Environmentalists yesterday called on Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a potential Democratic vice presidential candidate, to come out against a proposed commercial airport in south Florida, saying the expansion of the former Homestead air force base would bring development and pollution that would devastate the nearby Everglades and Biscayne national parks. The Sierra Club and Friends of the Everglades are accusing Graham of lobbying behind the scenes to assist airport developers, but publicly he has said he will wait until after the Air Force completes an environmental evaluation before making up his mind on the matter. The Clinton administration blessed the …

Spurred by Beijing's bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics, China is pledging to ramp up its effort to clean the country's air. Last year, Beijing's air qualified for the government's best rating, Level 1, only once -- when the government shut down industries for the 50th anniversary of communist China -- and a quarter of the time it reached Level 4 or Level 5, when the air is so dirty that nearby buildings are obscured and many individuals feel dizzy after a few breaths. Major revisions to the country's air pollution law are set to take effect in September, and …

U.S. enviros said yesterday that a Clinton administration plan for making international trade negotiations more eco-friendly is a good first step but doesn't go nearly far enough. Under rules proposed by the White House last month, U.S. trade negotiators would be required to review how draft trade agreements would affect the environment and to solicit more input from environmentalists and other concerned citizens. The administration hoped the proposal would stave off criticism that its free trade policies threaten the environment. But activists complained that the proposed rules are full of loopholes and that draft trade agreements still would not be …

With international negotiations on the Kyoto climate change treaty set to continue this fall, the U.S. is proposing that countries get the same amount of credit for using forests and farmland to absorb carbon dioxide as they would for reducing CO2 emissions from power plants and cars. The State Department says the carbon-sink effect in the U.S. could cut by as much as 50 percent the amount of CO2 reductions the country would have to make to comply with Kyoto. U.S. officials acknowledged last night that adding farmers and foresters to the list of Kyoto allies could improve the treaty's …

In the latest step in its crackdown on dirty diesel vehicles, the U.S. EPA yesterday issued a final rule that will require new diesel truck and bus engines to emit 40 percent less pollution by 2004. Later this year, the EPA intends to issue a rule that will mandate even cleaner engines by 2007 and require diesel fuel to be almost free of sulfur, a contaminant that hampers pollution-control equipment such as catalytic converters. When both rules take effect, diesel trucks and buses should run almost as cleanly as those powered by compressed natural gas. Diesel engines are currently a …

Afflicted by poverty and drought, millions of people in East and Southern Africa are increasingly hunting and eating wild animals and in the process endangering several hundred species, according to a report released yesterday by TRAFFIC, an international wildlife monitoring program. With the decline in numbers of traditional game species like buffalo, hunters are now going after elephants, zebras, hippos, and other animals. While conservationists have long been worried about the effects of killing primates for food in the tropical forests of West Africa, the concern over the meat trade in the savannas of the eastern and southern parts of …

Norway announced yesterday that it is extending its controversial whaling season for another month because hunters have not yet filled the year's quota of 655 minke whales. Norway conducts commercial hunts in defiance of a moratorium by the International Whaling Commission. Johan Williams of the nation's Fisheries Ministry dismissed the possibility that failure to reach the quota could indicate that stocks of minke whales are declining; instead, he blamed the shortfall on rough sea conditions. Meanwhile, Japan defended itself against international criticism for the recent expansion of its so-called scientific whale hunt to include Bryde's and sperm whales in addition …

General Motors Corp. announced today that within a few years it will begin producing fuel-efficient, hybrid gas-electric versions of its full-size pickup trucks and city buses, just days after Ford announced its intention to boost the fuel economy of its SUVs by 25 percent over the next five years. GM Vice Chair Harry Pearce said he was "seriously annoyed" by Ford's announcement because GM's light trucks, which include SUVs, currently have better fuel economy than Ford's light trucks -- and Pearce pledged that GM models will still be leading the competition in fuel economy 20 years from now. Pearce: "We …

A number of scientists are warning that the spread of invasive species could become the next big environmental crisis. Some of the invasives are brought into non-native areas deliberately, but most are imported accidentally, particularly as global trade increases. Once the species get established in places where they have no natural predators, they can spread like wildfire and wreak havoc on native ecosystems. Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson believes that invasives will lead to more extinctions than pollution. One recent study estimated that invasive species, including diseases, cost the U.S. more than $130 billion a year. A few examples: The …

The cruise ship industry has been hit with bad press lately for some high-profile pollution cases involving the illegal dumping of oil-contaminated water and other pollution into the channels and bays along Alaska's southeast coastal rainforest. These incidents have raised awareness that current law allows cruise ships to dump wastewater and treated sewage virtually anywhere. Hoping to burnish its image and stave off stricter regulation, the cruise industry is slowly introducing voluntary pilot projects to clean up wastewater on ships, which is generated at the rate of about 100 gallons per passenger per day. But a growing number of citizens …