Environmental Crisis Looms by 2000
8/21/98
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
The sky is falling. Greenpeace reports in their annual report that
forests and species are being destroyed, fisheries are being
exhausted, global warming is underway, and nuclear wastes and PVC
plastics remain problematic. Greenpeace concludes, "we need
solutions, not excuses. We need actions, not words."
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Environmental crisis looms by 2000: Greenpeace
Source: Agence France-Presse
Status: Copyright 1998, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 17, 1998
AMSTERDAM, Aug 13 (AFP) - About 25,000 species could become extinct
and 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of ancient forest
significantly degraded or destroyed by 2000, the environmental group
Greenpeace warned on Thursday.
"Significant steps must be taken before the year 2000 to reverse these
trends," the executive director Thilo Bode urged in the group's annual
report.
"It is undeniable that the use of renewable resources -- including
land, forest, fresh water, coastal areas, fisheries and urban air --
is beyond their natural regeneration capacity," Bode stressed.
The use of fossil fuels and the resulting increase in global warming
had caused cracks to appear in a major ice shelf in Antarctica and the
whole shelf is likely to collapse by the turn of the century, the
group said.
While fossil fuels had led to a marked rise in global temperatures,
nuclear energy also presented serious dangers to world ecology, the
environmental watchdogs stressed.
"More than 115 tonnes of highly radioactive plutonium will be produced
(by 2000), thereby increasing the risks of potentially lethal
discharges," Greenpeace said from its international headquarters in
Amsterdam.
Plastic PVC also presented disposal problems. Another 35 million
tonnes of plastic will be introduced into the environment in the 505
days left this century but there is still no waste solution in sight,
Greenpeace pointed out.
The environmental campaigners also called for stricter controls on
commercial fishing.
By the next millennium, the catch of the industrial fishing fleet will
exceed recommendations by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation by
about 20 million tonnes, the group said.
A further 30 million tonnes of fish and other forms of marine life
being caught killed and thrown back in the sea as unwanted "by-catch,"
Greenpeace added.
In an attempt to avert these environmental disasters, Greenpeace
appealed to governments to consider six urgent measures.
PVC must be banned, industrial logging of ancient forests must stop,
the industrial fishing fleet should be halved and nuclear energy and
the reprocessing of radioactive waste should be halted.
The commercial release of genetically-engineered crops should also
stop and government must no longer issue licences for new oil
exploration projects, Greenpeace urged.
"These demands are an absolute minimum to protect the planet for the
future generations," Bode asserted. "We need solutions, not excuses.
We need actions, not words."