Tuesday, 27 Mar 2001

Burma Shaved

Hundreds of square miles of Burma's ancient tropical forests have been stripped bare in recent years to fuel the increasing demand for wood products in China. China's growing economy and a logging ban to protect the remaining forests in 18 Chinese provinces have led the country to look to neighboring countries to meet its need for more wood. Jim Harkness, director of the China office of World Wildlife Fund, said, "You have a situation where an environmentally beneficial policy in China created incentives to destroy forests in other parts of the world." A bit of good news: The president of the 1,000-member Chinese group Friends of Nature recently became the first environmental activist elected to the standing committee of the Communist Party in China.

Walled Whitman

A week before President Bush broke his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman wrote a confidential memo urging him to stand by the promise or risk damaging the U.S.'s standing among international allies. Since Whitman lost the battle, both conservatives and environmentalists say that her stature has been reduced, at least temporarily -- the perception now is that EPA policy is being set by the White House, not by Whitman. Some agency staffers say Whitman has lost so much credibility that they expect her to resign.

Axe-a-dunce

Yesterday brought news of another rollback on environmental protections by the Bush administration. The U.S. EPA announced that it would rescind a proposal by the Clinton administration to increase public access to information about the potential consequences of chemical plant accidents. Environmental groups say that communities could better plan for disasters if they had access to the worst-case scenarios drawn up by plant operators. But industry officials, some members of Congress, and law enforcement officials argue that the information is too sensitive and could help terrorists hatch attacks.

Label Me Badd

Three-fourths of Americans want to know if their food contains genetically engineered ingredients, according to a poll released yesterday by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents did not want such ingredients in the food supply, period. However, when they were told that the ingredients were already in many food products on grocery store shelves, nearly half of the respondents said the products must therefore be safe. Despite pressure from environmental and consumer groups, the U.S. has said it won't require labeling of genetically engineered foods. Labeling is already required in Japan, South Korea, Australia, and most of Europe.

A Trading Block

Environmental and labor groups are gearing up for a new battle over trade next month in Buenos Aires and Quebec City, where countries are meeting to discuss the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The pact, which would create a 34-nation trading bloc in the Western Hemisphere, is a priority for the Bush administration. The administration and Latin American governments think the pact could lead to big bucks for all countries involved, but they oppose including environmental and labor standards in the agreement. Environmentalists and labor supporters, however, fear a race-to-the-bottom, with multinationals settling in countries that have the lowest standards or no standards at all. They are planning Seattle-like protests in Buenos Aires and Quebec City, hoping to turn out tens of thousands of demonstrators.