Environmental
Reports for OKALOOSA COUNTY 
Earth
View - A fascinating, real-time look at our
home from above...
July 27, 2000 -
A
Lot Less Snow - NASA's Terra satellite saw less snow
than usual over parts of North America during the winter of
1999-2000. This spring if you thought there was less snow
than usual in parts of the Midwest and western United
States, Terra satellite data agree with you. Early results
from Terra's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
clearly observed a lot less snow cover than normal...
July 24, 2000 - Green
Chemistry Proves It Pays - Companies find new
ways to show that preventing pollution makes more sense than
cleaning up afterward. By Ivan
Amato, In recent years, one of the most powerful
forces outside of nature--the profit motive--has impelled
companies to clean up their manufacturing processes and
products. It pays to be green. To be sure, the original
"command and control" mentality of
environmentalism remains deeply entrenched. Activists and
government regulators still arouse public opinion and
support laws to shame or force companies into managing their
nastier emissions and wastes. But an alternative model for
corporate behavior, based on enlightened self-interest,
appears ascendant. Business sees that preventing pollution
in the first place--environmentalists call it source
reduction or green chemistry, among other terms--makes as
much business sense as, for example, spending less on raw
materials and capturing more market share...
October 26, 2000 - Dump along historic Ala. trail OK'd - MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - A garbage company longing to put a dump along the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights trail has been given a final, unanimous green light by Alabama environmental officials. The Environmental Management Commission on Tuesday rejected further delay of the landfill planned along the U.S. 80 route where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a successful 1965 march for suffrage. The commission also rejected the extension of hearings, where opponents have called the Lowndesboro landfill proposal an example of "environmental racism" since 75 percent of the town's 13,100 residents are black. The commission's vote cleared the way for construction on the 600-acre site to begin - and for the case to be heard in court.
October 26, 2000 - Temporary biotech corn OK sought - WASHINGTON (AP) - With unapproved biotech corn already showing up in the food supply, the government was asked Wednesday to temporarily allow its use for human consumption. The industry said the move was urgently needed to head off further recalls and plant shutdowns. The concern is that some people might be allergic to food containing gene-altered corn. But the corn's developer, Aventis CropScience of Research Triangle Park, N.C., said data it submitted Wednesday show there is "no potential" for the corn, known as StarLink, to affect people who currently suffer from food allergies. In 1998, the government rejected Aventis' original request to approve the corn for human consumption, approving it only for animal feed and industrial uses because the government's scientific advisers were uncertain whether it was an allergen. A protein special to the corn contains a common characteristic of food allergens such as peanuts in that it degrades slowly in the digestive system.
October 26, 2000 - Pollution adds to global warming - WASHINGTON (AP) - New evidence shows man-made pollution has "contributed substantially" to global warming and the earth is likely to get a lot hotter than previously predicted, a United Nations-sponsored panel of hundreds of scientists finds. The conclusions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most authoritative scientific voice on the issue, is expected to widely influence climate debate over the next decade. The report's summary was being distributed to government officials worldwide this week. It is the first full-scale review and update of the state of climate science since 1995 when the same panel concluded there is "a discernible human influence" on the earth's climate because of the so-called "greenhouse" effect caused by the buildup of heat-trapping chemicals in the atmosphere. Today, the panel says in its new assessment that "there is stronger evidence" yet on the human influence on climate and that it is likely that manmade greenhouse gases already "have contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years."
Critiquing
Sprawls' Critics - Although
most Americans are living better than ever, many now see
"urban sprawl" as the source of most of
society’s problems and "smart growth" as the
logical antidote to those problems. That belief has spawned
a host of local and state initiatives and been popularized
nationally by Vice President Al Gore, who proposes to make
urban sprawl a federal issue...
Archive
of Environmental News - December
2000