Earth Island Journal articles from September 2000

Earth Island Journal archives from September 2000

Dear Journal.
September 22, 2000... The Global Green Deal Thank you for Mark Hertzgaard's excellent, inspiring, and visionary article (Summer 2000). As Hertzgaard shows, the conventional wisdom (which says that we must cook the planet in order to have economic development)...

A COSMIC CORRECTION.(Correction Notice)
September 22, 2000... The Universe may be curved, spherical, hyperbolic or (as the most recent research from NASA suggests) flat, but it is generally accepted that the age of the Universe is in the vicinity of 10-20 billion years. An Ebb & Flow item in the summer...

Ebb & Flow.
September 22, 2000... Pope to WTO: "Repent" ITALY -- In a May Day address, Pope John Paul II declared "the globalization of finance, of the economy, of commerce and of work, should never be allowed to violate the dignity and centrality of the human person or...

ECO-MOLE.
September 22, 2000... Watch What You Say It's not just the French who are waging war against foreign phrases like "log-on," "mouse-click" and "couch potato." In a dispatch from Transitions Online [www.tol.cz], Sophia Kornienko reports that Russian President Vladimir...

Positive Notes.
September 22, 2000... Miraculous Cures: One Doctor's Pet Theory Pet owners live longer, fuller lives, argues Dr. Larry Dossey, author of Reinventing Medicine. In the May issue of Men's Health magazine, Dossey writes, "Evidence favoring the health value of pets is so...

Eco-Groups Say "Ban MTBE".(methyl tertiary butyl ether)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... On May 9, Earth Island's Bluewater Network and 90 other environmental groups sent a joint letter to Congress demanding a complete ban on the use of the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) and all other ether-based oxygenates....

BLUEWATER IN ACTION AND IN THE NEWS.(environmental activism)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... On April 20, the US Park Service, acting in response to a Bluewater Network (BWN) campaign, banned jet skis from 66 parks, recreation areas and seashores. Another 21 parks were exempted. Bluewater will soon file suit against the National Park...

Criminal Cruise Ships: Soiling the Seven Seas.
September 22, 2000... The cruise ship industry has been riding a tidal wave of prosperity in recent years, with more than $1.5 billion in profits and an explosive growth rate of eight percent per year. There is no sign this tide is ebbing: By the end of 2004, the...

Gray Whales Still at Risk.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... Despite the recent victory in Baja California, threats to the gray whale continue. The government of Mexico and Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation have abandoned plans to build a massive salt plant (See story on page 32.). In northwest Washington...

Judge Cans Clinton's Phony "Dolphine-Safe" Tuna Label.(President Bill Clinton)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... SAN FRANCISCO -- In an Earth Day gift to dolphins, US District Court Judge Thelton Henderson struck down the Clinton/Gore Administration's attempt to weaken the standards for the popular "Dolphin Safe" canned-tuna label. Earth Island...

Will Taiwan Turn Green?(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... TAIPEI -- On April 26, fishers from the coastal villages in Chiku joined members of SAVE International and other eco-activists in front of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), chanting "Stop the Binnan review!" The...

Green Power: A Global Goal.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... Two billion people in the developing world are without electricity, while dirty energy sources force many others to live under some of the most polluted skies in the world. In the developed and developing world alike, climate change threatens...

Earth Island in the News.
September 22, 2000... Earth Island Institute Founder Dave Brower resigned from the national board of the Sierra Club on May 18. Brower, the first executive director of the 108-year-old club issued the following statement: With no little regret and a bit of...

Bio Watch.(world environmental news)
September 22, 2000... Turtles Winning Race (to Extinction) INDONESIA -- The drive for short-term profits is triumphing over domestic and undermining international laws and campaigns to save the wild turtle, according to Indonesia's State Ministry of...

Global Marketplace.
September 22, 2000... Organic Farming US -- The international underground market in harvested human organs is drawing the attention of watchdog groups. Women in Brazil have had kidneys removed unknowingly during gynecological surgery. The bodies of Turkish...

Around the World.
September 22, 2000... Deadly Dividends US -- When the Pentagon handed over decommissioned military bases to local authorities, there was a hidden bonus -- tons of unexploded ordnance (UXO) buried in the soil. In California, more than 170 sites covering hundreds...

Fight the Fungus.(Agent Green)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... Thirty years after the use of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, the US is planning to enlist a new biological poison called "Agent Green" to fight the Drug War. The American government has proposed using deadly fungi...

Team Earth Island Goes to Extremes in Borneo.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... A group of experienced triathletes has organized under the name Team Earth gland (TEI) to compete in Eco-Challenge 2000, an extreme sports competition taking place in Sabah, Borneo from August 21 to September 2. Seeking to highlight...

