TL: GREENPEACE MAGAZINE May/June 1989
SO: Greenpeace USA (GP)
DT: May 1989
Keywords: greenpeace pre90 periodicals us digests gp /


THE HEAT IS ON: Global Warming Threatens The Natural World
Iceland Defies International Whaling Commission
Warming Up To Nuclear Power?
Marine Shale: Anatomy Of A Sham Recycler


THE HEAT IS ON 

by Norman Myers 

The greenhouse effect means more than hats and sunglasses,
especially for our fellow creatures. Gaia's planet manager,
Norman Myers, outlines what global warming will do to the
natural world.

NASTY BUSINESS 

by Judy Christrup 

Marine Shale Processors sells itself as a recycler of industry's
nastiest effluents. But the claim doesn't wash. Not even the
best of Madison Avenue could make this scheme come clean.

THROW THE DINOSAUR A BONE 

by Jim Harding 

Nuclear power is being touted as a cure for the greenhouse
effect. But energy efficiency and conservation are the best
medicine.

ECONOTES: Big animals help little ones--Is recycling a
capitalist plot?--Dirty nappies--Bhopal deal flawed--Dutch
attack smog--Cleaning up Boston Harbor--Green shopper pitfalls--
Rocking the USSR.

FORUM: Arms controllers come around on naval nukes.

BRIEFINGS: Rainforest for $1.83 an acre--A season of spills.

CAMPAIGNS: North America's coastline auctioned--Iceland's
whalers take NATO base hostage--Beware CFC substitutes--
Greenpeace bus hits California's toxic hot spots.

ACTION ACCESS: Support global warming act--Boycott Iceland--Get
dioxins out of milk--Strike drilling plans--Waste act needs
work--Cousteau launches letters.






ECONOTES

IN PRAISE OF BIG ANIMALS 

ECOLOGICALLY SPEAKing, small is where the action is. More than
99 percent of the planet's 10 to 20 million animal and insect
species average about three millimeters in length. As
environmentalists follow biologists in making the conceptual
shift from doe eyed seal pups to termites and beetles, some
scientists are concerned that the ecological importance of big
animals is being overlooked. 

This neglect may be shortsighted. Recent studies show that
elephants and jaguars, for example, play a far larger role in
balancing the environment than was previously believed. In the
Amazon jungle, according to Princeton University biologist John
Terborgh, the eating habits of the jaguar and puma are limiting
populations of smaller animals that would otherwise compete for
habitat and possibly eliminate each other. Some of these smaller
animals are also seed eaters which means that the big cats' diet
may directly affect the density and species variety of the
forest they live in.

Elephants, too, have a great effect on the Savannah. In the
course of foraging for the 300-plus pounds of vegetation that
make up a day's meal, the elephants shred trees and shrubs,
creating new habitat and keeping the grassland clear. This in
turn makes it possible for animals like the forest buffalo,
zebra and vervet monkey to eat well and stay healthy. Also,
elephants spread seeds in their droppings. This means that,
like the pumas and jaguars in the Americas, Africa's elephants
help create the forest in which they live. "The essential point
is that big things are important too," writes Terborgh in
Conservation Biology. "What is worrisome in these changing times
is that they are so much more vulnerable."

RECYCLING IS A CAPITALIST PLOT 

From an interview with James O'Connor, professor of sociology
and economics at the University of Santa Cruz, by Alexander
Cockburn in February's Zeta magazine. 

O'CONNOR: "[By recycling your newspapers], you're lowering the
costs of production for these paper companies, giving them this
free labor.... If these companies lower their costs, then their
profits are going to go up. If their profits go up, then their
accumulation rate is going to go up, and that's going to have a
positive effect on the whole economy. What you're really doing
is causing problems someplace else." 

COCKBURN: "Because an exuberant capitalist will rush off and do
some exploiting somewhere else?" 

O'CONNOR: Exactly.

HOT SUBS IN PORT 

THE DEBATE OVER PORT visits of nuclear-powered vessels, already
a hot topic around the world, has been fuelled further by a
Green peace study showing high levels of radioactive sediments
around nuclear submarine bases in Britain. A survey conducted
last summer revealed that levels of cesium-137 and cesium-134 at
Clyde submarine base in Scotland are two to five times higher
than government figures indicate. At the U.S. sub base at Holy
Loch, Scotland, cobalt-60 and cesium-137 appeared in
concentrations nine times higher than official levels.

The radioactivity comes from contaminated effluents, including
reactor cooling water, which pour out of submarines during
refuelling, refitting and general maintenance operations. One
U.S. Navy officer at Holy Loch quoted in the British press said
that any and all pollutants "went over the side, with little
regard for the environment."

WHAT'S BEHIND DISPOSABLE DIAPERS 

PERHAPS NO OTHER PRODUCT better represents the myopia of our
throwaway culture than the disposable diaper. Last year, parents
in the United States tossed out roughly 18 billion of the soiled
paper and plastic contraptions, adding nearly four million tons
of debris and infectious human waste to our bursting landfills.
Beyond the disposal problems, the disposable diaper constitutes
a hazard in its manufacture (paper-making and petroleum
processing contribute significantly to pollution problems) and
in its use (most bleached paper products contain some form of
dioxin).

One product touted as a "solution" is the biodegradable
disposable diaper. Launched with much fanfare from a variety of
manufacturers over the last year, biodegradable diapers in fact
do little to solve the problems with throwaway diapers. They are
still made of paper and plastic. And these diapers do not
necessarily biodegrade, as the public generally understands the
word. Adding starch compounds to the plastic, the technique most
often used to make plastic "biodegradable," only makes the
plastic break up into smaller pieces. 

Cotton diapers are clearly the way to go. According to a
comprehensive report by Carl Lehrburger, sticking with cloth
diapers is in most cases cheaper than using the throwaway
variety. But habits are hard to change, especially when
inculcated at an early age. Disposable diapers are now also on
sale in toy stores-- for Cabbage Patch dolls.

GREEN BUYER BEWARE 

SHREWD MARKETING MAY BE the underlying motive for one initiative
from a chain store trumpeting "environmentally benign" products.
Tesco, one of Britain's largest food chains, has unveiled a plan
to mark with a logo all products it claims are manufactured with
the planet's health in mind. But the chain refuses to take
Iceland's fish products off its shelves in support of the
whaling boycott, and Greenpeace is planning a series of protests
at the company's stores. Which products are "benign" remains,
unfortunately, in the eye of the beholder. 

The governments of Canada and Japan are also getting into the
act. Tom McMillan, Canadian Minister for the Environment, has
announced that the Canadian Standards Association will assess
what products deserve Ottawa's seal of approval. And Japan has
settled on a logo, called the Ecomark, which denotes products it
considers safe for the environment.

"Green-buying" initiatives are strong in the United Kingdom,
where The Green Consumer Guide, by John Elkington and Julia
Hailes, has become a best seller. A pamphlet prepared in the
United States by the Council on Economic Priorities, Shopping
for a Better World, has also sold some 200,000 copies since last
December (see Action Access, Greenpeace, January/February 1989).
Any reader who hears of similar "green-buying" initiatives, both
public and private, should please send the information to
Greenpeace magazine, 1436 U Street, NW, Washington DC 20009.

ROCKING THE USSR 

ON MONDAY, MARCH 6, AT ONE of the largest press conferences ever
held in the Soviet Union, rock stars Annie Lennox, Peter
Gabriel, Chrissie Hynde and U2's the Edge joined Greenpeace
campaigners and other musicians to announce the release of
Greenpeace's double record, Rainbow Warriors. About 160,000
copies of the record, a collection of songs by two dozen Western
groups, including REM, the Grateful Dead Talking Heads and Dire
Straits, were released to Melodiya record stores throughout the
country. 

Melodiya, the Soviet Union's sole record company, will
eventually press three million copies of the album and another
half-million cassettes. Proceeds from the album, which by all
indications will prove a best-seller, are earmarked for
Greenpeace projects in the Soviet Union and for the Foundation
for the Survival and Development of Humanity, an organization
set up last year to promote joint environmental research between
Moscow and the West. Rainbow Warriors will be available to the
rest of the world in May.

CAR WARS IN EUROPE 

OVERALL, CAR EMISSIONS standards in Europe are perhaps two
decades behind standards in the United States, and light-years
behind the stringent rules that prevail in California. Thanks to
the influence of European car companies and Common Market
bureaucrats, European Community (EC) member countries are forced
to let cars belch lead, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other
acid rain and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Reining in
the polluters or providing tax breaks for cars fitted with
catalytic converters would be against the EC's "fair market"
principles.

The Dutch, for one, are fed up. With anger over acid rain
withered forests on the rise, the Parliament of the Netherlands
this February voted in a substantial tax break for cars fitted
with U.S.-style catalytic converters. The EC headquarters in
Brussels immediately began legal proceedings. France led the
charge against the upstart Dutch, even though Paris had just
emerged from a killer smog that obscured the Eiffel Tower. (For
a day, city officials urged that only cars equipped with
catalytic converters enter the city.) 

Less than a month later, the EC dropped the case, making some
observers feel that pan-European emissions cuts are on the
horizon. Insiders say that public opinion played a role. The EC
had just received kudos for its commitment to an 85 percent cut
in CFC production, and a U.K.hosted greenhouse effect conference
was in the headlines, as was the decision by Bucking ham Palace
to catalytically convert the Royal fleet. And many European
countries privately support the Dutch government's concern over
car emissions. 

But France and the United Kingdom, among others, still have
quite a distance to go before their exhausts reach tolerable
levels. Ford, which has captured a third of the British car
market, doesn't offer the same low-emissions cars available in
the United States and adamantly opposes most efforts to clean up
the British car fleet. (Fords manufactured in the U.K. produce
over twice the noxious fumes of their U.S. counterparts.) And
France, proxy for its recalcitrant automobile giants, Renault
and Peugeot, has been just as reluctant to clean up its act.

