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scienticians attending the recent U.N. environmental program announced that the
No. 1 threat to the planet's oceans in the coming century won't be overfishing
or plastic six-pack rings, but the ominously named "Dead Zones."
The lifeless areas, which vary in volume from 1 square mile to 43,500, are caused
by agricultural fertilizer. The nitrogen-rich runoff flows from soil to stream
to sea, where it inspires great big algae blooms. The blooms consume all of the
available oxygen, choking everything else nearby. Dead Zones are said to have
doubled in each decade since the 1960s.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Leavitt signed off on the
second and final stage of the Nitrogen Oxide State Implementation Plan last week,
which is anything but environmentally protective. In fact, it's part of Bush's
squirrelly administrative implementation of his yet-to-be-passed Clear Skies
Initiative, an energy industry doggie treat that slashes and bleeds emissions
compliance regulations established in 1970 by the Clean Air Act. Congress has
had the good sense not to pass it, but Leavitt and his fellow installed bureaucrats
have been more than happy to enact it piecemeal under the radar. Bush
has accused Kerry of being a lackey for "special interests," and that's
undoubtedly true, but the president has accepted more direct contributions from
lobbyists and other influence merchants since 2003 than Kerry has in the past
15 years. The Clear Skies Initiative is a vivid example. Thomas
Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, has called the proposed legislation
"an exciting opportunity for our industry" — you know you're in
trouble when industrial fat cats get excited about proposed environmental rules.
Kuhn is the same chap who wrote a letter soliciting Bush campaign contributions
from fellow energy executives, asking that they note his campaign tracking number
to "ensure our industry is credited." Kuhn is also on the list of alleged
members of Dick Cheney's secret energy task force. So is Ken Lay. Speaking of
Enron … It's
like something out of a primitivist anarchist's wet dream - police, judges, and
other government officials are being made irrelevant by an indigenous uprising
in Bolivia. At least 1.5 million people — one-fifth of the country's population
- are living in areas in which some government functions have been taken over
by local organizations with names like the "peasant union police." The
precariously unstable government is reluctant to confront the Aymara, Quechua,
and other villagers who are returning to pre-Columbian forms of self-rule and
land redistribution, largely using protest, road blocks, and bands armed with
antiquated guns and sticks and stones. The
uprising has been burbling since 2000, and villagers claim they have been betrayed
by the corrupt and dysfunctional national government, whose plans to take out
international loans to build transnational oil pipelines and export the country's
natural gases are viewed as sellouts to foreign interests — especially to
Enron, a major stakeholder in Bolivian natural resources. Environmentalists have
decried Enron's influence in the country, saying its pipelines and history of
exceeding emissions standards, including those for nitrogen oxide, threaten the
health of the rain forest and its residents.
And finally, a Seattle-based
news analysis columnist has begun the ancient yogic practice of Amaroli, or drinking
his own pee. Various poorly designed Web sites assure him the practice will supply
him with homeopathic doses of nitrogen, urea and other magical kidney-filtered
treats. He reported that his morning's urine gave him heartburn at first but that
he's grown accustomed to its acidity and funky flavor. At
press time he had not confessed his eccentric kink to his girlfriend for fear
she'll refuse to kiss him.
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