Sorcerers’ Apprentices

As the modern world encroaches upon indigenous cultures around the world, native young people, sept up in the tide of seductive media and consumer goods, are increasingly trading in traditional lifestyles for modern ones. Unfortunately, in casting aside their rich heritage, they may also be losing stores of valuable undocumented knowledge. No wonder–all the while the WEstern world has been labelling them primitve while quietly appropriating their knowledge, particularly about medicinal plants, offering neither acknowledgement nor compensation.

Noise Annoys

The ear-shattering sounds of New York City–blaring car horns, piercing ambulance sirens, thundering subway trains, roaring pneumatic drills, and the noise generated by millions of people huddled together in limited spaces–have become legendary. Visitors are stunned by this cacophony and wonder how residents tolerate it. "We can’t and we won’t remain silent and longer," said Carmins SantaMaria, founder of Big Screechers, a New York anti-noise group credited with forcingthe City’s Transit Authority to lower its din.

A Crisis of Complacency

Environmentally speaking, the test of the new Clinton Administration may well lie in how it handles a crisis of both national and global proportions that, ironically, has an Arkansas connection.

Dawn of the Eco-Shop

Imagine walking into a store an not having to stand dumbfounded in front of rows of laudry detergents trying to figure out which brands are best for the environment, let alone your wallet. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could grab any product off the shelf and not have to wonder whether its recycled, recyclable or contains phosphates?

Earth Day

It’s Thursday, April 22, and Marty Kraft is back in business. He’ll once again orchestrate masses of Kansas City volunteers into building a 200-foot recycled sculpture. In 1990, he transformed tons of cans, bottles and newsprint into a giant Earth; last year, into the mythical Grandmother Turtle. Diana Mendelsohn is back in business, too. She’ll lead a parade of 2,000 costumed kids from Indiana schools dressed as the "All Species Parade." Paul Perkins can’t wait, either. He publishes Imagine, an insert in Sunday newspapers that will again become the largest-circulating environmental magazine, with three million copies distributed worldwide. Named after the John Lennon song, it’s the "official publication of Earth Day."

Operation Restore Earth

Below eerily quiet, clean-looking vistas, plumes of toxic chemicals have tainted soil and grounwater at every military installation in the country. Millions of gallons of solvents were dumped into the ground at Air Force bases from Alaska to Florida; at an Army ammunition plants across the country, vast quantities of explosive compounds have washed into the groundwater. At many of these bases, the pollution has migrated into neighboring comunities. Military officials often knew of these environmental threats but failed to notify the public or their own personnel of the dangers. At the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, high levels of toxic explosive compounds such as TNT and RDX (Research and Development Explosive) had been found in groundwater below the plant since the 1970s. Army tests in 1983 discovered that these toxic wastes had migrated far beyond the base border. But neighboring residents–who drew upon this groundwater with private wells for drinking and agriculture–didn’t hear from the Army until more than a year later.

Good Threads

Like many consumers, California businessman George Akers thought that cotton was the "cleanest, best thing in the world," because it was natural. Then, while shopping in a self-described environmental clothing store in London in 1989, he discovered "green" cotton. He learned that conventional cotton doesn’t, in fact, wear so well on the environment, considering the sum total of its environmental impacts. Akers mended his thinking. Last year he started O Wear, a clothing company that from cotton seed to cotton sweater, uses no toxic chemicals.

Milk a Natural? Think Again

There are 200 million cows in India today. The nation’s Hindus worship the cow as the sacred mothers of life; cow killing is punishable by life imprisonment. For the half million cow that have become too sick to roam the streets, the Indian government provides shelter, food and care. When questioned about the costs involved, the Hindus reply, "Will you then send your mother to a slaughterhouse when she gets old?"

Letter Perfect

In 1988, the old fishing pier along the banks of the Hudson River was rotting, but underneath it lay an ipso facto nursery for striped bass. A sandy stretch of land off Liberty State Park in Jersey City, environmentalists called it the last tidal flat in the Hudson Estuary. City officials wanted to sell is for industrial use. Local activist Audrey Zapp wanted the bass to keep laying eggs there. She proceeded to ask every environmental group in New Jersey to write letters urging the stat to save the tidal flat.

The Booming Business in Waste

Bill St. John was once a rising star in the environmental cleanup marketplace. Now he claims that offering effective, lower cost toxic waste cleanups was a bad business strategy. His old company, Ecova, collided with an "environmental industrial complex" of contractors, consultants and regulators geared to making money by dragging out cleanups and discouraging innovation.

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