Monday, 11 Sep 2000

We're Gonna Rock Down to Electric Avenue

Against automakers' objections, the California Air Resources Board on Friday voted unanimously to stick with a rule requiring that 10 percent of the cars offered for sale in the state in 2003 emit little or no pollution. CARB estimates that the rule will prompt automakers to put 22,000 electric vehicles (EVs) on the market in 2003, 10 times more than are now on the road. The decision has implications for other states, too, as Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont are following California's lead on the issue. Automakers contend that the 2003 goal is unreachable because EVs are too expensive, costing as much as $20,000 more than equivalent gasoline-powered vehicles, and that consumers won't buy cars that can travel only 100 miles before needing a recharge. The CARB staff will consider options such as subsidies to make the EVs more affordable.

Into Thinner Air

The ozone hole over Antarctica is the biggest it's ever been, 11 million square miles, or three times the size of the U.S., scientists at NASA said on Friday. Synthetic compounds in refrigerants, aerosol sprays, and foam-blowing agents cause depletion of the ozone layer. The amount of such chemicals in the atmosphere is leveling off, thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which halted the production of most of them, but the effects of past production are only now just being felt and experts say it could be another 20 years before ozone levels recover noticeably.

And We'll Have Fund, Fund, Fund

Last year investors put nearly $3 trillion into investment portfolios and funds that are screened for social responsibility, up from $639 billion in 1995, according to the Social Investment Forum. And 79 percent of those portfolios focus on companies' environmental records, up from 37 percent in 1997. Advocates of eco-friendly investing argue that companies with bad environmental records can turn out to be bad investments because they can be subject to government fines and liable for expensive cleanups. On the other hand, companies with good green records can often turn out to be good financial bets; hot growth industries right now include organic foods and alternative energy sources like fuel cells.

Underbrush With the Law

President Clinton on Saturday endorsed a report by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman calling for a big increase in the number of national forest acres to be swept clean of the thick, flammable underbrush that led to many of the wildfires in the West this summer. Clinton's comments came during his weekly radio address, in which he outlined a $1.6 billion package that he hopes Congress will approve to aid communities affected by this year's fires and to prevent future fires. Republicans in the West have called for more commercial logging as part of a forest recovery program, but the White House made clear that it rejected such an approach. Babbitt and Glickman will speak to Western governors later this week and present details of their plan, which calls for more controlled burns and other efforts to remove forest underbrush on some 40 million acres of public land.

Go Ahead and Jump

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday proposed designating 5.4 million acres as critical habitat for the threatened California red-legged frog, a move likely to affect development and agriculture in the state, particularly in Southern California. This designation, which would be the largest of its kind in the state and one of the largest in the nation, would require that landowners seeking federal permits prove that projects wouldn't harm the frog or its habitat. The USFWS proposal came after environmentalists took the agency to court for not designating critical habitat and a judge ordered the agency to identify such habitat for the frog, which is believed to have inspired the famous Mark Twain story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."

Wild and Crazy Guy

U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck this weekend said his agency should be leading the effort to protect what's left of wild spaces and that he would increase the number of people on his payroll working on wilderness issues. Speaking at a national wilderness conference in Denver, Dombeck said, "Five percent of our land area is wilderness. It might not sound like much, and it isn't. It's not nearly enough." He also said the use of off-road vehicles, such as snowmobiles, is the wilderness "issue of the decade," though he didn't touch on any specific plans for banning them. Meanwhile, the USFS has removed 25,000 miles of roads in the last decade and is removing thousands more miles this year. The agency hopes to finalize a rule this year that would encourage its staff in the field to get rid of roads that are no longer needed or cause environmental problems.