The Environment: Cleaning Up the Mess

This is the second in a series of weekly essays on the important issues that the candidates are, or should be, addressing.

It was the summer that the earth struck back. Amid an unnerving global heat wave, scientists took the planet's temperature and debated whether the greenhouse effect had already begun. At the beach, syringes replaced seashells. The wholesale destruction of forests in northern India and Nepal helped spawn a tragic flood in Bangladesh. Sturgeon were infected by toxic wastes in the Soviet Union, threatening the caviar supply. And, belatedly, the environment returned as a compelling political issue in the U.S.