Inuit Plan to Launch Human-Rights Case Against U.S. Over Climate Change Saying global climate change threatens them with extinction, the world's Inuit people yesterday announced plans to launch a human-rights case against the United States, which has repeatedly reiterated that it will take no decisive action on the issue. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference represents 155,000 people living inside the Arctic Circle, where a rapidly warming climate is changing the ecosystem and threatening to permanently destroy the Inuit way of life. At talks on the Kyoto Protocol underway this week in Milan, Italy, Inuit representatives said they would invite the Inter-American …

Development, Tradition on Opposite Sides in South American Energy Battles Given its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, the Amazon basin should be heaven for extractive industries. Instead, the people who make their home in the basin are trying to make life hell for energy companies. Over the years, Amazon natives have become both more sophisticated and more forceful in efforts to protect their pristine homeland -- efforts that include everything from protests and lawsuits to vandalism and kidnappings. At issue is the struggle to balance national growth with traditional culture, and the stakes could scarcely be higher: millennia-old …

Taking Stock of the Endangered Species Act at Age 30 Who knew the Endangered Species Act was a Sagittarius? That's right, this month the act will turn 30. Signed into law by President Nixon in 1973, the ESA aimed to prevent extinctions, bring imperiled species back to viable population levels, and protect the natural habitat needed to sustain wildlife. Five years later, the law gained some teeth when the Supreme Court halted work on a federal dam in Tennessee that would have harmed a now-famous fish, the snail darter. In its ruling, the court determined that Congress meant for the …

Chile Dedicates New Nature Park on Land Purchased by Rich American Some 738,000 acres of pristine rainforest in southern Chile will get official billing as a nature sanctuary today, thanks to a deal between U.S. tycoon Doug Tompkins and the Chilean government. Tompkins, cofounder of the sportswear company Esprit, paid more than $30 million for the land and spent many years trying to get it officially protected. Now that the government has agreed to do so, control of the area, dubbed Parque Pumalin, will be handed off to a seven-member Chilean directorate. Tompkins created a huge controversy when he first …

British Think Tank Proposes a "Kyoto Tax" for the U.S. With Europeans none too happy about the U.S. having ditched the Kyoto Protocol, a British think tank has come up with an idea for making the U.S. pay its fair share to deal with climate change: trade sanctions. The New Economics Foundation has proposed that the European Union tax imports from countries that refuse to cut their emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, arguing that these countries -- the U.S. being the most notable among them -- are getting an unfair competitive advantage as energy costs rise in nations that are …

Australia to Protect One-Third of Great Barrier Reef In a major boon to Down Under ecology, fully one-third of the Great Barrier Reef will receive protection, the Australian government announced this week. The move will increase the protected areas of the reef by 40,000 square miles, thereby establishing the largest network of marine reserves in the world. No fishing will be allowed within the reserves, but tourism will be permitted, including snorkeling and scuba diving -- which, with some 1.3 million dives per year, represents a critical component of the regional economy. Environmentalists welcome the protection but say it must …

Famed Frog Rediscovered After Years of Presumed Local Extinction Speaking of Mark Twain, the amphibian he made famous in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" has been discovered in the eponymous California region, 34 years after it was thought to have disappeared. A few of the threatened frogs were found by the 6- and 10-year-old children of a local cattle rancher, who were playing around water holes on their property in western Calaveras County. Biologists verified the species, last seen in 1969, and are seeking funding to develop a captive-breeding program to protect and expand the estimated current population …

Academics Up in Arms Over Exxon-Funded Research When Exxon went to court in 1997 to appeal a $5.3 billion punitive damage verdict over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, it cited articles from respected journals and law reviews that found that high punitive damages were bad for society or based on the unjust whims of quixotic juries. What the company didn't say was that it had bankrolled the articles. In the years after the oil spill, Exxon hired at least nine academics at a price well beyond what the average university could pay; the new hires published 13 papers, which …

The hippest catwalk in Milan this week. Photo: IISD. Milan is famous for opera and fashion, so perhaps it's appropriate that the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol conference, being held in the Italian city this week and next, has so far been characterized by high drama and public spectacle. Some 180 negotiators from around the world have been treated to rumors of deliberate sabotage and shady backroom deals, derisive public statements about the treaty from leading U.S officials, and bogus news reports that Russia had dealt a fatal blow to the beleaguered pact (one such report was summarized in yesterday's Daily …

Russia Rejects Kyoto Protocol, Likely Killing Climate Change Treaty The Kyoto Protocol on climate change received a presumably fatal blow today, when Russia announced that it will not ratify the agreement in its current form. Without Russia or the U.S. on board, the treaty will not have buy-in from at least 55 countries that account for 55 percent of the developed world's 1990 carbon dioxide emissions -- the only terms under which it can take effect. "In its current form, the Kyoto Protocol places significant limitations on the economic growth of Russia," said Russian economic advisor Andrei Illarionov as he …