In the beginning God cerates THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH

THE HEAVENS
and
THE EARTH

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

- Old Testament, Genesis 1:1

~ o ~

April 10, 2008

U.N. says markets are to blame
for world food crisis

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Global investment funds and the weak dollar are largely to blame for high world food prices, a senior official of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization said on Thursday.

"The crisis is a speculative attack and it will last," said Jose Graziano, the UN food and farm organization's regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"This is not a conspiracy theory," he said.

Across the globe foods from bread to milk have become more expensive and in some countries helped fuel inflation. High prices for rice, beans and other food staples provoked food riots in Haiti this week.

"The lack of confidence in the (U.S.) dollar has led investment funds to look for higher returns in commodities ... first metals and then foods," Graziano told a news conference in the capital.

Investors have speculated in commodities including wheat, corn and rice because stocks in recent years have been drawn down by rising demand in emerging markets and supply shortages due to adverse climate in key producer nations, Graziano said.

"Speculative attacks become possible when you have low reserves," Graziano said.

Stocks of some food crops have fallen to their lowest levels in three decades, according to Brazilian farm experts.

Brasilia will host an FAO conference next week, which will focus on food shortages in Haiti, biofuels and small farms.

The FAO will in next week's meeting propose initiatives to help combat the current global food shortage, including incentives for small farmers.

Brazil is one of the world's leading food exporters.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080410/wl_nm/brazil_un_food_dc

April 5, 2008

Food riots turn deadly in Haiti

BBC News

At least four people were killed and 20 wounded when demonstrations against rising food prices turned into riots in southern Haiti, officials say.

Reports say scores of people went on the rampage in the town of Les Cayes, blocking roads, looting shops and shooting at UN peacekeepers.

The UN said its personnel had opened fire at some of the armed protesters.

For two days running, parts of Haiti have been erupting into violence triggered by the soaring cost of food.

The prices of rice, beans and fruit have gone up by 50% in the last year.

Earlier this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a report saying that the food crisis threatened the Caribbean nation's fragile security.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7331921.stm

September 2, 2007

Pope to youth: Save planet
'before it is too late'

Pontiff speaks to up to half-a-million
at Church's 'eco-friendly' youth rally

LORETO, Italy - Pope Benedict, leading the Catholic Church’s first “eco-friendly” youth rally, on Sunday told up to half a million people that world leaders must make courageous decisions to save the planet “before it is too late.”

“A decisive ’yes’ is needed in decisions to safeguard creation as well as a strong commitment to reverse tendencies that risk leading to irreversible situations of degradation,” the 80-year old Pope said in his homily.

Intentionally wearing green vestments, he spoke to a vast crowd of mostly young people sprawled over a massive hillside near the Adriatic city of Loreto on the day Italy’s Catholic Church marks it annual Save Creation Day.

More than 300,000 of them had slept on blankets and in tents or prayed during the night. Organizers said they were joined by some 200,000 more people who arrived from throughout Italy on Sunday morning.

“New generations will be entrusted with the future of the planet, which bears clear signs of a type of development that has not always protected nature’s delicate equilibriums,” the Pope said, speaking to the crowd from a massive white stage.

'Alliance between man and earth'

Making one of his strongest environmental appeals to date Benedict said: “Courageous choices that can re-create a strong alliance between man and earth must be made before it is too late.”

The two-day rally the Pope closed with a Sunday morning mass was the first environmentally friendly youth rally, a break from past gatherings that left tonnes of garbage and scars on the earth.

A participants’ kit included backpacks made of recyclable material, a flashlight operated by a crank instead of batteries, and color-coded trash bags so their personal garbage could be easily recycled. Meals were served on biodegradable plates.

Tens of thousands of prayer books for Sunday’s mass were printed on recycled paper and an adequate number of trees would be planted to compensate for the carbon produced at the event, many in areas of southern Italy devastated by recent brushfires.

Under Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, the Vatican has become progressively “green.” It has installed photovoltaic cells on buildings to produce electricity and hosted a scientific conference to discuss the ramifications of global warming and climate change.

Last month Benedict said the human race must listen to “the voice of the Earth” or risk destroying its very existence.

