Wednesday, 23 Oct 2002

Hitting the Bottle

Until two years ago, the last thing the people of Mecosta County, Mich., worried about was their water supply. Mecosta County sits near the center of Michigan's lower peninsula, which itself sits at the center of the largest supply of freshwater on Earth. But when the Perrier Group of America won permission to drill wells, extract up to 210 million gallons of water per year for free, bottle it, and sell it throughout the Upper Midwest, the people of Mecosta County suddenly had plenty to worry about. A group of residents calling themselves Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation has sued to stop the company, arguing that water, like air, is a public resource -- not a commodity. The issue has created so much political unrest that it has divided the state Republican Party and is influencing the 2002 Michigan gubernatorial campaign -- and its resolution will have implications not only in the Great Lakes region, but also far beyond. Keith Schneider reports from Mecosta County, only on the Grist Magazine website.

A Dehli-cate Balance

Delegates from around the world are meeting in New Delhi, India, today for the latest round of international talks on climate change. In part because the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions -- the United States -- has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the meeting is focusing on ways to adapt to climate change rather than on ways to curb it. Delegates will discuss "minimizing vulnerabilities and preparing for worsening droughts, floods, storms, health emergencies, and other expected impacts," especially in developing countries, according to a statement issued by the U.N., which is sponsoring the meeting. Attendees will also address the related question of how much industrialized countries will help pay for the consequences of global warming in developing nations. Some environmental organizations are criticizing the shift in focus at the talks, saying the international community should be intensifying efforts to control climate change at the same time as it seeks to deal with the consequences.

Color Me Good

Far from the climate change conference in New Delhi, a different crowd is gathering today in Washington, D.C., for the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. Among the attendees is Na'Taki Osborne, the national leadership development coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation and this week's Grist diarist. The summit brings together people of color from across the United States to assess the progress made in the environmental justice movement, to share stories of struggle and triumph, and to build on the action plan established at the first summit in 1991. Osborne, an environmental engineer by training, has committed her life to engineering social change as well; read about her experiences at the summit and her efforts to empower disenfranchised communities to participate in environmental decision-making, only on the Grist Magazine website.

The Eagle Has Landed -- With a Thump

The U.S. Department of Defense would be permanently exempted from an international law protecting more than 850 species of migratory birds, under a tentative agreement reached between negotiators from the House and Senate and disclosed by environmental groups yesterday. The negotiations began after the Bush administration complained that the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act interfered with military training exercises. The agreement would effectively allow the incidental bombing of the habitat of hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, including endangered species, on 25 million acres of military-controlled land. However, the DOD would have to examine ways to minimize the impact of military exercises on the birds. The treaty is just one of several environmental laws from which the military has sought exemptions in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Many environmentalists and some lawmakers feel the trend has gotten out of hand: "Exempting our military from the MBTA ... endangers our wildlife heritage and compromises our international treaty obligations," said Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.).

Touching News

A whopping 83 percent of the surface of the Earth is dedicated to human activities -- farming, mining, fishing, or just plain old living -- according to a report released this week by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network. Human use leaves wildlife with just a fraction of the terrestrial surface of the globe still untouched, mostly in Alaska, Canada, Russia, Tibet, Mongolia, and the Amazon River Basin. The report also found that close to 100 percent of the land that can be farmed for rice, wheat, or corn is already being cultivated by humans. Eric Sanderson, a landscape ecologist and the leader of the report, called it "a clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth" that provides "a way to find opportunities to save wildlife and wild lands in pristine areas."