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China’s anti-pollution efforts stink
Kent Ewing, Asia Times
When toxic-chemical spills in its rivers threaten the water supply in neighboring countries, China’s lax environmental record becomes a serious regional issue.
However, when researchers in California report that on a given day 25% of the pollution littering the skies above Los Angeles has wafted over from China, the country’s battle to clean up its degraded environment turns into a world war. It’s not just China’s trade imbalance that is commanding international attention these days; the country is also increasingly known as the world’s greatest exporter of pollution.
The issue has become so big that Chinese leaders are vowing to do something about it. The government has committed US$162 billion to cleaning up the environment over the next five years.
Zhou Shengxian, head of the State Environmental Protection Agency, is in charge of China’s stepped-up anti-pollution drive, and he is talking tough about making the country green again. However, so far all Zhou’s stern talk, not to mention reams of accompanying SEPA regulations, has not produced any results, leaving critics to dismiss the agency as a paper tiger and environmentalists to throw up their hands in despair.
(16 Aug 2006)
Engineered grass found growing in wild
WILLIAM McCALL, Yahoo!
Grass that was genetically engineered for golf courses is growing in the wild, posing one of the first threats of agricultural biotechnology escaping from the farm in the United States, a new study says.
Creeping bentgrass was engineered to resist the popular herbicide Roundup to allow more efficient weed control on golf courses. But the modified grass could spread that resistance to the wild, becoming a nuisance itself, scientists say.
“This is not a killer tomato, this is not the asparagus that ate Cleveland,” said Norman Ellstrand, a geneticist and plant expert at the University of California, Riverside, referring to science fiction satire about mutant plants.
But Ellstrand noted the engineered bentgrass has the potential to affect more than a dozen other plant species that could also acquire resistance to Roundup, or glyphosate, which he considers a relatively benign herbicide.
Such resistance could force land managers and government agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, which relies heavily on Roundup, to switch to “nastier” herbicides to control grasses and weeds, Ellstrand said.
(18 Aug 2006)
Scientists add years to ozone recovery
ELIANE ENGELER (AP), Yahoo!
The atmosphere will take up to 15 years longer than previously expected to recover from pollution and repair its ozone hole over the southern hemisphere, the United Nations’ weather organization said Friday.
Thinning in the ozone layer — due to chemical compounds leaked from refrigerators, air conditioners and other devices — exposes the Earth to harmful solar rays. Too much ultraviolet radiation can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants at the beginning of the food chain.
Scientists said Friday it would take until 2065, instead of 2050 as previously expected, for the ozone layer to recover and the hole over the Antarctic to close.
“The Antarctic ozone hole has not become more severe since the late 1990s, but large ozone holes are expected to occur for decades to come,” ozone specialist Geir Braathen told reporters in summarizing a new report by the
World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environment Program. The report will be released next year.
(18 Aug 2006)
