Monday, 10 Sep 2001

The Slush of Mount Kilimanjaro

Many favorite vacation spots around the world are threatened by global warming. For example, the snow atop Mount Kilimanjaro may be around for just 15 more years and the glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana may last just 70 more, according to recent studies. Would you like to travel to an uncomfortably hot and smoggy Paris -- or a Martinique beset by hurricanes? "Global warming is a train wreck about to hit the world tourism business, and I think we've all been asleep at the switch," says Jerry Mallet, president of the Adventure Travel Society, an international trade association. Tourists themselves are contributing big time to the problem, burning fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere with each new trip they take.

Bad Company

Commercial recycling is hit or miss in the U.S. -- in some cases, for example, companies assume that recycling is occurring, but their cleaning companies are actually mixing recycling with garbage and throwing everything out as trash. From 35 to 45 percent of waste produced in the U.S. in 1999 was commercial, according to the U.S. EPA. Unlike in Europe, however, the U.S. government doesn't require commercial recycling and only a few states or local communities do. The EPA's WasteWise program encourages companies to throw out less and buy recycled products. So far, it has helped 1,100 big businesses, start-ups, and nonprofits set waste-reduction and recycling goals.

Bay City Rollers

Hybrid cars are all the rage in the San Francisco Bay area. About one in five hybrids sold in the U.S. has been purchased in the Bay area, and the average waiting time to buy a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight is five months at local dealers. Drivers say heads turn as their cars cruise by; some folks even talk of the sex appeal of the vehicles. In related news, across the U.S., about 37 percent of people in the market for a new vehicle in 2001 considered themselves "extremely concerned" about the environment -- more than triple the percentage who said they had that level of concern in 1996. Still, alternative-fuel vehicles have made up only 50,000 of the 16 million vehicles sold in the U.S. this year.

Cash Croppers

Nearly two-thirds of the $27 billion in farm subsidies given out last year went to just 10 percent of American farm owners, including Fortune 500 companies, wealthy members of Congress, and other millionaires, according to a study of federal data by the Associated Press. Studying the same data, the Environmental Working Group says that fewer than one-fourth of farmers received 84 percent of subsidy payments. The new farm bill before the U.S. House would add to the big payments. But some House Democrats and moderate Republicans are proposing an amendment to shift $20 billion in payments to conservation programs, spreading a total of $55 billion for environment and conservation programs to more farmers in more states.

Saving Private Xylem

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) is asking the state Board of Forestry to pass a rule tomorrow that would require private landowners to get state approval before cutting down ancient trees on their property. Landowners would have to go through a multiagency environmental review before receiving permission to log a single ancient tree. The proposal appears designed to head off a more stringent ballot measure that enviros hope will win approval in 2002. The measure would ban logging of all trees that are more than 150 years old.

No Safe Harbor

Even though water clarity in Boston Harbor has improved twofold and concentrations of contaminants have dropped 80 percent this past year, the area's major beaches aren't much cleaner than they were in the 1990s. Officials attribute the successes to a $4.1 billion, 16-year cleanup effort that ended in 2000. Sewage and stormwater discharges, however, have kept the beaches shut about 20 percent of the time this summer -- a problem that officials said would be difficult (and not cheap) to solve.