Culture

Russia’s Thirst for Oil

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Russia has been single-minded in ensuring its hegemony over oil rights and delivery throughout Eastern Europe, and now seeks to edge out its American competitors in providing oil to Western Europe as well, say analysts. Vladimir Putin shocked observers by announcing a plan to annex a 460,000 square mile chunk of oil-rich Arctic last week. Russian scientists claim there is evidence showing that its northern Arctic region is connected to the North Pole by an underwater shelf. Critics counter that Canada could make the same claim — and besides which, nobody owns the North Pole. Putin also met with the leaders of eight Balkan countries to persuade them to back his new Italy-backed venture to build a gas pipeline under the Black sea from Russia to Bulgaria, saying it would benefit all of Europe.

Culture

Poverty is a Plague for Africa's Children

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A gangrenous affliction of the face called noma is surging among impoverished, malnourished children in West Africa, and now appears to infecting HIV-positive adults as well. Aid workers told the U.N. news agency that the disease is not transmitted, and could be prevented with improved nutrition and improved living conditions. Niger and Burkina Faso, the centers of the African surge, have the world’s highest rates of underweight and undernourished children. The disease, which is not yet taught in medical schools, rots facial tissue, causing the skin to scab off all the way to the jaw. Health workers are only now beginning to recognize the symptoms; survivors are disfigured for the rest of their lives.

Culture

Natural Resources Spur Pollution, Indigenous Rights Disputes

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From fossil fuels to “blue gold,” from uranium to offshore biodiversity, natural resources around the world promise riches but often deepen social and economic disputes. In Turkey, the massive new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is expected to bring $1 billion into the national economy. But residents of the fishing vilage of Golovasi, near the pipeline terminal on the Mediterranean Sea, say the pipeline has scared away the fish, and that the local economy is shutting down even as promises of financial aid fall through. In the United States, a spike in the value of uranium has renewed interest in abandoned uranium mines throughout the West. The Christian Science Monitor reports that a leap in prices, from $10 to almost $140 per pound, has inspired a surge in mining land claims — 32,000 of them in 2006 alone.

Culture

Carbon Trading Beset by Fraud and Doubt

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A new report finds the most common system for trading carbon emissions, which allows rich European countries to continue polluting while also investing in environmental projects in developing countries, has major flaws. The report finds that as many as a third of the “green” projects approved in India are actually regular commercial ventures, wrongly approved by fraudulent middlemen. Those concerns led British airline Easyjet to cut out the middleman entirely, buying U.N.-backed carbon credits on the open market and selling them directly to passengers. The Guardian reports that scientists have doubts about how effective carbon credits actually are. Widely-used carbon offset schemes, such as tree planting, may ironically increase global warming by trapping heat, the newspaper reports.

Science

Lupus Linked to Petroleum Exposure

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Scientists in Boston and New Mexico have shown that exposure to petroleum is linked to the deadly auto-immune disease lupus. The illness is already known to have genetic origins — African- American women are nine times more likely to get it. But reports show the environment plays a role, especially in two black neighborhoods in Boston. Residents of Roxbury and Mattapan live near gasoline stations or sites near petroleum-product dumping groups, and have the highest rate of lupus in the region. Another study of people living in a housing development in Hobbs, New Mexico, built on the site of a former oil-field dump, detected an incidence of Lupus at 30 to 99 times higher than estimates for the general population.

Culture

The EPA Under Pressure

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The Environmental Protection Agency has come under fire from activists and state officials for not enforcing laws to protect the public from harmful chemicals and emissions, even as it considers controversial budget cuts that will reduce its enforcement staff. California has threatened to sue the EPA within six months if it does not issue a waiver allowing the state to enforce its own vehicle emissions standards. The state has been waiting for the waiver since 2005, and the EPA now wants to continue the delay until it completes an analysis of whether greenhouse gases are linked to human health. Activists also say the EPA’s new rule on power plant emissions is in conflict with a recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned a lower courts support of regulating emissions based on an hourly standard, rather than an annual standard preferred by environmental activists. And House lawmakers have questions for the EPA’s Acting Inspector General, who was given a $150,000 bonus even as he prepares to lay off 60 employees in anticipation of a $5.1 million budget cut.

Culture

Mines, Factories and the Cost of Asian Growth

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Investors breathed a sigh of relief when Indonesia dismissed charges against Newmont Mining, a U.S. firm accused of dumping mercury and arsenic into Buyat Bay that locals say causes skin rashes and tumors. But numerous tests found pollution within “normal” levels there, the BBC reports. In Vietnam, rivers are “choking” on industrial waste, Edie News Center reports. Pollution from rapid growth is creating “dead” areas with no plants or animals, where water supplies are “not at all suitable” for domestic use or agriculture. China admitted that pollution is a “severe threat” to its food supply as well.

Science

The Disappearing Honeybee

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A widespread honeybee die-off, known as “colony collapse disorder,” has seen bees disappear from hundreds of thousands of hives around the world this winter. Experts are scrambling to explain why bees are fleeing their hives en masse and dying elsewhere. Honeybees affect one-third of all food eaten in America and the United Kingdom, pollinating orchards, gardens and crops. Twenty-four U.S. states have been affected, as have Scotland, Spain, Italy, Poland, Greece and other parts of Europe. A Pennsylvania beekeeper blames a new insecticide used to treat agricultural crops, while scientists on the West Coast say the culprit is cold weather and mites.

Culture

Record Earnings From Endangered Ocean Harvest

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The fishing industry brought in a record $71.5 billion last year, most of it from ocean fisheries that lack ecological oversight. Now, a new report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization finds that 25 percent of ocean fisheries are virtually depleted, and 52 percent “fully exploited.” This comes on the heels of a study last year that predicted a complete collapse of ocean fisheries worldwide by 2050 without reform of fishing practices and curtailing pollution. Fish Farmer Magazine reports that with the record harvest, wild fisheries have “levelled off” even as aquaculture becomes the “world’s fastest growing food production sector.” Sources:
“Record high for global seafood trade”
Fish Farmer Magazine, March 5, 2007
“Ocean fisheries maxed out”
Inter Press Service, March 5, 2007

Culture

Autism’s Spread Brings a Mystery and a Lawsuit

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A new report finds that one in every 60 boys in New Jersey has autism — nearly twice the national rate. Youth in the study were affected regardless of race, and the trend is spread equally throughout the state. Efforts to find suspected clusters of autism there have failed, and calls for more research are matched by a growing demand for new funding and services for children with the disorder. In Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that babies born via Caesarian sections or in breech position do appear to have a slightly higher rate of autism. But a chemical culprit has been harder to identify, leading to a class-action lawsuit by thousands of parents convinced that their children developed autism after receiving vaccinations containing a mercury-based preservative.