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FRONT:: Scientists warn a brownish haze may destroy a region. It has the makings of a futuristic script for a Mad Max movie: A noxious cloud covers a vast swath of inhabited earth. creates droughts. floods. temperature fluctuations and kills off some two million people a year. Welcome to thunderdome. the future is now. A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) sponsored report concludes that the Asian Brown Cloud. a two-mile- thick. "large brownish haze" hanging over the Indian subcon- tinent and Southeast Asia is having just these effects. After five years of study. a team of 200 scientists from Europe. India and the United States reports that the cloud of ash. acids. aerosols and other particles is disrupting rainfall and wind patterns in a region that stretches from Bangladesh to Afghanistan. 'The haze is the result of forest fires. the burning of agricultural wastes. dramatic increases in the burning of fos- sil fuels in vehicles. industries and power stations. and emis- sions from millions of inefficient cookers burning wood. cow dung and other 'bio-fuels ... ยท said Klaus Toepfer. Executive Director of UNEP. during an August press conference in London. The global models used by the scientists suggest that the Asian Brown Cloud is reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth's surface by as much as 15 percent. and of rainfall from northwest India to western China by 20-40 per- cent. The agricultural impact is tremendous. with suggestions that the Indian winter rice harvests have decreased by 10 percent. The report also suggests that pollution in the cloud 22 is responsible for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths due to respiratory diseases. Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen is more dire in his assessment. saying that atmos- pheric pollution is killing 2 million a year in India alone. 'There are significant increases of emergency department visits due to acute asthma. acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute coronary events." says Dr. Dietrich Schwela, an air pollution scientist with the World Health Organization. While 60 percent of the world's population lives in the region, the cloud isn't just Asia's problem. Pollutants within the cloud can travel halfway around the world in a week. claims Toepfer. bringing hemispheric repercussions, such as the spread of black carbon and acid rain. a distinct possibility. Furthermore, any reduction on the amount of sun- light reaching the ocean surface shocks the food chain by reducing water plants and plankton. 'What we need are transboundary air pollution agreements," says Dr. Gary Haq. a research associate with the Stockholm Environment Institute at England's University of York. "Everything is transboundary. Pollution isn't isolated, it spreads from country to country." To that end. experts stress that local governments, and the world at large. need to tackle everything from factory and transportation emissions to the fuels people use to cook their foods. The Asian population is estimated to reach 5 bil- lion by 2030, and there is a distinct fear that an environmen- tal catastrophe produced by the Asian Brown Cloud will cause economic and health calamities for generations.- Michael J. Cervieri