Sziasztok!

Nehany honapja  mar nektek papoltam egy hidrogenes
napkollektoros eromurol!

Erre az volt a valasz, hogy ez szep es jo, de:
De a hidrogen ez veszelyes es robbanekony es az egesz
vegul is lehetetlen, meg hasonlok!

Most szerdan az MTV1-en neztem a Pesty Fekete Dobozt, 
amiben autokat es buszokat uzemeltetnek HIDROGENNELl!!!!!

Ugyhogy most utannanezek es ujra jovok!

Csokolom
Robi
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            Mail:  
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GLOBALIZATION HITS HUNGARY WITH A WAVE OF CYANIDE

Here's a story of the global economy at its worst and maybe also at its best.

In early February a cry of alarm came over email from my friend Zoltan Lontay i
n Hungary.  The Hungarian news had just announced an enormous fish kill in the 
Szamos river on that country's eastern border.  A wave of cyanide was moving do
wn the Szamos and into the Tisza, Hungary's second largest river.  No one knew 
what had happened, but there was talk of a mine, operated by an Australian comp
any, across the border in Romania -- a mine that uses cyanide.

Zoltan's message went out to a discussion list of over 100 friends all over the
 world.  Replies bounced back, a guess that it must be a gold mine using cyanid
e heap leach technology, reports of similar disasters in other parts of the wor
ld.  Philip Sutton in Australia said he would find out which Australian mining 
companies operate in Romania.

By February 8 Zoltan had more information.  It was indeed a gold mine, of the m
odern sort that allows even very dilute deposits gold deposits to be extracted 
from tons of rock economically.  The rock is dug, crushed, and piled in heaps, 
through which cyanide drips to leach out the gold.  The tricky part is what the
n to do with the cyanide.

In Romania it was dumped into an above-ground pool held by an earth dam.  Zolta
n wrote, "Though the poison in the pool was enough to kill a million people, th
e authorities neglected to keep it inspected.  On January 30 the dam collapsed.
  Within half a day cyanide concentrations in the Szamos reached 150-300 times 
the safe level.  Life in the river was exterminated, from fish to plankton.

"Several hundred thousand people live in the danger zone.  No drinking, fishing
, water extraction from the river or from wells along the river is allowed.  Th
e city of Szolnok on River Tisza is distributing bottled water, five liters per
 family per day.  Food industries and paper mills have shut down.

"For more than 24 hours the polluting company did not report the incident.  Peo
ple in Romania learned about it only from the Hungarian media.  A fine of $160 
was imposed on the company for late reporting.  Eight days after the spill a si
milar spill occurred in the same region,  The Romanian authorities again did no
t warn Hungary, and they have not withdrawn the operating licenses of the minin
g companies.

"Direct economic damage is several hundred million dollars.  No one knows how l
ong cyanide in the mud will poison the river and neighboring wells and soils. I
t is shocking to see on television local people standing along the dead river a
nd mourning it."

The following day Philip Sutton passed on news from the Mineral Policy Institut
e, an Australian non-profit that keeps its eye on the mining industry.  The off
ending company's name is Esmeralda.  It did not post a bond against environment
al damage.  The cyanide pond sat in the middle of a Romanian town, fifty yards 
from an apartment block.  The dam broke because rain and snow had filled the po
nd beyond capacity.

Geoff Evans, Director of the Mineral Policy Institute, said, "This adds to the 
legacy of environmental disasters by Australian mining companies.  Serious acci
dents like this are an inevitable and tragic consequence of using cyanide for g
old extraction."

The word "inevitable" leaped out at me.  The favorite word of globalization ent
husiasts.  Free trade, the global economy, it's all inevitable.  Don't try to s
tand in the way of the train; your only choice is to get on and ride.

That "inevitability" claim stops both thought and action.  Economics is not phy
sics, it doesn't operate by laws we can't revoke.  An economy is a human invent
ion designed to serve human purposes.  It is probably inevitable that there wil
l be spills from huge open pools of cyanide.  It is not inevitable that compani
es from one country be allowed to mishandle deadly chemicals in another country
 and spill them into a third country.  Not inevitable, unless we believe it is 
and do nothing to prevent it.

Free trade enthusiasts never define what this "inevitable" globalization actual
ly means to them.  I gather that it means something like the freedom for anyone
 to go anywhere and do anything that makes money without interference from the 
locals.  I don't suppose anyone actually wants a planetary pollution free-for-a
ll.  But you can see why Hungarians -- and New Guineans and other people who ha
ve had to live with cyanide and other kinds of spills -- might come to believe 
that, whatever is intended, what globalization really means is carelessness, un
accountability, greed and destruction.

Of course it was a global information system that allowed my group to pass alon
g news of this disaster way ahead of the media.  The WTO protesters in Seattle 
organized through the global Internet.  Romanians learned about the poison on t
heir border through Hungarian media.  Some aspects of globalization are not onl
y inevitable but desirable, and others are neither acceptable nor necessary.  I
t isn't really hard to figure out which is which.

(Donella Meadows is an adjunct professor at Dartmouth College and director of t
he Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont.)