Myanmar out of Massachusetts
A Massachusetts state boycott of businesses that deal with military-ruled Myanmar (Burma) has drawn eight US states, the US Congress, the US Justice Department, corporate lobbyists, Japan, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization into the controversy about individual states' power to enact selective purchasing policies. The National Foreign Trade Council won a suit against the law in 1998, but Massachusetts has appealed to the First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Oral arguments are scheduled for May 1999.

The case has united unlikely allies: human rights advocates, "states' rights" advocates, House Democrats including Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO), other US states, and people who just mistrust globalization moves and the World Trade Organization on one side; and multinational corporations, the EU, the WTO, Japan, and possibly the US Justice Department (which may file a brief against the Massachusetts sanctions as an infringement on US power to conduct foreign policy) on the other. The international unpopularity of Myanmar's current repressive regime has made the case an embarrassment to the EU, as its own parliament advocates a tougher stance against Myanmar. This unpopularity may also keep the White House from pursuing the case on constitutional grounds.

Oil be seeing you
Mike R. Bowlin, Chairman and CEO of oil and gas giant ARCO, told the Cambridge Energy Research Associates' 18th annual executive conference that the world is entering "the last days of the Age of Oil" and that "Global demand for clean energy - natural gas, renewables, electricity, and new energy technologies - will grow faster than overall demand for energy, including oil and coal." He urged his audience, industry leaders all, to "Embrace the future and recognize the growing demand for a wide array of fuels." What he was talking about, mostly, was using natural gas - cleaner-burning but still a nonrenewable fossil fuel, with its attendant environmental costs - instead of other petroleum products. He also mentioned ARCO's introduction of "cleaner-burning" gasoline in California. There was a nod to real alternative fuels: "The challenge is not merely to survive today's low prices, but to plan for a future in which hydrocarbons are just one of a wide variety of fuels that will build the global economy of the 21st Century."

What's yours is mined
Gold mining has caused enough destruction in western Ghana to bring out whole communities in protest, and changes in mining companies' policies and practices are making things worse. One South African company wants to change its operation in Prestea to an open-pit mine, for example, losing local jobs and increasing land scarring and cyanide pollution. Residents say that mining operations, which have swallowed whole communities, have not compensated them enough for the loss of their homes and land. Gold mining has earned some 3.6 billion dollars for Ghana since 1983, but only about 10 percent of that is returned to the places where mining is done. Young people have taken to the streets and blockaded roads against mining operations.

Ghanaian government officials acknowledge environmental problems with mining, especially with recent open-pit mines, despite guidelines in place to minimize impacts. But, they say, small-scale illegal miners cause more harm, and should be banned or regulated, and mined-out areas converted to alternative economic activities as well as environmentally rehabilitated.

Green egged
Hundreds of nuclear workers at the Cogema nuclear waste reprocessing plant in Normandy showered Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit with rotten eggs and dirt clods in January. Nuclear workers feel threatened by the Greens' platform for the EU Parliamentary elections, which promises an end to reliance on nuclear power. Cohn-Bendit told the angry crowd that it would take 20 years to close the plant even if the Greens managed to do so.

Frank Mr. Yen makes his Mark
Japan's "Mr. Yen," vice-minister of finance Eisuke Sakakibara, warned against "market fundamentalism" and called for government controls to keep currencies stable and prevent premature withdrawal of speculative investments. In arguing for more control over capital flow between nations and some common international rules, he said, "The financial system we have today is inherently unstable." He also warned of a world financial collapse.

Haiti see you go
Haiti is nearly deforested after years of internal wars, neglect, poverty, and official misconduct, and parts of the country are now deserts. During the Duvalier years, troops cut down forests and orchards to deprive guerrillas of food and hiding places. Now the culprit is poverty, which drives desperate people to cut trees for charcoal, the country's most-used fuel. Haiti's annual per capita income is about $260, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. With only 1.5 percent of its forests remaining, Haiti loses 36 million tons of soil to erosion yearly, and some informed observers think that parts of the country will never recover, no matter what actions are taken. Denuded hillsides wash away in rainstorms, with disastrous results; hurricanes and tropical storms kill hundreds with mudslides and flooding; some places stay under water for months after a big storm, as the village of Mapou did after both Hurricane Georges and tropical storm Gordon.

The government has just completed an environmental action plan, and says it's determined to salvage and protect what's left of the forests, but the environmental ministry has no director - the country has been without even a prime minister for over a year - and gets only one-quarter of one percent of the national budget.

The Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, has banned charcoal cooking and subsidizes gas as cooking fuel.

Polysyllabic peril
Scientists at Lund University Hospital in Sweden call exposure to isocyanates a more serious health hazard than previously acknowledged. Isocyanates are found in polyurethane products such as foam "rubber," varnish, adhesives, caulks, and paints.

