I have great news for you from our Stop Cruise Pollution campaign!

It's official: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines has heard your calls for them to clean up their sewage-treatment act. And they are doing something about it.

To put it simply -- WE WON!

In a letter to Oceana (PDF format) http://ga0.org/ct/Y115Yjd17Bpr/ Royal Caribbean Chairman and CEO Richard Fain has committed the company to do the following:

* Install advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) systems on every ship in their fleet -- just as Oceana has been calling on Royal Caribbean to do -- as their ships come in for their scheduled drydocking, which means their whole fleet will have them by 2008.
* Select AWT systems whose treated discharges meet the stringent standards of the state of Alaska -- the same standards which Oceana has been calling on Royal Caribbean to meet.
* Have a third party monitor the performance of the AWT systems, and make the results of that monitoring public.

It is very gratifying to see Royal Caribbean make this decision. As you know, we have been urging them for almost a year now to start down this road, so it's great to see them beginning the journey.

And you have been instrumental in making that happen. Almost 90,000 people have signed our cruise pollution pledge, vowing not to cruise with Royal Caribbean until they committed to stop dumping inadequately treated sewage. In communities across North America -- in Miami, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Vancouver, and many more -- you turned out to show your support.

http://www.stopcruisepollution.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=page&pageID=974

Now, your voices have been heard. Royal Caribbean has started to clean up its act. It's an exciting day for us all, and a turning point for the oceans!

WHAT COMES NEXT

In recognition of Royal Caribbean's commitment, we're suspending our campaign against them. However, Royal Caribbean is just one company. Cruise pollution is still a major threat to our oceans, which is why we're supporting the Clean Cruise Ships Act of 2004 -- a bill currently before Congress that would go a long way towards stopping the problem of cruise pollution across the entire industry.

You acted, and you got Royal Caribbean's attention. Now we're asking you to do the same for Congress. Ask your Members of Congress to co-sponsor the Clean Cruise Ships Act of 2004 -- they need to hear from you how important this is!

* TAKE ACTION: Ask your Members of Congress to co-sponsor the Clean Cruise Ships Act of 2004
http://ga0.org/campaign/cleancruiseact/7iwdixzhjem7wn

Want to share the good news? You can use our Tell-A-Friend feature to invite your friends to join the community that made this victory possible:

* TELL A FRIEND: Pass on the good news!
http://ga0.org/wavemaker/join-forward.html?domain=wavemaker&r=gd15Yjd1pB8p

And we're also opening a thread over on our community site, The Oceana Network, for you to discuss this news with your fellow activists:

* GET CONNECTED: Discuss the Royal Caribbean decision on The Oceana Network http://ga0.org/ct/Rp15Yjd17Bp4/

This is a major step forward for everyone who cares about the future of the oceans, and it couldn't have happened without you. Thanks for your continuing commitment, and congratulations!

For the oceans,

Andy Sharpless
CEO
Oceana

Tell your friends about this important victory, and the need to support the Clean Cruise Act!
Tell-a-friend! http://ga0.org/join-forward.html?domain=wavemaker&r=gd15Yjd1pB8p

AFP
May 2, 2004

http://www.terradaily.com/2004/040502030651.y5wzzm8d.html

KRASNOYARSK, Russia - Illegal logging and controversial business plans have ecologists raising the alarm in Siberia's scenic Krasnoyarsk region, Russia's prime forestry area and vital to a country struggling under massive air pollution.

"From Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, the taiga stretches without limit. Does it have an end? When you are on the top of a mountain, you see mountains all around... And all is covered by a dense forest. It gives you shivers," Anton Chekhov wrote in the 1890s.

But the famed writer's days are past, and now the sight is different -- criminal logging and arson gnaw at the sea of trees.

"In Russia, up to 30 percent of tree logging is illegal. Depending on the region, the wood then goes to Scandinavian countries or China," said Yevgeny Shvarts of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

"They do it quickly, a team of five or six people take a big truck, cut a large area and send the wood to China. It makes a good profit," lamented Galina Kuzmina, deputy head of Krasnoyarsk's forest protection center.

In addition, 2,000 fires last year alone -- most of them due to arson -- and the Siberian bombyx parasite has devastated entire swaths of the region's forest, she said.

But the government's new forestry code, which is still being drafted and allows the regions to privatise forest zones, is what troubles Russian ecologists most.

The Russian forest is currently almost entirely managed by the "leskhozes," local forestry administrations, which hand out licences to the lumberjacks and their firms.

