Tuesday, 08 Apr 2003

The Girl With the Fate of the World in Her Hands

The folk duo Indigo Girls is gearing up to hit the road Thursday with Native American activist Winona LaDuke for a two-week Honor the Earth tour. During the tour (which will end, appropriately enough, on Earth Day, April 22), Grammy Award-winners Emily Saliers and Amy Ray will talk -- and sing -- about the connections between the environment, energy, Native American issues, and U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Check out what Saliers has to say about the origins of her environmental awareness, the life of an artist-activist, her automotive inclinations, and more, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Great, Britain!

Industries in Great Britain have surpassed goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by almost three times national targets and almost twice international obligations, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs announced this week. In 2000, the British government signed 10-year climate change agreements (CCAs) with 44 industries (including steel, aluminum, cement, chemicals, paper, and food and drink) representing over 5,000 companies. In 2002, carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 13.5 million metric tons, 10 million tons more than the CCA targets. The struggling steel industry was responsible for the majority of the emissions decreases, but other industries beat their own targets as well. Environment Minister Michael Meacher said the country would exceed the 12.5 percent emissions reductions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol by 2020, and was on target to see a reduction of almost double that, at 23 percent.

The Wealth of Nature

The idea of slapping a dollar value onto an alpine meadow or a soaring redwood forest strikes a chill into the very bones of most environmentalists. Like love, nature is the kind of thing that money just can't buy. Or is it? A small but growing chorus of ecological economists are saying that perhaps the best way to protect nature is to figure out just how much it's worth -- in cold, hard cash. In a special series, writer Lissa Harris profiles Bob Costanza, Joshua Farley, and Herman Daly, three leading ecological economists, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Wheat in the World?

South Dakota is home to the largest unbroken stretch of prime waterfowl nesting habitat in the nation -- but if farmland continues to gobble up natural areas, the state's wildlife, landscape, and water quality could all suffer. South Dakota has seen almost 1.1 million acres of rangeland and pasture disappear in the last 20 years, a loss the state's top wildlife official blames on federal policies and technological innovations that make farming more lucrative than protecting land or using it for grazing. The problem could get worse in 2005, when Roundup-ready wheat becomes available. A product of the Monsanto Company, the genetically modified wheat can withstand exposure to Roundup, an herbicide also sold by Monsanto. The product will allow wheat to be grown in grasslands, which are normally poor areas for wheat farming.

Attack of the Clones

Move over, Dolly: For the first time in history, scientists have successfully cloned an endangered animal, giving rise to speculation about what role technology will play in preserving -- and even reviving -- imperiled species. Using a single frozen skin cell, scientists at the San Diego Zoo cloned a Javan banteng, a cattle-like animal native to Asia. The cell was taken from a captive banteng that died in 1980; the resulting embryo was transferred to a beef cow, and the baby banteng, born April 1, is currently thriving. Only one other endangered animal, the Asian guar, has ever been cloned, but it died two days after birth. Likewise, another banteng born from the same method is currently in poor health. Hunting and ecosystem devastation have reduced banteng numbers by 80 percent in the last two decades, and the scientists involved in the cloning emphasized that no conservation technique is as important as habitat protection.