Click here for this year's Green Screen Awards!

Germ gone
In 1997 a mysterious, deadly, and hard-to-kill microbe, Pfiesteria piscicida, appeared in alarming numbers in coastal waters of the eastern US, apparently killing huge numbers of fish and injuring still more. Now it seems to have vanished, and scientists know as little about its disappearance as about its appearance - or about when or why it could return. A January conference in Baltimore, led by the US EPA, included scientists and others from Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, some of whom speculated that 1998's wet spring may have diluted salt and nutrients enough to slow Pfiesteria reproduction, by reducing the algae on which Pfiesteria feeds in its nontoxic life stage, and which also attract "oily" fish like Atlantic menhaden, which Pfiesteria attacks in its more deadly phase.

Salmon chanted evening
Atlantic salmon that escaped from fish farms in British Columbia have been able to reproduce in the wild: 12 juveniles were found in Vancouver Island's remote Tsitika River. Since Atlantic salmon stocked in western rivers early in the century, when people just went ahead and did that sort of thing, failed to survive, scientists and fish farmers had assumed that the thousands that escape yearly from net pens in coastal waters pose no threat of biological invasion. Some officials and aquaculturists in the US and Canada remain doubtful that the handful of fish represent a threat, but the discovery has reopened hearings by a pollution-control panel in Washington state, which had given the industry a clean bill of health. The Canadian government may be considering an end to its moratorium on fish-farming off the coast; groups on both sides of the border, like Washington's Marine Environmental Consortium, oppose ending the freeze.

Corn flakes
Monsanto will require its customers to grow "sizable" plots of non-gene-spliced corn along with any of the corporation's Bt corn they raise. This is an attempt to ease fears that the new corn, which by use of genes from Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that poisons certain insects) produces an insecticidal toxin throughout the plant, will speed the breeding of resistant insect populations and render Bt useless as an emergency tool for organic farmers. Farmers spray a Bt suspension occasionally, but the new crops would expose pests to a constant dietary level of its active ingredient. A representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists called the proposal "far, far from what is needed" because the size of the non-genespliced corn plots is thought too small to be effective.

Heartless heartland
The Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank, (as opposed to at least one other Heartland Institute that isn't a right-wing think-tank) has released a policy study opposing wilderness protection for any more lands, on the grounds that it might cause financial and ecological disaster. The paper claims that about a third of the US is "…'wilderness' by some definition of the term." The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation counters that the actual portion is more like 4.4 percent, and that not even adding in all federally-owned lands of many uses would make it one-third of the country. The "some definition" may be a clue, as the paper's authors also call wilderness "a state of mind… associated by some people with some places." The spat is occasioned by a science-based National Forest roadless-area policy that the Clinton administration was to release in November 1998, which deadline it missed. Environmentalists hope the policy will preserve undisturbed areas.

Yummy echinoderms in trouble
Sea cucumbers in the Galapagos are being fished out in spite of a four-year ban, unsuccessfully enforced, by the Ecuadorian government. Most sea cucumbers (bęche de mer, trepang) are dried and exported to Taiwan and Hong Kong, often through the US. Waters off mainland Ecuador have already been stripped of commercially-valuable sea cucumbers, and some four million have been taken from the Galapagos since 1992. The wildlife trade monitor TRAFFIC is urging the Ecuadorian government to bring Galapagos fisheries under better control, and urging countries that consume sea cucumbers to help in the attempt.

Apes and essence
The Great Ape Project works to gain civil rights for the primates most closely related to humans: chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. It's poised to win one victory in New Zealand, where a new animal welfare bill carries a clause that gives individual apes the right to life, the right not to suffer cruelty or degradation, and the right not to be used in harmful or distressing experiments. Most of this is symbolic, since ape experiments aren't being done in New Zealand, but the clause's proponents hope to influence other countries, and the law changes legal responsibilities to allow concerned citizens to intercede when they perceive mistreatment, as they can with human children. The Great Ape Project is also calling for a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes, which would include freedom from imprisonment without due process. Arguments among biologists, ethicists, philosophers, and others on several sides of the issue include slippery slopes in all directions: if apes have rights because of the continuity between their species and ours, do monkeys have the same rights for the same reasons? And so on, "down" to lab rats. On the other side, arguments that apes should have rights similar to humans', when rested on perceived intellectual similarities, would evaporate if research were to show that these similarities were illusory. And arguments based on similar ability to suffer would extend at least to anyone with a nervous system, which medical researchers and some primatologists fear would eliminate many avenues of experimentation.

Of this coral bones are made
Seventy to 90 percent of the corals in the Indian Ocean had died by the end of 1998, and a significant proportion of the corals in the rest of the world's oceans are dead or bleached - their symbiotic algae killed - as well. The middle of the Pacific has so far escaped devastation, but much of the western Pacific hasn't. Corals support fish, prevent erosion, and absorb the force of tsunami, as well as initiating the island-forming process in many areas. They attract tourists, contributing significantly to many nations' economies. Their wasting is being blamed on pollution, poisoning (including as a side-effect of stunning fish for capture and sale as pets), coral mining, and in large part on ocean temperatures that in 1998 were the highest on record.

