When Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act in 1964 it was the first law of its kind in the world. It was a progressive notion, indeed, for an industrious, civilized country to protect large areas of roadless, resource-rich land for the sole purpose of keeping it uncivilized and theoretically, as wild as when Europeans still believed the Earth was flat.
John Schaeffer started out as an "urban refugee" living on a remote commune in California in the 1970’s. Tired of life without electricity, Schaeffer, a tinkerer, hooked up a solar-powerd television in his home–and he’s been finding innovative ways to introduce mainstream America to renewable energy ever since.
Art Graham is the very model of a socially responsible businessman. His business diverts garbage from the landfill, his plants obey emissions guidelines to the letter, and a framed certificate from former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) director William Reilly, commending him for service to the environment, hangs in the lobby of his factory. But here’s the catch: His business isn’t making compost, rahabilitating discarded wine bottles, or being entrepreneurial in any of the other ways beloved by environmentalists. His business is melting and reshaping polystyrene, better known by the brand name Styrofoam, into plastic "popcorn" shipping pellets.
Since the beginning of life on EArth, the oceans have been the ecological keel of the biosphere. The marine environment, from the brackish waters where rivers flow into the sea to the deepest depths, constitutes roughly 90 percent of the world’s inhabitated space. The oceans cover nearly 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, and their deepest trenches plunge lower below sea level than Mount Everest climbs above it. They hold 97 percent of the water on Earth, more than 10,000 times as much water as all the world’s freshwater lakes and rivers combined.
It sounds implausible: foreign-owned companies bruning hazardous waste in the United States, some of it imported, generating millions of dollars while poisoning citizens. And yet, at about 30 sites nationwide, cement is being made by burning hundreds of thousands of tons of liquid hazardous waste per year in unpermitted cement kilns. The waste, which originates, from the plastic petrochemical, pesticide and other industries, can contain arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury and a host of other toxins which, when burned, send heavy metals and dioxins up into the air, down into unlined pits, and even out into bags of cement sold to unsuspecting consumers.
Delfin Payaguajo of the Sekoya tribe in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador says his family’s health and traditional way of life have been ruined by Texaco. The U.S. oild giant has pumped a billion barrels of crude oil out of the Ecuadoran rainforest–one of the world’s most biologicially diverse–and left behin and ecological horror show.
From the air, Gibraltar Chemical Resources, Inc. resembles a ballfield clearing in the yellow pine forests of east Texas, scraped down to red dirt and crowded with steel sheds and smooth white cannister tanks. It lies in rural Winona, where many people raise cows or rose bushes for a living. Started in 1982, Gibraltar now handles 25 million gallons of hazardous waste a year from such sources as Fortune 500 electronics companies, small paint shops and U.S. military bases. It recycles solvents, mixe other chemicals as fuel for cement kilns, and pumps fluid wastes almost a mile down and injection well. Government agencies approve of Gibraltar’s work, but some townspeople accuse the company of chemical warfare.
In the early 1970s, "Save the Seals" became the anthem of the nascent environmental movement, and the harp seal pup, with its bottomless black eyes and snow white innocence, became the movement’s mascot. Environmentalists succeeded in virtually shutting down the commercial baby seal hunt in Canada, but now older harp seals have a new price on their heads–and possibly their penises–as the next target for the Asian aphrodisiac market.
When Matt Simmons hears someone describe him as a "Bush energy advisor," he winces. Yes, he talks to President Bush about oil sometimes, but what he has to say isn’t colored by partisan politics. Simmons wants everyone to realize the energy crunch we’re in, and that’s why he wrote Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy</I> (Wiley, $24.95), which will be published in July.
Following its annual survey of avian life around the world, the conservation organization BirdLife International says that one-fifth of all bird species are facing extinction in the short term as a result of habitat loss and introduced pests.
