Atlanta, For Immediate Release: The joint U.S.-Russian initiative to dispose of nuclear weapons is so “vitally important” that it ranks as the world’s most significant environmental project over the past few decades, according to noted futurist McKinley Conway’s new book, Global Super Projects: Mega Ventures That Are Shaping Our Future.

That landmark nuke program, however, is only one of a host of mega-endeavors in which Conway has selected the world’s most significant projects in recent history. The prolific author of more than two dozen books has also chosen the top projects in 19 other important categories, ranging from conservation undertakings, to new airports, highways and other infrastructure elements. (To access all of Conway’s selections, as well as the Conway Global Super Projects Registry, look for the online version of the entire book that will be available by Jan. 16, 2006, at www.sitenet.com/books/superprojects. To go directly to the Conway Global Super Projects Registry, go to www.sitenet.com/books/superprojects/registry.)

Conway, a pioneer in the economic development field, made his selections from what he calls “Super Projects, the billion-dollar babies that are changing the face of world development.” A Super Project, he explains, “represents a cost of US$1 billion or more and/or a represents a technological breakthrough of worldwide significance.” Conway’s Atlanta-based research firm, Conway Data Inc., maintains a global Super Project database that now includes some 2,000 ventures.

Just how did Conway, who has studied major global projects for decades and brought together leading Super Project experts in a series of historic worldwide conferences, choose the crème de la crème? The winners, he explains, “were those deemed to be most significant in improving the quality of life for large numbers of the world’s citizens.”

Here, for example, is how the author explained his choice for the most significant environmental initiative:

“Top environmental program. The U.S./RUSSIA nuclear weapons disposal. Scanning environmental undertakings, we find that the biggest are the cleanup projects left behind by the nuclear weapons production plants. Without doubt, the most important project in the world today is the joint U.S./Russia program of decommissioning nuclear weapon sites. We have no price tag for that nor a guaranteed completion date, but we know it is vitally important.

“In the United States we have had estimates as high as $100 billion for total cleanup at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Savannah River, S.C., plants. The price tag on the cleanup at the Rocky Flats, Colo., facility is $22 billion. The Texas Pantex site is estimated at $15 billion. Russia has a $50 billion task cleaning up at Chernobyl after the 1986 disaster, which took more than 8,000 lives.

“The cleanup (non-nuclear) of the Great Lakes has totaled $10 billion and the Boston Harbor cleanup is a $6 billion project. The cost of cleaning Alaska’s Prince William Sound after the Exxon spill was $3.4 billion. Putting out the oil well fires and cleaning up in Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War cost $2.7 billion. The program for “re-plumbing” the Florida Everglades is budgeted for $8 billion.

“There’s a lesson here! Fouling the environment is very, very expensive.”