Category: H. Sterling Burnett

On Earthday 1998, with the new millennium approaching it is time to build a bridge to a better environment in the 21st century.

At the 1992 United Nations' Earth Summit in Rio, the United States signed a treaty establishing the voluntary goal of returning to 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2000. By 1996 it was evident voluntary action was not working.

In 1997 the federal government, which had demanded that new passenger vehicles come equipped with passenger-side air bags by that year, did an about-face.

I'm still hoping, perhaps foolishly, that traditional environmentalists (by that I mean the typical Audubon or Sierra Club member) will find common ground with the classical liberals who call themselves free market environmentalists.

Though ground-level measurements of temperature show the earth has warmed between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius in the last 100 years, many scientists and the American public remain largely unconvinced or unconcerned that global warming is a serious threat to society.

Citing concern for the health of asthmatic children, President Clinton on June 25 endorsed stringent clean air standards for particulate matter (soot) and ground-level ozone (smog), first proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in November 1996.

The Clinton administration has decided to commit the United States to finalizing a treaty in December 1997 that would impose internationally enforceable limits on the production of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2).

A casual glance at the nation's highways shows that much has changed in the last 25 years, including fewer large family cars on the road, a dramatic increase in the number of light trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and the introduction of minivans.

Public attention has recently turned to the global nature of many environmental problems, such as global climate change, the transmigration of pollution, the rapid loss of biodiversity, and the collapse of ocean fisheries.

Contrary to popular opinion, the last Congress was one of the most environmentally active ever, passing three major environmental bills and a host of minor ones.

Despite the recent attention paid to global environmental problems (e.g., global climate change, ozone thinning and the rapid loss of biodiversity), for most people environmental problems are local.

Timothy Wirth, the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, is staging a series of events to drum up support for the Clinton Administration's recent commitment to an internationally binding agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Paradoxically, a century of development has turned vast areas of prairie and desert into large urban forests.

Politicians complain that the media never give them credit when programs work. Is President Clinton's "get tough on crime" policy finally paying dividends?

A recent federal court decision may have drastically altered the debate over renewal of the controversial Superfund law to clean up hazardous waste sites.

What could be wrong with a bill that promotes environmental protection, preserves a fundamental civil right and does so at minimal, if any, additional cost to the government? Plenty, according to some environmental extremists, most members of the Senate Democratic minority and the Clinton Administration.

Superfund is the largest single project of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Yet despite cumulative federal expenditures of more than $30 billion over 15 years, Superfund successes are few.

Despite spending more than $30 billion over 15 years, the federal Superfund program has failed.