UNION CARBIDE STILL UNSETTLED 

WHEN FIVE MEMBERS OF India's 12-member Supreme Court declared
the Bhopal lawsuit settled, executives at Union Carbide's
Connecticut headquarters were elated. Press releases announcing
the agreement were flashed to the media, and most of the $470
million payment was quickly transferred to India. The sum
represents a fraction of the $3.3 billion sought by the 500,000
plaintiffs (thus accounting, perhaps, for the swift
reimbursement). The newspapers declared the case closed, and
Union Carbide's stock jumped $2.00 on the stock exchange.

Not so fast. Numerous irregularities in the procedure and whiffs
of scandal mean that the case may be back in court and the
"settlement" annulled sometime in April. For one, the five
members of the Supreme Court who negotiated the agreement were
charged only with settling a dispute over interim relief
payments, not with deciding the entire case.

A new bench of five justices will review the agreement, and a
variety of legal challenges have been raised. From the
beginning, the constitutionality of the act that permitted the
Indian government to speak for all the plaintiffs has been in
dispute, as is the right of the five-member panel to settle the
case. Also, several U.S. attorneys are pushing claims against
Union Carbide in the United States.

Despite the caveats, most of the U.S. press rushed to judgment.
"Many newspapers didn't bother to check the story," says David
Dembo of the International Coalition for Justice in Bhopal.
"They just accepted the Union Carbide press release." Union
Carbide's calculated haste in forwarding the token payment to
India may work against them. If the settlement is reversed,
India will have $420 million of the company's money to disburse
as an interim payment for victim relief, something the thousands
of Bhopal victims have sought, unsuccessfully, for years.

BOSTON HARBOR BEAUTIFIED? 

LAST SUMMER, GEORGE BUSH sailed briefly through Boston Harbor,
declared it the presidential campaign issue of the moment, and
then pushed on to Washington, D.C. The candidate's concern over
Boston Harbor's status as the nation's filthiest harbor did not
carry over into the White House (indeed, this year's federal
budget includes no funds for harbor cleanup). But it did spark
some much-needed attention to an issue that was beginning to
fester long before Michael Dukakis was born, let alone
considering a run for national office.

Boston's sewage system is a plumbing nightmare. The city and
scores of outlying communities daily pour millions of gallons of
sewage and industrial wastes through some 5,000 miles of pipes,
some of which were installed more than a century ago. This
noisome brew then receives either cursory treatment or no
treatment at all before it is poured into the harbor. The total
volume of sewage entering the bay is higher than the volume of
its major "fresh-water" tributaries: the Charles, Neponset and
Mystic Rivers. 

Thanks in part to grassroots lobbying by the state's
environmental community, the Massachusetts Water Resources
Authority (MWRA) announced in February that all the city's
sewage sludge would be composted starting in 1991. Although
forced to stop sludge dumping by a federal court, the state
could have opted for incineration, an alternative that
Greenpeace and other groups oppose because of toxic air
emissions and problems with disposing of hazardous ash. The
composting solution has another added benefit: federal
guidelines limit the toxic content of "recycled" sewage sludge,
so the MWRA's action will be accompanied by a program of source
reduction and strict guidelines for industrial users of the
system.

In one year, Boston has gone from laggard to trailblazer in the
municipal sludge battle. In the United States, only New York
City and its environs continue to dump sludge into the ocean. As
Washington tightens up on this out-of-sight, out-of-mind
solution, city managers in New York and environmentalists
everywhere will be looking to Boston to see how the composting
option works out.


FORUM

NUCLEAR FREE SEAS COMES OF AGE 

BACK IN THE SUMMER of 1987, few people were concerned about the
naval nuclear arms race. No major arms control group would touch
the issue. It did not seem the appropriate topic upon which to
launch a major public education, direct action and lobbying
campaign. 

Into the void stepped Greenpeace. When it launched the "Nuclear
Free Seas" campaign nearly two years ago, then disarmament
director Jon Saxton said Greenpeace hoped to call attention to
the "unnoticed, unregulated arms race at sea." A flurry of
reports, pamphlets and direct actions followed, and Greenpeace
set out, largely alone, to bring the issue to public attention.

The campaign was not well-received. The Navy which refused to
discuss naval nuclear arms control for fear of lending
credibility to the concept, did not welcome the attention. Even
the arms control community ridiculed the idea. "It's a bad idea"
Spurgeon Keeney, Jr., president of the Arms Control Association
(ACA) told Nuclear Times. "Greenpeace is proceeding orthogonally
[at right angles] to the rest of the arms control community....
Green peace is injecting a new issue that may well absorb the
attention of well-meaning people and remove them from the real
issues. [Disarming the seas] is an idea that is not going to
happen." 

Since that interview, the nuclear arms race at sea has become a
"real issue." In fact, it has emerged as a crucial factor in
U.S.-Soviet START negotiations, and it is a sticking point for
the Navy, which insists on bringing nuclear weapons into ports
around the world. The first public boost for the issue came from
veteran conservative arms expert Paul Nitze, then senior adviser
to Secretary of State George Shultz, who suggested in April of
1988 that the nation's security would be well served by
negotiating a ban on all nuclear tipped sea-launched cruise
missiles (SLCMs ), as well as the 4,000 or so miscellaneous
naval nuclear weapons: depth charges, torpedoes and nuclear
bombs aboard naval aircraft.

Soon after, the ACA's journal, Arms Control Today, tested the
waters with an article by two experts who admitted that "naval
nuclear weapons have long been neglected by strategists and arms
controllers alike." Arguing that naval nuclear weapons "make the
Navy less welcome as a diplomatic visitor. . . and disrupt
alliances that the United States seeks to reaffirm," the authors
concluded that the United States would "benefit substantially
from a complete ban on naval nuclear weapons." 


And in January of this year, a high-powered panel, headed by
former U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown Senator Sam Nunn,
former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and his soon-
to-be successor Brent Scowcroft, issued a report that urged
nixing the deployment of nuclear SLCMs for fear of yielding the
Soviet Union "a net advantage." The reasoning? In the United
States, cities and many important facilities are located on the
coasts, whereas Soviet targets tend to be far inland. At the
group's press conference, McFarlane asked "may there not be an
agreement for banning at least nuclear SLCMs?"

Keeney has now joined the chorus, reversing his former support
for tactical naval nuclear weapons as well as SLCMs, which can
have a strategic role. "It is disadvantageous to have tactical
nuclear weapons at sea," he told Greenpeace in February. "When
you add this all up, the role of nuclear weapons at sea is
rather limited." 

"Clearly we have achieved more than we expected," says William
Arkin, defense specialist for the Institute for Policy Studies
and Green peace's consultant on the campaign. "We have succeeded
in bringing naval nuclear issues to people's attention." An
inside report from a friendly researcher bears this out. In a
November meeting, a senior Navy official was asked about the
status of the Navy's policy to neither confirm nor deny (NCND)
the presence of nuclear weapons on board its ships. "We are
really getting beaten up over the NCND policy," he answered,
"especially by groups like Greenpeace."

The new shift in thinking, unfortunately, does not extend to all
aspects of the Greenpeace campaign--at least not yet. Ballistic
missile submarines and the nuclear reactors that power them are
still sacrosanct. Keeney maintains that the Trident ballistic
missile submarines and their intercontinental nuclear missiles
are "probably the most important leg of the strategic triad"
because they "contribute to deterrence." And Canada, Brazil,
Argentina and India, points out Arkin, "are all eyeing naval
nuclear propulsion technology," including submarines. 

On these issues, Greenpeace and the rest of the arms control
community part company. "The Nuclear Free Seas campaign is a
disarmament campaign, not an arms-control campaign," says U.S.
campaign director Steve Shall horn. "We simply don't accept the
argument that the oceans are a safe environment for nuclear
weapons or reactors, whether they are ballistic missile
submarines or not."--Robert Schaeffer


THE HEAT IS ON: Global Warming Threatens The Natural World

By Norman Myers


THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT: QUICK RECAP 

The burning of fossil fuels and tropical forests throws so much
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that a significant percentage
of the sun's heat, which would ordinarily escape into space,
becomes trapped. Other "greenhouse gases" (methane, nitrous
oxide, chlorofluorocarbons) are also produced by industrial
processes, and these contribute to carbon dioxide's warming
effect. Because carbon dioxide has been building up in the
atmosphere since the industrial age began, it will be almost
impossible to stop it. To slow down the process, it will be
necessary to develop new energy policies, agricultural systems,
human settlements and coastal infrastructures.

The Earth's temperature has already warmed up by about one-half
of a degree Celsius (C) this century. According to the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and
the United Nations Environment Program, the average worldwide
temperature is expected to rise between 1.5 and 5 degrees C by
the year 2030. (This increase could come sooner or later.) An
increase of a few degrees may not sound like much, but it is at
least as large as the warming that brought an end to the last
ice age. It will make our Earth as warm as it has been for at
least 100,000 years.

But warmer temperatures will not be evenly distributed around
the globe. At the equator there will be hardly any change. In
mid-latitudes and in temperate zones such as North America and
Western Europe, the warming will be about the same as the
average worldwide, a rise of perhaps 2.5 degrees C. At the poles
things will get really warm, with an increase in temperature of
between 5 and 9 degrees C, which is high enough to melt much of
the pack ice in short order (though the ice caps themselves
could be safe for centuries). 

Climate and temperature predictions are based on sophisticated
computer model simulations. We do not know how fast the
greenhouse effect will overtake the planet or what its
particular manifestations will be. But there is broad agreement
that we shall shortly be living in a greenhouse affected world.
According to Dr Stephen H. Schneider, a scientist at NCAR, the
greenhouse effect is one of the least controversial concepts
among the entire climatological community. Of course, there is
still much uncertainty, but it is no longer a case of "if," but
rather of "when," "how much" and "where?" 

