Back in the winter of 1976, I happened to catch an evening TV news report which graphically depicted the killing of baby seals near Newfoundland. Outraged at what I was seeing, I hurried to the phone to chide the station for showing me this carnage. As I began dialing, though, I realized that I was about the blame the messenger rather than the actual perpetrators of these horrors that so offended my sensibilities.
advice and dissent
The western environmental team boarded the Russian bus from the Hanoi airport, after cutting through rice paddies of every imaginable hue of green, tended by women in conical hats and watched over by teary-eyed water buffaloes. It was the Vietnam of every news report, every post-war film.
Despite the current Congress’ wholesale assault on land conservation, preservationists are still winning many of the local battles. Take the case of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a magnet for hundreds of thousands of summer tourists who come for the sandy beaches and New England charm. Environmentalists thre argued this year – successfully – that the much-loved 75-mile spit of mogratory dunes ought to be off limits.
Food and Pain: Making the Connection
Labor-saving big appliances-dishwashers, refridgerators, clothes washers/dryers and air conditioners – can drastically reduce the house holder’s workload and increase comfort levels. But traditional appliances are no friend to the environment. Their clean white facades hide the soul of polluters. They use countless megajoules of electricty and billions of gallons of gallons of water, accelerating fuel consumption, dam building and air pollution. How could appliances dedicated to making things clean be so dirty.
The early fighters for animals were crusaders whose commitment grew out of concerns about slavery and the exploitation of children.
Anne Holmblad of Chelsea, Vermont has used a wheelchair for all her life, but that didn’t stop her from joining a religious boat trip around the Thousand Islands area of South Florida. "In a canoe I’m as mobile as everyone else," she says. "I’m able to touch my environment in a way I rarely can. The highlight was sneaking into narrow inlets, pulling myself through the mangroves, never knowing if I’d get stuck."
The numbers say it all. Each year an average of 25 people across the world die as a result of a shark attack. You have one in 300 million chance of meeting your maker in the mouth of a shark. The sharks, on the other hand, wish they had our odds. While U.S. Department of Health mortality statistics show that Americans are more likely to be killed by lightning than by a shark, the Department of Commerce estimates that people kill 100 million sharks a year. In order to keep up with us, sharks would have to eat the entire combined population of Mexico and Texas every year.
Sixteen-year-old Jake Wilson (not his real name) was the star of his Wayne, Pennsylvania high school football team. Young, smart and in good shape, he was also radiantly healthy. But then Jake started become lethargic. He began to fatigue easily, lost his ambition, seemed disoriented, complained of headaches and grew quite irritable. His school work took a dive as well as his performance on the feild.