Loreto is famous in the Catholic world for the “holy house of the Madonna” a small stone structure purported to be where Mary grew up in the Holy Land and where she was told by an angel she would give birth to Jesus although a virgin.

According to popular legend, it was “flown” by angels from the Holy Land in the 13th century to save it from Muslim armies.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20548340/#storyContinued

April 5, 2008

Food riots turn deadly in Haiti

BBC News

At least four people were killed and 20 wounded when demonstrations against rising food prices turned into riots in southern Haiti, officials say.

Reports say scores of people went on the rampage in the town of Les Cayes, blocking roads, looting shops and shooting at UN peacekeepers.

The UN said its personnel had opened fire at some of the armed protesters.

For two days running, parts of Haiti have been erupting into violence triggered by the soaring cost of food.

The prices of rice, beans and fruit have gone up by 50% in the last year.

Earlier this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a report saying that the food crisis threatened the Caribbean nation's fragile security.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7331921.stm

April 2, 2007

Court rules against Bush
in global warming case

By James Vicini, Reuters

WASHINGTON - In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that U.S. environmental officials have the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.

By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.

The high court ruled that such greenhouse gases from motor vehicles fall within the law's definition of an air pollutant.

The ruling in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the Supreme Court marked the first high court decision in a case involving global warming.

President George W. Bush has opposed mandatory controls on greenhouse gases as harmful to the U.S. economy, and the administration instead has called for voluntary programs.

In 2003, the EPA refused to regulate the emissions, saying it lacked the power to do so. Even if it had the power, the EPA said it would be unwise to do it and would impair Bush's ability to negotiate with developing nations to cut emissions.

The states and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit hailed the ruling.

"As a result of today's landmark ruling, EPA can no longer hide behind the fiction that it lacks any regulatory authority to address the problem of global warming," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Greenhouse gases occur naturally and also are emitted by cars, trucks and factories into the atmosphere. They can trap heat close to Earth's surface like the glass walls of a greenhouse.

STEEP RISE

Such emissions have risen steeply in the past century and many scientists see a connection between the rise, an increase in global average temperatures and a related increase in extreme weather, wildfires, melting glaciers and other damage to the environment.

Democrats in Congress predicted the ruling could add pressure on lawmakers to push forward with first-ever caps on carbon dioxide emissions. The United States is the world's biggest emitter of such gases.

The ruling also could make it easier for California and 13 other states to put in place mandatory emission caps, officials in that state said.

Writing for the court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the EPA's decision in 2003 was "arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law."

In sending the case back for further proceedings, Stevens said the EPA could avoid regulation only if it determined that the gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provided a reasonable explanation.

Stevens said the EPA could not avoid its legal obligation by noting the scientific uncertainty surrounding some features of climate change and concluding it would be better not to regulate at this time.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said of the ruling, "We're going to have to take a look and analyze it and see where we go from there."

The EPA said the administration was committed to reducing greenhouse gases and it was "reviewing the court's decision to determine the appropriate course of action."

The court's four most conservative members -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both Bush appointees, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- dissented. They said the environmental groups and the states lacked the legal right to bring the lawsuit in the first place.

"No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency," Scalia wrote.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070402/ts_nm/usa_warming_court_dc

February 13, 2007

Corporate Laggards on
Global Warming Named

By ALAN ZIBEL, Forbes (AP)

Shareholder activists named 10 U.S. companies as the top laggards in their industries in responding to global warming, arguing they have failed to plan for the possibility of new greenhouse gas regulations that could cost them money.

A list to be released Tuesday by Ceres, an environmental investment group, criticizes energy firms such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips, and even retailer Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., accusing them of failing to adequately address the industrial causes - and consequences - of climate change.

Oil and gas producers and utilities emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that gets trapped in the atmosphere and, most scientists believe, contributes to global warming.

Ceres says the companies on its list are either not adequately prepared for possible new restrictions on carbon emissions, or not planning for how changing weather patterns and rising sea levels might affect their operations.

The effort to spotlight these companies comes as a growing number of businesses and politicians are calling for a national policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Some investors are even starting to speak out against corporate proponents of carbon constraints.

The Free Enterprise Action Fund, a mutual fund based in Potomac, Md., has placed a resolution before General Electric Co. shareholders, criticizing that company for advocating limits on greenhouse gases and arguing that those regulations would harm economic growth and demand for GE products.