In addition to rising temperatures, rainfall patterns will
shift. Although the planet could receive about seven percent
more rainfall, certain areas will receive less. Much of North
America and parts of Europe could dry out considerably. Stronger
winds, more hurricanes and assorted storms, shifting ocean
currents, and a rising sea level could accompany changes in
temperature and precipitation. These changes will drastically
affect agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy, pollution,
cities, communications and threatened species. "The inhabitants
of planet Earth are quietly conducting a gigantic environmental
experiment," says Dr. Wallace S. Broecker, a professor at
Columbia University in New York City. "So vast and so sweeping
will be the impacts of this experiment that, were it brought
before any responsible council for approval, it would be firmly
rejected as having potentially dangerous consequences."


EVERYONE KNOWS THAT WE ARE PUSHING countless plants and animals
to the brink of extinction. And we all have heard about our role
in raising the Earth's temperature--the infamous greenhouse
effect. But we don't hear much about how the two are connected.
In fact, global warming may prove to be the single greatest
threat to our fellow species. At the same time, this connection
may provide the incentive for a global solution to our most
serious environmental crisis.

For many of the Earth's plant and animal species, a few degrees
makes the difference between survival and extinction. As the
planet warms up, temperature bands will move away from the
equator and toward the poles. Vegetation will try to adapt by
following the temperature bands, though with limited success.
For one thing, climatologists project that changes will not only
be large, they will also arrive suddenly, almost overnight as
compared with previous climate changes. At the end of the last
ice age, when the glaciers covering much of North America
retreated, trees and other plants followed the ebbing ice
northward. But they moved slowly, at a rate of only 25 miles per
century. The sudden arrival of the greenhouse effect will
require communities of plants and animals to migrate at a rate
ten times faster. Many, if not most, species will find it
impossible to adapt and will die out. 

Species that can make the quick transition will encounter
another problem. In the past, they have enjoyed a "free run"
with only geographic obstacles--mountains, oceans, rivers--
blocking their paths. Following the last ice age, wild papaya
and oranges migrated to Toronto, tapirs and peccaries to
Pennsylvania. This time, wildlife species will find their way
blockaded by farmlands, cities and other paraphernalia of human
communities, which are "development deserts" for wildlife. To a
migrating forest, a city presents just as big a barrier as a
mountain range. As Dr. Robert Peters of World Wildlife Fund
says, "Few animals or plants would be able to cross Los Angeles
on the way to the promised land."

Realistically, if the greenhouse-affected future unfolds as
anticipated, it will eliminate species in huge numbers. The
impact of the rifle and harpoon, the chain saw and plow, the
bulldozer and pesticide pack could well be matched, if not
exceeded, by the factory chimney, the auto exhaust and other
sources of greenhouse gases. 

Nor will present networks of parks and preserves provide much
help to threatened species. Protected areas have been set up to
reflect natural conditions that are fast disappearing. So a rain
forest park might soon start to desiccate into woodland
vegetation, leaving its rain forest species high and dry. A
desert preserve might be overcome by wetter conditions to which
its desert-type creatures cannot adapt. In each case, of course,
migration (according to the past record) drops to a mere 15
miles. Meanwhile, the climate will have moved 250 miles north.
Of course, the park's creatures will seek refuge elsewhere. But
they will find themselves thwarted | by the park's boundaries
and the alien, human-dominated lands beyond. What was once a
sanctuary will become a trap.

This, then, is the general outlook for wild-life species in a
world of accelerating climatic change. But how will things work
out for particular species and regions, such as North American
forests wetlands and tropical coral reefs? Here is a closer look
at some environments.

The Northern Forests

Many tree species will have to migrate northward at a speed ten
times greater than they have moved in the past--and do it while
sidestepping cities and other impediments that people have put
in their way. Difficult as this prospect is, much of its success
depends on the mode of migration. If a tree reproduces by
spores, it could conceivably keep up. But if, as is the case
with the common beech of the eastern United States, it depends
on birds and mammals to carry its seeds into new areas, the
realistic range for a century-long migration (according to the
past record) drops to a mere 15 miles. Meanwhile, the climate
will have moved 250 miles north.

Of course, we can give the poor old beech a helping hand by
transplanting its seeds into new habitats. But this will reduce
the species to a plantation tree. As Dr. Margaret Davis, a
professor at the University of Minnesota, says, "massive and
very expensive intervention" would be required to save a species
we do not now view as threatened at all.

So much for a single species. How about an entire biome, such as
the boreal forest that spans much of northern Canada and Alaska?
The outlook is dire. Although this forest will not disappear
entirely, it will be reduced from 23 percent of all the world's
forests to 1 percent or less. The rising temperature (with the
greatest increase projected for the poles) will cause its
present range to give way to vegetation patterns invading from
the south. Yet the boreal forest itself will have little place
to go northwards: it will simply run out of space. The great
assemblages of plants and animals that make up one of the
Earth's glories will fade from the scene. 

Fens, Bogs and Moors 

Different sorts of greenhouse threats are creeping up on the
rich stocks of species that reside in wetlands. For instance,
rising sea levels will threaten coastal wetland species.
According to Dr. Jim Titus, a scientist at the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., a one-foot rise in
sea level would allow seawater to penetrate 35 yards inland
along the average coastline. A three foot rise would inundate
low-lying coastal areas almost 1,000 yards inland. A mere three
inch rise would cause tidal rivers to advance even farther--more
than half a mile inland, thus drowning many estuarine wetlands.
Given predicted levels of warming, these are the most likely
amounts of sea level rise. Less probable, but still plausible,
is a six-foot rise: this would eliminate 80 percent of all U.S.
coastal wetlands. Of course wetland wildlife will try to move
inland. But it will find its way blocked by levees, sea walls,
housing, sea-front highways and other structures. All in all,
the demise of coastal wetlands as a result of sea level rise
could prove to be the greatest wildlife-related impact of the
greenhouse effect in the United States. 

As for wetlands inland, the outlook is scarcely better. Marshes,
tens, peat lands, mires, swamps, bogs, sloughs, swales, wet
heaths and moors cover about 6 percent of the Earth's land
surface, an area roughly the size of the United States. They
comprise some of the richest wildlife communities anywhere. But
due largely to draining one-half of the world's wetlands have
been lost since the year 1900, most of this loss in developed
nations. According to Dr. R.W. Buddemeir, a scientist at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who has studied the issue
extensively, the drying-out impact of the greenhouse effect will
cause many remaining wetlands to evaporate.

The Cote d'Azur

Mediterranean-type zones, which are characterized by cool wet
winters and hot dry summers, are also rich in species,
particularly endemic species (those found nowhere else).
California contains 5,050 higher plant species, or roughly one-
quarter of the total for the United States and Canada combined.
Thirty percent of them are endemic. Southwestern Australia
contains 3,630 species (80 percent endemic) in just 2,340 square
miles, an area one-seventieth the size of California. The Cape
Floristic Province in South Africa contains 8,600 species (73
percent endemic) in 30,000 square miles and is ultra-rich in
animal species (a roughly similar proportion is endemic).
As the greenhouse effect overtakes these exceptional ecosystems,
they may well experience not only increased temperatures but
declining rainfall, according to Dr. Bert Bolin of the
University of Stockholm. Naturally enough, vegetation
communities in these zones will seek to migrate toward
territories with customary climates. But the California biome
will find its way blocked by human settlements in Oregon and
Washington states. And according to Dr. Barry Pittock of the
Australian National University and Dr. Anthony Hall of the Bolus
Herbarium in Cape Town, South Africa, species in the other two
zones will find no land at all to receive them, only sea.

Tropical Coral Reefs 

The tropics are far richer in species than temperate zones, but
as noted previously, they may suffer less climate change. Least
affected of all could be equatorial rain forests, containing at
least 80 percent of all species on Earth. But coral reefs, the
second richest biome after tropical forests, could be in deep
trouble.

Coral reef species tend to live close to their temperature
limits. When heated waste water from industrial installations
and domestic sources is dumped into a coral reef, as is
sometimes done in Hawaii, the reef suffers. Moreover, natural
warmings in recent years have caused mass fatalities in several
localities. The unusual 1983 warming of the southern Pacific
current, known as "El Nino," increased the temperature three to
four degrees Celsius for just six months. But this was enough to
do widespread damage to coral reefs in the South Pacific. A
greenhouse warming of tropical seas will be impossible for
corals to tolerate. 

Still more harmful will be a rise in sea level. As the ocean's
surface waters warm up, they will expand. Scientists at the
Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the
National Center for Atmospheric species could be in for
considerable turmoil. Research in Boulder, Colorado, and the
United Nations Environmental Program in Nairobi project that the
sea level will rise from 1.5 feet to 7 feet during the next
century. Although corals can grow upwards, of course, they
cannot generally do it at even half the pace they will need to
keep up with the rising sea level. So they will eventually
drown. Moreover, the increased depths of sea water will reduce
available sunlight, which will inhibit and even halt coral
growth. These factors in themselves could be enough to kill off
entire coral reef ecosystems.

Of course certain coral species will probably respond better
than others. For instance, "antler" corals grow more rapidly
than others. But because they have branched forms, they are
particularly susceptible to storm damage, and the greenhouse
effect could increase the incidence of tropical storms.

The Deep Blue

How will open-ocean (non-coastal) species fare in a greenhouse-
affected world? Alas, more bad news. So far as we can tell,
marine species could be in for considerable turmoil. In addition
to ocean surface warming, major ocean currents could shift. The
Gulf Stream could stop flowing northeastward as far as Europe.
and instead swing southward into the mid-Atlantic. This would
leave northwestern Europe with a colder climate overall and
possibly push to final oblivion the North Atlantic herring and
the 20-odd other species already threatened by over-fishing in
the North Atlantic.

