur in Andhra Pradesh. Sammiah died February 1 after...

Terminator seeds threaten an end to farming.
September 22, 1998... The 12,000-year-old practice in which farm families save their best seed from one year's harvest for the next season's planting may be coming to an end by the year 2000. In March 1998, Delta & Pine Land Co. and the US Department of Agriculture...

The green reapers vs. Monsanto.
September 22, 1998... UK -- On July 4, five women dressed in protective suits "openly and accountably" pulled up 200 genetically engineered sugar beets from a Monsanto "test field" at Model Farm, Oxfordshire. Before they were arrested, the five members of the...

The Year 2000 problem: an environmental impact report.
September 22, 1998... WITH ANY LUCK, the turn of the millennium will happen with out serious incident. The stroke of midnight will approach on December 31, 1999 and then it will pass, and life will go on as normal. Banks will open on Monday, January 3 and...

The Donora fluoride fog: a secret history of America's worst air pollution disaster.
September 22, 1998... The anniversary of the worst recorded industrial air pollution accident in US history- which occurred 50 years ago this October in Donora, Pennsylvania -- will go virtually unmarked. The Donora incident, which killed 20 and left hundreds...

Bananas, bulldozers and bullets.
September 22, 1998... HONDURAS -- Nothing remains of Tacamiche but a few concrete foundations. No one lives here any more but lizards and crows. The churches are gone. The homes of the banana workers are gone. After six decades as a community among Chiquita's...

California's commercial spaceport rises native land.
September 22, 1998... The State of California and the aerospace industry have joined forces to create the California Commercial Spaceport (CCS) near Santa Barbara. The spaceport is being built on 100 coastal acres leased from Vandenberg Air Force Base -- on land...

Iraq's lost generation.
September 22, 1998... IRAQ -- In July, sailing by moonlight along Basrah's Shatt Al-Arab, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, I saw the eerie hulks of rusting ships bombed by the US and its allies in 1991. Looking at the floating graveyard, I recalled...

The challenges of globalization.
September 22, 1998... Concerns over the negative effects of globalization are beginning to stir even at the highest levels. A surprising dissent was recently issued by John Sewell, president of the Overseas Development Council and ODC Chair Peter Sutherland....

Surviving Y2K will mean reinventing society. (Year 2000)
September 22, 1998... JUST AS WE SHOULD BE PREPARING ourselves for physical interruptions in goods and services with respect to the Year 2000 Problem, we must also prepare ourselves for the fanning of social and psychological flames that now simmer like coals...