Currents

It hasn’t been an easy road for the <a href="http://www.capewind.org/"> Cape Wind Project</a>, an ambitious privately funded (with public subsidies) attempt to build a large, 130-turbine wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, in Nantucket Sound. But the latest attempt to scuttle the project—an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act introduced by Senator John Warner (R-VA) has been <A HREF="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/10/08/tough_language_dropped_in_cape_wind_farm_plan/">withdrawn</A>.

When the Bush administration issued an important change in policy recently, virtually acknowledging that global warming is real, it was news to President George W. Bush, who was unaware that any new program had been announced. Earlier, he had dismissed another global warming report from his own administration as "from the bureaucracy."

September 29, 2004—Rana Foroohar of <I>Newsweek</I> reports that over the past two years, despite lots of recent media coverage about how hot the alternative energy sector is, the worldwide stock-market value of companies developing renewable energy fell from $13 billion to $10.7 billion, while the value of fossil-fuel companies surged to record highs of more than $1.2 trillion.

Death on the modern factory farm assembly line is not as neat and clean as it should be. "They blink. They make noises," Ramon Moreno <a href="http://www.hfa.org/hot_topic/wash_post.html">told</a> the Washington Post. "The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around." Moreno, a slaughterhouse worker in Washington State, says that on a bad day, many of the cows that reach him are still alive and even conscious, even after having gone through the "tail cutter," the "belly ripper" or the "hide puller." As Moreno puts it, "They die piece by piece."

September 29, 2004—<I>Nature</I>, a leading international science periodical, has published written responses from President Bush and challenger John Kerry to questions regarding their respective stands on various scientific issues, including stem cell research, global warming, genetically modified crops and nuclear weapons development. As might be expected, the candidates rarely agreed on what should be done regarding federal policy on most matters of science.

In a recent press interview, Andre Heinz, the leading spokesperson on environmental issues for the Kerry campaign, talks about the potential impact of his step-dad’s environmental proposals if voters elect to dump Bush this November. Heinz, the middle son of Theresa Heinz Kerry and the late Sen. John Heinz (R-PA), is a self-proclaimed student of industrial ecology, having worked directly with environmental visionaries like architect William McDonough and author Paul Hawken. Prior to joining the Kerry campaign, Heinz doled out advice to government entities and corporations on behalf of the Natural Step, a sustainability consulting firm with a global clientele.

An international team of biologists released a report last week warning that when endangered species go extinct, they take down other dependent species with them. The upshot of the finding is that up to 50 percent more species may be endangered than can be currently accounted for by biologists.

New evidence that climate change is upon us arrives daily, and since this column is our most timely forum, we can offer new dispatches from the global warming front that arrived in just the last couple of months.

According to critics like the Wilderness Society, George W. Bush has distinguished himself as the President most at odds with wilderness preservation since passage of the Wilderness Act 40 years ago. Bush has signed off on adding just 530,000 acres to America’s wilderness legacy, the least of any President since Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law in September 1964. Additionally, the Bush White House has lobbied extensively for increasing oil and gas drilling on wilderness lands throughout the nationwide 106-million acre wilderness system.

In response to pressure from environmental groups and the Norwegian government, Ford Motor Company decided last week to spare 400 electric vehicles from the wrecking ball. The futuristic vehicles will be sent back to Norway, their country of origin, for resale to willing consumers.