In addition, the global warming could trigger crucial changes in
up welling zones, such as the famous anchovy site off Peru, in
sea salinity and in sea ice patterns, which could affect fish
species long accustomed to stable environments. Incidence of sea
storms, including hurricanes, will probably increase, though
this would affect coastal wetlands more than deep water species.
And all this will take place in ecosystems where threatened
species are beyond helping hands. As EPA's Titus puts it, "We'll
be mere spectators in the adjustments to climate change [in the
oceans]. People will have to adapt to whatever the fish decide
to do." 

The combined effects of global warming and ozone layer
depletion, at least in Antarctica with its wealth of marine
life, could be the most significant development of all. On top
of greenhouse mayhem, Antarctica will suffer the consequences of
increased ultraviolet radiation (UV-B) as a result of the United
States-sized "hole" punched in the ozone layer over that
continent. Excess ultraviolet light reduces the productivity of
phytoplankton and weakens the basis of ocean food webs.

This will harm the rich marine ecosystem surrounding Antarctica,
where ultraviolet radiation will be most pronounced. Were the
phytoplankton to decline, herbivorous krill-- small crustaceans
that abound in the Southern Ocean and serve as a primary food
resource for many other creatures--would be immediately
affected. There would be adverse repercussions for the many
other creatures that depend on krill, including the spectacular
throngs of penguins, seals, dolphins and whales.

What Can We Do?

There are a few things we could do about the impending debacle.
First, where possible, we could extend parks and reserves
northwards (and southward in the southern hemisphere). This will
help provide migration corridors through human-dominated
territories. Several private sector groups are planning a
network of "green ways" across the United States. 

Second, we could establish a host of new parks and reserves
designed to counter the greenhouse effect. This does not mean
they will all have to be long sausage-shaped areas. They can
include areas with an unusual array of uplands and mountains: a
species moving 1,500 feet uphill could achieve the same result
climate-wise as migrating 200 miles northwards. 

Third, we could manage our present parks and reserves to
compensate for climate change. For instance, if an area becomes
too dry, we could irrigate it. We could employ similar "heroic"
measures by transporting species from one place to another. To
be sure, these environments would no longer be "natural," and
the very notion of wild lands may be something our descendants
will know about only through books and films. It is ironic that
just as we are remaking zoos in order to replicate natural
surroundings, so we shall have to manage our parks as something
akin to mega-zoos, with highly intensive intervention on all
sides, if they are to retain much wildlife at all. This will
require expensive and never-ending efforts. After doing our
best, we will probably discover we have lost more species than
we have saved. 

There is, of course, another solution. Losing species may be the
built-in price for responding to symptoms of problems rather
than to problems themselves. How about tackling the greenhouse
effect head-on? So far many political leaders, as well as some
in the general public, have talked about it as if the most
acceptable response is to learn to live with the problem, to
adapt in a thousand ways. But as the threatened species problem
is added to the problems of dust-bowl agriculture, coastal
cities afloat and mass migrations away from the excessive-sun
belt shouldn't we ask whether it might be less costly in the
long run to try to tame the greenhouse problem? We cannot
eliminate it altogether. We are too late for that. But we still
have time to cut back on the problem severely.

What would it take? Primarily we need to cut down on fossil
fuels. We can do this, without any decline in living standards.
But we must cut out the absurd waste and mobilize the clean
sources of energy (solar, tidal, etc.) forthwith. In individual
terms, we can forego some private driving in favor of mass
transit, conserve energy within the home, recycle energy-costly
materials, and apprise ourselves of the myriad other ways to
practice energy efficiency. It would also help to halt the
burning of tropical forests and plant a few trillion trees to
soak carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It could all be done
at a cost small in comparison to the cost of living in a
greenhouse.

The Good News

After such a welter of bad news, here is the payoff: the good
news. Because we stand to mess things up irrevocably this time,
we might decide that enough is enough and pull together to set
things right. If we do, we might not only fix the greenhouse
effect, or at least reduce it to a level that we and the Earth's
ecosystems could live with. We might also solve a few other
problems. By reducing our careless use of fossil fuels and
increasing our use of pollution control and energy efficiency
devices, we could surely reduce acid rain. And by cutting out
the most potent of all greenhouse gases, the chlorofluocarbons,
we would start to contain the ozone-layer problem.

To be sure, this would take an unprecedented effort. But after
coping with the fossil-fuel problem, we might find it possible
to deal with pollution, desertification, soil erosion,
population growth, Third World poverty and the many other issues
that plague us and our Earth. If we ever manage to regulate our
human appetites and numbers, we can find that we have made room
for our fellow species as well. Nothing less will do. 

For a long time it has seemed that nothing would be dramatic
enough to spur both citizens and leaders to action. Politicians
continue to adjust this and tinker with that, as if we had
another planet parked out there in space, ready to inhabit after
we foul up this one. Will it take a Chernobyl, a Bangladeshi
flood and an Ethiopian famine every month before the politicians
finally get the message?

Perhaps the greenhouse effect can be a catalyst for global
awakening and action. It is going to affect people in all parts
of the world. We must realize that the greenhouse-effect
flooding of Bangladesh will ultimately mean that a quarter of
that country disappears beneath the waves, and for good; that
African droughts could be more severe than anything we have seen
to date; that America's grain belt will come unbuckled; that a
dried-out Central America will send many more people north
across the Rio Grande; and that barricading America's shorelines
will cost a cool $110 billion. That is just for starters. The
greenhouse effect is not some new challenge a political leader
should try to handle before the next election, but something we
must head off while there is still time.

Who knows, one day we may thank the greenhouse effect for
sending a message that even the most optimistic politicians
could not ignore. Wouldn't it be sweet irony for our fellow
species if the greatest threat they have ever encountered turned
out to be a source of relief, the only one that really made a
difference?

Norman Myers, Ph. D., a consultant in environment and
development, lives in Oxford, England. He is editor of the Gaia
Atlas of Planet Management and the author of many acclaimed
environmental books, including The Primary Source and The
Thinking Arc.


NASTY BUSINESS: The Marine Shale Masquerade

By Judy Christrup

Everyone liked Jack. He supported the Chamber of Commerce and
the Morgan City High School Band. He even bought uniforms for
the little league. But then his kids got sick. Five children
living downwind from Jack's company, Marine Shale Processors
(MSP), contracted neuroblastoma - a rare form of cancer. Two
died. The connection between the children's deaths in 1988 and
Jack's company has not been proven scientifically, but it has
turned public sentiment against Jack Kent, president of the
largest hazardous waste incinerator in the country.

Kent doesn't call himself a hazardous waste burner. Rather, he
fancies himself a recycler. According to his promotional video,
"MSP is designed to manufacture aggregates from a variety of
industrial solids and liquids." This means that Marine Shale
accepts a variety of toxic materials, from every state in the
continental United States, so long as it can be moved by truck,
train or barge to Amelia, Louisiana, home of MSP. Then MSP burns
the toxic waste in a kiln - barrels and all - and tries to sell
the leftover combustion ash or "aggregate" to construction
projects as road building and fill material. But few are buying.
Although MSP bases its claim to being a recycler on the sale of
aggregate, less than one percent of its income comes from sale
of this "product". The rest of Marine Shale's gross revenue ($40
million in 1988) are fees generators of toxics gladly pay to get
rid of their waste.

It's a matter of definition. Kent calls combustion ash
"aggregate". He describes burning hazardous waste as
"recycling". But the situation in Amelia is far more serious
than a discussion of semantics. In putting himself forward as a
recycler, Kent insists that MSP is not subject to many stringent
state and federal laws for handling, storing and burning
hazardous waste. Since Kent spends comparatively little on
containment, safety and pollution control equipment, he
undercuts his competitors. He also endangers the environment and
public health of southern Louisiana.

According to Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality
(LADFEQ) records, MSP has been emitting dangerous toxins into
the air, ground and water since it opened for business in 1985.
In 1986, the Coast Guard found MSP storing hazardous materials
in barges on nearby Bayou Boeuf. One of the barges was tilted
over at a 40 degree angle, with waves washing in and out. The
barge's tilt alarm has been disabled. Nearby fish showed high
levels of mercury poisoning. During the same year, an MSP
employee swore that he was following orders when he spent an
entire day dumping degreaser, lime and Tide detergent into Bayou
Boeuf in order to sink an oil spill. MSP operations in 1987 were
marked by equipment fires (and accompanying toxic fumes),
multicolored smoke emissions, and "accidental" hydrocarbon
releases. And in 1988, fires broke out, barges leaked and local
residents complained of skin irritations and foul odors.

Despite a U.S. Department of Justice grand jury investigation,
at least one civil law suit and more than $4 million in
penalties fro LADEQ, Marine Shale is burning more hazardous
waste than ever before. Its kiln takes in more than 100,000 tons
a year of every imaginable toxin: pesticide waste, DDT, cyanide,
lead smelting sludge, solvents and dioxin-laced wood
preservatives, such as pentachlorophenol and creosote. Kent
hopes to double his business and gross $80 million this year. He
has appealed or ignored virtually every order given ny LADEQ. In
the time it takes to fight these orders, his profits accumulate,
enabling him to keep fighting. Government bureaucrats simply do
not have the authority to deal quickly with flagrant violators
like MSP. "Trying to deal with Marine Shale is like trying to
deal with a greased pig in a dark room," Louisiana's Assistant
Attorney General told a local news program.

Until Louisiana inaugurated its new governor last year, Kent had
the sympathetic ear of governor Edwin Edwards, and LADEQ's hands
were effectively tied. But LADEQ says it is moving ahead with
its case against Marine Shale. Says Elizabeth Megginson of
LADEQ's legal affairs office, "LADEQ has moved pretty fast in
the last year. If we're going to do it, we're going to do it
right."

