So, for those of us who care about the kind of world our kids come from and will be left in after we're gone (and who doesn't?), there are a couple of developments in the Big Summer Stories.

Toxic product recalls: Remember the lethal Chinese toothpaste sweetened with antifreeze story? Did you ever wonder exactly how the diethylene glycol was discovered to begin with? It wasn't an imports inspector. It wasn't a curious doctor. It was a Kuna Indian dude from Panama - a civil servant who doesn't even own a car - who simply read the label on the toothpaste he'd just bought from a street vendor. And recognized that "diethylene glycol" was antifreeze. That's all it took - well that, and he wouldn't be quiet about it.

That extinct dolphin: And then there's the Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, who was determined to have gone extinct, mostly because people caught all their fish, dumped nasty stuff in the river and filled the water with engine noise, making the dolphins' echolocation useless. You may have heard, however, that the baiji perseveres - for now. A fisherman caught a specimen on video. However, the experts are saying the species is still "functionally extinct," since its incredibly unlikely individuals will ever find each other through the noise, and couldn't hear each other pitching woo regardless.

Air pollution vs. Solar power: China has recently overtaken the U.S. in emitting greenhouse gases. But the country's flirtation with solar power is taking new and exciting turns involving lots of money being invested in companies that turn sunshine into electricity. The government has also followed the recent Beijing air experiments - stopping half the cars in the city from driving for four days - with a crusade against Viagra ads and Victoria's Secret catalogs, since they're pollution too. (Well, that and they're, uh, actually admitting there might be a teensy problem with the Three Gorges Dam.) And, OK, they've released the results of the Beijing experiment. Parking those cars made a difference in greenhouse gas emissions measurable in tons, the government says - 5,800 tons. Of course, that's just a fraction of the output from coal-burning plants, bajillions of which are still going to be generating plenty of power during the 2008 games - even if some are temporarily shut down.



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