How will another 220,000,000 Americans affect you? Professionally? Personally? How about the environment? These are the preliminary questions raised by a recent article in The Economist. In this editorial I will try to sketch a way to look at the issues. The gist of The Economist's article is that America and Europe show strong signs of diverging demographically, after many years of moving in tandem. Before 1980, both were dropping so far in fertility rates (the number of children born to each woman) that both were below the replacement level of about 2.1 children per woman.

As environmental professionals we see more and more efforts within the regulatory community to be "user friendly."I recently attended a meeting of environmental professionals in Michigan and learned how the Department of Environmental Quality is being reorganized to better serve the professional and the citizen. Such programs as Pollution Prevention and Technical Assistance, and The Clean Corporate Citizen (which among other things provides recognition of corporate responsibility) were exhibited. Other programs discussed were units within Education and Outreach that included Operator Training certification for hazardous materials. From Wisconsin, I learned of a regulatory office of grants and contracts, just as we have here at Michigan State University. This unit is charged with supporting individuals who are applying for grants and loans to support environmental restoration projects. In some cases across the country, there are state-supported bonds that are administered through the Departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality.

Most of us think of the consulting ecologist or consulting engineer and imagine a person who works developing malls, marinas, and of.ce parks. But there are those who will accept other clients. There are those who will work for the people. The people are homeowners associations, condominium groups, and a variety of environmental activist groups. There are many times when a consulting .rm may work for a developer on one project, and a citizens group on the next. In past essays, I have highlighted many of the ethical con.icts associated with development and regulation. What can happen when our client now wants us to help them halt development?

Suddenly, the path from here to there seems as wide open as you can dream it. Imagine, within a decade, metro Detroit transformed into a region known as much for its natural landscape---its riverfronts, parks, bike paths, and greenbelts---as for being a worldclass industrial and auto center. That's the vision of the GreenWays Initiative, a five-year effort by the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan.

Ecologists are charged with understanding and communicating the ecological values of the natural world from the standpoint of science. They are trained to bring the tools of science—observation, experimentation,modeling—to document patterns, understand processes, and make predictions following disturbance. Ecologists are also trained to communicate their research findings to other scientists in language that is efficient, technical, and targeted toward our closest peers.

There is nothing wrong with this mode of understanding or communication. However, it is growing increasingly clear that scientists—at least some scientists—must go beyond the typical modes of scientific communication if they are to be effective in motivating the large pool of non-scientists to understand, conserve, and sustainably use the natural world.

As the environmental, social, and economic problems associated with heavy reliance on pesticides become more apparent, many national and international organizations are promoting integrated pest management (IPM) as a way of reducing pesticides without sacrificing yields. IPM, which has been rapidly implemented in Indonesian rice production, is currently the most successful United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization-sponsored national IPM program in existence (United Nations, 2002). The integration of government policy with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization-supported farmer education points to the success and sustainability of a bottom-up approach in IPM, and is an important lesson to all practitioners involved in efforts that necessitate community participation.

Environmental due diligence for industrial mergers and acquisitions has traditionally been viewed as ensuring that environmental liabilities associated with on-site contamination and regulatory compliance issues are fully accounted for in the transaction. However, this focus fails to obtain information on a number of potential strategic risk issues, nor does it provide for the type of proactive business planning that can add tremendous value to the overall due diligence process for industrial mergers and acquisitions. To eliminate these critical shortcomings, strategic environmental management (SEM) concepts need to be incorporated into the environmental due diligence process. This paper provides guidance on the incorporation and implementation of SEM reviews in these types of projects. This guidance includes examples of the types of objectives that SEM reviews can encompass to better ensure the integration of environmental issues with overall business planning efforts conducted during the due diligence process, in order to obtain a competitive advantage.

Construction activities generate a myriad of negative effects on the environment. ISO 14000, the series of environmental management standards released by the International Organization for Standardization in 1996, has been introduced as a tool that can aid in reducing these impacts. The implementation of these standards is focused on the establishment of an environmental management system (EMS) that can guide an organization toward achieving its own environmental goals. Certification for the ISO 14001 standard has been successfully implemented at an international level, mostly in Europe and Asia. Different types of companies have achieved ISO 14000 certification, including those performing construction work. However, up until 2002, only one construction group has received certification for its subsidiaries. Benefits such as minimization of environmental impacts, marketing opportunities, and cost savings have been identified. Some parties, however, argue about the standards applicability in the US construction industry, stating that ISO 14000 is not economically feasible and that significant or proven environmental benefits cannot be associated with the standards usage. Therefore, the main goal of this article is to analyze ISO 14000 standards and their current status in the US construction industry, identifying advantages and setbacks of the application of this EMS in the organizational structures of US construction firms. The information is based on a literature search and a case study of a construction contracting firm certi- fied for the standards. The article concludes that the positive aspects of certification outweigh the negative aspects and recommends added government support and the combined use of ISO 14000 with other environmental systems and matrices.

\cf1\f1 Consideration of cumulative effects as part of the environmental impact assessment process is seen as an essential element to ensure a complete determination of impact significance. These effects, defined as the incremental impact of an action when added to other past, present, and future activities, often result from individually minor but collectively significant actions taking place over a period of time. While conceptually appealing, the analysis of cumulative impacts has been frustrated by the absence of tractable methodologies to facilitate their identification and inclusion in more comprehensive environmental impact assessments. In this article the potential role of remotely sensed data is discussed and a scoping methodology based on the use of remotely sensed data is presented. For over three decades remote sensing has enabled the collection of detailed environmental data in a systematic and reliable manner. The method introduced in this article utilizes the ability to transform remotely sensed data into landscape indicators that can be employed to summarize the status of the environmental system and detect changed conditions over time. Through this procedure the pattern of cumulative effects on critical environmental indicators can be observed and the contribution of new actions can be more easily discerned. The procedure outlined also supports the implementation of satellite-based monitoring to uncover trends within a specified planning region. A demonstration of this scoping methodology illustrates that even over a comparatively short time-horizon, remotely sensed data can provide sufficient information to help identify the significant issues surrounding cumulative change. \cf0\f0

Charles H. Eccleston, who teaches a class titled “NEPA Advanced Tools for Planning” as part of each year's national conference of the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP), opened the 2002 class in Dearborn, Michigan, by stating that the character of NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) practice has not changed substantially since te 1970s.

In The Skeptical Environmentalist, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg delivers one overarching message: don't worry. The world is doing fine. Water, forests, fossil fuel supplies, biodiversity, and air quality are all in good shape, and most are getting better. Global human welfare is improving in every possible way. Thing are not perfect, but technology will deliver the answers to all our worries. Contemporary environmental concerns are a “litany” developed by a handful of people to serve their own agendas. Above all, Lomborg seeks to free the world from the tyranny of that litany.