Friday, 03 Jun 2005

Corporations based outside of the U.S. are increasingly spending big bucks to lobby the U.S. federal government, many with an eye toward weakening environmental protections. Take, for example, the London-based oil giant BP, which doled out $33 million from 1998 through mid-2004 to push its agenda in Washington, D.C. One of its key aims during that period: opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Muckraker investigates the changing face of lobbying on Capitol Hill.

The Bad News Forebears

Study suggests toxins' effects may be passed down through generations

A pregnant woman's exposure to toxic chemicals may cause harmful effects not only in her children, but in her grandchildren and theirs, a surprising new study suggests. For some time scientists have known about "epigenetic" changes: chemical modifications of DNA that affect the way it is expressed (phenotype), without changing the genetic code itself (genotype). What Washington State University researchers discovered -- and report this week in the journal Science -- is that such changes can be passed from generation to generation. This, suffice it to say, flies in the face of some fairly central assumptions in biology. It also raises disturbing questions about the long-term effects of chemical pollution. "In human terms, this would mean if your great-grandmother was exposed to an environmental toxin at a critical point in her pregnancy, you may have inherited the disease," says lead researcher Michael Skinner. "It is a new way to think about disease." And by "new" he means "freaky."


On her very first fishing trip, Niaz Dorry found a herring inside a cod's stomach and realized "it takes an ecosystem to save a fish." Since then she's been hard at work promoting ecosystem-based conservation efforts. As this week's InterActivist, Dorry answers reader questions about being a woman in a fisherman's world, uniting fishing communities and environmentalists, making purchasing choices that promote healthy oceans, and more.

The Sawn Remains the Same

Massive Amazon illegal logging ring busted

Eighty-nine people were rounded up by Brazilian authorities this week as part of a massive crackdown on illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, causing a rare outbreak of hope among conservationists that the country's government is finally taking the problem seriously. (The sweep came just weeks after the latest, very grim, data on Amazon deforestation were released.) The illegal-logging syndicate was one of the largest in the country. Among those busted were nearly 50 officials of Ibama, Brazil's environment protection agency, including the head agency official in the state of Mato Grosso, where the bulk of illegal logging takes place. Apparently, Hugo Jose Scheuer Werle was producing documents saying trees were extracted legally in exchange for bribes; 32 of the bribers were also nailed. Said Justice Minister Thomaz Bastos, "Worse than corruption is corruption which is not punished." Uh, right.

Ferry Godfather

Architect shows that reusing discarded materials can be chic

Greens have been going on for years about the need to reuse society's refuse. Now, a high-end modernist San Francisco architect named Olle Lundberg is showing that scavenging is not just for the poor and idealistic. The rich can play too! For instance, Lundberg lives on a decommissioned Icelandic auto ferry, retrofitted with materials discarded from his other building projects. You too can construct a similarly hip domicile without using any new materials -- all you need is an environmental ethic, some dock space, and around $900,000. Or if a weekend cabin is more your speed, you can mimic Lundberg's approach on that front too: Refurbish a shack using solely materials discarded from other projects or reclaimed from demolitions, including a pool made from an old wooden water tank. He estimates building the cabin new would have run $750,000, while canny reuse reduced the price of renovations to $150,000. So, while the near-million-dollar ferry home is beyond the reach of 99.9 percent of us, $150K -- and some architectural expertise, and 16 acres -- well, that's, uh ... sigh.