EarthTalk Q&A

Has the landmark federal cleanup legislation Superfund been a success or failure from the perspective of environmentalists?

No doubt the age of commercial/industrial fishing, which dawned in the 1950s when large offshore trawlers and at-sea processing facilities first plied the open ocean, has taken its toll on a number of fish species. Atlantic Cod, for example, once teemed off the coast of New England and sustained millions of settlers and then immigrants.

Indeed, the Kyoto Protocol—an international accord signed by 141 countries agreeing to scale back carbon dioxide (CO2) and other “greenhouse” gas emissions—has gone into effect now despite non-involvement by the U.S.

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.

Builders, architects, environmental organizations and forward-thinking governments around the world are working on a host of innovative ideas aimed at greening the built environment—from giant factories and public spaces to housing developments and single-family homes.

Senator Gaylord Nelson—who just passed away in July—founded the first Earth Day back in 1970 in order to celebrate and raise awareness about protecting the planet. With rivers catching fire from the dumping of combustible toxins, and cities buried under blankets of auto exhaust smog

We are not often exposed, in this country, to acts of principled self-denial on the part of those far less fortunate than ourselves. America is a country seemingly obsessed with rights, demands and redress. Greed is presumed god, or at least neutral, when accompanied by a relative lack of wealth. So while the poor are, by virtue of their state, free of any need to justify avarice, many of us make special pains to do just that. Accumulation pervades life in the developed world so completely that much can be determined about our worldview by how much and how gracefully we consume.

On a mild winter morning, Yellow Creek runs caramel brown behind larry and Sheila Wilson’s house, smelling of the earth, pungent and natural. The surface ripples over hidden rocks and breaks into tiiny white caps. From the porch it looks like a gentle wading creek, but as you cross the lawn you find that it is a powerful little river, full of muscle, racing ahead through this flat hollow to the next bend in the wooded mountains that have shaped five decades of Larry’s life. This is the heart of coal country. One small hill has laready been cut down soon. But for now the hollow seems at peace, slumbering in the brown shades of winter. The loud burbling of the creek blankets the yard. a great blue heron flies overhead. The damp air carries an acrid trace of coal smoke from a neighbor’s chimney.

The 25-foot boat darted toward the Exxon tanker under cover of night, stealthily taking water samples of the liquid being discharged. For a half year, the tiny boat had trailed tankers along New York’s Hudson River as they rinsed their tanks clean of sea water tainted with jet fuel–an illegal activity Exxon would live to regret. But back in 1983 few people knew that the Hudson River had recently acquired its very own watchdog: John Cronin, better known as the Riverkeeper.