The Ecologist articles from December 1999

The Ecologist archives from December 1999

Bob's Box of Tricks.(Robert Shapiro, Chief Executive Officer for Monsanto Co.)
December 1, 1999... When Robert Shapiro, Monsanto's Chief Executive Officer, addressed the Greenpeace Business Conference in mid-October, he didn't look a happy man. Beamed into a London hotel via video-link from his Head Office in Missouri, USA, he looked...

Nuclear Havoc.
December 1, 1999... Within days of putting last month's special issue, The Madness of Nuclear Energy, to bed, the nuclear industry seemed to have set itself the task of vindicating our every accusation. First it was Japan, where citizens in the Ibaraki...

Russia's Catch-22.(conflict between environment and economics)
December 1, 1999... The following bulletin from Russia reveals a fundamental conflict between the interests of the Russian environment and those of the economy. As economic activity accelerates, so too does the deterioration of Russia's environment. And as...

Economy Vs Environment in Russia.
December 1, 1999... There are few more powerful icons of what communism meant for Russia than the smoking factory chimney. It was the banner of glorious industry, symbolising more than anything else the progress that Socialism had forced on the country. Industry...

A Big Bang for Accountable Science.(proposed construction of a nuclear accelerator that would replicate the Big Bang)
December 1, 1999... The much-hyped Cassini spacecraft, designed to travel to Saturn, where it will orbit the planet for four years collecting scientific data, was set to re-enter the Earth's orbit in August of this year. The project attracted enormous...

Bring Back Slavery.
December 1, 1999... MEMO TO: President Bill Clinton, and senior US economic policy-makers FROM: Gard Binney RE: Radical economic policy proposal As global economic competition hots up, it is clear that radical new measures will soon be needed if...

What is the 'International Community'?
December 1, 1999... The emergence of something called the 'International Community' is a recent phenomenon. This new entity has nevertheless been extremely busy in the past two or three years, expressing its displeasure at the overthrow of Pakistan's undeniably...

Gulliver in Automobilia.
December 1, 1999... Part IV. Wherein the Author considers the Disposal of Refuse. The Apostle Luke relates of the Athenians that they spent their Time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new Thing. This enthusiasm for Novelty he evidently...

THE WTO -- Crunch time?(1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, WA)
December 1, 1999... To Seattle! By the time you read this, the 'protest of the century' will be in full swing It's enough to scare the pants off Seattle's trade-pushers. Early this month, hundreds of non-governmental organisations and tens of thousands...

Colombia Update.
December 1, 1999... A licence signed on September 21st by Colombia's environment minister, Juan Mayr, means that nothing can now stop Occidental of Colombia (Oxy) exploiting the sacred indigenous territory of the U'wa people for petroleum. And this is not the...

Russia Sells Its Forests.
December 1, 1999... Widespread corruption in Russia threatens the country's forest wilderness Russia harbours one of the greatest remaining forest wildernesses on the planet. But things are set to change. Russia's timber Mafia, profiting from illegal...

Iceland or Greenland?
December 1, 1999... Iceland, the UK supermarket, is to ban the artificial sweetener aspartame from its own brand products. The move is certain to disturb Monsanto, which has been selling the chemical through its subsidiary Nutrasweet for over 20 years ...

America: A Nation of Legal Drug Addicts.
December 1, 1999... When it came to drugs, "just say no" used to be a parent's favourite slogan. But not any more, says psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin in The Boston Sunday Globe. Today, America is raising a nation of legal drug addicts. "In my psychiatric...

Puerto Rican Islanders Say 'Basta' to US Army.
December 1, 1999... Activists are forming a 'human shield' to prevent the US Navy from bombing US-owned Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico In 1941, the American military appropriated most of Vieques island for use as a bombing range. But now...

France's Anti-Nuclear lobby Celebrates Victory.
December 1, 1999... A delay in France's nuclear power programme has given hope to activists. Recent news that no decision regarding the future of France's Energy Pressurised Nuclear Reactor (EPR) will now be taken before 2003-2004, has been greeted with...

Fighting MAIgalomania: Canadian Citizens Sue Their Government.
December 1, 1999... A citizens' initiative in Canada is suing the government for preparing to sign away its powers under the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). If they win, it could be the first serious legal challenge to the entire global trade regime....

Why Canada Should Listen to the Cree.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... The following extract from a speech given by Ovide Mercredi, a Canadian Cree leader, to the 'Save Canada Conference' in Ottawa, in August, compares the colonisation of Indian lands by the European invaders 200 years ago with the colonisation...

