Good News/Bad News August 22, 2002

By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted August 22, 2002.

Remember how last week we talked about the Radioactive Winged Monkeys, and how we were spared their ferocious attack? Well, it turns out they were just regrouping, Voltron-like, and took the form of the Bush Administration. I have a hard time believing that the world has ever seen a more vicious, self-interested gang of thugs. Genghis Khan at least treated his horses well; hell, even Nixon founded the EPA.. History, we hope, will not be kind to the Bush administration...

That said, here's the Bad News:

We see a lot of discouraging stuff in the EnviroHealth wing of AlterNet HQ, but every once in a while something crosses our desk that makes us want to start throwing bricks. It's bad enough that Bush has decided, unsurprisingly, not to attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development; sadder still, he doesn't feel the need to give a reason, and instead sends flunky Colin Powell to take the heat. But when Friends of the Earth UK released a letter sent to Bush from Republicans and conservative lobbying groups pressuring him not to attend, we were awed and dismayed by the sheer self-serving profit-driven audacity of these ExxonMobil-funded organizations...

With its glaring economic inequality, environmental degradation, AIDS crises and food shortages, Johannesburg is an ideal place to spotlight the world's environmental situation. Unfortunately, world leaders will be holed up in Sandton, a plush financial district. Interestingly enough, only Brazil, host of the 1992 WSSD, has a more unequal distribution of wealth than S. Africa.

If Australia is a "renegade state" on environmental progress, what does that make the U.S.?

Citizens of the world, prepare to meet the Super Weed: Not the good "kind" kind, but the bad, GM kind. Two teams of scientists have found the weeds are cross-breeding with genetically modified crops, making them nearly impossible to kill with pesticides.

In more scary Frankenfoods news, the Guardian (UK) reported this week that trial GM crop plantings have gone awry, spreading GM pollen across the countryside.

The U.S. alone produces 2,000 tons of nuclear waste every year, and security experts are recognizing this waste as prime targets for terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts has released a report stating that the Department of Energy, responsible for overseeing all this waste, has cut security spending by at least 40 percent in the last decade.

Responding to ever-worsening drought conditions and a rash of wildfires nationwide, President Bush is proposing to ease restrictions on logging in the national parks, ostensibly to clear out deadwood and underbrush that feed the massive blazes. We're all for libertarian naturalism, but something tells us the timber industry isn't in this for the twigs and bushes....

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