"After the privatisation experience of the 1990s, public opinion will not stand for privatisation of forests," Shvarts fumed.

Environmentalists also fear that the new code would bar millions of Russians from the forests, who make their living by collecting cedar kernels, mushrooms and berries.

"They say here that Russal," the giant Krasnoyarsk-based aluminum producer, "is ready to buy up the region's entire forest," Kuznina said.

The government in turn hopes to encourage the creation of wood refining factories and paper and cellulose plants.

Russia, 70 percent of whose massive territory is covered by forests, nets 4.5 billion dollars (3.8 billion euros) annually from wood exports, but could profit more if it could refine wood at home rather than ship the raw material to be treated abroad.

The region's governor Alexander Khloponin has ambitious plans to chop down 49 million cubic meters (1715 million cubic feet) of wood annually where only five million cubic meters are now harvested.

"This would require important forestry territories and big investors who would build roads and replant forests as needed, like they do in Finland," he noted.

The governor hopes to attract enough capital to set up a cellulose factory, which would profit from the region's low energy prices.

However, he said he thought privatisation plans were too hasty, arguing that the industry could pass into the private sector only after the state set up efficient control systems -- which could take up to 15 years.


Informant: NHNE

May 04, 2004

The Department of Defense (DoD) has asked Congress for blanket exemptions from three major federal environmental and health laws. These changes would effectively exempt DoD's operations on 25 million acres of training ranges from local, state, tribal or Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversight and regulation for toxics releases, hazardous waste contamination, and air pollution.

Even though each law already allows for exemptions in cases of national security, the Bush Administration wants to enable one of the nation's largest polluters -- the Department of Defense -- to evade laws protecting public health and the environment.[1]

The DoD has asserted that adhering to environmental protection laws compromises military training and readiness. However, a General Accounting Office report in 2002 found that the Pentagon could not substantiate this claim.

Further, in testimony before the Senate in February, 2003, Christine Todd Whitman, then-administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, noted that EPA and DoD worked very closely together. "I don't believe there is a training mission anywhere in the country that is being held up or not taking place because of environmental protection regulation," Whitman told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.[2]

Late last year the Pentagon succeeded in gaining exemptions to habitat preservation rules under the Endangered Species Act, as well as overall wildlife protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.[3] A coalition of environmental and public health advocacy groups opposed the changes, noting that "[t]he military has, time and time again, found reasonable solutions to pursue necessary training in compliance with environmental laws."[4]

The Pentagon-proposed changes to the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) would range from removing explosives, munitions, chemical weapons and other materials from the law's definition of "solid waste," to blocking the authority of states, tribes, and the EPA to require investigation and cleanup of toxic munitions contamination on military sites, even when an off-site threat to public health develops.

The DoD's changes to the federal Superfund law would effectively absolve DoD of any responsibility for toxic releases under the law, remove EPA's ability to enforce Superfund regulations on military training sites, and undercut state power to collect damages from the DoD when toxic munitions contamination affects public resources including wildlife, fisheries, and public recreational lands.

Currently the Clean Air Act requires all federal agencies, including Defense, to mitigate any activities that negatively impact a state's EPA-mandated target for air quality. The DoD is seeking a three-year exemption for air pollution caused by a broad range of military activities.

The proposed changes would require EPA to approve state air cleanup plans even if they fail to compensate for military-generated pollution, and would exempt states from facing more serious classifications and other public health requirements if they missed their targets for air quality.[5]

Paul Mayberry, the DoD's deputy undersecretary for readiness, recently told reporters the proposed exemptions were "all about readiness," and that the laws inhibited the military's ability to train realistically.[6]

However, the Department admitted to state officials late last year that the laws have never hampered military preparedness -- nor have states ever used their authority under RCRA or the Superfund law in a way that compromised readiness. It has also failed to show any case where enforcement of the Clean Air Act put national security at risk.[7]


SOURCES:
[1] Natural Resources Defense Council press release.
http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/040421.asp
[2] Ibid.
[3] Defender Action Fund report on Senate Roll Call #190, 108th Congress, 1st Session
http://capwiz.com/defenders/issues/votes/?votenum=190&chamber=S&congress=1081
[4] "Oppose the Department of Defense Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative," Defender of Wildlife et al.
http://www.defenders.org/habitat/dod/4103.pdf
[5] NRDC press release, op cit.
[6] "Pentagon renews request for environmental exemptions," GovExec.com.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0404/040604g1.htm
[7] NRDC press release, op cit.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0404/040604g1.htm


Source: http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000110.php

Environmental activists from Pacific nations threatened by rising sea levels have called on Australia to recognise "environmental refugees" who try to escape the effects of global warming.

