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UK scientist ‘gagged’ after
warning of global warming threat
By Steve Connor and Andrew Grice
Mar. 8 — Downing Street tried to muzzle the British government’s
top scientific adviser after he warned that global warming was a more
serious threat than international terrorism.
Ivan Rogers, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s principal private secretary,
told Sir David King, the Prime Minister’s chief scientist, to limit
his contact with the media after he made outspoken comments about President
George Bush’s policy on climate change.
In January, David wrote a scathing article in the American journal Science
attacking Washington for failing to take climate change seriously. “In
my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today,
more serious even than the threat of terrorism,” he wrote.
Support for David’s view came yesterday from Hans Blix, the former
United Nations chief weapons inspector, who said the environment was
at least as important a threat as global terrorism. He told BBC1’s
Breakfast with Frost: “I think we still overestimate the danger
of terror. There are other things that are of equal, if not greater,
magnitude, like the environmental global risks.”
Since David’s article in Science was published, No 10 has tried
to limit the damage to Anglo-American relations by reining in the Prime
Minister’s chief scientist.
In a leaked memo, Rogers ordered SDavid --- a Cambridge University chemist
who offers independent advice to ministers -- to decline any interview
requests from British and American newspapers and BBC Radio 4’s
Today.
“To accept such bids runs the risk of turning the debate into a
sterile argument about whether or not climate change is a greater risk,”
Rogers said in the memo, which was sent to David’s office in February.
“This sort of discussion does not help us achieve our wider policy
aims ahead of our G8 presidency [next year].” The move will be
seized on by critics of Blair’s stance over the Iraq war as further
evidence that he is too subservient to the Bush administration. It will
also be seen as an attempt to bolster the Prime Minister’s case
for pre-emptive strikes to combat the threat of international terrorism,
which he outlined in a speech on Mar. 5.
David, who is highly regarded by Blair, has been primed with a list
of 136 mock questions that the media could ask if they were able to
get access to him, and the suggested answers he should be prepared to
give. One question asks: “How do the number of deaths caused by
climate change and terrorism compare?” The stated answer that David
is expected to give says: “The value of any comparison would be
highly questionable - we are talking about threats that are intrinsically
different.”
If David were to find himself pushed to decide whether terrorism or
climate change was the greater threat, he was supposed to answer: “Both
are serious and immediate problems for the world today.” But this
was not what David said on the Today program on Jan. 9 when the Science
article was published.
Asked to explain how he had come to the conclusion that global warming
was more serious than terrorism, Sir David replied that his equation
was “based on the number of fatalities that have already occurred”
- implying that global warming has already killed more people than terrorism.
The leaked memo came to light after a computer disk was discovered by
an American freelance journalist, Mike Martin, at the annual meeting
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle,
where Sir David gave a lecture.
“The disk was lying on the top of a computer in the press room
and I popped it into the machine to see what was on it,” said Martin,
whose own article is published on the ScienceNow website, an online
service operated by Science.
Rogers’ memo, written a few days before the Seattle conference,
was aimed at limiting his exposure to questions from US and British
media. While in Seattle, David sat on a panel of scientists at one carefully
stage-managed press conference, but his press office said he was too
busy to give interviews afterwards to journalists.
Lucy Brunt-Jenner, David’s press officer, said she could not comment
on internal government documents but said it would be wrong to suggest
that David was in any way muzzled. “Sir David had a press conference
and he was available to the media at three times,” Brunt-Jenner
said.
But Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesman,
said: “It’s a clear attempt by the Prime Minister to keep
David quiet. The government’s chief scientist is the nation’s
chief scientist and I’d expect him to say what he thinks.”
Source: Independent (UK)
Hopi and Navajo youth defend desert waters
By Brenda Norrell
Black Mesa, Arizonia Feb 24 — When Navajo and Hopi youths
came together three years ago in the defense of Black Mesa’s pristine
water, they had few material possessiAons and a wealth of spirit, traditional
teachings and fortitude.
Calvin Long, a 28-year-old Diné, said the Black Mesa Water Coalition
is preserving more than the water and land of Black Mesa. It is preserving
the identity of the people themselves.
“I value who I am as a human being. I value nature. I want my descendants,
and my nieces and nephews, to be able to have that identity, to be able
to be Diné and to understand what their forefathers have protected,
what has been passed down from the Holy people.
“I’m standing against religious intolerance, cultural genocide
and oppression, that is what I see happening,” Long said in an
interview.
