Friday, 14 Apr 2000

Spencer for Higher

Greenpeace is claiming moral victory after 13.5 percent of votes cast at BP Amoco's annual shareholders meeting yesterday supported a Greenpeace-backed resolution that calls on the company to stop oil drilling in the Arctic and increase investment in solar energy. The motion was defeated, as expected, but the level of support it garnered surprised even enviros. Matthew Spencer of Greenpeace said it was the "highest vote for an environmental [shareholder] resolution anywhere in the world." Meanwhile, 11 Greenpeace activists have been arrested this week for protesting at the Northstar construction site in the Arctic where BP Amoco is undertaking a major oil exploration project.

Damn Those Snakes!

Federal officials say they are likely to delay making a recommendation about the fate of four dams on the Snake River in southeastern Washington until after the November presidential election. Enviros are waging a national campaign in favor of breaching the dams to help restore salmon populations. The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are studying the controversial breaching proposal and have been expected to make a recommendation about the dams this year. Republican George W. Bush has vowed to keep the dams standing if he's elected president, while Al Gore has refused to take a side on the issue, despite prodding from enviros.

This Stresses Me Out -- I Need a Nice Cup of Herbal Tea

The growing popularity of herbal medicine, particularly in Western countries, is threatening the survival of a number of valuable wild plants, according to delegates to the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, this week. Trade in at least 14 plants is already regulated because demand for herbal medicine is putting pressure on the species, and another six, including Asian ginseng, are being considered for regulation. Up to 600 kilograms of Asian ginseng are smuggled each year out of Russia, one of the few places where the plant grows. Illegal gathering of North American ginseng is also a problem. Poachers recently cleaned out all the healthy wild ginseng populations in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Book 'Em

Vice President Al Gore, in a new foreword to his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, renews his call to eliminate all internal combustion engines and take dramatic steps to curb global warming. Gore's best-selling book is being reissued next week to mark the 30th anniversary of the first Earth Day, and some Republicans are rejoicing at what they see as another opportunity to paint the vice president as an extremist. Enviros, however, say that the views Gore expresses in the book are becoming solidly mainstream, and they lament the fact that Gore hasn't pushed an environmental agenda more strongly. In the new foreword, Gore takes a shot at Texas Gov. George W. Bush without naming him, by pointing out that Houston now has the worst air pollution in the U.S.

Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise

A House-Senate conference committee yesterday dropped from a major budget bill a controversial provision that could have opened the way for oil and gas drilling in part of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The measure, approved by the Senate last week, assumed that $1.2 billion would be raised from a lease sale of drilling rights in ANWR by 2005. Enviros applauded the conference committee for eliminating the provision, though they know the fight is far from over. Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski (R) plans to continue his push to open ANWR to oil exploration. He has already introduced one bill that would allow drilling the refuge, and he plans to insert a similar provision in a large energy bill that will be introduced in coming weeks.

Wind Without Sales

Construction is set to begin today on seven towering windmills that together will constitute the largest wind power project in the Eastern U.S. Most wind farms in the nation have been built by utilities, but this $16 million project planned for the rural town of Madison, N.Y., is being built on speculation, without a guaranteed set of customers, by PG&E Generating, which sells power on the open market. The company expects the wind farm's customers to be companies and institutions like universities that are willing pay an additional 5 or 10 percent on their electric bills in order to say that they are using clean power. Local officials and farmers who have leased land for the project expect it to boost the local economy.