Ceres' effort is backed by religious and socially responsible investors, municipal pension funds in New York, Connecticut and North Carolina and a major union.

"We're trying to push these companies as much as possible to just look at what I view (as) very fundamental issues of profitability," said Richard Moore, North Carolina's state treasurer, who manages more than $70 billion in public pension funds and government debt.

According to Ceres, the number of shareholder resolutions filed with U.S. companies on global warming issues has grown from 25 in 2004 to 42 filed this year. Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, said the resolutions are "not about theatrics at annual meetings," but about concern for long-term business prospects.

Also named on the list were coal producer Massey Energy Co., insurance firm ACE Ltd. and utility TXU Corp.

TXU was criticized by the investors' group for its proposal to build 11 new coal-fired power plants in Texas.

Lisa Singleton, a spokeswoman for TXU, said her company is working to develop cleaner energy technologies. "We believe strongly that technology will be the solution," she said.

Companies outside the energy industry such as Bed Bath & Beyond also made the list because, they have been "unresponsive" to requests that they make public their emission reduction and energy efficiency goals, the activist shareholders said.

May 27, 2002

Research Shows that Tiny Pollutants
Have Global Reach, Effect

By Andrew Bridges, Associated Press

~ ~ ~

"We live in a small world. We breathe each other's air."

- Thomas Cahill, University of California

LOS ANGELES - Atop Hawaii's Mauna Loa, thrust 13,677 feet into the sky, one would expect nothing but the freshest air, save the occasional gaseous burp from the volcano.

But environmental-monitoring stations crowding the peak find arsenic, copper and zinc that was kicked into the atmosphere five to 10 days earlier from smelting in China, thousands of miles away.

When industrial pollution first showed up at Mauna Loa a few years ago, scientists were startled. Now, after intense study, they know that the pollution that dirties the world's largest cities affects the whole Earth.

"It turns out Hawaii is more like a suburb of Beijing," said Thomas Cahill, a University of California, Davis, atmospheric scientist.

Along the West Coast, a campaign to measure the pollutants as they make landfall after bridging the Pacific ends this month.

Since April, scientists have used data gathered on the ground and from an airplane flying along the coast to measure aerosol pollutants that waft eastward each spring, carried by the prevailing winds.

For the United States, China is a major source. For Europe, it's the United States, and likewise down the line, complicating the blame game.

Scientists previously supposed only greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide were so global in reach and effect. They now understand that the microscopic, suspended particles of pollutants - generally called aerosols by atmospheric scientists - also wrap the globe, even if they persist for just hours before settling to the ground.

This class of pollutants includes soot, salts, dust and other byproducts of the burning of fossil fuels and vegetation. . . .

During their time aloft, the particles affect everything from global warming to human mortality to the rainfall that ultimately scrubs them from the sky....

SCIENTISTS LONG THOUGHT AEROSOLS WERE DAY-TRIPPERS, settling close to their point of origin. . . . But, beginning in the 1950s, scientists began noticing layers of haze in places like the Arctic, far from any significant source of pollution. The haze suggested aerosols were capable of traveling jet-setter distances.

Now, armed with satellites, airplanes, balloons, and ship- and land-based observatories, scientists track with accuracy the pollutants and the winds that carry them.

"If there's anything we've learned over the years, it's there is a lot of long-range transport up there that no one was ever aware of," said Ken Rahn, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.

Large storms can hoist a plume of particles high enough to hook up with the jet stream. Once high enough, dust from the Sahara or smoke from big fires "can easily travel halfway across the globe," said Yoram Kaufman, a scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration....

The problem isn't just with China. Aerosols have been tracked from the Sahara to the Caribbean, from Ontario to Rhode Island, and from Germany to Sweden. Within them travel toxic metals, nutrients, viruses and fungi.

"We live in a small world. We breathe each other's air," Cahill said.

Nor is the problem new: Pollutants generated by the smelting of ores by the Greeks and Romans show up today, more than 2,000 years later, in trace amounts in ice cores drilled from Greenland.

"These dust plumes don't go away right away. They can be carried over great distances and are forcing people to take a global perspective on pollution," said Barry Huebert, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii.

