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Antarctica's harsh desert valleys -- long considered a bellwether for global climate change -- have grown noticeably cooler since the mid-1980s, scientists report, even while the Earth as a whole is warming. Air temperatures recorded continuously over a 14-year period ending in 1999 declined by about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the polar deserts and across the White Continent, according to prominent researchers from 11 American universities and government laboratories. The cooler temperatures are triggering a cascade of ecological consequences in the sensitive and barren region known as the Dry Valleys. They include a 10 percent annual decline in tiny soil ...

Green Global Tribunals on the Way "The rights of victims of environmental disasters worldwide are to be formally recognized by the Permanent Court of Arbitration," reported a BBC News dispatch on November 26th. On that date the Hague-based international court signed "an agreement with the Cousteau environmental society as a basis for settling international environmental disputes between organizations and individuals. The Cousteau Society is placing a ship, the Alcyone, at the court’s disposal to carry out fact-finding commissions. It is the first time a court will give legitimacy to environmental disputes between individuals and organizations in an international context." The ...

It's a rule of thumb that when President George W. Bush leaves the United States to visit other Western countries, the press can be counted on to report the conventional wisdom that US opposition to the Kyoto Protocol regulating climate change runs afoul of the popular opinion and official positions of our Western allies. However, since President Bush labeled the Kyoto "fatally flawed," this conventional wisdom has been changing. Consider our friends to the north, the Canadians. Canada's Minister of Industry, Brian Tobin, recently addressed a group of Canadian mining executives. Discussing the nation's official environmental policies, he said, "I ...