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European leaders are in general declining to take up one of the most effective weapons available to them: taxation. Environmental watchdogs advocate the use of eco-taxes, in which polluters end up paying directly to repair the damage they have wrought. In Sweden, for instance, levies on sulfur emissions that cause acid rain are put back into desulfurization equipment for power stations. "Taxes are usually put on labor and profits," says Sir Crispin Tickell, head of the British government Panel on Sustainable Development. "They should be switched to pollution and the use of scarce resources." Though Britain imposed a landfill tax in 1996, eco-taxes have yet to gain wide acceptance. In Germany the environment minister's proposals to tax factories that emit carbon dioxide--in an effort to reduce co2 emissions 25% by 2005--were stymied by the Federal Association of German Industry. Even when the will is strong, the economy may be weak. Portugal, for example, has long imposed tight restrictions on the discharge of liquid industrial waste, but fewer than 25% of Portuguese companies have the means to invest in waste treatment. "If the government were to enforce existing legislation," says Elisa Ferreira, Minister for the Environment, "it would drive a huge percentage of companies out of business." It is mainly in the former communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe, though, that the environment can still be termed a disaster area. Maritime pollution in the Baltics, the "black triangle" at the intersection of the heavily industrialized countries of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and toxic waste in the Danube are just some of the concerns that dog the region. Although many outdated factories have been shut down, in Poland 73% of power plants still use pollution-heavy brown coal. Some rivers, including the Nitra in Slovakia and the Morava in the Czech Republic, are so foul that in spots the water cannot be used for industrial purposes, much less as drinking water. But before Eastern Europeans despair, they should look at the advances made by neighbors to the west. Londoners note proudly that the infamous pea-soup fogs of the prewar years--which were really clouds of coal smog--have vanished, and Germans can once again fish in the Rhine on a Sunday afternoon. Even the hardest-to-please eco-radicals feel a new sense of power. "We might be annoyed," says Frank Reissenweber, chairman of the local chapter of the Bavarian Association for the Protection of Birds in Coburg, "we might be disillusioned, but we haven't lost any of our motivation." And Thilo Bode, the head of Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International, is willing to give credit where it is due: "We have made considerable progress," he observed. "Air quality has improved, rivers have become cleaner, waste disposal is better controlled." And if political leaders can move beyond image-making toward stronger action, then Europe will truly deserve the mantle of environmental leadership. --Reported by Alexandre d'Aragon/Paris, Martha de la Cal/Lisbon, Tadeusz L. Kucharski/Warsaw, Angela Leuker/Vienna, Fred Pearce/London, Ursula Sautter/Bonn, Barbara Smit/Amsterdam, Jan Stojaspal/Prague and Mark Turner/Brussels [ Page 1 | Page 2 ] |