The following two items are excerpts from the May 2000 Sierra Club "Planet"

More outrage from Senator "Exploiter." Senator Murkowski of Alaska has again proven to be phoney in his sudden concern about the need to sever America’s dependence on foreign oil. If he truly had this concern he would have not stubbornly resisted over the years improving the fuel-economy standards for motor vehicles. But that is what he is claiming in his introduction of S. 2214 which would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. And this in the face of our current exporting to Asia of 50,00 to 90,000 barrels of Alaska oil each day. If he has his way, this refuge will be severely damaged and likely not recover for decades or even centuries, while any oil discovered will be used up in only a few years by our gasoline thirsty economy.

Activism pays. Citizen activism has taken the exuberance out of the Canadian old growth forest clearcutting. There has been a concerted effort on the part of the Sierra club members and others to educate the public and to bring pressure on the large corporations that distribute old growth forest products. This has led to some cancellation of contracts for wood products made from old growth forests which has gotten the Canadian slashers worried and upset and calling for some kind of truce with the activists. For the moment the pressure is on Mayor Giuliani of New York City to phase out the buying of old growth wood. NYC is a large buyer of such.

Encouragement. It is nice to hear of some encouraging environmental trends – there seem to be so few of them these days. Worldwatch magazine of May/June 2000 reports that there has been a breakthrough in international law. In spite of strong resistance from the United States and a few other nations, a Biosafety Protocol has been developed and signed by 130 nations as of February 2000 in Montreal. This agreement puts the onus on the producers of bioengineered products to prove their safety before promoting them to the public. This is a rapid departure – the US has usually taken the stance that the product must be proven to be destructive before it would be taken off the market. In effect, the precau- tionary principle has been given a life. For the first time ever, food consumers will not be the subjects of experiments for unproven food products!

An industry association of polluters called the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), set up to prevent any measures which might reduce global warming, seems to be rapidly collapsing. Some mega corporations, unable to deny the unmist- akable evidence any more of the existence of global warming, have recently dropped out. Among these are Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Texaco, Southern Company and General Motors. Preceding these in leaving the association were Royal Dutch Shell, BP Amoco and Dow Chemical. Remaining members include mining, coal and utility interests.

Howard Youth reports that a shift in human relationships with wildlife from exploiting for fur, food or sport to just watching. Animals with "charisma" or some endangered species have become very potent economic assets. A wild African lion is estimated to be worth over a half million dollars in the tourism that is produced. The very rare yellow-green vireo who lives locally in South Texas brings in $15,000 to businesses there. In general, the more a rare species is watched, the more protected it becomes.