The tiny aerosol particles make for spectacular sunsets, but they also pose a serious health hazard, as they can lodge deep in the lungs, contributing to increased mortality.

Aerosols also harm agriculture by blocking portions of the spectrum of light from the sun, effectively starving crops like wheat and rice of the energy they need to grow.

The biggest worry, and the one least understood, is the effect aerosols have on weather and climate.

Some aerosols can cool the planet by literally shading it from the sun. Others can warm it by absorbing and trapping the sun's heat.

Aerosols "are clearly right at the center of some important climatic issues," Huebert said.

~ ~ ~

For more on the GLOBAL EFFECTS of POLITICS on POLLUTION, GO TO > > > The World Trade Organization

March 7, 2002

IT'S EVERYONE'S AIR, MR. BUSH!

An editorial in The Los Angeles Times

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion, more than a decade ago, that breathing someone else's cigarette smoke can cause cancer galvanized support for passage of tough anti-smoking laws and nationwide. Let's hope a new study forging a clear link between exposure to soot and lung cancer also prompts swift political action, the most significant of which would be a reversal by President Bush of his administration's unhealthy effort to weaken air quality rules.

The study, released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finds that breathing air containing microscopic particles of soot or dust over a long period greatly increases the risk of dying of lung cancer or other lung or heart diseases. Many city residents who inhale air laden with these particles face a risk of developing fatal lung cancer similar to the risk faced by those living with a smoker.

Earlier studies have hinted at this link. But this latest research, a team effort led by George D. Thurston of the New York University School of Medicine, is far more compelling because it follows a large sample - 500,000 individuals - over a long period, 16 years.

The tiny particles swirling over American cities have long bedeviled air quality officials. They come from diesel trucks and buses, farm equipment, power plant smoke-stacks, dust blowing off unpaved roads and portable generators.

Invisible to the naked eye, these specks can float in the air for weeks and bypass the body's defenses to lodge deep in the lungs....

In 1999, the EPA adopted tougher standards for diesel engines, requiring that they spew far fewer particles. But those rules don't take effect until 2007. In the meantime, the Bush administration is trying to block rules that require utilities to tighten pollution controls when they modernize power plants....

Lung cancer is often hideously painful and sometimes as terrifying as drowning, as lungs eaten away by renegade tumors strain for a taste of oxygen they're no longer able to process.

The latest study argues powerfully for redouble federal action to control this cause of disease, not for cutting corporate polluters more regulatory slack.

PRESS RELEASE

September 25, 2002

GROUPS DEMAND THAT BUSH OUST #2
AT INTERIOR OVER ETHICS VIOLATIONS

RELEASE DOCUMENTS REVEALING J. STEVEN GRILES
INVOLVED IN DECISIONS BENEFITING
ENERGY COMPANIES THAT WERE HIS CLIENTS

Washington, D.C. - Friends of the Earth and the Citizens Coal Council today called on President Bush to fire J. Steven Griles, a former energy lobbyist who is now Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department, for violating his ethics agreement.

The groups cited calendars they obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing that Griles met with his former energy company clients and worked on particular issues that benefit them, as reported in a page-one story in today's Washington Post.

Griles was a lobbyist for over 40 coal, oil, gas and electric companies and trade associations before President Bush named him to the Interior post.

Griles sold his lobbying firm and signed a recusal agreement pledging that while at Interior he would not be involved in "any particular matter involving specific parties in which any of my former clients is or represents a party."

In May 2002, Friends of the Earth caught Griles violating his recusal agreement after he attempted to pressure the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to change its analysis criticizing a coal bed methane project in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana.

Before his appointment to the Interior Department, Griles worked as a lobbyist on behalf of several coal bed methane companies involved in drilling gas wells on public lands in the basin.

"Once again we've caught Griles lobbying and meeting with his corporate polluter buddies and violating his ethics agreement," said Kristen Sykes, Interior Department Watchdog for Friends of the Earth. "President Bush should clean up the dirty corporate influence at the Interior Department by firing Griles immediately."

Doyle Coakley, Chairman of the Citizens Coal Council and a resident of West Virginia, said:

"Griles is another example of a backroom dealer in the Bush administration who thumbs his nose at the public trust and helps greedy coal companies damage the environment. The president must get rid of people who have conflicts of interest. We deserve honest government, not government by and for the big energy companies."

