ENVIRONMENTAL HEROES
Every year, the Goldman Foundation searches the globe for outstanding grassroots activists (see “Green Warriors,” Currents, May/June 2001). Goldman Award winners receive a $125,000 cash stipend as well as honor and prestige.
This year’s Goldman winners include Odigha Odigha, a Nigerian forest activist and educator fighting to save the home of 2,400 local tribes as well as endangered gorillas and 20 percent of the world’s butterfly population; Von Hernandez, a passionate activist against waste incineration in the Phillipines; Eileen Brown and Eileen Wingfield, aboriginal elders opposing a nuclear waste dump in South Australia’s wild deserts; Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, a physicist and economics professor in Spain who fights damming and water diversion with conservation efforts; Maria Elena Foronda Farro, a sociologist leading a campaign to prevent Peru’s fishmeal industry from releasing untreated waste; and Julia Bonds, a community leader fighting destructive mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachians.
Also receiving accolades are this year’s recipients of the Heinz Environmental Award, presented in honor of the late Senator H. John Heinz III. The winners are scientists John D. Spengler and Mario Molina. Spengler won for his pioneering work on indoor air pollution and Molina for his studies of ozone depletion and global warming.
CONTACTS
The Goldman Environmental Prize
The Heinz Awards
—Laura Ruth Zandstra
FEET TO THE FIRE
No fewer than seven state attorneys general are taking the Bush administration to federal court to force it to stop violating the Clean Air Act, particularly when it comes to global warming (see “Hot and Bothered,” cover story, September/ October 2000). Attorney General Elliot Spitzer of New York is leading the charge.
The problem, say the state officials, is unrestricted carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-burning power plants. Bush has lifted a Clinton-era requirement that older coal plants update their environmental controls when undergoing modernization. Letting the plants off the hook, says Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, will lead to “more disease, health damage, weather extremes, droughts and floods.”
The power plant problem has also led to lawsuits from the Sierra Club and Our Children’s Earth Foundation. Some cities have also sued federal agencies over their failure to act on global warming. President Bush rejected the international Kyoto Treaty as “too costly.”
CONTACT
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Tel: (828) 271-4800
—Jim Motavalli
SAVE THE DOLPHINS
The discovery 50 years ago that yellowfin tuna school below pods of dolphins was a boon for the tuna industry—and a bane for those playful, personable mammals. When word got out that the nets used to catch tuna also trapped and drowned hundreds of thousands of dolphins each year, the Earth Island Institute led a successful boycott that culminated with the U.S. Commerce Department’s “dolphin-safe” label (see “On the Blue Frontier,” cover story, July/August 2001).
Now concerns about free-trade violations could open U.S. markets to Mexican-caught tuna. And late last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced that tuna caught when dolphins are chased down can be labeled “dolphin-safe” as long as no dolphins are injured—even though the agency found in an earlier report that this method indirectly kills dolphins through stress. Environmental groups sued the Commerce Department in January, putting the new regulations on hold.
CONTACT
NMFS
—Phoebe Hall
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NMFS
The Heinz Awards
The Goldman Environmental Prize
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Office of Global Programs
1100 Wayne Avenue
Suite 1225
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Phone: (301)427-2089