Most exposure to isocyanates occurs during manufacture of these items and of products that use them, such as printed circuit boards, optical cable, mattresses, auto parts, insulation, appliances, flooring, or anything treated with polyurethane. Exposure can cause asthma, loss of lung capacity, lung irritation (coughs, pain, shortness of breath), eye irritation, and skin problems resembling eczema.

Got elk?
A Utah hunter, his wife, and allies have filed legal demands that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) more aggressively monitor and control transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSEs include Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow disease), scrapie in sheep, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in elk and deer, and, in humans, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD) and the "new variant" CJD (nvCJD) that has struck down 33 young people in Great Britain. The hunter, 30-year-old R. Douglas McEwan, and his wife Tracie McEwan fear he got the disease from exposure to deer and elk he hunted. In Britain, nvCJD has been conclusively linked to eating contaminated beef, and cattle feeding practices that spread BSE restricted. These include feeding processed offal and blood products to cattle, pigs, and sheep; this still happens in the US. The legal petition would bar feeding livestock blood and blood products, gelatin, and pork byproducts, and would increase CDC's watch over TSEs, especially in humans.

The CDC counters that its TSE surveillance is already quite thorough - which the activists concede - and that it catches 86 percent of the CJD cases in the US. A CDC spokesperson said McEwan's case had no connection to exposure to elk, deer, or beef, but did not say how that conclusion had been reached.

Cram every mountain
Tourists in the Himalayas have left a mountain of trash - some 66 tons over the last 45 years - and more serious problems like water pollution, deforestation, and soil erosion and compaction. Population growth and exploitation of forests for lumber and firewood, cutting them for grazing and cultivation, and burning groves and grasslands have amplified the effects of all this trampling. The local flora and fauna have changed more in the last few decades than in the previous several centuries. According to Sir Edmund Hillary, "The impact of all these people has been substantial. The Himalayan environment has suffered severely."

Aside from food and oxygen containers, shredded tents, tools, and garbage, climbers have left behind the corpses of their less-fortunate fellows; carrying a body back down the mountain can be costly and dangerous. Everest's South Col route has accumulated the most trash - and human corpses, as it's the path of the most deaths. Attempts at cleanup have been hindered by cost and inexperience.

Terminator Two
The latest twist on Terminator Technology - by which gene-engineered seeds produce only sterile plants, eliminating the possibility of seed-saving by farmers - is under development by biotech companies: seeds that will develop productive, but also sterile, crop plants only when they're dosed with proprietary pesticides or fertilizers.

Monsanto's latest Terminator seeds won't germinate without being exposed to a particular additive, and AstraZanaca has plans to market seeds for plants that will need regular, repeated exposure to proprietary chemicals to avert stunting.

Seed sterility technology is being offered as a remedy for genetic pollution, since the plants can't cross-fertilize. The catch is the speculative risk that sterility could be spread through Terminator pollen. Terminator technology is also used to protect patented seed from unauthorized reproduction. A number of organizations worldwide are calling for a ban on it, because it forces farmers into "economic serfdom," and stops them from saving and selecting seeds that do best in their particular conditions. Pat Mooney of Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) has called this "a disaster for global food security."

The obvious solution is for farmers not to buy Terminator, but it's seldom that simple. Farmers generally survive on credit, and seed companies have been known to extend credit only to farmers who agree to plant proprietary seed. Banks and governments often follow suit. See RAFI's web site at <www.rafi.org> for more scandalous details.

Wasn't the future wonderful
A Worldwatch Institute report predicts environmental disaster, of course, but also sees avoiding that disaster as an unprecedented investment opportunity. There is hope in existing recycling, alternative-energy, and sustainable industry programs.

The dire predictions in the report - destabilized economies, deforestation, loss of water supplies, accelerated climate change - are given weight by 1998's record increase in global temperature and record losses from storms and floods, which displaced some 300 million people. There is hope in a slightly slowing population growth rate, greatly increased power from sun and wind, and great potential for such alternative power sources and recycling.

By way of footnote, the report mentions predictions by past futurists that were right about widespread electricity use and the telephone, but said that pollution would fade away, and missed widespread contraception, nuclear power and weapons, and (no surprise) the Internet.

The sunny side of surgery
Two Israeli physicists have designed a system of parabolic mirrors and optical fibers they hope can replace surgical lasers in treating skin tumors, wounds, and arterial blockage. Their system uses existing technology, feeds sunlight into an operating room via 330 feet of fiber, and is recommended for areas with plenty of sunshine, New Scientist reports.

CITES approves ivory sale
The Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species approved a one-time sale of specified ivory stockpiles from Namibia, Zimbabwe, and perhaps Botswana, to Japan, under strict conditions that include use of the proceeds for elephant conservation. There is a great deal of controversy over the strategy, which is meant to support conservation efforts, improve local cooperation in these, and help curb poaching. Part of the debate concerns whether legal ivory sales will improve or worsen the poaching situation. No elephants would be killed for the sale; all ivory would be from old stock. - RS