Friday, 16 Aug 2002

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Have you ever tromped up the stairs to your apartment wishing you knew those neighbors who were cooking the yummy-smelling plantains? Or gazed at the empty lot on the corner of your street and fantasized about a community garden? Plenty of people yearn to develop closer relationships with the land and the people around them -- and some of them actually do something about it. In this month's Global Citizen, columnist Elizabeth Sawin describes the six years of planning and dreaming that culminated in her moving, earlier this summer, into Cobb Hill Co-Housing, an intentional community in Vermont. Live communally, vicariously, or be inspired to follow your own dreams, on the Grist Magazine website.

No Island Is an Island

Climate change was the leading concern at the annual Pacific Island Forum this week, where leaders of small island nations chastised the United States for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The islands have an unusually vested interest in the protocol because they face a high risk of being swallowed up by seas swollen from melting ice caps and thermal expansion of ocean waters. The leaders of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu released a statement at the forum noting their "profound disappointment at the decision of the U.S." The consortium stopped short of chiding Australia, which has also rejected Kyoto on the basis that it would be fatally flawed without U.S. participation. Australia is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the South Pacific, but it is also one of the largest aid donors to Pacific islands.

A Drinking Problem

Preventable water-related illnesses could kill as many as 76 million people by the year 2020 unless nations take action to improve their water-delivery systems, according to a report by a California environmental research institute. Most of the affected people would likely be children in developing countries, who are highly susceptible to such water-borne diseases as diarrhea, worms, dysentery, and cholera. Experts estimate that currently, 2 to 5 million people die every year from water-related illnesses; the new study blames those deaths largely on development efforts that have focused on big, centralized water-delivery systems rather than accessible, affordable, localized methods of providing clean water to impoverished people. Peter Gleick, lead author of the study, called the issue "a hidden tragedy" and "one of the greatest development failures of the 20th century."

Putting the Golf Cart Before the Horsepower

Seeking to comply with California regulations requiring automakers to reduce their emissions, General Motors has announced plans to give away thousands of electric vehicles over the next three years. The vehicles in question are literally modified golf carts (they have had seat belts, windshield wipers, and other parts added), and are only for use in low-traffic areas; the electric carts will be donated to businesses and charitable organizations, and will help GM earn low-emissions-vehicles credits under the California law. While most of the vehicles will go to California, some are destined for New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts, which have traditionally followed California's environmental lead when it comes to tightening automotive standards. Some environmentalists expressed skepticism at what seemed like a half-measure by GM: "I don't think anyone's clamoring for more golf carts," said Kate Simmons, a member of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. "There are real technologies that exist today that GM could put in their vehicles."

Walk Softly and Carry a Big Computer Model

Unless you live there, you probably haven't been following the brouhaha in North Dakota. So here's the skinny: The U.S. EPA insists that the state is in violation of air quality standards because of the high concentration of sulfur dioxide in the air at the otherwise-pristine Theodore Roosevelt National Park and a national wildlife refuge. The state, meanwhile, conducted its own computer air quality models and says it is not in violation of the standards. The EPA was unconvinced, and used the same model but different data to prove its point. If the EPA maintains its position, some North Dakota power producers could be required to clean up their act, scrubbing sulfur from unscrubbed power plants. Moreover, the EPA has threatened to take over the state's pollution program.