And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JUNE 4, 1999
President Clinton Orders Federal Buildings to Cut Air Pollution
Public Comments Support Permanent Protection For Roadless Forests
Global Warming Could Raise Sea Levels in New York City
Ocean Ecosystems Suffering as Planet Warms
Human Health Emphasized in Climate Change Assessment
European Chicken and Pork Shipments Barred From the U.S.
Algae & Bacteria Can Help Reduce Herbicide Contamination
Plan for Coping with Natural Disasters Updated
Tortoises May Win Race For Habitat Protection Votes
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 1999
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun99/1999L-06-04-09.html
PRESIDENT CLINTON ORDERS FEDERAL BUILDINGS TO CUT AIR
POLLUTION
Federal buildings across the United States will be required
to cut their air pollution
and emissions by 30 percent under an executive order issued
Thursday by
President Bill Clinton. The new policy covers 500,000
government buildings,
including the Pentagon. The President also called on the
federal government to
reduce energy usage by 35 percent by 2010. Clinton
previously set a goal of a 30
percent reduction in energy use by 2005. The federal
government currently uses
about 32 percent more energy per square foot than the
average private sector
building. <snipped>
* * *
PUBLIC COMMENTS SUPPORT PERMANENT PROTECTION FOR
ROADLESS FORESTS
An estimated 200,000 public comments in support of
permanently protecting
national forest roadless areas were delivered yesterday to
Vice President Al
Gore and U.S. Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck by
conservation groups.
The Heritage Forests Campaign, the U.S. Public Interest
Research Group (U.S.
PIRG), and several other conservation groups said roughly
half of the comments
were in the form of postcards and half were emails sent
directly to Gore via the
Heritage Forests Campaign's website. U.S. PIRG gathered
115,000 postcards
addressed to the administration, calling for permanent
protection of America's
Heritage Forests. Working with major Internet sites, the
Technology Project, the
webmaster for the Heritage Forest Campaign, has promoted
paperless petitioning.
The Clinton administration is reportedly just weeks away
from making a decision
on how or whether to manage roadless areas in the national
forests. "What the
American public wants is for President Clinton to ban the
bulldozers from forest
roadless areas forever," said Ken Rait, director of the
Heritage Forests
Campaign. "The administration has repeatedly acknowledged
the importance of
roadless area protection. Unfortunately, they seem headed in
a direction that
misses the target," Rait said. Richard Hoppe, spokesman for
the Campaign, rates
the event a "smashing success," adding "We got our message
across to the
administration in an effective way."
* * *
GLOBAL WARMING COULD RAISE SEA LEVELS IN NEW YORK CITY
Global climate change is expected to create challenges for
New York City.
Scientists and government agencies there are joining forces
to address possible
future problems for the city and the Eastern seaboard.
Researchers from the
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA)
presented early results
Friday of a landmark study on how climate change may affect
the Eastern U.S.,
as part of the U.S. National Assessment on the Potential
Consequences of Climate
Variability and Change. "Climate change in urban areas is
understudied, and it is
amazing to me how complex the metropolitan area is," says
NASA researcher and
study author Cynthia Rosenzweig. "We are looking at how
people, place and
decision mechanisms of the city respond to climate change
and variability as well
as to each other." The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now
working with sea
level change scientists to estimate future beach erosion
rates due to sea level rise.
Land surface scientists and city planners are working to
project whether wetland
areas will grow or shrink due to climate changes. Climate
researchers are
working closely with New York City planners to investigate
the influence of the
"urban heat island" effect on the city. This effect occurs
because asphalt and
concrete absorb and retain more heat than vegetation,
causing cities to be warmer
than surrounding areas, and increasing smog levels.
* * *
OCEAN ECOSYSTEMS SUFFERING AS PLANET WARMS
Global climate change is impacting ocean ecosystems earlier,
and having wider
consequences, than previously expected, according to a new
report from the
World Wildlife Fund and the Marine Conservation Biology
Institute. The groups
found evidence that declining Pacific salmon stocks may no
longer find survivable
habitat in the Pacific Ocean. Reef fish and intertidal
invertebrates like anemones,
crabs and snails in California provide evidence that fish
and other species are
shifting toward the poles in response to warming. Decreased
reproduction and
increased mortality in seabirds coincide with warmer water.
Sea ice is diminishing
in both the Arctic and Antarctic, depriving birds, marine
mammals, and polar
bears of their hunting and breeding grounds and of the algae
that are the base of
the polar food web. The groups will release the report,
based on a comprehensive
review of the latest science, on June 8, at an Environmental
Media Services press
conference in Washington, DC.
