‘Ecological meltdown’:
Huge dust cloud threatens Asia
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BRIEFS
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Advisory panels stacked, scientists warn

By JR Pegg

Washington, DC, Jan. 23 (ENS)-- American scientists are growing increasingly worried that the Bush administration is manipulating scientific advisory committees in order to further its political agenda.

The federal government relies on hundreds of these committees to provide agencies with unbiased advice based on the best science available as well as to peer review grant proposals for scientific research.

The Bush administration, many scientists fear, has distorted this process by putting committee members through political litmus tests, eliminating committees whose findings looked likely to disagree with its policies, and stacking committees with individuals who have a vested interest in steering conclusions to benefit affected industries.

For the rest of this article, please see Environment News Service.

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‘Ecological meltdown’:
Huge dust cloud threatens Asia

By Geoffrey Lean

Washington, DC, Jan. 26-- Gigantic dust clouds swirling over China are threatening the world's most populous country with the first-ever "ecological meltdown," experts warn.

The clouds – which stretch for thousands of miles over Asia and have even reached across the Pacific to North America – are rising from a rapidly growing dust bowl in northern China that far outstrips the notorious one in the United States in the 1930s.

It threatens to drive up the price of food and greatly increase starvation worldwide, and could lead to tens of millions of desperate Chinese environmental refugees.

"No country has ever faced a potential ecological catastrophe on the scale of the dust bowl now developing in China," says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, based in Washington. "Merely grasping its dimensions and consequences poses a serious analytical challenge."

Dust storms have been recorded in China for at least 2,700 years, but they are now increasing alarmingly both in size and in number. The Chinese Meteorological Agency says there were just five major storms in the country in the whole of the 1950s. This rose to 23 in the 1990s. But the first two years of this decade have almost equaled this figure already, with 20.

The storms – which peak in late winter and early spring – can blot out daylight in Beijing and other cities, make it hard for millions of people to breathe and destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of crops. They have closed schools and airports in South Korea and Japan, and caused a Korean car factory to shrink-wrap its vehicles as soon as they come off the production line to stop them from being spoiled.

They have even occasionally crossed the Pacific: one in April 2001 covered the west of North America from Canada to Arizona with dust.

The clouds sweep up millions of tons of precious topsoil from Chinese fields and pastures. Gone in a single day, the soil will take centuries to replace. But this is just the most dramatic symptom of the accelerating spread of deserts across the country, which is home to nearly one in every four people on the planet.

Between 1994 and 1999, the country's Environmental Protection Agency reports, the Gobi Desert expanded by 20,240 square miles, to within just 150 miles of Beijing. New, smaller, areas of desert are erupting all over the country. In all, this "desertification" is affecting 40 percent of the country's land. Partly as a result, harvests – which more than quadrupled between 1950 and 1998 – have fallen sharply, even as China's population and appetite grow.

In Ganzu province alone, some 4,000 villages are facing being submerged by drifting sands, and the Earth Policy Institute believes that throughout the country tens of millions of people may be forced off their land, dwarfing the migrations of the "Okies" from the American dust bowl.

The institute blames "over-cultivation, overgrazing, over-cutting, and over-pumping" for the escalating catastrophe. Marginal land is being increasingly pressed into cultivation, but quickly turns to dust under the strain. The country's 290 million sheep and goats strip the vegetation off grazing lands. Cutting down forests removes the trees that bind soil to the ground. And excessive pumping of water from underground aquifers dramatically lowers water tables, drying out the earth.

China is belatedly trying to come to grips with the crisis. It is planting 26 million acres – a tenth of its grain-growing area – with trees. But many die because the soil is already too thin; and, say critics, too many are being planted around Beijing so as to try to "green" the city – and clean the air – before the 2008 Olympics.

As the crisis continues, Brown predicts, the world will soon feel the pinch. So far China has compensated for its falling harvests by eating stocks, but soon it will have to buy massive amounts of grain on world markets. He warns: "Grain prices could double – impoverishing more people in a shorter period of time than any event in history. It would create a world food economy dominated by scarcity rather than by surpluses, as has been the case over most of the last half a century."

Source: Independent (UK)

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BRIEFS

New report decries impact of Three Gorges Dam
The resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people dislocated by China’s controversial Three Gorges Dam project has been marked by inadequate compensation, serious abuses of human rights and widespread corruption, says a report released this week by California-based International Rivers Network (IRN).
The report concludes that people resettled by the project are left essentially to fend for themselves often in unfamiliar areas with little or no help from the government. More than 1.2 million people – and, according to some estimates, up to 1.9 million – are supposed to be resettled before the historic Yangtze Valley is submerged upriver from the dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric power project.
The project, which is expected to provide power for tens of millions of households and control flooding, is opposed by environmentalists and scientists who say it will render extinct flora and fauna that are unique to the river, transform the new reservoir into a cesspool, and reduce fertility of the floodplain downriver. Archaeologists have also protested against the scheme, noting that centuries-old monasteries and other historic, religious, and cultural shrines and landmarks will be lost forever as the reservoir is filled. (IPS)

Invasive algae smothering Florida coral reefs
An invasive, coral-smothering seaweed has spread like a green tide across the reefs along the south Florida coast. Recent reports from divers and fishers show that the seaweed has become so thick on reefs in Florida’s Palm Beach County, about an hour north of Miami, that it is forcing lobsters and fish away.
The species, a type of macroalgae, has also now been spotted as far north as Ft. Pierce, FL, about 60 miles away. The seaweed, called Caulerpa brahypus, is an invasive algae usually found in the Pacific. It has no natural predators in Florida waters, a problem compounded by the fact that the species is very hardy, and can spread rapidly if the nutrients it needs are available.
Based on past research, Dr. Brain Lapointe, a marine ecologist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, believes that the spread of this and other microalgae species, in Florida and at many troubled reefs around the globe, is driven by nutrients from land based pollution. In South Florida, one of several key sources of pollution is hundreds of millions of gallons of nutrient rich treated sewage pumped offshore each day.
Caulerpa brahypus’s explosive growth devastates coral reefs. Besides smothering and killing the coral itself, it blankets the food on which many fish rely, forcing them and their predators away from a reef. The weed can also fill in the ledges and crannies that attract lobster. (ENS)

