diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 2eed8a142..5f115a181 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2002-05-12  Havoc Pennington  <hp@pobox.com>
+
+	* src/main.c (main): turn on --g-fatal-warnings if 
+	METACITY_G_FATAL_WARNINGS env variable is set.
+
 2002-05-11  Anders Carlsson  <andersca@gnu.org>
 
 	* src/display.c: (find_tab_forward), (find_tab_backward),
diff --git a/src/main.c b/src/main.c
index 0c1d56c69..4153ce6ee 100644
--- a/src/main.c
+++ b/src/main.c
@@ -257,9 +257,10 @@ main (int argc, char **argv)
                      G_LOG_LEVEL_MASK | G_LOG_FLAG_FATAL | G_LOG_FLAG_RECURSION,
                      log_handler, NULL);
 
-  if (meta_is_debugging ())
-    g_log_set_always_fatal (G_LOG_LEVEL_MASK);
 #endif
+
+  if (g_getenv ("METACITY_G_FATAL_WARNINGS") != NULL)
+    g_log_set_always_fatal (G_LOG_LEVEL_MASK);
   
   meta_ui_set_current_theme (meta_prefs_get_theme (), FALSE);