The conservationists currently visiting Australia say climate change is raising sea levels and increasing the frequency of events like cyclones which will one day make some low-lying Pacific island nations uninhabitable.

Fiu Mataese Elisara-Laulu of Samoa said Australia, as the region's biggest producer of the greenhouse gases which cause global warming, has a special responsibility for the environmental damage caused.

"We have a genuine case for being affected as environmental refugees if they don't do anything," he said on Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

"But unfortunately Australia seems to be a very poor leader in the Pacific," he said. "From our point of view, they want to assume leadership but they don't want to take responsibility."

The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard joined the United States in 2002 in refusing to ratify a UN treaty on lowering the production of greenhouse gases, saying the pact, known as the Kyoto Protocol was flawed.

Five weeks ago a group of Australian government researchers reported an alarming increase in global greenhouse gas emissions since 2002, due almost entirely to the burning of fossil fuels.

Greenhouse gases have been blamed for a steady warming of the earth's atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

If left unchecked, global warming is projected to cause a significant rise in sea levels over the next century through the melting of polar ice caps and thermal expansion.

It is also blamed for an increase in extreme weather events like floods, droughts and storms and damage to coral reefs and other sensitive ecosystems.

Elisara-Laulu was in Australia along with Siuila Toloa of Tuvalu's Island Care group on a "climate justice tour" to lobby Australia to take a more active role in tackling climate change.

The tour was sponsored by charity Oxfam, AID/WATCH and Friends of the Earth.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040503/1/3jyhm.html


Informant: NHNE

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
The Independent
May 2, 2004

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=517321&host=3&dir=507

Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

He said the Earth was entering the "first hot period" for 60 million years, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The warning -- one of the starkest delivered by a top scientist -- comes as ministers decide next week whether to weaken measures to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed".

The Prime Minister -- who was launching a new alliance of governments, businesses and pressure groups to tackle global warming -- added that he could not think of "any bigger long-term question facing the world community".

Yet the Government is considering relaxing limits on emissions by industry under an EU scheme on Tuesday.

Sir David said that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- the main "green- house gas" causing climate change -- were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level -- 379 parts per million -- was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life.

"No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life," he said.

Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by 2100".


Informant: NHNE

By KIRK JOHNSON and DEAN E. MURPHY

Published: May 2, 2004

AGE, Ariz. — At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip.

Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm.

Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the West during the 20th century was a fluke. In other words, scientists who study tree rings and ocean temperatures say, the development of the modern urbanized West — one of the biggest growth spurts in the nation's history — may have been based on a colossal miscalculation.

That shift is shaking many assumptions about how the West is run. Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, the states that depend on the Colorado River, are preparing for the possibility of water shortages for the first time since the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930's to control the river's flow. The top water official of the Bush administration, Bennett W. Raley, said recently that the federal government might step in if the states could not decide among themselves how to cope with dwindling supplies, a threat that riled local officials but underscored the growing urgency.

"Before this drought, we had 20 years of a wet cycle and 20 years of the most growth ever," said John R. D'Antonio, the New Mexico State engineer, who is scrambling to find new water supplies for the suburbs of Albuquerque that did not exist a generation ago.

The latest blow was paltry snowfall during March in the Rocky Mountains, pushing down runoff projections for the Colorado River this year to 55 percent of average. Snowmelt is the lifeblood of the river, which provides municipal water from Denver to Los Angeles and irrigates millions of acres of farmland. The period since 1999 is now officially the driest in the 98 years of recorded history of the Colorado River, according to the United States Geological Survey.

"March was a huge wake-up call as to the need to move at an accelerated pace," said Mr. Raley, assistant secretary of the interior for water and science.

Losing Water at Lake Powell

Some of the biggest water worries are focused here on Lake Powell, the vast blue diamond of deep water that government engineers created in one of the driest and most remote areas of the country beginning in the 1950's. From its inception, Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest artificial lake, after Lake Mead in Nevada, was a powerful symbol across the West. Some saw it as a statement of human will and know-how, others of arrogance.