Another oil disaster at sea
An oil tanker sank Jan. 21 in the Mediterranean Sea just off the southern coast of Spain, reviving already energetic demands for stricter regulation of fuel transport and, say activists, serving as an example of the grave danger that single-hulled ships pose for the marine environment.
The Spabunker IV sank in the bay of Algeciras, near the British enclave of Gibralter, just two months after the huge environmental catastrophe caused by the 77,000 tons of oil leaked from the tanker Prestige off Spain’s northwest Atlantic coast.
The Spabunker IV went down with 900 tons of fuel and 100 tons of diesel, immediately producing a slick of 90 tons of fuel covering at least a square km near the Algeciras port.
The government announced it would take steps to recover the oil still in the ship’s hold, but has yet to explain how it will do so. The tanker sits on the sea floor at a depth of 50 meters. (IPS)

Bush admin. ordered to add environmentalist to committee
The US District Court in Seattle has ordered the Bush administration to comply with a court order and appoint an environmentalist to a federal committee that advises the government on international trade in chemicals.
The Bush administration had rejected a nominee proposed by the environmental community, instead appointing an academic with deep industry ties to serve as the environmental representative. The chemical panel, known as ISAC-3, is one of 17 advisory committees whose members shape US policy and have access to confidential trade texts and documents.
The ruling follows an action taken Dec. 18 by attorneys at Earthjustice, representing a coalition of groups, to protest the appointment of Brian Mannix. The groups asked the court to order the administration to follow through on its commitment to appoint an environmentalist to the 23 member committee, which is already packed with chemical executives.
In her decision, Judge Barbara Rothstein said that there was nothing to indicate that Mannix “has ever been affiliated with any environmental group or ever advocated on behalf of the environment. The court is, therefore, unpersuaded that Mr. Mannix’s appointment provides a voice for the environmental community on ISAC-3.” (ENS)

Feds: Some labs fake environmental tests
Federal investigators say there’s a disturbing trend involving falsified lab tests of water supplies, part of a wider problem of false environmental tests by private companies on petroleum products, underground storage tanks, air and soil.
Environmental and law enforcement officials said the manipulated tests are interfering with the government’s ability to enforce environmental laws, defrauding companies that pay for honest testing and ripping off consumers who pay for products such as blended gasoline that reduces pollution.
In some cases, officials said companies and laboratories have conspired to falsify test results so the companies can certify that their products meet environmental standards, while in other cases, the labs duped the companies that submitted samples for testing. Numerous reasons are cited for the frauds: poor training, ineffective ethics programs, shrinking markets and efforts to cut costs. (AP)

Tax credits could boost SUV sales
A tax credit proposed by the Bush administration would allow small business owners to purchase large sport utility vehicles (SUVs) almost for free.
One of the tax cuts included in a package proposed by Bush would increase from $25,000 to $75,000 the amount that business owners, including wealthy self-employed doctors and lawyers, could claim as a tax write off if they buy a large SUV for their business use.
The so-called SUV loophole, first reported Jan. 20 by the Detroit News, is part of a tax proposal that the administration says would help stimulate the economy by allowing a higher deduction for business equipment. The deduction was $17,500 in 1996, but was raised to $25,000 in 2003 under the Bush tax plan.
Environmental groups say the proposal could have a negative effect on the environment, encouraging small business owners to buy the largest SUV available, rather than more fuel efficient, less polluting vehicles. The IRS will only allow “trucks” weighing 6,000 pounds or more to be written off as necessary equipment. SUVs fall into this category, but smaller, more fuel-efficient cars may not be written off. Even the tax credits offered to alternative fueled cars, which qualify for a $2,000 clean vehicle deduction, do not bring the incentives for buying cars up to the level of the proposed incentives for buying large SUVs. (ENS)

Decades of old lead shot linked to massive swan die-offs
Last year, 229 of the 2,400 trumpeter swans that wintered in Whatcom county, Washington, died of lead poisoning. The reason, investigators have found, is the birds’ ingestion of lead pellets from hunters’ spent shotgun shells. This year’s unseasonably warm, dry winter seems to have delayed migration – a midwinter count on Jan. 21 showed roughly 827 trumpeter swans in Whatcom. The odd weather may have also delayed mass deaths seen in years prior. As of Jan. 21, the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife had tagged 75 dead birds.
Use of lead shot to hunt waterfowl was outlawed in 1986, although it still is legal for shooting other game birds. However, hundreds of tons of old lead pellets have settled into lakes, marshes, wetlands, fields and other hunter haunts over the decades. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Senate backsrelaxation of clean air regs
George W. Bush’s decision to relax the enforcement of industrial clean air rules survived a crucial test Jan. 22, as the Senate voted 50 to 46 against a Democratic call to delay the new policy for six months while scientists study its potential effects on public health.
Administration officials and industry representatives hailed the vote as an affirmation of the president’s efforts to remove regulatory constraints on refineries and manufacturing plants seeking to upgrade or expand their facilities.
But the vote also revealed deep-seated bipartisan concerns about the administration’s handling of clean air issues. Six Republicans from Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Arizona – states hit hard by air pollution generated by midwestern and western power plants – sided with most Democrats in trying to block Bush’s premiere environmental initiative. (Washington Post)

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