Monday, 30 Apr 2001

The Environmentalist Currently Known As Prince

Britain's Prince Philip (you know, the queen's husband) warned today that the Danube River is on a path toward ecological disaster unless European governments rally to save it. The prince, who is an honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund, said, "Pollution, scouring, and disturbance are slowly killing the natural balance of the whole river system." He spoke at an environmental conference in Bucharest that was attended by nine presidents. The Danube, which flows through 11 European countries, has had a tough run of it lately, what with NATO bombs knocking bridges into the river during the war in Kosovo and a huge cyanide spill in Romania killing hundreds of tons of fish in a tributary of the river.

Rant and Rail

Germany's first shipment of nuclear waste in three years to a British reprocessing plant arrived quietly in the U.K. yesterday, a sharp contrast to the protests that marked the beginning of its five-day journey. Protesters in Germany succeeded briefly in delaying the shipment, and demonstrators in northern France threw smoke bombs on the rail line to slow down the train, which was carrying five containers of spent fuel rods from two German nuclear plants. Meanwhile, anti-nuke activists in Poland yesterday blocked train tracks to the Baltic seaport of Szczecin to protest planned shipments of nuclear fuel to a controversial Czech power plant just over the border from Austria.

Survey Says ...

Fifty percent of Americans believe that improving the environment should take priority over economic growth, according to a Los Angeles Times poll completed last week. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said protecting plants and animals should trump protection of property rights. Fifty-six percent opposed President Bush's decision to overturn a rule to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water, and 59 percent disagreed with Bush's move to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Four of 10 respondents in the poll claimed to be environmentally active in some way.

Newt Rockme

The environment "has been the most obvious public relations failure" of the Bush administration so far, but the issue offers President Bush one of his best opportunities to truly change the country, writes former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in the New York Times. Bush could chose to "create the most conservative regulatory policies the current political system could tolerate" and "grudgingly give the left those environmental victories [he] could not block." But Gingrich suggests instead that the president adopt a "transformational" style and "develop a vision of a healthy environment with maximum biodiversity that would attract the support of the vast majority of Americans and would use a high-technology, scientifically based, locally implemented and cooperative approach to problem-solving" (whatever that means).

Tijuana Gets Brassy

Environmentalists in Mexico are taking lessons from U.S. greenies and are filing more lawsuits and using right-to-know laws to force government agencies to make public the poor environmental records of some companies. Carla Garcia, an enviro attorney in Tijuana, said, "There is a change in the way things are being done. It's not just about going up and throwing trash in front of the municipal building. It's about learning about the law." About 400 environmentalists who work along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border met for three days in Tijuana at the end of last week to talk shop.

Daschle, Dancer

U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) last week said he would support dramatic changes in the Kyoto treaty on climate change, including a move away from mandatory to voluntary targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Faced with immediate criticism by environmental groups, however, Daschle on Saturday backed away from his earlier statement and issued a clarification saying voluntary emissions controls "are not a substitute for binding measures." Meanwhile, in the month since President Bush said that the U.S. would withdraw from Kyoto, top officials in his administration have been meeting on a weekly basis to figure out how to move forward on climate change. Most of the speakers at the meetings have been scientists and policy wonks who believe that humans bear at least part of the blame for global warming.