Environment

LETTER-WRITER Kim Empson points to a few votes, taken out of context, as evidence that the future of our environment is not something important to me. I'd like to take this opportunity to correct Ms. Empson's misstatement. Our children and grandchildren deserve to enjoy the benefits of a clean, protected environment, just as my generation has. America's vast environmental resources have always been among our nation's greatest assets, which is why I've long fought to preserve them.

President Bush's recent State of the Union address has awakened environmental activists such as they haven't been for some time. They are concerned not by what he said but by the lack of public reaction to what he did not say. He spoke of the nation's problems and the dangers it faces, particularly in regard to national security, but he gave no indication that he recognizes the dangers of global warming. Surely it has been brought to his attention that scientists are increasingly alarmed over the rapidity with which the world's environment is being poisoned by the refuse of human endeavor.

RE PATRICK O'Brien's letter "Is there a place for a family guy in Philly's sports palaces?" Pat, even if you could afford to go to one of these games, I don't think you would want to bring your family. A friend of mine brought her son to the Sixers game on Jan. 9, and paid $50 for each ticket. Once there she was afraid to ask to be moved from the group of "animals" who were sitting next to her and her son because she has to walk a mile to her car afterward. These men were cursing, throwing things and causing everyone around them to be uncomfortable.

The Clinton administration is taking yet another waffling approach to our environment. Global warming is not an issue we can afford to waffle on. Al Gore has actually written a book on the disastrous effects of global warming. We have a president and Congress who agreed to a treaty in Rio claiming we would cut our emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000 (a promise we simply ignored). And our president, addressing a panel of top economists and scientists, spoke ever so eloquently about the dangers of global warming.

Bringing art and a message of environmental awareness to the people is Margot de Wit's aim in her multimedia installation, "Dichotomy Project No. 18," at the Painted Bride Art Center. De Wit is a Dutch-born Philadelphia sculptor and artist-in-residence at Glassboro State College. The installation includes a video portion created by a team including poet Ernest Yates and composer Edo Jasper. Her video images zero in on the urban environment; deteriorated housing here and elsewhere receives considerable attention - most notably the once- grand Parkside Avenue mansions on which her camera effectively dwells.

Frankly, we've had our belly full of President Bush's equivocating about whether he'll go to the largest gathering of world leaders ever - the United Nations' Earth Summit on environment and development in Brazil this June. One day he says he sure would like to go. The next, he frets about signing accords that might hamstring the U.S. economy. Still later, he remarks, "We do have room for compromising. " He's starting to sound like Mario Cuomo. What's really going on here is that the White House staff is split about the politics of whether to go to Rio. Some say Mr. Bush can't afford not to: All the other guys are going and, besides, it coincides with the California primary, when environmental stuff is likely to be hot. Others say it's a loser.

When he sails New Jersey's intracoastal waters, Rep. Jim Saxton remembers a time when Barnegat Bay was lined with treetops, not rooftops. That's why he has fought to expand the state's wildlife refuges and preserve its estuaries. He also remembers the late 1980s when red tides plagued New Jersey's coastline; dolphins were dying, and garbage and medical waste washed ashore. Now, the Republican congressman can boast that New Jersey's beaches are among the nation's cleanest - a model for states - because of clean-water laws he sponsored.

In the flood of news accounts, magazine articles, political oratory and governmental reports generated by the drug crisis, one can drown without ever confronting this fundamental question: Why in the last two decades of the 20th century do so many Americans of all races and economic levels turn to drugs as a means of coping with reality? Any program that hopes to be effective in reducing drug use among Americans must have, if not an answer to this question, at least a working hypothesis.

With the threat of global warming and acid rain, and with preservation of the Amazon rain forest on the minds environmentally conscious adults, Joseph Pilyar is looking to the future for help by asking children of the Delaware Valley to join in the fight and "Hug the Earth. " "The idea emanated from me, the store and my interest with children," said Pilyar, who is owner of a bookstore and the founder of the year-old, nonprofit environmental organization for children called Hug the Earth.

After returning from a trip to Russia several years ago, Karen Seaton, a teacher at Buckingham Friends School, asked her students to draw pictures about their images of Russians. "All the drawings," Seaton says now, "were dark and violent. " But no sooner had the school helped dispel those fears by starting an exchange program with a Russian school than Seaton discovered another fear just as insidious. "When we were talking about the environment I realized the students felt the same way as they had once felt about Russians," she said.