MARINE SHALE'S HELICOPTER IS OCCASIONally heard over Amelia. In
keeping with his flamboyant character, Kent has been known to
land atop a storage tank holding flammable hazardous wastes.
Kent wasn't always rich enough to ride around in helicopters. He
lost his shirt in the oil bust of the early 1980's, when his oil
field supply business went bankrupt. He nonetheless arranged a
$7.5 million loan from a local savings and loan, bought the old
Pelican State lime kiln in December 1984 and obtained permits
from Louisiana Office of Conservation and St. Mary's Parish
Council to incinerate non-hazardous oil field wastes using coal
or natural gas. 

Kent told the New Orleans news program "Bill Elder's Sunday
Journal" what happened next. "So then our fuel bill was like
$90,000 per month," said Kent. "I asked my attorney, 'Can we
start taking hazardous materials to cut down on this fuel bill?'
George [Eldrege] looked into it and said we definitely can if we
meet the air requirements and we'll have to get a modification
to our permit." But Kent didn't have any such "modifications"
when he started using hazardous waste to fuel his kiln. 

Eldrege did write to Pat Norton, Secretary of LADEQ, asking her
to approve alternate fuel sources, such as ethers, solvents and
sludges, to supplement their natural gas and coal fuel. But
Norton only gave permission to MSP to use "non-hazardous solid
wastes . . .for energy recovery and/or for manufacturing a
product." Norton called such use "legitimate resource recovery."

When MSP began burning creosote wastes without a permit,
residents complained of noxious smokestack fumes. The 16th
Judicial Court placed a 10-day restraining order on MSP to stop
it from burning creosote. LADEQ issued its first compliance
order against MSP for storing hazardous waste without a permit,
releasing hazardous waste into the ground and water and
violating its air quality permit. 

Norton opposed giving MSP permission to burn creosote wastes,
but was hounded by then-governor Edwards. Edwards made numerous
phone calls to Norton, asking her to issue a permit. He summoned
her to the 18 governor's mansion in December 1985 where she was
told, in Kent's company, to sign a letter of authorization.
Reluctantly, she agreed.

This allowed MSP to burn one type of hazardous waste, creosote.
But the only piece of paper recognizing Marine Shale as a  
"recycler" of hazardous wastes was sent by LADEQ Assistant
Secretary, John Koury, on June 9, 1986. This letter granted MSP
"interim status as a storage facility" and said that MSP could
"receive hazardous waste for storage prior to reuse and/or
recycling if such waste has been listed in the facility's Part
I Permit Application or in any subsequent approved revisions to
that application." Koury's letter was sent without Secretary
Norton's knowledge, but, according to Norton, even she didn't
have the authority to sign such a letter. According to LADEQ's
Megginson, "You can't bestow interim status. You either have it
or you don't. It's like a grandfather clause. It's for operators
already in existence when federal hazardous waste laws were
passed."

KENT COUNTERS THE COMPLAINTS, CHARGES investigations, violations
and penalties filed against Marine Shale with legal maneuvers
and slick newspaper, magazine and television advertisements.
This strategy has succeeded in winning people over to his side.
And with Marine Shale employing some 300 people, there is
economic pressure to keep the plant open.

Kent's newest media target is Washington, D.C., where he is
suspected of trying to rally the support of federal regulators.
Marine Shale recently bought time on the 11:00 p.m. news on
several Washington television stations, running commercials so
misleading that Greenpeace has filed a petition with the Federal
Trade Commission to have them taken off the air.

One of the TV commercials opens with Kent standing before a
backdrop of nasty looking muck. He says: "This is hazardous
waste. It's dirty, and it's poison. It's no use to cuss the
folks who left it here, 'cause without them there wouldn't be
much of Louisiana. Now somebody's got to clean the stuff up.
That's what we do. We're Marine Shale Processors of Amelia, and
we turn that nightmare into this harmless, reusable material.
Marine Shale Processors. We not only clean the stuff up. We make
it safe to use." But in Green peace's opinion, MSP's incinerator
ash is not safe to use. In its compliance order of January 13,
1989, LADEQ identified some of MSP's aggregate piles as
hazardous waste and directed the company to remove the piles to
"an approved off-site facility." And it is deceiving for Kent to
say that MSP turns toxic nightmares into harmless materials. In
addition to producing "aggregate," MSP's so-called "recycling"
releases a host of toxic by-products into the environment. 

All of Marine Shale's TV ads end with a written tag line:
"Marine Shale Processors. Environmentally Safe." But LADEQ, the
agency responsible for regulating Marine Shale, sees it
differently. Its latest compliance order and penalty notice
states: "MSP is storing hazardous waste in a manner which is not
environmentally safe." And LADEQ's Elizabeth Megginson says,
"They're serious violations, and they're violations which pose
a great risk to the environment."

The danger MSP poses to the environment is not just limited to
Louisiana. Other industries across the nation are following
MSP's lead and burning hazardous waste under the claimed federal
loophole for recycling. These facilities assert they are
cleaning up hazardous wastes, but are themselves sources of
pollution, not subject to even the most basic regulations
imposed on hazardous waste incinerators. 

These facilities are a serious disincentive to reducing and
eliminating the production of hazardous waste at the industrial
source. "Industries must be encouraged to develop safe materials
and clean technologies," says Greenpeace toxics campaigner Fred
Munson. "Allowing the proliferation of 'sham' recycling
facilities works against any long-term solution to our toxic
waste problem." 


BRIEFINGS

HOW ONE RAINFOREST WAS SAVED

LAST JULY, WHEN ETHNO-botanist Paul A. Cox arrived in the
Western Samoan village of Falealupo, he was shocked to find
loggers shearing off the forest's prized trees. He rushed to the
village chiefs to ask them why this desecration was taking
place. "They simply had no other choice," says Cox. "They had
resisted the loggers' requests for years, but finally had to
succumb." 

Because the Western Samoan government had condemned the local
children's school and demanded the village build another one,
Falealupo chiefs found themselves an agonizing choice: cut the
rain forest or forego their children's education. Says Cox,
"these high chiefs literally cried when they saw their trees
being felled." 

The 30,000 acres of rain forest surrounding Falealupo village on
the island of Savai'i comprise one of the world's last surviving
paleotropical rain forests, says Cox, an associate professor of
ethnobotany at Brigham Young University who has conducted
research in Samoa for more than a decade. 

"The government of Western Samoa estimates that if logging
continues at the present rate, the entire country will be logged
out within 20 years," Cox says. Samoa, about halfway between
Honolulu and Sydney, is divided into American Samoa (77 square
miles) and Western Samoa (1,093 square miles). On the island of
Savai'i, the largest of nine islands making up Western Samoa,
about 80 percent of the lowland tropical rain forest has been
replaced by plantations or logged. In American Samoa, 95 percent
of lowland rain forest and 40 percent of the primary rain forest
is gone, Cox says.

Not enough money was coming in from the village's cash crop,
cacao, because the season had been too wet and the harvest poor.
So the village chiefs reluctantly signed a licensing agreement
with a local logging company that allowed the firm to cut trees
until the school debt was paid off. "We were really in bondage
to this school, and we didn't know how in the world to pay off
our debt," says High Chief Seumanutafa Siosi."We support efforts
to preserve the rain forest 100 percent." 

By Western standards, Falealupo's debt for building the school
was small, only $55,000, but it was a huge amount of money for
the community. Raising money became Cox's first project. He
forwarded about $500 to the Bank of Western Samoa to cover that
month's bill, personally guaranteed payments for the next six
months and began making plans to raise the money to pay for the
school and preserve the rain forest. "If you can believe this,
I figure it costs about $1.83 to save an acre of rain forest on
this island," Cox says. "What an incredible legacy we can leave
the world with such a small amount of money."

Cox quickly convinced Verne Read of Bat Conservation
International to take over payments for the next several months
while he searched for other sources of money. He told potential
donors that "it's crazy to kick these people off their land by
buying up the rain forest." Foreign ownership of rain forest
land may be a good idea in some countries, Cox believes, but it
is culturally or politically unacceptable in others. Better to
work with indigenous cultures by helping them economically, and
support their natural desire to preserve tropical rain forests.

In December 1988, Cox convinced Rex Maughn of Forever Living
Products and Ken Murdoch of Nature's Way, both manufacturers of
natural products, to support the project. And in February,
Maughn and Murdoch travelled to Western Samoa to present checks
totalling $45,000 to the chiefs of Falealupo. The donors also
signed a unique document conceived, negotiated and written by
Cox that required the donors to relinquish any rights to the
rain forest. Each Falealupoan high chief co-signed the covenant
and promised in return to preserve the land for 50 years. They
pledged to protect the indigenous flora and fauna, including
endangered species such as the "flying fox," a fruit eating bat
that is the forest's main pollinator.

The covenant provides for limited use of the rain forest by
local people, thus preserving their right to collect plants for
medicinal purposes and select certain woods for carving
ceremonial kava bowls and building canoes, homes and meeting
houses. Small, traditional garden plots are allowed if they are
planted along the edge of the forest and do not involve clearing
any primary rain forest land. Cox and other scientists will also
be permitted to continue their scientific research in the
forest, which includes harvesting plants for pharmacological
testing. 

For his efforts, Cox has been recognized in Samoa-- the chiefs
made him an honorary "high chief"--but also in places as far
away as Sweden, where the king and queen invited him to discuss
his work on forest preservation in March, and the king donated
$1,000 to the Falealupo project.--Nancy Perkins

Nancy Perkins is National News Coordinator for Brigham Young
University. She recently visited Western Samoa.


WHAT'S BEHIND THE SPILLS [As we go to press, the most
devastating oil spill in U.S. history, more than 11 million
gallons from the crippled tanker Exxon Valdez, is coating the
frigid waters and the abundant wildlife of Alaska's Prince
William Sound.] 