In the 1990s, Griles represented several coal mining interests including Arch Coal, the National Mining Association and Pittston Coal Company. Many of these companies are clients of National Environmental Strategies, which bought out J. Steven Griles and Associates and retained Griles as a vice principal and lobbyist. The firm is paying Griles $284,000 a year over the next four years for the sale of his client base.

DETAILS OF GRILES MEETINGS WITH ENERGY COMPANIES

The calendars that Friends of the Earth and the Citizens Coal Council obtained show that from July 27, 2001, to February 20, 2002, Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles:

> Met at least seven times with his former clients, including the National Mining Association and the Edison Electric Institute, and at least once with his former lobbying firm, National Environmental Strategies.

> Met at least 15 times with either companies that belong to the National Mining Association or with administration officials to discuss issues concerning those members; including nine meetings with or about Peabody Energy and two meetings with the West Virginia Coal Association, a proponent of mountaintop removal mining,

> Met at least 16 times with former industry clients and administration officials to discuss the rollback of air pollution standards for power plants, oil refineries and industrial boilers. Discussions included the New Source Review rule, pending air pollution legislation and issues such as mercury.

> Met at least 12 times with administration officials and coal companies to discuss mountaintop removal strip mining. In May, the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA issued a major rule that weakened the Clean Water Act rules. The new rule legalizes the longstanding practice of mountain top removal mines that dump millions of tons of mining waste into streams. A federal judge, however, has blocked this rule from taking effect at coal mines in Kentucky and West Virginia.

The Deputy Secretary assists the Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton in the discharge of Secretarial duties and serves as Acting Secretary in the absence of the Secretary. With the exception of certain matters reserved by the Secretary, the Deputy Secretary has the full authority of the Secretary....

Friends of the Earth - Campaigns

See also: Corby Robertson ; Peabody Energy

November 2, 2002

Two File Whistleblower
Suits Against State

Regulators say natural-resources cabinet interfered

By Mark Pitsch, The Courier-Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. - Two state landfill regulators filed whistleblower lawsuits last month, saying "political interference" prompted the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet to remand and reassign them.

In separate suits against the state, Guy F. "Jeff" Vansant, an engineer, and David A. Jackson, a geologist, say they were removed in May from reviewing the construction of an extension to Ford Branch Landfill in Pike County because of engineering concerns they raised about the project. That action was followed by a written reprimand.

The lawsuits contend the interference "constituted potential threat to the public health or safety of the citizens of the Commonwealth if not properly addressed."

Vansant and Jackson also allege that the cabinet's reorganization of the Division of Waste Management was designed to keep them from vigorously inspecting landfills around the state . . .

Vansant declined to comment. But in an Aug. 29, 2002, memo to then-cabinet Secretary James Bickford, Vansant said:

"I am frankly appalled, and extremely disappointed, to receive a reprimand for essentially providing important, and critically needed, technical information to a taxpayer owned, regulated facility. It appears that a few preferred consulting firms and their owners may be capable of receiving more 'customer service' than are some local government and county officials, whose facilities they design."...

The project was overseen by Summit Engineering Inc. of Pikeville. Jack Sykes, Summit president, did not return telephone calls yesterday.

Robert Padgett, the cabinet's environmental control supervisor who reprimanded Vansant and Jackson and ordered them off the Ford Branch job, said Summit officials and some Pike County government officials told the cabinet they were unhappy with its oversight of the project because of conflicting advice from cabinet employees....

The Pike County Fiscal Court hired Summit Engineering in the mid-1990s to oversee the design and construction of the landfill in Meta, at a price tag of more than $3 million, said Mike Lyons, Pike County's solid-waste coordinator....

Construction has taken place in phases....

Before the state gave its approval to the latest phase - and before garbage was dumped into it - heavy rain and snow in January caused ground water to build up between the ground and a synthetic liner used as a barrier, Lyons said.

Lyons said underground drains built at the site were too small to handle the ground water after the heavy precipitation.

Summit; its contractor, Hardaway Construction of Nashville, Tenn.; the Natural Resources cabinet; and Pike County officials met to come up with a solution.

Padgett said Vansant and Jackson were recommending one method of repairing the landfill after the leak while a third cabinet inspector, Merle Watson, recommended another method.