* * *
HUMAN HEALTH EMPHASIZED IN CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENT
Penn State researchers asked a large number of stakeholders
for input to a
regional climate assessment and found the suggestions
invaluable in determining
what was important in global climate discussions. "We have
approached
stakeholders in two ways," says Dr. Patti Anderson, research
associate in Penn
State's Environmental Resources Research Institute and team
member of the
Mid-Atlantic Regional Assessment of Climate Change Impacts
(MARA). "One
way was to ask specific constituents to fill out surveys on
perceived risk from
potential global change." The team also put together an
advisory board of about
95 people representing industry, the environmental movement,
the nonprofit
sector, government and research organizations. "One effect
the MARA advisory
committee had on how we proceeded with the research was the
emphasis on
human health," Anderson told attendees today at the spring
meeting of the
American Geophysical Society in Boston. "We initially
thought it would be only a
minor component." MARA is funded by the U.S. Environmental
Protection
Agency as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
* * *
EUROPEAN CHICKEN & PORK SHIPMENTS BARRED FROM THE U.S.
All shipments of chicken, pork and related products from the
European Union are
being barred from the U.S. by the Department of Agriculture
as a precautionary
measure. The move comes in response to information from the
Belgian
government that these foods may be contaminated with dioxin,
a carcinogen.
Dioxin leaked into products supplied to Belgian feed
manufacturers in January.
Chickens on about 400 Belgian farms may have been fed oils
and fats
contaminated with this toxic chemical. the European Farm
Commission has
recommended that Belgian chicken and egg-based foods made
between January
15 and June 1 should be destroyed. A similar plan developed
for pigs from 500
farms and cattle from 70 farms was expected to be approved
today. The U.S.
imports about $250 million in European pork annually, but
only imports small
amounts of European chicken, mostly in pate. The Agriculture
Department plans
to review all poultry and pork imports from the European
Union since January 15
to determine if additional action is needed.
* * *
ALGAE & BACTERIA CAN HELP REDUCE HERBICIDE
CONTAMINATION
Certain species of algae and bacteria can help break down
herbicides applied to
the soil, reducing their impacts on soil and water quality,
according to a new
study by scientists from the Agricultural Research Service,
the U.S. Department
of Agriculture’s chief scientific research agency. While
studying populations of
microbes in three lakes in Mississippi, the scientists
discovered that some species
of green algae can absorb and degrade herbicides commonly
applied to corn and
cotton crops in the area. Intensive conservation practices
such as winter cover
crops and reduced tillage increased the amount of algae in
the soil. The scientists
also found that a specific group of bacteria, called
fluorescent pseudomonads,
could break down three common herbicides - metolachlor,
propanil and trifluralin.
The presence of the algae and bacteria could reduce the time
required to clear
herbicides from area waters, the scientists concluded.
* * *
PLAN FOR COPING WITH NATURAL DISASTERS UPDATED
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued
an updated
plan on Friday for mobilizing and deploying federal
resources to people and
communities overwhelmed by natural disasters and manmade
emergencies. The
new Federal Response Plan will serve as the principal guide
to define the roles and
responsibilities of 26 federal agencies and the American Red
Cross in delivering
aid during a major crisis. The plan mentions the importance
of private sector
partnerships and describes several new response resources,
coordinating
mechanisms and management tools. "Our revised plan
incorporates 11 changes
and other modifications that result from the lessons learned
and the experiences
of our federal partners since we first employed it during
Hurricane Andrew in
1992," FEMA director James Lee Witt said. "By making the
plan more
consistent with current policy guidance and new ways of
doing business, we
have significantly improved our response capabilities for
aiding distressed states
immediately and expediting their recovery." The full text of
the revised plan is
online at: http://www.fema.gov/r-n-r/frp/.
* * *
TORTOISES MAY WIN RACE FOR HABITAT PROTECTION VOTES
Four desert tortoises recently embarked on a whirlwind
lobbying tour in
Washington, D.C., with Sierra Club volunteers Elden and
Patty Hughes to help
build support for federal acquisition of 437,000 acres of
private lands in the
Mojave Desert in Southern California.This land is prime
habitat for the threatened
desert tortoise. The tortoises, named Davey, Jose, Tippy and
Christmas,
reportedly opened doors for the lobbyists and attracted
considerable attention
among lawmakers and the press for their cause. The Hughes
have been bringing
some of their 34 desert tortoises with them on lobbying
trips to Washington since
1990. On this trip, the tortoises were stumping in support
of a proposal to
appropriate $36 million from the Land and Water Acquisition
Fund to help
purchase and protect private lands that lie within National
Park Service and
Bureau of Land Management lands. The Catellus Corporation
has offered to sell
the lands for $54 million, and the Wildlands Conservancy, a
private conservation
group, has pledged $18 million to the purchase, contingent
on the federal funding.
AmeriScan Index: April 1999
© Environment News Service (ENS) 1999. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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