Currents

Last week’s column was about rivers. This one’s about oceans. Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean and Eye of the Albatross, sees the current ocean crisis this way: "For those who take seriously the overwhelming scientific evidence showing a precipitous decline in fish populations, the answers to ocean recovery lie in fishing slower than fish can breed, farming seafood in ecologically less-destructive ways, and giving consumers the information they need to vote with their conscience and their wallet. There is time. And, yes, there is hope."

What do individuals who fought a water privatization project in Ghana, campaigned to protect the environment and people of the Republic of Georgia from a major oil pipeline, sought justice for an industrial disaster that killed 20,000 people, and battled a Louisiana chemical plant spewing toxic fumes have in common? They are the 2004 winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize, which honors the work of grassroots environmental activists from around the world

Analysts are predicting that by 2030 or earlier the world could peak. Forward-thinking policy-makers are beginning to realize that society must have alternative plans ready in order to move beyond the era of cheap and abundant oil. With 90 percent of the world’s transport currently dependent on oil, changes to the status quo will be drastic indeed.

A new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) rating air-pollution emissions performance of America’s 100 largest electric power producers reveals important trends in the industry, and sharp contrasts between the best and worst emissions performers. The report shows overall emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are dropping, thanks largely to standards created in the Clean Air Act of 1990. Meanwhile emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which remain unregulated, are soaring.

Last week, following years of legal wrangling, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) informed officials in 31 states they must develop new pollution controls because the air in some of their counties does not meet quality standards. Across the country, 150 million Americans are affected by this problem.

Langston Hughes wrote a very moving poem about rivers, later set to music by saxophonist Gary Bartz. Paraphrasing, it says, "I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins
I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

President Bush’s campaign chairperson, former Montana Governor Marc Racicot, said Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry is an environmental extremist whose policies would kill thousands of jobs.

Despite the end of the Cold War, the Bush administration is spending 12 times more on nuclear weapons research and production than on nonproliferation efforts to retrieve, secure and dispose of nuclear weapons materials worldwide, according to an analysis of Department of Energy programs released last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

With gasoline prices reaching new highs, analysts would expect Americans to limit consumption by reducing the number of miles driven. But overall growth in the economy means that people have more expendable income to pump into their cars" gas tanks, and as a result Americans are driving more miles than ever.

The head of Britain’s Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) last week issued a report stating that the Blair government is not changing fast enough to keep pace with the environmental problems facing that country and the world at large. Sir Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the SDC, said that Blair’s central objective remains conventional economic growth rather than the well-being of society and the planet as a whole.