IT WAS A SEASON OF SPILLS. On December 22, 1988, a seagoing tug
gashed a hole in the side of a barge, spilling 230,000 gallons
of oil into Gray's Harbor on the coast of Washington State.
Heavy seas and strong winds smeared the oil across 300 miles of
coastline, including the scenic parts of the Olympic National
Park and the Pacific Rim National Park in Canada. 

One month later, on January 28,1989, the captain of the
Argentine supply ship Bahia Paraiso ignored warnings and charted
a course that ran his ship into rocks off Antarctica's Palmer
Peninsula. The ship broke apart, spilling some 250,000 gallons
of oil near thriving penguin, seal and sea bird colonies and a
U.S. scientific research facility.

For a while, the oil spills were in the headlines. It helped
that two were in remote, sensitive areas, and the third on the
doorstep of a major city. But the attention faded with the tide,
and few looked further than the oiled birds and clean-up crews
that followed them. Unlike the wholesale review of safety and
security provoked by the recent rash of airplane accidents, the
implications of oil exploration, and the attendant spills,
remain largely unexamined. Oil spills, it is assumed, are a
natural part of our industrial landscape. Perhaps they shouldn't
be. 

First, these spills were relatively small. Neither of them
approached the mammoth slicks that accompanied the wreck of the
AMOCO Cadiz off Brittany in 1978 or the infamous Ixtoc oil rig
blowout in the Gulf of Mexico a year later. But they proved to
be nearly impossible to clean up. At Gray's Harbor, foul weather
spread the slick up and down the coast and hampered the would-be
rescuers. "I don't know any equipment that can contain oil in
15-foot waves," Canadian Coast Guard commander Colin Hendry told
the Vancouver Sun. "If you know anyone who does, get them to
give me a call."

As for the Antarctic spill, the clean-up equipment needed to
deal with the spill was unavailable. It took a week to ferry the
appropriate gear to the remote site, and the delay was costly.
The wreck is 500 yards from Litchfield Island, an area protected
under international agreement for its wildlife. Thousands of sea
birds have already washed up dead on the shore.

Neither are these spills the rarities that the headlines would
suggest. A Peruvian research ship ran aground off Antarctica
less than a month after the much-publicized Argentine accident.
A week later, 117,000 gallons of oil poured from an EXXON tanker
onto a Hawaiian beach. During January alone, Green peace
recorded six ship, barge and boat wrecks in Alaskan waters that
released or threatened to release large quantities of oil. One
accident dumped nearly two million gallons of diesel fuel into
the frigid Alaskan waters.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates there
are some 10,000 oil spills a year in the United States alone, an
annual gusher that costs some $175 million a year to clean up.
And even this deluge is exceeded by the quantity of oil annually
poured into coastal waters from what are known as "routine"
releases--the bilge and oil tanker cleaning, and drilling rig
discharges that attend day-to-day oil development and transport.


If the development of offshore oil in North American and
Antarctic waters proceeds as planned, the recent spills may warn
of worse things to come. In addition to the controversial plan
to begin drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, the
U.S. Department of the Interior is preparing to lease vast
tracts of coastal waters along the Arctic and Pacific coasts, as
well as offshore sites near North Carolina and in the Gulf of
Mexico (see Campaigns).

As for the relatively untouched Antarctic, the countries that
are party to the Antarctic Treaty have designed a minerals
agreement that could, if ratified, unleash a Klondike-like rush
for oil and other minerals on the continent. Exploration in
colder climes presents a particular threat. Accidents are far
more likely in the storm-tossed polar seas, particularly in the
company of icebergs. Oil slicks in the Antarctic are a hardier
and more dangerous variety; salt-water microbes, for example,
take much longer to break down the oil. Also, oil freezes in the
ice, and is slowly released into the environment during ensuing
thaws.

Oil exploration in the Antarctic will mean "more ships, more
vehicles and more people, all crowding onto the tiny two percent
of the continent that is ice-free," says Sue Sabella, Antarctic
campaigner for Green peace. "This is the same two percent we
must share with most of Antarctica's wildlife. We've found that
the scientific community can't even police their garbage and
waste. Imagine what it will be like when heavy industry gets
here." 

The record for the industry elsewhere bears out these fears. An
EPA report disclosed in March details a host of environmental
problems at the oil complex on Alaska's North Slope, including
overflowing waste disposal pits, toxic chemical spills, stacks
of leaking drums and a series of blatant violations of EPA
regulations. According to the Alaska Department of Environmental
Conservation, each of the 500 to 600 wells on the North Slope
generates about 840,000 gallons of waste each year, much of it
dumped onto tundra wetlands. In 1987, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service reported that "fish and wildlife habitat losses from
construction and operation of the pipeline system and the
Prudhoe Bay oil fields were greatly underestimated in the
environmental impact statement." 

This litany of unexamined costs leaves out, of course, the
environmental effects of the subsequent use of the fossil fuels,
extracted with such dire effect. Nor does it touch on the
economic convolutions required to make the keep-on-drilling
philosophy appear reasonable. But, for the record, according to
University of California energy expert Arthur Rosenfeld, the
United States loses more energy each year through poorly
engineered windows than is provided by all the oil flowing
through the Alaska pipeline. From this perspective, leaving it
in the ground is far cheaper and less destructive than pumping
it, burning it and spilling it across oceans from Cape Horn to
the Bering Sea.


THROW THE DINOSAUR A BONE

The New Pitch For Nuclear Power

By Jim Harding

BRICE LALONDE, FOUNDER OF FRIENDS OF THE Earth in France and
currently that nation's environment minister, told Nucleonics
Week last year he is reconsidering nuclear power. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists, the organization that
initiated the debate on reactor safety in the early 1970s, now
tells its members that it favors development of a second
generation of nuclear power plants. 

The Climate Institute, whose board includes several respected
environmentalists, recently called upon activists to leave the
door open for "safe" nuclear energy.

Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO), long one of the best environmentalists
in Congress, has cosponsored climate protection legislation that
calls for, among other things, research on a new generation of
"safe" nuclear plants. Environmental organizations are divided
on whether they can fully support this legislation. Wirth,
meanwhile, urges any fence sitters to outgrow their "nuclear
measles" in the face of climate risks that have changed his mind
on the risk of nuclear energy.

Granted, the threat of greenhouse warming is real. Carbon
dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased 25
percent since the mid-19th century, both because of
deforestation and growing use of oil, gas and coal. Equally
troublesome are a host of other gases, including CFCs
(chlorofluorocarbons), methane, nitrogen oxides and ozone that
trap heat attempting to escape the atmosphere. 

Most climatologists now project a three to ten degree Fahrenheit
increase in average surface temperatures during the 21st
century, much of which is "locked in" by greenhouse gases that
have already been released. Some scientists anticipate a rise of
three to ten feet in sea level, but such figures do not begin to
measure ecological consequences. Warming will play havoc with
water supplies, rainfall patterns and agriculture. 

The rate of climate change expected in the next 100 years dwarfs
by about 30 times the rate of global warming that followed the
last ice age. Forests moved about one kilometer per year during
that period. It takes very little daydreaming to appreciate the
profound ecological consequences of a thirty-times-faster change
(see The Heat Is On).

But whatever the motivation for reassessing it, an endorsement
of nuclear power flies in the face of the lessons learned about
energy during the 1970s and 1980s. While the greenhouse effect
should be taken seriously, it makes no sense to adopt nuclear
power as a solution. Nuclear power remains a major problem. Its
financial cost and environmental risk make it unacceptable as a
solution to greenhouse-induced global warming.

High Costs

During the energy crisis of the early 1970s, nuclear power was
touted as an inexpensive energy source that would replace scarce
oil and gas. But then as now, nuclear power was limited to
producing electricity, which is the most expensive form of
energy and represents only about 10 to 15 percent of energy use.
It is far too expensive to compete against oil and gas for most
of what oil and gas does-- provide heat for buildings and
industry and fuel for transportation. As a heat source nuclear
electricity is equivalent to buying oil at more than $200 per
barrel. It is nuclear power's economic inability to replace oil,
gas and coal (at the equivalent of $15 to $30 per barrel) that
has crippled its expansion in even the most ardent, pro nuclear
nations. 

Given current prices, the high cost of nuclear power makes it
the last choice of any utility looking for new ways to meet
demand. By comparison, a new coal plant, with emission controls
that make it cleaner than the average oil-fired power plant, is
cheaper by nearly half. Cheaper still is a natural gas fired
plant. Improvements in jet engine technology have come so far
that utilities can profit from closing down a coal-based power
plant, erecting a gas-fired turbine and reducing carbon dioxide
emissions by three-quarters. 

One company that builds power plants has found that it can
offset all the new carbon dioxide emissions by planting trees.
Applied Energy Services of Arlington, Virginia, estimates that
the cost of this is about five percent of the total price of the
plant. The result is a plant that has the same climatological
impact as a nuclear power plant at better than half the price.
Solar electric cells or photovoltaics that produce electricity
also have about the same impact on the atmosphere's carbon
dioxide levels as nuclear power plants. Improvements in
amorphous silicon cells have come so quickly that if one
believes the press releases, the technology is competitive with
new nuclear plants today--not that this is any great bargain.

But the best option, cheaper than any new energy supply and
causing no increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, is
energy efficiency.

Conservation

During the energy crisis of the 1970s, energy conservation and
efficiency did more than anything else to ease the shortage.
Between 1978 and 1986, growth in energy efficiency displaced 13
times more fossil fuel than did growth in nuclear power.
Compared with 1973 the United States in 1988 used 27 percent
less energy per dollar of Gross National Product and produced 30
percent less carbon dioxide. According to estimates by
scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, full
implementation of today's energy-conserving technologies could
cut U.S. energy consumption by more than half, slashing carbon
dioxide emissions by an equal amount.

