What grows on behind the scenes (10/10/2002) Touring the 7,000-acre property alone, you
might think that it resembled any farm in
America, with expansive fields of crops and
livestock. After a guided tour of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC), however,
you'll learn that its pigs, cows, chickens, elm trees, tomatoes and other living things are not so
typical.
Measure 27: Look beneath the surface (10/9/2002) Measure 27, requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods, is typical of
too many Oregon ballot measures: It sounds good on the surface, but it would
create expensive headaches.
Power to the people: Plugging developing nations into renewable energy (10/9/2002) The groaning has largely subsided over last month's World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, but one of the
biggest disappointments of the event still deserves scrutiny: the failure
to create a strategy to disseminate renewable energy throughout the
developing world. "The Johannesburg summit's plan for renewable
energy has two fundamental flaws -- there is no plan and nothing to
implement," says Cowan Coventry, chief executive of the Intermediate
Technology Development Group (ITDG), a U.K.-based nonprofit. "The
U.S. and the OPEC states scuppered the chance to switch on lights,
refrigerators, water pumps, and other essential devices in the poorest
parts of the world."
