TIME
checks our ecological clock...

If we are to protect and preserve our environment on a global scale, we all must do our part, as nations, as families and as individuals. (...)

If we practice and teach the right kind of care and commitment for our environment, it will continue not only to bring us its natural gifts, but also to bring us together.

Al Gore, Time Magazine, November 1997

If you didn't see Time Magazine's November 1997 edition - entirely devoted to exploring the current ecological state of our planet - then take a trip down to your local library and check it out. The issue draws together talented writers, scientists, and prominent public figures in an attempt to capture our environmental predicament from a variety of perspectives.  Of particular note is a moving address by U.S Vice President Al Gore.  If you want concise, intelligent environmental reporting, chase this edition.

Subsidising destruction

A report by the World Watch Institute entitled "Paying the Piper: Subsidies, Politics and the Environment" concludes that more tha $500 billion a year in consumer and taxpayers money is spent by governments to subsidise deforestation, overfishing and other environmentally destructive activities.   The report states that many subsidies to industries are gained by "political prssure, campaign donations and even bribery".  Econews, August '97.

Go-getters go green

The "greening" of business has received a boost from research which shows that British companies taking environmental issues seriously have better financial performances than their non-green rivals.

In the first substantial study of this kind, the research by Imperial College and Jupiter Asset Management, a financial services company, found that a large sample of greener companies did as well or better than competitors in the same business over four years.

The study focused on 51 such firms and compared their profitability between 1992 and 1995 with similar companies in the same sectors.  The green companies achieved substantially higher returns on capital and even the best of the non-green companies did no better than those on Jupiter's list.   The green store groups, for example achieved returns of almost 26 percent over the four-year period, compared with on 15 percent for comparable non-green companies. Guardian, 11th May 1997.