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An excerpt from Eco-Economy by Lester R. Brown
In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres," in which he challenged the view that the sun revolved around the Earth, arguing instead that the Earth revolved around the sun. With his new model of the solar system, he began a wide-ranging debate among scientists, theologians, and others. His alternative to the earlier Ptolemaic model, which placed the Earth at the center of the universe, led to a revolution in thinking, and ultimately to a new worldview.
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Dropping the Bali
Negotiations at a two-week meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to establish the agenda for the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development ended in stalemate on Friday. Delegates could not agree on several key issues and were ultimately forced to admit defeat; former Indonesian Environment Minister Emil Salim, who chaired the meeting, blamed the failure on a […]
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Public interest groups fight for elbow room in Indonesia
Thousands of people have gathered on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, to talk about poverty and environmental degradation in preparation for the August 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. Yet the big question among public interest participants here is not how to solve the world’s woes, but rather whether they […]
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Foresight Is 20/20
California state regulators unanimously approved a measure yesterday that will allow Golden State residents to save up to 20 percent on their electric bills by conserving power. Beginning in July, households that use 15 to 20 percent less electricity than they used in 2000 (before the energy crisis) will receive an additional, proportional deduction from […]
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Auto-ah!
The Canadian government has proposed levying a tax on motorists to help pay for implementing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The Canadian Automobile Association, which represents some 4 million vehicle owners, calculated that the tax would be roughly $1,200 per year, based on 15 cents per mile of urban driving and three cents per […]
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Haida Ho
In an unusual move, unhappy employees of paper giant Weyerhaeuser are siding with native inhabitants of British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands, the Haida, in their legal battle against the company. Earlier this year, the Haida sued the company for control of the islands and their forests; on Monday, a reported 135 of 155 Weyerhaeuser employees […]
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Taylor-made Destruction
Charles Taylor, the president of Liberia, has spread instability within his nation’s borders and helped foment a brutal civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. To fund the fighting, he has exploited his country’s natural resources. At first, it was diamonds — but as international scrutiny on the dirty diamond trade has increased, Taylor has been […]
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A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing
Does access to information protect us, or put us at risk? That question is at the heart of an environmental debate that’s taken on a different shape — and different stakes — since Sept. 11. At issue is the public’s right to know about chemical plants and other factories manufacturing hazardous materials. Environmentalists maintain that […]
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TRI a Little Tenderness
The amount of toxic chemicals released into the environment dropped 8 percent in 2000, continuing a decade-long trend of declining industrial pollution, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA. The Toxics Release Inventory compiles data from more than 23,000 factories, refineries, hard-rock mines, power plants, and chemical manufacturers, which together reported pumping […]
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Taipei Personalities
More than 200 former employees of an RCA television and semiconductor plant in northern Taiwan have died of cancer and at least 1,000 others are suffering from the disease, in what industry watchdogs are calling the worst cancer cluster in the history of high-tech. A group of former plant workers arrived in Silicon Valley yesterday […]
