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[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

October 17, 2004

IN 1984, when he was still lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, John 
Kerry became interested in the emerging problem of acid rain. Some 
people mocked the idea of poisonous rain from the skies, but Kerry 
embarked on a fact-finding mission across Europe, where he saw the 
devastation of industrial pollution on the Black Forest in Germany and 
many historic buildings.

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He took the issue to a meeting of the six New England governors and the 
eastern Canadian premiers, resulting in the first international 
agreement on acid rain controls. The pact became a blueprint for the 
reauthorized Clean Air Act in 1990.

In 1997, four years before Sept. 11, Kerry published "The New War," 
which was derived from his years leading the Senate Subcommittee on 
Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations. In the book, Kerry 
described a changed global landscape after the end of the Cold War, with 
security threats coming less from nation-states than from shadowy 
criminal groups. Although it dwelled mostly on drug cartels and the 
Russian mafia, "The New War" also addressed the threat of Islamic 
terrorism and called for international cooperation to fight it.

"We should be the natural leaders of a world coalition against crime," 
Kerry wrote, "but we have yet to recognize the `new crime's' scale and 
sophistication."

This year as a presidential candidate, Kerry has offered a plan for 
energy independence that is notable not just for its sweep and technical 
detail but because it recognizes the destabilizing effect of resource 
shortages in the struggle for world security