Wednesday, 23 Feb 2005

Too much of the conversation around the purported "death of environmentalism" has taken place among middle-aged movement veterans. We have nothing against middle age, of course. Some of our oldest friends are middle-aged. (We kid!) But if there's one thing Whitney Houston taught us ... okay, there isn't. Young people really are the future, though. With that in mind, we've invited four up-and-comers from the Environmental Leadership Program to discuss the problems, real and imagined, of the environmental movement. Their email dialogue will continue throughout the week. Find out what all the hip kids are talking about -- in Dispatches, today on the Grist Magazine website.

Exhausted

Old diesel engines kill more than 20,000 Americans a year

Particulate pollution generated by old diesel engines is killing more people per year than drunk driving, said a report released yesterday. Using data and methodologies from the U.S. EPA, the Clean Air Task Force and a coalition of public health groups found that more than 20,000 Americans -- particularly those in urban areas near bus stops, highways, truck stops, or construction sites -- die, and more than 400,000 visit the emergency room, each year after breathing in tiny particles of diesel exhaust. While the EPA has mandated the phase-in of cleaner diesel engines for highway vehicles and heavy equipment starting in 2007, it has not addressed the 13 million such engines already in use, which have a lifespan of some 30 years. The groups behind the report recommended requiring the upgrading of current engines and the use of cleaner-burning fuel. "We do not need to wait," wrote Howard Frumkin of Emory University in the report's foreword. "Technology is available today that can reduce particulate matter emissions 90 percent." Industry groups, you'll be shocked to hear, decried the study.


The sprawling, disconnected modern U.S. city, where the wealthy live in peripheral suburbs and the working class lives in the center, has created a kind of "transit apartheid," according to participants at last weekend's Future of Transportation Conference in Los Angeles. SUVs on their way to and from the 'burbs commit drive-by pollution, while inadequate funding reduces transportation options for those in the city core. Activist Ansje Miller describes the ideas and energy presented at the conference and, unusual for environmental gatherings, the diversity of voices -- in Dispatches, today on the Grist Magazine website.

Global Warming -- It's Infectious

Environmental change linked to spread of infectious diseases

If the catastrophic flooding, drought, and weather-related calamities associated with global warming don't kill you, exotic infectious diseases might step up to do the job, a new report released by the U.N. suggests. It found that changes to the environment -- such as deforestation, urban growth, mining, and pollution of coastal waters -- may be aiding the spread of infectious diseases, including ailments never before seen in humans. The report also suggests that global warming could be a major aggravating factor because rising temperatures and altered habitats could allow more diseases and their carriers to flourish. Climate change may also increase the number of environmental refugees moving to new areas and taking germs with them. The researchers noted a rise in the occurrence of dengue fever, found in only nine countries in the 1970s, but now present in more than 100. Other ailments scientists have linked to the environment include tuberculosis, bubonic plague, and cholera.

Marshing Our Mellow

Legendary Iraqi marshes slowly on the mend

Despite certain, er, unfortunate events elsewhere in the country, one part of Iraq, subject to some of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's worst crimes, is experiencing a glimmer of hope. For years after the 1991 Gulf War, much of Hussein's industrial machinery was turned toward a massive dam-building project that drained some 90 percent of the southern wetlands where Marsh Arabs had lived for more than 5,000 years. Aside from the human toll -- hundreds of thousands of marshland inhabitants were displaced -- it was an ecological catastrophe, destroying an area many call the cradle of Western civilization, periodically flooded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and home to hundreds of fish and bird species. After Hussein was booted, residents tore down the dams and water began flooding back in -- water a group of researchers now says is much cleaner than they expected. The researchers report in the latest issue of Science that the marshes are surprisingly resilient and that while full restoration is impossible, signs are positive that with enough water, much of their former glory could return.