Tuesday, 11 Dec 2001

Food for Thought

The fixings for a traditional British turkey dinner could travel more than 24,000 miles before they reach the table, according to a report released yesterday by the U.K. lobby group Sustain. On average, food consumed in Britain travels 50 percent more than it did a decade ago, at the expense of human and environmental health. Sustain said that the country's food system had become "almost completely dependent" on oil, and that internationally, food distribution is a major cause of pollution and climate change. The organization also criticized a food system in which countries essentially swap food. (For example, in 1997, the U.K. imported 33 million gallons of milk and exported 71 million gallons). It urged Britain to improve food quality and safety and protect the environment by supporting local food suppliers.

Ice, Ice, Maybe Not

The South Pole is treading on thin ice, according to a study presented yesterday that found rapid thinning in three of Antarctica's largest glaciers. In the last 10 years, the glaciers have lost up to 150 feet of thickness, or a collective 37.6 cubic miles of ice. According to the authors of the study, who shared their conclusions during a panel on the effects of global warming on the world's cold regions at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, that's enough to raise the world's sea levels one-sixtieth of an inch single-handedly (so to speak). At current melting rates, the glaciers could begin to float in 150 years and would vanish in around 1,500 years -- a long time for us, but a blink of the eye in geological time. Some scientists blame global warming for the melting ice, but others doubt that the relatively small temperature change in the last century could affect Antarctic climes.

Sunder Water

The home of one of India's leading environmentalists, Sunderlal Bahuguna, was flooded last week when the Indian government resumed work on the massive Tehri dam project. Bahuguna has spent two decades protesting the project, which is expected to totally submerge the town of Tehri by November. Activists, including author Arundhati Roy, have condemned the project as environmentally destructive, unsafe, and unfair to the tens of thousands of people who will lose their homes and be forced to relocate due to the flooding.

Ann of Green Stables?

"Awful" and "horrible" are just some of the epithets that have been hurled at U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman by farm-state lawmakers. What's drawn their ire is Veneman's effort to overhaul the $20 billion federal farm subsidies program, which she says threatens international trade agreements, supports the wealthiest farmers, and is bad for the environment. She is proud of her reform proposal, which helped double the amount of funding for conservation efforts in the bill being considered by the Senate, but her opponents call her ideas "drastic." Her predecessors in the position say the farm lobby is immensely powerful and warn that she is playing with fire.

That Extincts!

Environmentalists in Florida are concerned about state plans to weaken protections for the manatee and the red-cockaded woodpecker. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has developed a new set of criteria to gauge what levels of protection animals deserve, and it has indicated that the woodpecker and manatee may now merit lower levels. To qualify as endangered in the state, a species must now have lost at least 80 percent of its population during the past 10 years; a threatened species must have lost at least 50 percent of its population in the last 10 years. Enviros say the criteria will effectively guarantee the extinction of more species. The woodpecker population, for example, has dropped 97 percent in the last century, but not even 50 percent in the last decade.