Denis Hayes

In a move to greatly expand the U.S. market for recycled products, McDonald's Corp. on Tuesday pledged to purchase up to $100 million worth of recycled materials a year for use in building and remodeling its U.S. restaurants. The new "McRecycle USA" program is designed to create markets for hundreds of products made from recycled material ranging from wallboard to trash cans and table tops.

Hoping to sway the growing national debate on how to spend money saved from defense cutbacks, a liberal coalition Tuesday launched a two-year campaign of television ads, sermons and town meetings to urge that the savings be used for struggling domestic programs, not for tax cuts and deficit reduction. To help support their position, the Campaign for New Priorities, spearheaded by labor unions and women's groups and endorsed by Boston's Democratic Mayor Raymond L.

Like many of the Californians he represents, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now spends more than three hours commuting because he lives so far from the office. But his ride is a private jet. After flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at his Brentwood mansion. The commute costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which aides say the governor pays for himself.

Gov.-elect Pete Wilson on Wednesday named as his secretary of resources a former Sierra Club director who pledged to aggressively mediate disputes between the environmental movement and the business community. Douglas P. Wheeler, currently executive vice president of the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation Foundation, said he intends to be a "responsible activist" who will strive to include all points of view in the Administration's decision-making process.

The claims on store shelves are increasingly confusing. Biodegradable. Recyclable. Ozone-friendly. But is a plastic bag made with cornstarch really biodegradable when buried deep in a landfill, with no water and air to break it down? Are plastic bottles really recyclable when there is no system to collect and reuse them? And what about aerosol sprays that replace propellants that eat the Earth's ozone layer with others that produce smog?

Declaring that the right to breathe clean air is as basic as holding a job, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Monday in Los Angeles that the time has come for minorities to enlist in the environmental movement.

Some of the giant trees took 500 years to mature. The giant fight about their future has been building for a decade. And now the promise of a "settlement" by presidential decree has the Pacific Northwest holding on with white knuckle jitters. Progress. Hope. Solution. Healing. Those were the words of President Clinton's forest conference. But there was a sharper edge to the moment.

Most environmentalists vociferously want new "carbon" taxes, regulations and market mechanisms to get American business to clean up its act. But what the "greens" really need to capture corporate America is a W. Edwards Deming of industrial ecology. Deming, of course, is the guru of quality control. The Japanese named their national quality prize after him. His work offers a fascinating model for the environmental movement.

Lester R. Brown is president of the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit environmental research and public policy organization based in Washington. "Every major global indicator of the Earth's environmental health shows dramatic deterioration since 1972. The forests are smaller. The deserts are larger. . . . "Two great issues of our time are going to converge there (at the Rio summit)--the environmental degradation of the planet and the spread of poverty.

Bruce Babbitt nursed a chardonnay and perched uncomfortably on an ottoman, wincing occasionally as a parade of his soon-to-be former employees dredged up embarrassing stories. One after another, wildlife biologists, wolf experts, park rangers and conservation activists spun out anecdotes collected from the Interior secretary's eight years in office. The setting, a gathering over the weekend at Yellowstone National Park, was weighted with symbolism.