Monday, 10 Feb 2003

Gaza Stripped

As if the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians weren't producing enough problems, the U.N. now says the clash is creating a big environmental mess in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A study conducted by the U.N. Environment Programme over the last five months documented increasing water pollution, loss of natural vegetation, indiscriminate waste dumping, and the razing of forestland. Some of the troubles -- such as asbestos contamination released when Palestinian houses were bulldozed by the Israeli Army -- were directly related to the escalated conflict that broke out in September 2000 and still rages today. An U.N. report with 136 recommendations for minimizing the environmental degradation was formally adopted on Friday; Palestinian and Israeli negotiators backed the report and expressed a willingness to cooperate on solving the problems. UNEP officials spun the agreement as a small step toward peace, but some observers were skeptical.

Kerrying the Weight of the World

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a presidential hopeful, took a swipe at George W. Bush yesterday by blasting the president's environmental record. "Almost as soon as this administration took office, they invited in the chief lobbyists to rewrite the very laws that were intended to protect our land, our water, and our air," charged Kerry. He criticized Bush for abandoning the Kyoto treaty on climate change, weakening the Superfund toxic-cleanup program, and trying to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, among numerous other moves. Kerry was particularly derisive of Bush's oil-dependent energy policy, proclaiming that we need to build "an America where the use of military might is not clouded by our need for oil." But in the eyes of some, Kerry himself is not immune to criticism on that front; outside the venue where he gave his speech yesterday, he was met by protestors angry over his conditional support for a war in Iraq.

Chutes and Bladders

Kids who romp around on wooden structures in playgrounds could face a higher risk of contracting lung or bladder cancer than those who don't come into contact with the equipment, the head of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Friday. Nearly all wooden playground equipment in the U.S. has been treated with the pesticide chromated copper arsenate, which can leave arsenic residue on kids' hands -- and, kids being kids, the residue can too easily end up in their mouths. The agency is considering a ban on the arsenic-based preservative in playground equipment; consumer groups petitioned for such a ban in 2001.

Executive Carte Blanche

Chalk one up for Big Energy and its boosters in the White House. On Friday, the General Accounting Office abandoned its efforts to force Vice President Dick Cheney to turn over information about which people he met with while heading up the administration's secretive energy task force. The GAO, Congress's investigative arm, had been fighting for nearly two years to find out who had input into formulating President Bush's biz-friendly energy plan. But under pressure from Republicans, who won control of both houses of Congress in November, the GAO decided not to appeal a December ruling from a federal court that sided with Cheney. Some scholars worry that the decision will hobble the legislature's ability to check executive branch power. "This is a tremendous setback for open government," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), one of the lawmakers who requested that the GAO undertake the probe.

Smart Attack

Smart-growth policies, designed to put a damper on runaway development and preserve local character, have recently come under attack in a handful of U.S. communities. In Loudon County, Va., on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., nearly 200 lawsuits were filed last week against the county's growth-control policies. Also last week, the mayor of Erie, Colo., a small mining town, had to beat back a developer-funded campaign to oust her because of her efforts to curb excessive development; she won a recall vote 1,065 to 874, but not without a difficult battle. "This is very shortsighted," Elise Jones of the Colorado Environmental Council said of efforts to roll back growth restrictions. "[L]ong-term economic vitality is tied to the protection of our quality of life."