Environmentalists in the United States, in collaboration with former Soviets, are working to develop economically sustainable agriculture and tourism enterprises in Siberia’s vast Lake Baikal region. If they are successful, the world’s oldest, deepest and largest lake could become a prototype of environmentally sound development for the rest of the former Soviet Union.
For the past dozen years, the environment did not pass "go" in the White House. But President Clinton has promised us "the most ambitious environmental cleanup…of our time." Vice President Gore has written one of the biggest environmental bestsellers since Silent Spring. And green lobbyists suddenly have friends in high places. Will this team win the jackpot, or wind up politically bankrupt?
You’re selecting a dinner wine at your local liquor store. But when you reach for your old standby in the Chardonnay bin, you notice a new, official looking label affixed on it: "Organically Grown Wine, No Sulfites Added, California Organic Food Act of 1990." You’ve heard of organically grown produce. But an organically grown wine? Is it better healthwise? Is it more Earth-friendly? Are sulfites bad for you? If you’re thinking of turning to the government for answers think again.
I’ve been seeing the terms "greenies" and "greenie rhetoric" quite a bit lately, most notably in the business press where one can sometimes find considerable verse seeking to trivialize the concerns of environmentalists (which, not coincidentally, often relate to irresponsible corporate behavior). The subtle jabs come in forms something like this (to wax poetic): "Business will save the environment, making moey at it too, we don’t need the greenies telling us what to do."
Tall sea grasses reach the surface of Chincoteague Bay, filling the water like a sunken forest. To many boaters, these beds of grass would be a nuisance. But to Bill Denison, they are a marvel. "You’re looking at one of the most productive areas in the world," he said, as his boat skims the stops of the grasses which provide important food and habitat for waterfowl, fish and shellfish.
When Robert Laporte and his family moved from a log cabin in rural Canada to a house in Iowa, they soon noticed a marked downturn in their health. They traced their symptoms to the toxic chemicals routinely used in construction materials.
In the 1970s, Jan Lundberg was a rising star in the oil industry, lunching at yacht clubs and crusing California freeways in a Mercedes. For 14 years, he built his family’s business, Lundberg Survey, Inc., into the highly respected publisher of the Lundberg Letter, a newsletter which forecasts oil industry trends. In 1986, Lundberg left the family business and went through a transformation–selling his car, fouding the non profit Fossil Fuels Policy Action Institute (FFPAI) and joining forces with environmentalists in Washington, DC. Today, in his work to end our society’s petroleum dependency, not only does Lundberg no longer drive a Mercedes, he no longer drives a car at all.
"What’s the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?" Thoreau once asked. His quote adorns the brochure for EcoVillage–a planned community coming to life in Ithaca, New York. At their forum last fall, 60 earthy people slogged through sodden paths and armpit-high brambles on the 176-acre site–recently purchased for $400,000–that many hope to someday call home. They drew smeary-inked circles and arrows on map handouts. They debated whether the site proposed for the village center would be better suited for a water tank, and whether to plant the asparagus patch over the proposed playing field. "The land will let us know what goes where," reassured architect Steve Blais, one of the many professionals donating their services to the nonprofit project.
Six weeks after her wedding, 20-year-old Nean Pok was gathering firewood at the edge of a forest near the Cambodian village of Phrum Prey Kpors when she stepped on a land mine. nean was more fortunate than some of her fellow villagers. Her husband, who heard the explosion, was nearby. He quckly tied a tourniquet around Nean’s lower left leg.
A slight, chocolate-brown seabird that darts through the forests of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest at speeds topping 50 miles per hour, the marbled murrelet bewildered long-ago orinthologists. They wondered why they saw murrelets in forests 40 miles inland, but couldn’t find any when they honed their binoculars on the sea.
