Monday, 12 Nov 2001

Morocco On!

As day broke on Saturday, delegates in Marrakech, Morocco, reached an 11th-hour agreement on the rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The agreement, which was the culmination of a two-week conference and four previous years of tough negotiations, mandates an average global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels and paves the way for ratification. Although some critics claimed the protocol had been watered down to an unacceptable degree, others said the agreement represents an important first step to control climate change. Many industrial nations have signaled their intent to ratify, but the Bush administration is standing firm on its decision to pull out of the accords, even with the U.S. Energy Department reporting on Friday that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions jumped 3.1 percent in 2000, bringing the nation's total emissions increase since 1990 to nearly 14 percent.

Lake It or Not

Overuse and pollution of the world's lakes threaten nearly 1 billion people who depend on lake water for fishing, irrigation, transportation, tourism, sewage, and drinking water, global experts said during an international conference on lake management being held this week in Japan. More than half of the world's lakes and reservoirs are already suffering from pollution and drainage, and the problems will worsen as population increases and global warming intensifies, delegates said. The most threatened lakes include the Great Lakes in North America, Lake Okeechobee in Florida, Lake Victoria in Africa, and the Aral Sea. China's lakes have already been hit hard, with 543 large and medium-sized lakes disappearing between 1950 and 1980. Read more about China's irrigation crisis on the Grist Magazine website.

Standards vs. the Poor?

The European Union is demanding that environmental issues be included in the latest round of World Trade Organization talks, which opened on Friday in Doha, Qatar. The E.U. wants environmental standards to be negotiated as a part of trade rules -- and says the issue could be a "deal breaker" at the talks -- but many developing nations fear that industrialized countries will use environmental concerns as a pretext to implement protectionist trade barriers. Meanwhile, anti-globalization protesters at the talks are struggling to adapt their tactics to post-Sept. 11 political realities, and our correspondent Ben Lilliston from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy tells it like it is in Qatar, only on the Grist Magazine website.

States of Disgrace

New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont may postpone for four years a requirement that automakers increase sales of electric cars to improve air quality. Two years ago, the states adopted California's standard, which mandates that by next year, 8 percent of cars sold must be much cleaner than current cars and another 2 percent must be entirely emissions-free (i.e., electric cars). The proposed delay in the Northeast would cut the market for electric cars roughly in half; environmentalists say the shift would critically harm efforts to make such cars affordable. Top environmental officials in the three states, however, say the technology doesn't yet exist to make electric cars viable, and that focusing their efforts on other strategies to reduce tailpipe emissions would actually result in cleaner air.

I Want to Be an Army Rearranger

Measures designed to protect the remaining wetlands in the U.S. could be substantially weakened by a new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers policy, environmentalists and federal officials warn. A recent Corps letter outlines a retreat from a decade-old policy, instituted under George Bush the Elder, stating that the country's total amount of wetlands cannot decrease. Under that policy, developers who destroy wetlands must offset the loss by restoring or creating wetlands elsewhere. By contrast, the new Corps policy would allow builders to fill in wetlands and offset losses by preserving dry land that helps preserve remaining wetlands or by boosting protection of the remaining wetlands. Either approach could result in a net loss of wetlands.