Vansant, Jackson and Watson were prohibited for working on the landfill because of the dispute and higher-ranking cabinet officials took over, Pladgett said....

(Catbird: A tip of the Catbird's wing to Guy Vasant and David Jackson for your courage and integrity!)

March 7, 2002

Army Official Fired After
Criticizing Budget Cuts

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The assistant secretary of the Army, former Mississippi Rep. Mike Parker, was fired yesterday after he criticized the Bush administration's proposed spending cuts for Army Corps of Engineers water projects, members of Congress said.

The Defense Department issued a brief statement saying Parker had resigned....

"Apparently he was asked to resign," said Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a member of the House Appropriations Committee's energy and water development subcommittee that oversees the corps' budget....

Secretary of the Army Thomas White was directed over the weekend to seek Parker's dismissal, said a congressional official....

In his budget submission last month, Bush proposed cutting the Corps of Engineers' budget by 10 percent to $4.175 billion, excluding federal retirees' pensions and benefits. The corps had requested more than $6 billion.

At a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee last week, Parker said the cuts would require the corps to cancel $190 million in already contracted projects providing 4,500 jobs....

March 1, 2002

Key EPA Official Quits, Claims White House Undermines Effort

Review interfering with clean-air task, civil servant says

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency's civil enforcement office has resigned, complaining the White House is undermining anti-pollution efforts at power plants that violate clean air laws.

Eric Schaeffer, a lawyer at the EPA for a dozen years dating from the first Bush administration, said in a letter to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman that the White House "seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce."

An EPA spokesman disagreed with many of the assertions made by Schaeffer, a career civil servant, and said the Bush administration "remains committed to enforcement ... in a major way" against polluters. . . .

Schaeffer said in the letter, submitted Wednesday, that he had been frustrated especially by the administration's review of the EPA's push to require power plants, many of which are fired by coal, to augment pollution controls when they make significant improvements or expansions that result in more pollution.

Reached at his home yesterday, Schaeffer said the problems he outlined in his resignation letter "reflect the views of just about all the civil servants working in enforcement" at the EPA.

"This is the kind of thing you can't say when you're in government, and it is something I really feel needs to be said," he added.

In his letter, Schaeffer lamented to impact that the White House review of the so-called "new source review" rule has had on lawsuits filed against a dozen utilities. The suits alleged the plants violated the Clean Air Act by not putting in additional pollution controls when making plant changes.

Settlements with two of the companies resulted in major reductions of pollution.

Two other utilities tentatively agreed to settle but refused to sign agreements because of the White House review, Schaeffer said.

Noting in the letter that the power plants targeted by the EPA release 5 million tons of acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide and 2 million tons of smog-causing nitrogen oxide, he said: "Fifteen months ago it looked as though our lawsuits were going to shrink these dismal statistics, ... yet today, we seem about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

He said the changes being considered by the administration "would turn narrow exemptions (allowed to power plant operators) into larger loopholes that would allow (older) plants to be continually rebuilt and emissions to increase without modern pollution controls."

Tom FitzGerald, executive director of the Kentucky Resources Council, an environmental activism group, said the Bush administration's review of the EPA's enforcement action could harm Kentuckians - even though state power plants are not subject to the action.

"Whether the plant is located here or not, we are located in the same air-shed," FitzGerald said, citing plants in neighboring states, "It is a regional issue. A lot of the pollution we deal with in Jefferson County comes from across-the-border coal-fired plants."

He said the administration's delay "is a direct affront to the people of the Eastern half of the country, particularly those with respiratory problems and those with children who have respiratory problems." . . .

The Administration's Cozy Relationship
with Big Corporate Interests

Is the GAO right to worry about undue corporate influence? Consider this statement from Mike Smith, assistant secretary for fossil fuels at the Department of Energy, who recently told an audience in Charleston that, "The biggest challenge is going to be how to best utilize taxpayer dollars to the benefit of industry." (Charleston Gazette, January 31, 2002).

After the release last year of the President's National Energy Policy, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) created an implementation plan of more than 40 tasks focused on speeding up energy development and reducing environmental safeguards. Meanwhile in Utah, the state director for the BLM, sent out a memo to field offices saying that wilderness reviews and compliance with environmental laws were creating backlogs of oil and gas leases and permits and dictating that oil and gas development must be their No. 1 priority. (BLM memo, January 4, 2002).

