Earth Focus is an environmental news magazine that puts a human face on environmental issues and legislation by featuring under-publicized stories about how environmental changes are affecting everyday people around the world. "Earth Focus" is a joint project of Link TV and the international environmental group, Friends of the Earth, and is produced for Link TV by Planet Vox.

The pilot program of Earth Focus, the new Link TV environmental news magazine, began airing December 2002. Production of Earth Focus is currently scheduled to resume in the near future.

About 15 minutes long, the show features a report about the world's climate that puts a human face on the sometimes arcane subject of global warming. The show introduces viewers to Arthur and Anne Berndt, maple syrup producers from Sharon, Vermont, and Dr. Phil Dustan, a coral reef biologist based at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, who personify the threat of climate change.

For the Berndts, warmer temperatures could mean the end of maple trees and maple syrup on their farm. For Dustan, the impacts of climate change have already been "catastrophic" to the reefs he studies in the Florida Keys.

Both the Berndts and Dustan are participating in a new lawsuit filed by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the city of Boulder, Colorado, that questions if two little-known federal agencies, the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, are required to assess whether their actions contribute to global warming, and if so, take steps to mitigate their impacts. The segment shows footage of Ex-Im and OPIC fossil-fuel projects underway in Africa and South America and effectively presents the question now in court: Are these little-known federal agencies legally responsible for the greenhouse gases created when fossil fuels they help produce are burned?

Other segments include:

• Food Alert, which looks at the continued use of genetically-engineered food by the Kraft, America's largest food company
  
  
• Bright Idea, which highlights a new food-packaging product called Earth Shell that biodegrades rather than taking up landfill space
  
  
• Legislative Scorecard that reports on policy developments in Washington that affect the environment.
  
  
  

Earth Focus hopes to bring environmental stories to television that other networks ignore. The pilot program contains footage of the beaching of whales in the Canary Islands that occurred in late September during a NATO military exercise, footage not seen widely, if anywhere, on U.S. networks. The footage, obtained by Earth Focus from a television outlet on the remote, Spanish-owned islands, is part of report about the initiative by the U.S. Navy to have restrictions lifted on its use of military sonar, which is known to cause disorientation and death in some species of whales.

Earth Focus may become the only regular news magazine about the environment on television, now that Time-Warner has cancelled CNN's Earth Matters and Outdoor Life Network did not extend the life of A Thin Green Line.

The need for insight and reporting about the environmental issues will be stronger during the next session of Congress, as legislation reauthorizing major environmental laws like the Superfund and the Marine Mammal Protection Act are likely to attract debate. Now that the deadlock in Congress has been removed by the new Republican majority in the Senate, some of this new legislation is likely to become law in some form. Earth Focus intends to keep WorldLink viewers up to date on what could happen and what it will mean.

Earth Focus is funded by the Scriabine Foundation and other donors and is produced for Link TV by Planet Vox, a Washington DC media production company specializing in environmental content.