Climate Gate, precursor to a slippery slope..?

Over 40% of all tropical forests have been destroyed and another acre is lost each second.

While the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world's population, we produce 72% of all hazardous waste and consume 33% of the world's paper.

Worldwide, thousands of pounds of plutonium are being produced, used and stored under conditions of inadequate security. Using current technology, only two pounds of plutonium is required to make a nuclear device.

The annual catch in 13 of the world's 15 major fishing zones has declined and in four of those - three in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific oceans - the catch has shrunk by a startling 30%.

Taxpayers will lose over one billion dollars over the next decade as the Forest Service spends more money on building logging roads and preparing commercial timber sales than it makes on selling the timber.

In 1992, taxpayers subsidized the clearcutting of our Alaskan forest with an estimated $40 million.

Mining companies are allowed to buy our public lands for less than five dollars an acre - any they pay no royalties on the gold and other minerals they extract. This taxpayer giveaway, combined with the cost of massive environmental damage and cleanup, amounts to a billion dollars every year.

Grazing has led to soil erosion, watershed destruction and ruin of wildlife habitat on millions of acres of our public lands. Taxpayers subsidized grazing fees with $1.8 billion during the years 1985 - 1992.

As many as 70,000 people nationwide may die prematurely from heart and lung disease aggravated by particulate air pollution.

More than 100 million Americans live in urban areas where the air is officially classified by the EPA as unsafe to breathe.

In many urban areas, children are steadily exposed to high levels of pollutants, increasing the risk of chronic lung disease, cell damage and respiratory illness.

Dioxin and other persistent pollutants that are released into the air accumulate in our waterways, wildlife, food supply and human blood-streams. These poisons may cause cancer and reproductive disorders in human beings and other animal species.

Millions of pounds of toxic chemicals, like lead, mercury and pesticides, pour into our waterways each year contaminating wildlife, seafood and drinking water.

One-half of our nation's lakes and one-third of our rivers are too polluted to be completely safe for swimming or fishing.

Raw sewage, poison runoff and other pollution have caused 8,000 beach closures or advisories over the past five years.

We are losing once pristine national treasures - like the Everglades, Lake Superior, and the Columbia River System - to toxic pollution, chemical spills, development, and diversion of freshwater flows.

All but one species of the magnificent ocean-going salmon in the Pacific Northwest face a growing risk of extinction throughout most of their range, due to habitat degradation and over-fishing.

You get the idea...



Peace.