Powell, part of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, has lost nearly 60 percent of its water and is now about the size it was during the Watergate hearings in 1973, when it was still filling up. White cliffs 10 stories high, bleached by salts from the lake and stranded above the water, line its side canyons. Elsewhere, retreating waters have exposed mountains of sediment.

The tourist economy here in Page has been battered. The National Park Service, which operates the recreation area, has spent millions of dollars in recent years just to lay concrete for boat-launch ramps that must be extended every year, a process that one marina operator here called "chasing water."

Daniel C. McCool, a professor of political science at the University of Utah and director of the American West Center, says Powell is the barometer of the drought because what has happened here is as much about politics, economics and the interlocking system of rules and rights called the law of the river as it is about meteorology.

Part of the lake's problem, for example, dates to a miscalculation in 1922, when hydrologists overestimated the average flow of the Colorado River and locked the number into a multistate agreement called the Colorado River Compact. The compact, along with a subsequent treaty with Mexico, requires Lake Powell to release 8.23 million acre-feet of water each year below the river's dam, Glen Canyon, no matter how much comes in.

http://tinyurl.com/2wkxv
http://tinyurl.com/352zp
http://tinyurl.com/3cc9h


Informant: NHNE

April 30, 2004

Childhood asthma, already at record highs, is expected to grow even worse in the coming years due to a potent mix of air pollution, higher levels of pollen and changes in the types of molds spurred by global warming. Because the Bush administration has backed away from solutions to the growing problem of global climate change, the situation is not expected to improve any time soon.

A report released yesterday states that millions of poor and minority children in America's cities are likely to suffer the consequences of pollution generated by emissions from cars, trucks and buses, plus a spate of new molds being spawned by global warming.[1]

The report, "Inside the Greenhouse: The Impacts of CO2 and Climate Change on Public Health in the Inner City," http://www.resultsforamerica.org/calendar/files/Bigreportwithpics.pdf was released by the Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, at a Washington, D.C. press conference co-sponsored by the American Public Health Association and Results for America, a project of the Civil Society Institute.

"This is a real wake-up call for people who mistakenly think global warming is only going to be a problem way off in the future or that it has no impact on their lives," said Christine Rogers, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The problem is here today for these children and it is only going to get worse."

The problem is multi-dimensional, Rogers said. Asthma among pre-school children is at an all-time high: It grew 160 percent between 1980-1994, with the highest incidence found among poor and minority children in urban centers. These children are at greatest risk for suffering increased health problems as a result of the CO2-generated increase in allergenic pollen.

Cities also have higher concentrations of air pollution, such as soot and ozone, caused by fossil fuel emissions. On top of that, global warming has led to an increasingly earlier pollen season in the spring. The result? "These children get hit with a powerful one-two punch," said Rogers.

Under the Clinton administration, the U.S. had committed to an international treaty to reduce the emissions causing global climate change. But President Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto protocol and backed out of his own campaign promise to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to climate change.

"In the absence of action from Washington, it is incumbent on local communities and states to take the best of the available solutions to reduce fossil fuel consumption, and promote cleaner energy and more efficient technologies," said Pam Solo, president of the Civil Society Institute. "This kind of change will not take place unless citizens inform themselves about the problem, the best solutions and start working for change where they live."


SOURCES:
[1] Results for America press release, Apr. 29, 2004.
http://www.resultsforamerica.org/calendar/files/042904childhoodasthmaGWreleaseFINAL.pdf


http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000107.php

Christian leaders challenge Bush's environmental policy

by Amanda Griscom

28 Apr 2004

Almighty God, your word of creation caused the water to be filled with many kinds of living beings and the air to be filled with birds ... Thank you for seeds and soil, green stem and air. For fruit on the vine, then falling fruit rotting on the moist ground, then new seed again ... We pray for your wisdom for all who live on this earth that we may wisely manage and not destroy what you have made for us.

So spake a reverend at Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tenn., last weekend at an Earth Day Sunday service attended by Muckraker -- one of tens of thousands of similar services that took place nationwide as part of a growing effort in America's church community to stimulate environmental activism.

Even enviros of a decidedly secular bent who might normally blanch at such creationist sentiments will appreciate the call for wise management of natural resources. Indeed, when they discover that in the past week Christian leaders have delivered this plea not just to millions in their congregations, but also to our very own God-fearing commander in chief, they may cry "hallelujah!"

