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TODAY Thursday 18 December 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Year of Fire

Yesterday the London office of the World Wide Fund for Nature -- the Panda People in their internationalist incarnation -- issued an announcement that, if true, is astonishing.

Here's the announcement, via Environmental News Network: "More tropical forest burned down around the world in 1997 than at any other time in recorded history, the World Wide Fund for Nature said Tuesday. At least 12.4 million acres of forest and other land burned in Indonesia and Brazil alone and vast areas of Papua New Guinea, Colombia, Peru, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Congo and other parts of Africa were similarly incinerated. Huge forest fires also raged in Australia, China and Russia, as well as in many Mediterranean countries. '1997 will be remembered as the year the world caught fire,' said Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, head of forest programs for WWF International."

Let's trust the venerable WWF and assume that what they're saying is reliable. Why did it happen? Blaming your headache on El Nino has become a national joke these days, but there's no doubt that El Nino induced drought in Southeast Asia and delayed monsoon rains. Both conditions were crucial to the magnitude and duration of the vast fires in Borneo and Sumatra which cloaked every country between China and Australia in a pall of smoke. El Nino, in its turn, has been attributed to increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. As Monsieur Jeanrenaud says, "We are creating a vicious circle of destruction, where increased fires are both a result of changes in the weather and a contributory factor to these changes."

Most, though not all, of the acreage burned has come from fires ignited by humans. And what induces them to set the fires? Standard, even universal, economic appetites that operate outside regimes of enforceable legal sanctions. Whether it's burning by Indonesians to clear ground for plantations, or burning by Brazilians to make room for cattle, or burning by Ghanaians to expand cassava cultivation, most of the fires are attributable to local citizens looking to increase their purchasing power, and often by methods that are technically illegal. These fires can be seen as a failure of civil society as much as a failure of environmental policy. Population pressures, the pressures and opportunities presented by export-driven economies, pressures to earn cash as fewer and fewer of the necessities (and pleasures) of life can be procured without cash -- these pressures are tough to resist. Absent sanctions from government or (preferably) other incentives for economic advancement, people will strike a match.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

Attention, Lib Tree shoppers! All of you who subscribe to " The Grove," our free e-mail newsletter, will get your copy a little later than usual today. Grove editor Jessica Robinson, hitherto indispensable to both the newsletter and the site as a whole, has taken leave of her senses and decided to pursue an excellent new opportunity with better pay, benefits, and colleagues than what she has here. Seriously, the estimable Ms. Robinson is leaving at year's end, and so I'll be trying my hand at The Grove until we can find a successor. Patience beseeched.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

12/17: Ramblin' Man (Ramblin' Woman)
12/16: Big News on the Margins
12/15: The Hybrid As Savior
12/12: Good Week for the Dragon
12/11: Help Wanted: Unreasonable Extremists
12/10: Oh Boy! A Fight!
12/9: Running Away From It All
12/8: "What I Wouldn't Give for This War to End."
12/5: Feisty Euros at Kyoto
12/4: Beauty in the Bronx
12/3: God from Machine
12/2: Gentlemen's Bet
12/1: Public Opinion
11/26: Sperm
11/25: Sound Sound-Bite Science
11/24: Home Sweet Storage Locker
11/21: Tim Wirth's Inscrutable Adventure
11/20: Better to Receive than to Give
11/19: Wes Jackson's Problem with Agriculture
11/18: "Stay Home and Be Decent"

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.