It would be unimaginably expensive and difficult to accomplish
the same goal with nuclear-generated electricity. To do it
globally by 2020 would require the installation of two nuclear
plants per day between 1995 and 2020. This is 40 times faster
than the installation rate achieved worldwide during the last
decade. The cost? Hardly worth the time to calculate given the
odds against it, but for those who care, it would cost $50
trillion. 

The new proponents of nuclear power argue that nuclear power is,
at best, a partial solution. But there are several problems with
this argument. Under the best of circumstances, a dollar spent
on nuclear power might displace about six pounds of coal used at
another electric plant. But the same dollar spent on electric
efficiency programs saves more than 40 pounds of coal. The cost
of picking nuclear power over efficiency measures to accomplish
the same goal is 34 pounds of coal needlessly burned. 

There is also a practical political problem with a resurgence of
nuclear power. This cumbersome technology inevitably drains
resources away from less glamorous but far more effective
efficiency improvements. Despite the economic collapse of
nuclear power throughout the United States and most of Western
Europe, many governments remain adamantly pro nuclear. Thus, as
one climate expert put it in defending Senator Wirth's bill,
"You may have to throw a bone to the dinosaur" to get any
positive legislation through Congress. 

The problem is that those throwing the bone feed a problem,
nuclear power, not possible solutions, such as conservation. It
is a mistake to use nonexistent technology as a panacea and
pretend that nothing else needs to be done. This is the gambit
undertaken by those who hold the door open for a new generation
of "safe" reactors.

Environmental Risk

Its proponents argue that a new generation of "inherently safe"
reactors will overcome the public's "nuclear measles." But
developing "inherently" or "passively" safe reactors calls into
question the safety of the more than 400 operating nuclear
plants worldwide that are not "inherently safe." It would be
difficult to sell simultaneously the safety advantages of a new
design and defend the continued operation of the current
facilities. And whatever terminology is used, no "inherently
safe" plants now exist, and it would take several decades to
prove that the new designs were reliable, let alone "safe." Even
nuclear plants closest to a new design generation will still
have to dispose of radioactive waste and could still contribute
to the spread of nuclear weapons.

More likely, given the deadlines, research funds would support
very modest improvements in existing nuclear technology. But the
further the industry strays from existing technology, the more
difficult the task becomes to sell the cost and reliability of
new technology. And the closer the industry stays to today's
product, the tougher it will be to win public acceptance. Either
way, nuclear power is a risky and expensive distraction from the
vital task of protecting the planet's atmosphere.

The Politics of Change 

Steady increases in energy efficiency, coupled with development
of renewable resources, present the best strategy for climate
protection. To cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half,
energy efficiency gains must outstrip economic growth by about
50 percent. In a world economy growing about 3 percent per year,
efficiency improvements need to reach about 4.5 percent per
year. This is a faster rate of improvement than was achieved in
the last decade by the United States (2.9 percent per year gain)
or Japan (3.4 percent per year), but it is conceivable, while a
world with thousands of "inherently safe" reactors is not.

In the 1970s, high energy prices persuaded many to improve
efficiency and increase auto mileage standards. Rising prices
also caused demand to fall. The market worked to promote
conservation. But the worsening climate does not have the same
economic clout that OPEC had. The greenhouse effect does not
automatically affect energy prices, which means that it won't
necessarily change the way energy is used. Because the market
won't push change along, people will have to use political means
to promote conservation, increased efficiency and renewable
resources.

Since the mid-1980s, most energy prices have fallen. Without a
new tax on fossil fuels, energy prices are likely to remain low
for at least another decade. During that time, the environmental
movement must redouble its effort to convince governments
worldwide of the necessity of increasing energy efficiency. This
can be done with energy taxes, efficiency standards on
buildings, appliances and automobiles, financial incentives to
go beyond minimum efficiency, and further research on renewable
energy sources and energy conservation. But the more time it
takes to adopt such a strategy, the more likely we are to grab
at nuclear straws. 

Jim Harding is an energy analyst for MHB Technical Associates in
San Jose, California. 


CAMPAIGNS

NEW ADMINISTRATION, SAME OLD STORY 

IN 1987 THE REAGAN administration unveiled a five-year plan for
selling the nation's outer continental shelf (OCS) to the oil
companies. Nearly 1.4 billion acres were scheduled to be put on
the block, including areas like Alaska's Bristol Bay, one of the
most productive fish and marine mammal habitats in the world.
Two years later, much has been sold, but much has been delayed
thanks to environmentalists and angry residents.

This February, in an effort to placate the opposition, George
Bush formed a task force to examine the environmental
implications of leasing parts of the coasts of California and
Florida. At best, it appears a hollow gesture. The task force,
as originally conceived, consisted of people from the Department
of Energy, the Department of the Interior and the National
Academy of Sciences--no state or environmental representatives.
Until members of Congress pressed the White House, even the
Environmental Protection Agency was not included. And the choice
of "sensitive" sites to be reviewed appears to be based less on
science than on the strength of the local opposition to the
government's leasing plans.

Left off the review list are such notable natural areas as
Alaska's Bristol Bay, the Beaufort Sea, North Carolina's Outer
Banks and a lease site off central California. "What makes
Florida and southern California any more worthy of
reconsideration than central California, Alaska or North
Carolina?" asks Dorrie Smith, Greenpeace OCS campaigner. "Is it
safe here, but not safe there?"

Environmentalists plan to fight the "task force" strategy of the
administration, with its implicit trade-off among various parts
of the nation's coastline, and to bring all threatened areas
back onto the national agenda. Greenpeace and its allies will
lobby to renew the moratorium on oil leasing and exploration in
Florida, New England's Georges Bank and northern California and
to expand the moratorium to include southern California the mid
Atlantic coast the Outer Banks and Bristol Bay. One main
strategy involves lobbying in the appropriations committee to
ensure that sales are not funded (see Action Access).

WHALING MEETING SET FOR JUNE 

THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUnity is preparing for the first full
meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) held in
the United States since 1971. The most important issues to be
discussed in San Diego on June 12th are disputes over the so-
called "research" whaling hunts conducted by Iceland and Japan.

In San Diego, Japan will renew its ongoing efforts to preserve
its whaling operations, this time by persuading delegates to
change the IWC charter to include a new type of permissible
whaling. The new classification would allow small-scale coastal
whaling, which has similarities to the current minke whaling
operations in Iceland and Norway. South Korea, Brazil and Peru
might be tempted to restart whaling if the plan is approved
Japan's ongoing effort to persuade the IWC to grant Japan's
whalers the same IWC exemption afforded aboriginal subsistence
whalers, such as Alaska's Eskimos, has failed over the last few
years. 

Outside the IWC, Iceland is feeling the heat of the long-running
international boycott of its fish products. And Japan was in the
headlines when its Antarctic whaling ships crossed paths with
the Greenpeace ship Gondwana. In a nine-day siege, inflatables
from the Gondwana disrupted Japan's operations so completely
that their "harvest" of minkes dropped from 40 in a ten-day
period to just 14.

In the course of its whale saving efforts, unfortunately, the
Gondwana collided with a Japanese catcher boat. As a result,
Japan's pro-whaling Institute for Cetacean Research has
threatened a lawsuit, and government officials have accused
Gondwana's crew of practicing "terrorism on the high seas."

ICELANDIC WHALERS TAKE NATO BASE HOSTAGE     

IN JUNE 1987, THE INTERnational Whaling Commission (IWC)
condemned Iceland's proposal to continue killing fin and sei
whales as part of a "research" program. To avoid U.S. economic
sanctions, Iceland called for a meeting with U.S. officials in
Ottawa the following September. There, a deal was cut: the
United States agreed to defer sanctions if Icelandic authorities
agreed to modify their research program, reduce the number
of whales killed, and "carry out the scientific recommendations"
of the IWC's scientific committee.

The next year, however, Iceland submitted the same proposal
(which was immediately condemned by the IWC scientific
committee) and vowed to continue its whale hunt. And, to the
amazement of environmentalists, the U.S. Commerce Department
refused to certify Iceland--no sanctions, nothing. 

What had happened during the year to gut the U.S. commitment to
sanctions? The answer may lie in the White House. In the course
of suing the Secretaries of Commerce and State to force them to
comply with the law, a coalition of environmental groups
obtained some interesting documents.

One document revealed that State Department official James
Wilkinson recommended that the chief U.S. scientist on the IWC
scientific committee "be constructively neutral" at the 1988
meeting and said, "We hope that U.S. scientists will not take an
active role in criticizing Iceland's program and will not
actively work to persuade others to criticize or oppose the
program." (U.S. State Department, May 6,1988). 

In another document, the State Department urged the new U.S. IWC
Commissioner to consult the [State] Department on whaling issues
which have a foreign policy dimension. This is particularly true
in the coming months as we again deal with Iceland's scientific
whaling program and the linkage to the U.S.-manned NATO base at
Keflavik [Iceland]." (April 20,1988)

These documents and other information obtained by Greenpeace
suggest that the government may be weighing the fate of the
whales against the desire to maintain good relations with
Iceland because of the NATO base. By permitting this to happen,
U.S. officials may themselves have violated provisions of U.S.
law. 

Judge George H. Revercomb, who presides over the case in the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled in
February 1989 that the State and Commerce Departments must
answer questions as to whether national security issues were
considered in the decision not to certify Iceland. He also
ordered government officials to provide him with original copies
of all the materials that they withheld under a claim of "state
secrets" privilege. He will privately review them to determine
whether this claim was justified.