Small Is Bountiful.
December 1, 1999... For more than a century, economists have predicted the demise of the small farm, which they label "backward, unproductive and inefficient". But in fact, far from being stuck in the past, small-farm agriculture provides a productive, efficient...

Cuba's Organic Revolution.
December 1, 1999... The US trade embargo of Cuba, plus the collapse of the island's Soviet market, has meant that the island has found it virtually impossible to import the chemicals and machinery necessary to practise modern, intensive agriculture. Instead, it...

Eclipse of the German Greens.
December 1, 1999... Last year, the German Green Party moved into national government. One year on, their achievements have been negligible. What happened to Die Grunen, and what does their story tell us about the problems of power and the paradoxes of Green...

Brave New World Revisited.
December 1, 1999... It is a groundbreaking new technology with enormous potential for the future. It will change the way we live forever, and could solve many of our environmental and social problems. Furthermore, it is safe, reliable and affordable. That's what...

Celebrating Columbus Day.
December 1, 1999... Every year, the US population celebrates Columbus Day. Yet Columbus was a mass-murderer, whose soldiers killed thousands of American Indians, and whose legacy was a continent-wide genocide against the original inhabitants of the Americas. So...

Heritage of the Mind.(Review)
December 1, 1999... OWNING THE FUTURE by Seth Shulman, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1999, 240 pp, US$25.00, ISBN 0 395 84175 5 Lexington, Massachusetts, is now a pleasant middle-class suburb of Boston. If you have ever explored Massachusetts (whose...

THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH: ALICE STEWART AND THE SECRETS OF RADIATION.(Review)
December 1, 1999... by Gayle Greene, University of Michigan Press, 1999, 839 Greene St., Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1104, FAX 800 876-1922, ISBN 0-472-11107-8 In an article, 'The Woman Who Knew Too Much', by Matt Henry, on page 404 of our special November edition,...

Lord of the Rings.(Review)
December 1, 1999... DEFENDING MIDDLE EARTH: TOLKIEN, MYTH AND MEMORY by Patrick Curry, Floris Books, 208 pages, [pounds] 15.99, ISBN 0 86315 234 1 Contemporary literary analysis is dominated by a plethora of 'isms'. There is Leavisism, structuralism,...

Going Underground.(Review)
December 1, 1999... SCHNEWS SURVIVAL HANDBOOK Justice? 1999, [pounds]6,00, ISBN 0 9529748 1 9 DO OR DIE 8 Earth First!, 1999, 344pp, [pounds]3.60, ISSN 1462 5989 The second-best magazine in Britain (you're reading the first, obviously) is free....

A Wake-Up Call.(Review)
December 1, 1999... EARTH ODYSSEY: AROUND THE WORLD IN SEARCH OF OUR ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURE by Mark Hertsgaard. Broadway Books, New York, 1999. US$26. 372pp. ISBN 0 7679 0058 8 In this latest work by investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard, the latter-day...

Globotomy.(Review)
December 1, 1999... THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER by Richard Sennett, W W Norton & Co., New York, 1999, 176pp, US$23.95, ISBN: 0 393 04678 8 At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials were hauled...

For Art's Sake.(Review)
December 1, 1999... A SNAKE'S TAIL FULL OF ANTS by John Lane, Green Books, Devon, 1996, pp317, [pounds] 14.95, ISBN 1 870098 65 X This important book is founded on the premise that the human arts are a social activity with redemptive powers, which can...

The Promise of Green Politics.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Environmentalism and the Public Sphere Douglas Torgerson, Trent University, Ontario "A detailed and penetrating exploration of the relationship between the means and the ends in green politics. Torgerson offers a fresh synthesis of, and...

Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Race, Class and the Environment Edited by David E. Camacho, Associate Professor of Political Science at Northern Arizona University "This is a book which examines an issue that is at the heart of environmentalism in the United States, but...

Managing the Environmental Crisis.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Incorporating Competing Values in Natural Resource Administration SECOND EDITION William R. Mangun, East Carolina University and Daniel H. Henning, Montana State University With a new foreword by Lynton Keith Caldwell "The...

Protection of Global Biodiversity.
December 1, 1999... Converging Strategies Edited by Lakshman D. Guruswamy, University of Tulsa and Jeffrey A. McNeely, World Conservation Union

Chinnagounder's Challenge.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... The Question of Ecological Citizenship Deane Curtin, Gustavus Adolphus College "Using ideas and images from a variety of sources, Curtin argues for a practical environmental philosophy that takes seriously the complexities...of local...