Thursday, 26 May 2005

The logjam seems to have broken: Three separate climate-change measures are competing for attention as potential amendments to the energy bill, set to go to the Senate floor in late June. Environmental advocates welcome the newfound momentum, but worry that preemptive vote-hunting, compromising, and watering down may render the final product virtually innocuous. That is, if the Senate manages to approve a final product at all. Muckraker investigates.

At Loggerheads

Mexico pressured to protect eco-activists after two murders last week

International human-rights groups yesterday urged the Mexican government to take action to protect the lives of environmental activists who are carrying out anti-logging campaigns. The plea comes on the heels of an attack last week on longtime activist Albertano Penalosa, which resulted in the murders of two of his sons. Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Mexican human-rights groups say the attack was part of an ongoing effort by local political bosses to squelch environmental campaigns in the western state of Guerrero. The local conservation group Peasant Ecologists of the Petatlan Sierra, to which Penalosa belongs, hasn't made many friends in the logging industry with its efforts to block roads and prevent the destruction of habitat and watersheds in an area where nearly 40 percent of the forest has already been destroyed. "This work is not just for us or for our family, but for everyone," says Penalosa's wife Reyna Mojica.


There's culture shock, and then there's culture shock. When well-traveled British journalist Brendan Sainsbury moved to Canada, he was astonished by North Americans' unbridled adoration of the automobile. Life without a driver's license had worked just fine in 65 other countries, but he began to wonder if this was the end of his innocence. Find out if cars did Sainsbury in.

The Left Knows What the Right's Brands Are Doing

Green campaigners target corporations as way to effect change

Environmental activists in the U.S., weary of battling with the largely unsympathetic Bush administration, have increasingly been targeting their efforts at other world power brokers -- transnational corporations. Their success to date has been fueled by a sort of guerilla advertising -- innocuously dubbed "market campaigns" -- in which activists creatively associate a company's brand with the harm they're doing to the environment. PR-conscious corporations, ever striving to be well-liked by both consumers and shareholders, often cave to the pressure, finding, like computer-maker Dell did after agreeing to offer a recycling service, that environmental benevolence isn't economic suicide after all. "What got us really going was that we found we can meet our business needs, we can meet our customers' needs, and we can do what the stakeholders are asking of us, all at the same time," said Dell spokesperson Bryant Hilton. Other successful campaigns have targeted Citibank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase.

An Offer: They Can't Dump E-Refuse

NYC considers tough e-waste bill

One of the toughest electronic-waste bills in the U.S. was introduced in the New York City Council yesterday. It would require producers of electronic equipment like computers and televisions to collect and recycle those devices -- that is, if they want to maintain selling rights within the city. City officials like council member Michael E. McMahon, one of the bill's cosponsors, say the legislation is intended to introduce "producer responsibility" into the equation. They hope it will save New Yorkers money on disposal costs and spare landfills from heavy metals like lead, chromium, and mercury, all of which can leach out of discarded electronic equipment. Called "pretty onerous" by one electronics industry honcho, the proposed law would require by 2010 that manufacturers collect and recycle the equivalent of 30 percent of the equipment they sell, or make up for it by donating used equipment to schools and nonprofit groups.