UPPING THE OZONE ANTE 

SOME OBSERVERS IN EUROPE this March wondered if they were in Las
Vegas. It seemed the ante was upped almost daily as world
leaders outdid each other in their efforts to appear to be
taking the lead on protecting the ozone layer. Margaret Thatcher
started off by inviting the nations of the world to a conference
on the issue in London, but was upstaged when environmental
ministers of the European Community (EC) announced they would
reduce chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) production by 85 percent as soon
as possible and try for 100 percent by the end of the century.
By the time U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director
William Reilly arrived in London, he had in hand a pledge from
President Bush to match the EC commitment.

According to atmospheric scientists and the EPA, a 100 percent
ban on CFCs is necessary just to stabilize the rate of ozone
depletion. This is why Green peace's atmosphere campaign,
launched this winter, is working for an immediate and total ban
on ozone-depleting chemicals. Delegates at Thatcher's London
conference were met by Greenpeace activists hanging a banner
from the Houses of Parliament, which read, "100% NOW."

Greenpeace urges that all government industry and international
efforts on ozone protection be sped up and expanded to include
many compounds not addressed by the current international
agreement, the Montreal Protocol. Green peace also cautions that
substitutes for CFCs should be safe. "There is significant risk
that, in the race to find substitutes, producers will turn to
alternatives that have environmental and human health risks of
a different kind," said campaigner Erik Johnson. A number of the
substitutes proposed by the chemical industry are them-selves
toxic or carcinogenic. "However, relatively benign substitutes
exist for all of the major uses of CFCs, and the public must
insist on their implementation," Johnson added.

TOXICS CAMPAIGN HITS THE ROAD 

THE GREENPEACE BUS AND crew lent its support to California
communities fighting proposed hazardous waste incinerators,
leaking toxic waste landfills and toxic contamination sites.
From January 23rd to February 22nd, Greenpeace toxics
campaigners aboard a 40-foot green and silver motor coach
rallied citizens to the cause of toxics reduction and
prevention. "Bus stops" included: 

ROSAMOND: Greenpeace and South Kern Residents Against Pollution
(SKRAP) spread the word about a proposal to burn toxic waste in
a CalMat cement kiln in nearby Mojave. Already furious because
their community has 35 toxic contamination sites and a childhood
cancer cluster (including ten deaths), more than 300 irate
residents packed a community meeting to tell the company, "No
Toxic Burn!" CalMat and the state government hoped to avoid
conducting an environmental impact report (EIR) and a public
hearing, but were forced to reverse themselves after the uproar.

MARTINEZ: Greenpeace and SAVE US, a local citizens' group,
kicked off an escalated campaign to defeat Stauffer Chemical
Company's toxic waste incineration proposal. Stauffer wants to
use its facility in Martinez to "import" and burn toxic waste
from other industries. More than 200 people attended a rally to
oppose the plan and call for toxics reduction throughout the
state.

CASMALIA: Fed up with ground water contamination, birth defects,
rare blood diseases and government inaction, hundreds of
citizens joined a February 11th rally and mock trial in front of
the local elementary school. Citizens found the owners of the
Casmalia Resources toxic waste dump and government officials
guilty of poisoning their community. Afterwards, a 65-car
motorcade snaked its way to the dump and blocked its entrance.
Joined by Mothers of East Los Angeles, Casmalia residents
chanted "If the government won't, the people will . . . close
the toxic dump!"

KETTLEMAN CITY: Over 400 people from this predominantly Mexican-
American farm worker community were joined by fellow
Californians in an unprecedented demonstration at the gates of
the Chem Waste Management Kettleman Hills toxic dump. Sponsored
by People for Clean Air and Water and Greenpeace, the rally was
conducted primarily in Spanish. The large turnout dispelled Chem
Waste's claim that the community supported their incinerator
proposal.


ACTION ACCESS

WRITE FOR RIGHTS 

MALAYSIA's RAIN forests and rain forest activists are under
siege from logging interests and corrupt government officials.
More than 120 Dayaks, native Malaysians trying to retain rights
to their land, have been arrested and await trial since
November, while logging on their land continues. Rep. John
Porter (R-IL) plans to reintroduce a resolution expressing
concern for the destructive logging of tropical rain forests and
the Malaysian government's disregard for the right of indigenous
people to control the use of their forest land. It also calls
for development of policies to ensure that U.S. timber imports
are obtained from sustainable sources. Ask your Representative
to support any future resolution concerning the promotion of the
environment and human rights in Malaysia. Write The Honorable --
-------------------- U.S. House of Representatives, Washington,
DC 20515.

UNDER FIRE VIDEO 

THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECT on Central America (EPOCA) has
completed an award winning video on the ecology and politics of
Central America The half-hour presentation includes interviews
with Central American activists and officials as well as U.S.
environmentalists who describe the links between poverty, war
and the destruction of the region's environment. $35.00 for
individuals, $75.00 for institutions, rental for $25 and $55.
Write EPOCA, 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133;
415-788-3666.

ACT ON GLOBAL WARMING ACT 

WORLDWIDE ENERGY SAVINGS worth trillions of dollars per decade
are possible with energy efficiency, conservation and
development of renewable energy resources. These measures are
also the key to curbing the production of greenhouse gases.
Claudine Schneider's Global Warming Prevention Act (HR 1078)
addresses these and other means of saving the atmosphere. This
bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation in
Washington this year.

Key features include: reducing carbon dioxide emissions 20
percent by 2005; requiring the Department of Energy to pursue
least-cost energy options (i.e. efficiency); establishing
research centers for studying energy intensive industries;
establishing higher fuel efficiency standards for new cars and
trucks; and promoting reforestation and energy efficiency
worldwide. The bill needs Co-sponsors. Urge your Representative
to cosponsor H.R. 1078, the Global Warming Prevention Act, by
writing The Honorable ------------, U.S. House of
Representatives, Washington DC 20515. And please send a copy of
your letter to Green peace, Atmosphere and Energy Program, Fort
Mason Bldg. E, San Francisco, CA 94123.

ICELAND BOYCOTT 

THE FIFTH NATIONAL DAY TO Protest Icelandic Whaling took place
March 25th in more than 100 cities. Many thanks to those who
organized and participated. If you would like to hold a
demonstration in your community on June 12th or August 19th,
contact Greenpeace in Washington, D.C., for an Icelandic Whaling
Demonstration Kit.

Help us thank Red Lobster for agreeing to join the Iceland
boycott by writing Mr. Jeff O'Hara, President, 6770 Lake Ellenor
Dr., Orlando, FL 32859.

Please continue to protest purveyors of Icelandic fish, like
Burger King, which even hosts a consumer hot line. Why not
suggest that they stop buying Icelandic fish products because
Iceland refuses to stop whaling? Call 1-800-937-1800.

PAPER PROBLEMS IN INDONESIA 

SCOTT PAPER COMPANY OF Philadelphia is behind a plan to cut
almost two million acres of rain forest in Indonesia to start a
eucalyptus plantation, a chip mill and a paper mill. The joint
venture, Astra Scott, has a huge concession that includes the
traditional lands of four indigenous tribes who make their
living through sustainable use of the rain forest. 

An international coalition of activists has been formed to help
the local people remain self-sufficient, promote sustainable
rain forest development alternatives and halt this ill-conceived
project. Please help by writing to Phillip Lippincott, CEO,
Scott Paper Company, 1 Scott Plaza, Philadelphia, PA 19113, and
to their overseas branch, P.T. Astra Scott Cellulosa, Jalan
Balikpanan no.15, Jakarta Pusat, Indonesia.

SAFE MILK FOR SCHOOLS 

ON FEBRUARY 13, GREENPEACE petitioned the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) to stop allowing schools to use dioxin-laced
chlorine-bleached milk cartons in federally funded school lunch
programs. According to U.S. paper industry test results,
bleached paper cartons are contaminated with dioxins, and a
Canadian study has shown that these highly toxic compounds may
migrate into the milk itself. Please write the Secretary of
Agriculture and ask him to support Greenpeace's petition. Also,
request that USDA conduct an Environmental Impact Statement to
determine what effect contaminated cartons have on children's
health and the environment. A letter to your congressional
delegation asking them to encourage swift USDA action would help
too. Write Hon. Clayton K. Yeutter, Secretary, U.S. Department
of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 20250.

DON'T DRILL 

PLEASE WRITE YOUR CONgressional delegation and urge them to
support the congressional moratorium on appropriations for the
U.S. Department of Interior's planned sale of leases for sites
off the coasts of California, North Carolina, New Jersey and
Massachusetts. Also appropriations for exploration on existing
leases in Florida, Alaska's Bristol Bay and North Carolina's
Outer Banks should be withheld. Oil drilling is no solution to
our energy needs, and it is environmentally unsafe to extract
and use (see Briefings). Write The Honorable -----------, U.S.
Senate, Washington, DC 20510, and The Honorable ---------, U.S.
House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515.

BAN WASTE TRADE 

DESPITE WIDESPREAD MEDIA attention, the U.S. Congress has not
enacted legislation on the export of toxic waste by
industrialized nations to the developing world. Greenpeace
supports a ban on toxic waste exports or, at minimum,
legislation requiring potential exporters to have first
exhausted all available waste reduction options and to export
only to facilities deemed "environmentally preferable" to those
in the United States. Urge Congress not to support anything
less, including the Waste Export Control Act unless it is
strengthened by stricter controls. Write The Honorable ---------
--, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510, and The Honorable
-----------, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC
20515.

WRITE WITH COUSTEAU 

IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 15TH anniversary, the Cousteau Society has
presented gift memberships to the 170 leaders of the world's
nations. It is now launching a letter-writing campaign to urge
these leaders to "conserve resources and protect the earth for
future generations." Write for a list of names and addresses and
join in. World Leaders, Cousteau Society,930 West 21st Street,
Norfolk, VA 23517.

Paid for by Greenpeace Action. Greenpeace Action is a sister
organization of Greenpeace USA that promotes environmental
protection and disarmament through grassroots organizing,
education and legislation.