NORMALLY I don’t pay much attention to hype for trade fairs. But the hype for the upcoming Globe °90 international conference on business opportunities and the environment is a little different. Scheduled for March 19 to 23, the conference will lure some 500 companies from around the world, with just about everybody who is anybody in the environmental sec- tor attending, from ‘‘soft-path’’ energy guru Amory Lovins to Adam (‘‘dioxins are drinkable’) Zimmerman of Noranda. Speakers will inciude everyone from World Bank vice-president David Hopper to B.C. Minister of Regional development Elwood Veitch, with the likes of Tom Sid- don, Gary Filmon, Grant Devine, Frank Oberle, Jack Davis, Jake Epp, Kim Campbell, Mary Collins and Marilyn Baker thrown in for local flavor. Not alf of the participants are good guys, by a long shot. Former Fisheries Minister Sid- don has long since been discredited in everybody’s eyes except his own and his boss’s. Ditto for Energy Minister Jake Epp, who has been stalling on carbon dioxide emission controls, Ditto for Frank Oberle, who has been allowing our forestry practices to continue to drift toward mination. But why be negative? The presence of federal political retreads isn't the only example of ‘ recycling we're going to see. Au contraire, the technological side of Globe ’90 promises to be mind- boggling. A comparison with the 1976 Habitat Forum is in order. Back then, incense was in the air. The old hangars at Jericho were converted by the hard-eyed Al Clapp as an expression of what was then a radically-new concept. Keep in mind that, in those days, starry-eyed recyclers were on the verge of suicide because nobody could relate to what they were talking about. Habitat had a hippie aura. And it wasn’t just Clapp’s motley crew of longhaired tradespersons. Ecology was still basically a counterculture thing. The mainstream was only sniffing suspiciously around the edges, wondering what futons and waterbeds were all about. The Globe '90 conference will be a substantially different affair than Habitat, not just in the switch of locale from Jericho to B.C. Place and the Trade & Convention Cen- tre. The crowds will consist not so much of organic farmers and macrobiotic fanatics watching warily for people with sanpaku eyes as municipal bureaucrats and CEOs in pin-stripe suits. Instead of eco-freaks, the main players will be eco-entrepreneurs. These guys won’t be shopping for love beds. They'll be locking for ground- water, cleanup equipment, static cone penetrometers, oxygen gener- ators, multi-parameter water qual- (12 outlets to serve you) 4 - Sunday, February 25, {990 - North Shore News ° Eco-