Dollars & Sense articles from May 1997

Dollars & Sense archives from May 1997

Power lines and leukemia: beware of scientists bearing glad tidings.
May 1, 1997... "No Adverse Health Effects Seen From Residential Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields," said the press release from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). "Study Fails to Link EMFs With Illnesses" repeated the Los Angeles Times. "Panel Sees No...

Winners take all. (domination of world investment by multinational firms)
May 1, 1997... It is an investor's market out there in the global economy, with countries around the world competing to attract corporate money. But corporations aren't satisfied. They want assurances that there will be no turning back from economic...

Natural capitalism? (ecological economics)
May 1, 1997... "Natural Capitalism," by Paul Hawken, is the cover story for the April 1997 issue of Mother Jones magazine. The cover shows an idealized view of natural harmony and agricultural productivity: a golden wheat field, distant fence posts fading into...

Is the boom and bust cycle over?
May 1, 1997... This March, the current economic expansion celebrated another birthday. It's six years old and still growing. Unemployment rates are their lowest in a decade. At the same time, inflation rates remain modest and the stock market continues to boom....

Toxic racism: Chippewas resist deadly dumping. (includes related article on successful lobby against mining operations in Nevada)
May 1, 1997... For a month last summer, a group of native Americans blocked a railway line near Bad River, Wisc., to prevent trains from bringing billions of gallons of sulfuric acid to dump into an old copper mine. Once sizzling underground, the acid would...

Does preserving the earth threaten jobs?
May 1, 1997... Back in 1990, the U.S. Business Roundtable published a study predicting that the Clean Air Act amendments, which were passed later that year, would lead to massive job loss: There is "little doubt," they claimed, "that a minimum of two hundred...

Moving mountains: the counter-summit confronts the G-7.
May 1, 1997... This coming June, the city of Denver will play host to the world's most expensive photo-opportunity: the G-7 Summit. Watched by 5,000 journalists, and costing over $11 million, the leaders of the seven major industrialized economies (Canada,...

Green labels: can they build a new marketplace? (includes related articles on FDA's association with multinationals and the meaning of 'green')
May 1, 1997... Even the name of the Pure Food Campaign takes you back to the first years of this century. That was when progressive crusaders - who were really enraged consumers - marched into unsanitary meatpacking plants with government regulations never...

Bucking biotech: the global threat of the new agribusiness.
May 1, 1997... Robert Shapiro, chief executive of Monsanto, told the Harvard Business Review in January that biotechnology in food production is the only way to avoid world catastrophe. Without it, he told the magazine, we face a dismal choice: watch the...

Greener industry: new industrial ecosystems.
May 1, 1997... In 1996, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed tightening the air pollution standard for smog by about 30%. Twenty-five years of this kind of federal regulation to protect the environment has achieved some successes. Even though...

Denmark shows the way.(Greener Industry)
May 1, 1997... Industry has a long record of resisting even the old-style regulations for cleaner air and water - the mandates to reduce, for instance, emissions of ozone-harming CFCs or the greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming. So it's difficult...

The sewage scam: should sludge fertilize your vegetables?
May 1, 1997... Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. The king promised Humpty Dumpty that with all his horses and all his men they'd pick him up again....

Let's just assume we're sustainable.
May 1, 1997... "If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then... the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event not a catastrophe." So wrote Nobel-winning economist Robert Solow in...

The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment.
May 1, 1997... Amid cries for more environmental regulation and for more environmentally friendly technologies come these two books which say, that's Fine - but it is not enough. Without a revolution at the roots of our history and society, the ecological...

Is Capitalism Sustainable?: Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology.
May 1, 1997... Amid cries for more environmental regulation and for more environmentally friendly technologies come these two books which say, that's Fine - but it is not enough. Without a revolution at the roots of our history and society, the ecological...

Why Do We Recycle? Markets, Values and Public Policy.
May 1, 1997... Frank Ackerman begins his book, Why Do We Recycle? Markets, Values and Public Policy, with a confession. Chagrined, he tells us he threw away a report that he should have recycled. If this recycling maven tosses into the waste bin what should...

Stagnation and inequality.
May 1, 1997... GRAPH 1: ONLY THE TOP 20% ARE HAPPY From 1970 through 1995 average (mean) income per household in the United States (adjusted for inflation) increased 22%. This was a rather modest rise compared to the two decades from 1950 to 1970, when income...