If there had been any doubt that the U.S. would play the role of pariah at the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development, it was banished yesterday when White House officials announced their goals and strategies for the meeting, which begins next week in Johannesburg, South Africa. The U.S. delegation's plan is, essentially, to stonewall: It will resist any changes to international agreements on trade and development and oppose any new targets or specific aid figures -- and although it is offering an aid package worth nearly $4.5 billion, most of the money is just a reshuffling of preexisting programs. …

Citing the need to reduce fire danger after a season of devastating wildfires, President Bush is planning to propose more extensive thinning of Western forests and support legislation to streamline environmental rules that have slowed down some logging projects in the region. Most Western governors back the plan to thin forests, but environmental groups say the president is simply leveraging fears raised by this season's fires to push through forest management legislation that is favored by the timber industry. Enviros say cutting would most likely target larger trees, which are more commercially valuable, rather than smaller trees, which pose the …

Native residents of the rainforests of Ecuador and Peru were dealt a blow late last week when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied their petition to reopen litigation against the oil giant ChevronTexaco for devastating their environment and exposing them to carcinogenic pollutants. The court upheld an earlier ruling, which found that two class-action lawsuits should be heard in Ecuador, rather than in the U.S. The plaintiffs say that a Texaco subsidiary dumped an estimated 30 billion gallons of toxic waste into rivers, landfills, and roads in the Oriente region of Ecuador between 1964 and 1992; the waste …

The environmental situation is not looking up in the land down under, according to a new report commissioned by a consortium of conservation organizations. Noting such environmental problems as loss of species and their habitats, degradation of inland waters, and high pollution levels from the burning of fossil fuels, the report calls Australia "a continent in reverse" and says government inaction is to blame. Written by Peter Christoff of Melbourne University, the report is designed to counter one the government will present at the World Summit on Sustainable Development next week in Johannesburg. Christoff said the official report overstates claims …

Climate change was the leading concern at the annual Pacific Island Forum this week, where leaders of small island nations chastised the United States for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The islands have an unusually vested interest in the protocol because they face a high risk of being swallowed up by seas swollen from melting ice caps and thermal expansion of ocean waters. The leaders of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu released a statement at the forum noting their "profound disappointment at the decision of the U.S." The consortium stopped short of …

In addition to scorching millions of acres of habitat and killing wildlife, the fires that have raged throughout the western U.S. this summer have taken another toll on the environment -- a financial one. The federal government expects to spend more than $1.5 billion battling wildfires this year, and millions of those dollars will come from sources that would otherwise be used to pay for environmental activities on public lands. Already, field offices of the U.S. Forest Service are suspending road and trail maintenance projects, land purchases, fish and wildlife habitat work, replanting of logged and burned areas, and other …

By all appearance, President Bush will not be attending the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the end of the month -- much to the delight of his conservative allies. "We applaud your decision not to attend the summit," read a letter signed by more than 30 conservative activists and sent to the president this week. The letter went on to warn that, "Your presence would only help to publicize and make more credible [attendees'] various anti-freedom, anti-people, anti-globalization, and anti-Western agendas." The signers of the letter also called for the president to …

A global report card issued by the United Nations just two weeks before an international environmental summit has given low marks to the world's ecological condition. Among the report's more shocking findings: Three million people die annually from air pollution, while more than 1 billion people -- a sixth of the world's population -- lack access to safe drinking water. The report also found that the world's forested areas shrank by 2.4 percent in the 1990s, with Africa taking the hardest hit, losing 7 percent of its forests. The world's environment is also threatened by growing energy consumption; in the …

The Bush administration announced yesterday that energy companies will be allowed to expand oil and gas exploration beyond the boundaries of their leases at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Durango, Colo. The announcement marks the first time exploration has been permitted outside leased areas at a monument. Already, about 85 percent of the 164,000-acre Canyons of the Ancients is leased for energy exploration; now, the Bureau of Land Management has approved a seismic exploration project that will begin Friday on nearly 1,900 acres of unleased monument land. Environmentalists say further exploration would damage sensitive biological and archeological areas …

In a classic David-and-Goliath battle, women in southern Nigeria are taking on oil giants ChevronTexaco and Royal Dutch/Shell to demand more responsible environmental and social policies. Last week, hundreds of women blocked access to company offices in the latest of a month of all-women protests. The unusual demonstrations are gaining a reputation as one of the most effective tools to force environmental and social concessions from U.S. multinational oil companies doing business in Africa. The strategy of choice at the protests is mass nudity, or at least the threat of it, which is generally sufficient to help persuade senior executives …