Sustainable Cherry Hill "isn't only about green, crunchy people. It's about everyday people, too," says Lori Braunstein, founder of the ambitious environmental group. Like the nonprofit, which an ever-expanding circle of friends and partners is helping her build, Braunstein is driven by global and local concerns. The all-volunteer Sustainable Cherry Hill educates and organizes the public to address quality-of-life issues - such as access to fresh local food or expansion of bike trails - and has become a player in the civic life of the township, Camden County, and beyond.

NEWARK, N.J. - Rules recently implemented by New Jersey's environmental authority unjustly limit the public's access to beaches and waterways while protecting the interests of industry and wealthy landowners, two environmental groups claim in a lawsuit filed against the state. The notice of appeal was filed Tuesday in Superior Court in Trenton by the NY/NJ baykeeper and the Hackensack riverkeeper. It claims the state Department of Environmental Protection exceeded its authority when it adopted the rules last month.

The William Penn Foundation will announce more than $3.2 million in grants Wednesday to fund a modern arts home on the Delaware waterfront, expand a successful early literacy program, and encourage appreciation of the environment - by getting out in it. The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe will get $1.5 million; the Children's Literacy Initiative will get $1 million; and four environmental stewardship groups will share $715,000....

D an Calista, 38, of Society Hill, is founder and CEO of Vynamic, a health-care-consulting firm in Center City that celebrated its 10th anniversary Monday. Calista founded the company in 2002, after working at the management-consulting firm Accenture. Vynamic has 65 employees and more than $16 million in annual revenues. Q: How'd you come up with the idea for Vynamic? A: I wanted to create an environment where I wanted to work. I had a laptop and a studio apartment, and I started to make phone calls.

The latest reports on wind-generated electricity in Pennsylvania and New Jersey equate the clean-air impact to pulling thousands of cars off the road. That's certainly enough vehicles to assemble one impressive motorcade to Washington and lobby for congressional action on extending tax credits viewed as critical to expanding wind power. The smart, 20-year policy of providing a 2.2-cent-per-kilowatt-hour tax credit for electricity produced by large-scale wind turbines faces a year-end expiration deadline.

IT IS HARD TO know exactly how the game-planning conversation goes, because none of us has ever been in the room with Andy Reid and Marty Mornhinweg. Both have their conversational crutches - Reid always gets around to talking about just trying to win the game in front of him on the schedule; Mornhinweg tends to mention, when the talk turns to runs and passes and ratios, that every game is different - but we all know by now that they believe in throwing to win and that doing anything else compromises their vision (and, in their belief, their chances of victory)

It's dark, dreary, and occasionally damp. Spiders lurk. Stinkbugs lie dead in the corners. And on the shelves: Ugh. Old cans of paint, their labels obscured by drips, their lids encrusted with clumped hues of yellow, green, and ecru. That's how one corner of my basement looks. And perhaps yours, too. It's evidence of my un-eco paint past. You could color those sins by the numbers. But while my old cans have been drying - one, it turned out, was more than a decade old - the paint industry has been progressing, growing ever greener.

By Michael Krancer Gov. Corbett promised to make Pennsylvania government better and more efficient, and both the Department of Environmental Protection and the public we serve saw room for improvement in our environmental permitting. We have to start by insisting on high-quality permit applications from businesses, nonprofits, and local governments. This is an important premise of the governor's recent executive order to revise the DEP permitting process and implement a timely "Permit Decision Guarantee.

FORMER UNION manager Peter Nowak endangered his players, created a hostile work environment and was insubordinate to his superiors, according to his letter of termination, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News. The letter from Pennsylvania Professional Soccer LLC also claims that during his time as manager, Nowak showed little regard for player safety, specifically noting that he directed "strenuous training activities" in excessive heat, denying players access to water.

The biotechnology industry's annual convention attracted more than 16,000 industry professionals to Boston last week. Unlike, say, the Consumer Electronics Show, no one emerged from BIO 2012 babbling about crowdsourcing for drug development or the must-have bioreactor of the season. But there was much discussion about and hand-wringing over the health and growth of the industry. For the Philadelphia region, the life-sciences sector remains one of the few that produces capital-hungry start-ups with the potential to hit home runs both for investors and patients.