These statements are indications of the cozy relationship the Bush Administration has with big oil, gas, and coal companies. In fact, the highest-ranking officials responsible for the protection of the nation's parks, forests, monuments and wilderness areas, come not from a science or conservation background. Rather, they stepped out of their jobs as lobbyists for the mining, coal, and oil industries to take control of the nation's public lands and waters.

Gale Norton, secretary of interior, is a former lobbyist for NL Industries, a chemical company that has had several Superfund sites.

J. Steven Griles, deputy secretary of Interior, is a former lobbyist for the oil and coal industries.

Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary for lands and minerals management, Department of Interior, spent most of her career as a lawyer representing mining, logging, and energy interests.

Mark Rey, undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, Department of Agriculture, was vice president of the timber industry's American Forest and Paper Association.

James Connaughton, head of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, is a former lobbyist for various mining companies and the Chemical Manufacturers Association.

Camden Toohey, special assistant for Alaska at the Department of Interior, was executive director of Arctic Power, the primary lobbying organization pushing for drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

Wilderness Society :: Big Oil's Energy Plan 2002 - The ...

From When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten:

MAKING MONEY, GROWING POORER

ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS

The World Wide Fund for Nature has compiled a Living Planet Index that shows a drop of 30 percent in the health of the living wealth of earth's forests and waters over a single generation from 1970 to 1995. When the index reaches zero, bacteria and cockroaches may still be here but there will be few humans around to marvel at how much money we have left behind in our bank accounts.

A joint study released in September 2000 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Bank, and the World Resources Institute assesses five ecosystem types (agricultural, coastal, forest, freshwater, and grasslands) in relation to five ecosystem services (food and fiber production, water quantity, air quality, biodiversity, and carbon storage). It found that sixteen of the twenty-five eco-system/service combinations had declining trends.

Only one - food and fiber production by forest ecosystems - presented a positive trend, which was due to expanding industrial forest monocropping at the expense of species diversity.

These declines are all a consequence of human economic activity. Bio-invasion, the second greatest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss, now threatens some 20 percent of the world's endangered vertebrate species. It is a direct result of the introduction, through expanded trade, of exotic invasive species into ecosystems that have no defenses against them.

By 1995 we had already learned a lot about the costs to humanity of the reckless chemical and radioactive contamination of our soils and waters. Yet only in 1996, when Theo Colborn and her research team published Our Stolen Future, did the public become aware of the full implications of the 70,000 synthetic chemicals now dispersed in the human environment.

Thousands of these chemicals mimic the action of hormones in humans and other living creatures and are responsible for declining sperm counts, reproductive failures, a high incidence of deformities in frogs, fish, and birds, and the impaired intellectual and behavioral development of human children.

A newly recognized hazard of the nuclear era is the use of depleted uranium (DU), a waste product of the nuclear arms and energy industries that is used to harden military munitions. When used in combat the uranium in the round ignites on impact and combines with oxygen to form a cloud of uranium dust that is persistent and highly toxic to those who breathe or ingest it, causing disability and/or death.

From 300 to 800 tons of DU munitions were fired in Iraq and northern Kuwait during the Gulf War leaving vast areas contaminated with the deadly toxic material with a radioactive half-life of 4 to 5 billion years - the present age of the earth.

DU has become a prime suspect as a source of the Gulf War Syndrome that afflicts as many as 90,000 of the 697,000 U.S. troops who served in the Gulf, even though the military steadfastly denies any possible link. Similar munitions were used by NATO troops in Kosovo, posing a considerable risk not only to NATO troops, but to the returning refugees who will suffer the consequences for generations to come. The continued production and use of such munitions reveals the extent to which a narrow focus on the immediate utility of a technology can result in a callous disregard of the longer-term consequences.

Two new pollution threats have come to public attention since 1995: electromagnetic radiation and transgenic organisms.

Health authorities have noted recent sharp increases in asthma, sleep disorders, hypertension, tinnitis, memory loss, and influenza and flu-like illnesses.

The increase began in the United States in November 1996, at the same time that digital cell phones