Wednesday, 16 Oct 2002

Greens in the Red

It's not just investors who are bearing the brunt of the bear market: U.S. and Canadian environmental nonprofits are learning that when the stock market shrinks, so do the coffers of their financial supporters. A recent survey found that 10 leading private foundations in the U.S. lost $8.3 billion in the first six months of this year -- and times are only getting tougher. The value of the California-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a major funder of environmental groups, has fallen from $6 billion to $3.3 billion this year. In 2000, when the Packard Foundation had still more money, it gave away $450 million; in 2003, it plans to give away $200 million. The Georgia-based Turner Foundation was hard hit too, losing a third of its assets this year. Some environmental organizations that survive off of memberships and smaller donations are in the black, but many others are not as lucky.

High-drogen

The European Union is homing in on hydrogen as a way to meet its ambitious goals of generating 22 percent of its electricity and 12 percent of all energy from renewables by 2010. Energy independence is increasingly urgent for Europe, which imports a whopping 70 percent of its oil and gas from foreign sources, including the Middle East and Russia. Last week, the European Commission (the E.U.'s governing body) met with senior executives from Shell, DaimlerChrysler, and other companies to hear advice on how to speed the development of hydrogen fuel cells, which would store the power generated from sources like the wind and sun. The commission has allocated more than $2 billion for research into sustainable energy projects over the next five years, a 20-fold increase over the previous five years. Romano Prodi, the commission's president, said, "We are not working on a scientific experiment. ... We are working for change in the most important pattern of consumption of a contemporary society."

Bed Head

An Interior Department appeals board has upheld its earlier ruling that three of the leases for a coal bed methane (CBM) drilling project in Wyoming's Powder River Basin were issued without adequate environmental review. Environmentalists hope the decision will help block pending leases for such drilling on millions of acres throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Controversy over the Powder River Basin project -- the largest natural-gas proposal ever approved by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management -- began in 2000, when the Wyoming Outdoors Council contested leases that gave the company Pennaco the right to apply for drilling permits. In April, the appeals board ruled for the first time that the lease sale was illegal; Pennaco and others then sued the BLM, and the BLM asked the appeals board to reconsider its decision. Now that the board has upheld that decision, the BLM may have to ask Interior Secretary Gale Norton to override the board's decision -- which she may well do, given that drilling is a central component of President Bush's energy plan.

Superfund Meets Kryptonite

Under the Bush administration, the Superfund program to clean up toxic-waste sites is seemingly becoming not-so-super. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the U.S. EPA completed cleanups at 42 toxic waste sites, down from 47 in the previous 12 months. This year's total was unimpressive compared to the average of 76 sites cleaned annually during the Clinton administration. The total might have been even lower if environmentalists and congressional Democrats hadn't accused the Bush administration of being lax with polluters after the EPA's inspector general revealed that 33 Superfund sites hadn't received federal money three-quarters of the way into the fiscal year. As a result, 21 of those sites received eleventh-hour funding. EPA officials said the decline in the number of cleanups was due to the size and complexity of the jobs.

Nevada Protest Site

Sixty-six environmental justice activists, hailing from a broad range of states, were arrested early this week in Nevada after demonstrating over the weekend against nuclear energy and weapons. The protesters, including individuals from South Carolina, Washington, and Mississippi, blamed nuclear facilities for high rates of cancer, birth defects, and skin disorders in black, Latino, and Native American communities nationwide. Most of the protestors were arrested for trespassing on the Nevada Test Site, where 928 full-scale nuclear weapons tests were conducted from 1951 to 1992. The country's proposed nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Mountain would also be located on the site.