America, meet organic meats
The US Department of Agriculture is allowing meats to be labeled "organic" if processors get their meats stamped by a certifier with defined standards and test procedures. Eleven states run such organizations, and there are a number of privately-owned and self-certifying entities. This is an interim measure in the ongoing USDA organic certification process, and matches the existing system for organic produce.

Tater tox
A study by a British scientist who has since retired under pressure has caused a furor and contributed to public mistrust of genetically-modified foods. Dr. Arpad Pusztai, of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, reported that rats fed on potatoes genetically modified to produce lectins - substances found in certain plants and commonly used in labs - suffered atrophied internal organs, including livers. There are conflicting versions of the story, hinging on the toxicity of the lectins themselves, the nutritional properties of the modified potatoes, and the distribution of ill-effects among the rats. The UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council says it cannot get access to Pusztai's data for purposes of corroboration. A group of scientists condemned Pusztai's employers, alleging that the experiments reveal an unacknowledged danger inherent to the genetic modification process. The British public has reacted strongly. People are worried about "Frankenstein foods" and cross-pollination of herbicide-resistant crops to produce super-weeds. Government advisors have said that the only application now being processed for herbicide-resistant plants is a rapeseed (canola) and that there are no weeds in the British countryside with which that could hybridize. But the public tends to dismiss such reassurances. Monsanto was caught in a breach of safety protocols (lack of the prescribed spacing between GM crops and unmodified crops) in a trial site in 1998, and biotech companies in general have not disclosed procedures or trial data to the public. People get scared when they are kept in the dark or denied choices - as they were when a threatened trade war with the rest of Europe put unlabeled GM soybean oil on their market shelves. Already burned by the handling of the BSE scare, and reasonably apprehensive about monopolies, the British public is unlikely to listen to the arguments of science as presented by officials. - RS

Move Over, Oscar!
It's the annual Green Screen awards

by Gar Smith

Our annual Green Screen Awards salute the most (and - with the accompanying Brown Screen Awards - the least) environmental films of the previous year. The winners are:

A Civil Action (Touchstone): Greedy lawyer saves community from polluters, loses case, loses bank account, discovers soul. Most remarkable element: the movie names the actual lawbreakers - W.R. Grace & Co. and Beatrice Foods. Bonus: Robert Duvall's skin-curdling portrayal of corporate überlawyer Jerome Facher.

A Bug's Life (Disney/Pixar): Lovable, big-eyed bugs (but what about those missing legs?). Hero is another misfit free-thinker who blunders his way to victory. A politically correct male ladybug is a step forward for gender-benders. Downside: Plotline slanders an entire order of insects (grasshoppers).

Mighty Joe Young (Disney): One movie, two orphans - how can you miss? One's a 15-foot Tanzanian gorilla; the other's Charlize Theron. Gorilla Joe is brought to a US wildlife preserve to save him from poachers but the endangered species black market threatens Joe even in the Land of Liberty.

The Avengers (Warner Bros): Special Award for "Best Villain in a Really Sucky Movie." Sean Connery (kilted, not stilted) as megalomaniacal businessman Sir August De Wynter who - in cahoots with a pack of "pure scientists" - has figured out how to commercialize the climate. Best line of the year: "From now on, you will buy your weather from meeeee!" Greatest disappointment: No cameo by Diana Rigg.

Firestorm (20th Century Fox): A force of nature in a title role. Howie Long and Scott Glenn face 600-foot walls of fire to save a cute child and an even cuter ornithologist named Jennifer.

Special Mentions
Wag the Dog (New Line Cinema) proved that even the wittiest satire is no match for reality. The movie launched a political catch-phrase that should have prevented the bombing of Baghdad.

Bulworth (20th Century Fox). The year's funniest tragedy. Courageous, obscene and on-the-mark, Senator Jay Bulworth's raps on politics, race, money, power, and socialism should be required reading in every school in the land.

The Siege (20th Century Fox). After the Oklahoma City bombings Congress passed a bunch of anti-terrorist laws. In 1997, the FBI, Pentagon and local police began making joint contingency plans to handle the "terrorist threat" in US cities. If you weren't worried in 1997, rent this film. Do you really want to live in a country ruled by General Bruce Willis?

Brown Screen Awards:
1998's Least Environmental Films
Tied for First Place: Armageddon and Deep Impact: These films, along with Antz and A Bug's Life, marked 1998 as the year of the instant sequel. Both space-rock blockbusters wind up with the Earth saved by a combination of military genius and nuclear bombs. Is this credible? No comet.

Babe: Pig in the City (Universal): Why sweat a storyline when you can get laughs by making animals act like human stereotypes? Here's why: You poison the spirit of an original and truly charming fable with too many scenes of snarling violence, grotesque humans, and overblown special effects. Babe II has all the subtlety of a Batman sequel. Message to the director: Dear Bacon-for-Brains, next time give the lead to the singing mice!

Hard Rain (Paramount): Bad Eco-Timing Award: For climactic chase scene through flooded high school... on jet skis! Feh!