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:: 6.23.2003 ::
From the Daily Grist:Bowdlerizing what was meant to be the first-ever comprehensive report on environmental problems facing the U.S., the White House has deleted most of the information the report contained on global climate change and reduced the remainder to a few vague paragraphs. The omitted sections referred to findings that climate change is at least partly caused by emissions from vehicles and power plants and could have dire consequences for human and environmental health. Environmental organizations and some EPA staff members strongly criticized the revisions; Jeremy Symons of the National Wildlife Federation compared them to "the White House directing the secretary of labor to alter unemployment data to paint a rosy economic picture." The report was commissioned in 2001 by U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, who said she was "perfectly comfortable" with the edited version; it is scheduled to be released next week, before Whitman steps down on June 27. Story in the New York Times.
Also,The amount of dangerous industrial contaminants seeping into Canada's environment has risen 20 percent since 1995, according to a report by three environmental organizations that compiled data from industrial polluters. The biggest increase came in discharges into lakes and rivers, which rose 37 percent, while air and land pollution each rose 9 percent. The increase in hazardous pollutants -- including lead, arsenic, asbestos, and benzene -- suggests that recent cleanup efforts by government and industry have been insufficient, the report's authors say. They called for more stringent laws to reduce the rate of chemicals released into the environment and thereby protect wildlife and human health. Since the early 1990s, Canada, like the U.S. under the Bush administration, has generally relied on voluntary agreements rather than mandatory regulations to coax industries to reduce their environmental impacts. Story in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Canadians, find the largest polluters in your neighborhoods
:: Deb 11:33 AM :: permalink ::
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