The Southern Summit.
September 22, 2000... CUBA -- In April, the Group of 77, the largest coalition of Third World counties in the United Nations, held its South Summit in Havana. It was the largest gathering of Third World leaders in history. The major topics were globalization,...

Behind the Okinawa Summit.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... At the end of July, the globalized economic elite that brought you the World Trade Organization (WTO) plan to reconvene in Okinawa, Japan's poorest and most militarized prefecture. It is Tokyo's turn to host the biannual Economic Summit of the...

The Last Plantation.
September 22, 2000... In November 1992, Melvin Bishop's farm in Georgia suffered sever damage from a tornado. After the storm, Bishop went to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to apply for disaster relief, an emergency loan, and an operating loan. For the next...

Glen Canyon: Just Drain It!(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... On March 14, 250 people gathered at Arizona's Glen Canyon Dam to call for a "Century of River Restoration." The celebration was one of 65 actions held in 20 countries on the Third Annual International Day for Action Against Dams and for Rivers,...

The Salmon are Sovereign!
September 22, 2000... On March 9, the environmental group American Rivers challenged the US government to breach four dams on Washington's Snake River -- Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite -- to save the river's endangered salmon. "We are...

Fishy Accounting: Bankrupt Seas.
September 22, 2000... The US fish-harvesting industry is facing bankruptcy and the government agencies charged with overseeing the fisheries admit that they cannot prove the industry isn't already insolvent. Commercial fish harvesting is the country's last "wild...

Beyond Ecotourism: Going Native.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... ECUADOR -- The community of Anangu is located 60 miles down the Napo River from the frontier town of Coca, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The community consists of 12 families of lowland ethnic Quichuas who moved into the territory a dozen years...

Bolivia's Water War Victory.
September 22, 2000... When the people of Bolivia revolted against an unconscionable increase in the cost of buying water, correspondent Jim Shultz was on the frontlines. Shultz, the Executive Director of the Democracy Center [PO Box 22157, San Francisco, CA 94122,...

Greenwashing the Olympics.
September 22, 2000... The Summer 2000 Olympics set to begin in mid-September in Sydney, Australia, have been hyped as the "greenest" summer Olympics of all time. But hidden beneath the fine landscaping at the competition site lies a massive toxic waste dump --...

MEDIA SELF-CENSORSHIP IN AUSTRALIA'S OLYMPICS BID.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... Perhaps the rarest, most perverse form of flattery a writer can receive is to have the government seek to suppress his or her work. I had the opportunity to experience one of these institutional efforts at censorship in 1993, when two senior...

Anatomy of a Victory.
September 22, 2000... In January 1995, the Grupo de los Cien (Group of 100, a group of leading Mexican artists and intellectuals) learned of a project to build a massive saltworks at Laguna San Ignacio, the last pristine mating and calving ground of the gray whale....

The $tockholder Myth.
September 22, 2000... CAN IT BE BELIEVED THAT THE DEMOCRACY WHICH HAS OVERTHROWN THE FEUDAL SYSTEM AND VANQUISHED KINGS WILL RETREAT BEFORE TRADESMEN AND CAPITALISTS? -- Alexis de Tocqueville The core problems of capitalism -- bloated CEO pay, sweatshops, and...

The Autocrats Detroit and the Politics of Pollution.
September 22, 2000... They called it the "Arsenal of Democracy" and it was truly one of the 20th century's most astounding feats of industrial accomplishment. The year was 1941 and the place, Detroit, Michigan. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US fully...

Green Cars Vs. Greed Cars.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... Surprise! US automakers already make fuel-efficient cars -- abroad. The Ford Focus gets nearly 48 mpg. Sold in Europe for years, it has only recently gone on sale in the US. The fuel-efficient Prodigy, the Precept and the Dodge ESX3 were...

The Quiet Revolution.(urban gardens)
September 22, 2000... Deep orange carrots... line up in ling rows, and collards, black-eyed peas, and okra stand up in their fullness against the din of this urban world Early Girl and Celebrity tomatoes hang ripe and ready in heavy clusters. Lima beans cover...

A Vote Wasted?(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... Russell Peterson, former governor of Delaware, ardent environmentalist and life-long Republican (until a few years ago when he switched to being a Democrat) was appalled when I told him I couldn't bring myself to vote for Al Gore. He gave...

The Facts IN THE YEAR 2000.(timber sales on national forests)(Statistical Data Included)
September 22, 2000... DETOUR? In 1989, my older brother and I hiked the length of the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Like many people, we mistakenly believed that national forests were protected from logging, much like national parks. When we...