On Earth Day last week, more than 100 reverends, ministers, and bishops representing more than 2 million American churchgoers sent a letter to the White House condemning President Bush's environmental record. There were no rabbis or imams among the signatories, but not because the National Council of Churches, which organized the letter signing, doesn't value interfaith efforts. Rather, according to Cassandra Carmichael, director of eco-justice programs at the NCC, "This was a Christian-to-Christian letter. We have a president who aligns himself with the Christian community, but as Christians we feel he needs to take a good hard look at the Bible and begin abiding by its principles."

"The book of Genesis records that God beholds creation as 'very good' (Genesis 3:1) and commands us to 'till and tend the garden' (Genesis 2:15)," reads the letter. "[W]e believe that the administration's energy, clean-air, and climate-change programs prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, which are depleting Earth's resources, poisoning its climate, punishing the poor, constricting sustainable economic growth, and jeopardizing global security and peace."

The missive takes aim in particular at the Bush administration's politics on air pollution. "[W]e feel called to express grave moral concern about your 'Clear Skies' initiative -- which we believe is [part of] the administration's continuous effort to weaken critical environmental standards that protect God's creation," says the letter, which goes on to criticize Bush's efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act's new-source review provisions and his failure to institute mandatory controls for greenhouse-gas emissions.

Citing the Bible's directive to "defend the poor and the orphan; do justice to the afflicted and the needy (Psalms 82:3)," the letter sings the gospel of environmental justice, noting that clean-air policy changes have the greatest impact on "those least able to defend themselves" -- namely, "[p]oor people, who have limited access to health care; senior citizens, who may have compromised immune systems; and children, who pound for pound breathe 50 percent more air pollution than adults."

What's notable about the effort is not just its attention to policy detail, but its direct assault on what Bush's supporters (and Bush himself) frequently cite as his core strength: an unswerving moral rectitude derived from Christian faith.

NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar put it this way: "President Bush has said that moral values are the cornerstone of his administration. But as a person of faith, I question whether the president fully understands his moral commitment. I'm concerned that he is failing to protect God's children."

Edgar, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1987, was the first Democrat in over a century elected from the heavily Republican seventh district of Pennsylvania. "I was elected largely by fiscally conservative Republican men that were supportive of the environment," he told Muckraker, adding that these same pro-environment Republicans are "horrified when they see what the Bush administration is doing to environmental protections."

While Muckraker sat among the families gathered in their Earth Day Sunday best at Cumberland Presbyterian -- as parents and grandparents beamed at dozens of children scurrying through the aisles with azalea blossoms in hand -- two words came to mind (besides amen and hallelujah): swing voters.

There was no overt Bush-bashing during the service, but it wasn't hard to connect the dots between a divine mandate for good environmental stewardship and growing evidence that the Bush administration has fallen from grace.

Consider this: The National Council of Churches has 36 member denominations in more than 100,000 congregations nationwide -- that adds up to a whopping 45 million faithful. This collaboration of mainline Protestant churches isn't part of the religious right, which Bush has worked so hard to court, but it might be called the religious middle -- a constituency the president would like to have in his camp this election season. If so, he's got some convincing to do.

"Our community holds the president, as a Christian, to the kind of moral standards that we live by," Carmichael said. "But more and more members are seeing a disconnect [between their beliefs and the president's policies]; they're becoming alarmed and raising their voices. They're coming to terms with the fact that they can't in good faith ignore what this administration is doing to God's earth."

The letter puts it this way: "We do not come to these positions casually, nor are we alone in our views. A growing number of religious Americans have come to recognize a solemn obligation to measure environmental policies against biblically mandated standards for stewardship and justice."

If the political force of Christian environmentalism continues to spread in areas once thought solid Bush demographics, his campaign may be doing some praying of its own come November -- their own Judgment Day.

Source: http://www.gristmagazine.com/muck/muck042804.asp?source=daily

Informant: NHNE

20.04.2004

"Wir sollten uns bewusst sein, dass die Menschheit die Natur nicht jenseits der Naturgesetze regieren kann." Dieses Zitat stammt nicht von einem Umweltminister, sondern von Chinas früherem Staats- und Parteichef Jiang Zemin aus dem Jahr 1998. Anlass war die damalige große Flutkatastrophe, von der über 200 Millionen Chinesen betroffen waren. Ähnlich begründete jetzt Chinas neuer Premierminister Wen Jinbao den Baustopp des größten Staudamms der Welt, der am Nu-Fluss geplant ist und noch größer werden soll als der umstrittene Dreischluchten-Staudamm am Jangtse.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/4692.php