2001 - Environment

Environment

A tanker runs aground on a reef in the Galápagos Islands January 23, threatening marine life on the islands with a spill of more than 150,000 gallons of diesel and bunker fuel.

An earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale rocks northwestern India, southern Pakistan, and Nepal January 26, killing 20,005 in the Gujarat city of Ahmedabad, injuring 166,812, and leaving 600,000 homeless. Critics blame the collapse of many buildings on shoddy construction.

The worst recorded infestation of Canadian timber by the indigenous mountain pine bark beetle wreaks havoc on British Columbian timberlands, carrying a fungus that destroys billions of dollars worth of trees and creates conditions that make forests vulnerable to fire. Severe winters usually kill off the beetles, but 90 percent have survived the mild winter and removing dead trees in rugged terrain poses formidable economic challenges (see 2004).

The new Bush administration delays implementation of a Clinton administration rule prohibiting most commercial logging and road building in 58.5 million acres of national forests (see 1976; 2003). Bush breaks a campaign promise March 13 by saying that he will not regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. His administration rejects the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming a few days later (see 2002), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issues an order March 20 suspending an order by former president Clinton that required a lowering of arsenic in drinking water to 10 parts per billion by 2006. The EPA has for decades set 50 parts per billion as an acceptable standard. Critics say the new administration is more sympathetic to the chemical, mining, timber, and utilities industries than to consumers, EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman orders a review of the data, and a report issued September 10 by the National Academy of Sciences says arsenic in drinking water poses such an increased risk of causing cancer that a standard of 10 parts per billion may be too high.