“San Francisco Peaks are the foundation for my identity as an indigenous
man,” he said after rallying against a plan to use recycled water
for snowmaking on San Francisco Peaks. “If you take an identity
from a human being it causes them to assimilate into mainstream society
- that is a form of genocide.
“The identity of who I am as a Diné man is what I’m
fighting for.” Long talked of the struggle to maintain his identity,
as an Indian youth and urban Indian. “I’m one of the elder
Indian youths,” Long said with a laugh. “And I’m one
of those urban Indians.”
Long grew up in Flagstaff. He was raised by his mother Sharlinda Mueller
of Kaibeto; his great grandparents and parents were traditional medicine
people. “They were always teaching me identity, since a young age.
The philosophy involves everything in the universe and the way we present
ourselves.”
Long said Hopi and Navajo youths are working to eliminate misconceptions
about the relationships between Hopi and Navajo created by the media.
Hopi and Navajo have long been united as neighbors and intermarried.
It is the traditional medicine people that have maintained the bond
on the land.
“The traditional people value each other,” Long said. Hopi
and Navajo elders guide the young people and encourage them to honor
families and live with respect.
Speaking of the prayers of medicine people, he said, “Their most
important message is to live in a beautiful way, the way the Creator
intended us to live.” The traditional way of life on Black Mesa
is rare in America, where mainstream American lives are dominated by
over-consumption. “To live as a traditional person on the Navajo
and Hopi reservations is to live with an understanding of being a true
human being, living without integrating capitalism and over-consumption
into life.”
Navajo and Hopi students founded Black Mesa Water Coalition at Northern
Arizona State University in 2001. “It is a youth-led, multi-cultural
organization, primarily Navajo and Hopi youths,” Long said.
“We are working on so many issues. We started off with protecting
the water and it led us on this trail to Nevada. We followed the water
and it led us to a power station in Nevada.” The Mohave Generating
Station in McLaughlin, Nev., is where coal from Black Mesa mined by
Peabody Coal is transported by slurry using water from the N-aquifer
water. Black Mesa’s coal becomes energy and that power, provides
energy for millions of people in the Southwest, making Black Mesa water
and coal a complex issue of power, economics, cultural and environmental
issues, he said.
Robert Nutlouis, a Navajo from Pinon, is pursuing a B.A. in Applied
Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University. He is among the founders
of Black Mesa Water Coalition.
Since the Coalition formed, Nutlouis has spoken at the Tonatierra human
rights conference in Phoenix, protested oil and gas leases on sacred
lands at state offices in Santa Fe, N.M., and joined Black Mesa Trust’s
“Water is Life” conference in Kykotsmovi on the Hopi Nation.
Opposing the tactics of the Forest Service regarding a plan to use wastewater
to make snow for ski resort expansion on San Francisco Peaks, Nutlouis
said, “There is a lot of cultural insensitivity.”
Nutlouis said most people proposing the plan do not understand that
spreading wastewater on the holy mountain would desecrate more than
just the top of the mountain. “It is like taking a pig to a Jewish
temple and placing it on the altar - then saying only the altar was
desecrated.”
Hopi members of Black Mesa Water Coalition are traveling and speaking
out for protection of the land and water. They joined Tonatierra’s
Human Rights Conference in Phoenix in September.
“People are starting to find out what has been happening to us
all these years,” said Jonah Hill, Hopi-Quechan, traditional artist
and herbalist from Kykotsmovi Village.
Hill said Peabody Coal has been pumping 3.3 million gallons of the pure
underground water daily for coal slurry from Black Mesa to Nevada for
electricity production since 1965 and the springs are drying up. The
animals, too, suffer from mining pollution and traditional hunting is
no longer possible.
“Rabbits have tumors on their necks.”
Cindy Naha, Hopi-Tewa from Hano Village, said since the enormous coal
beds were discovered on Black Mesa in 1908, Hopi and Navajo have suffered.
After the discovery, traditional governments of councils and elders
began to disappear with the U.S. policy of the Indian Reorganization
Act. It was the first step towards the United States government seizing
tribal lands for energy development.
“If the water goes, what will become of our people?”
Encouraging other young Indian people to rise up and struggle, Naha
said when the work is done from the heart, anything is possible.
On the campus of Northern Arizona University, the Black Mesa Water Coalition
is gifted with a unique faculty sponsor who joined the Save the Peaks
press conference at City Hall to speak out against the plan to use recycled
water for snowmaking on San Francisco Peaks. Anthropology professor
Miguel Vasquez spoke of waking up in the great beauty of these pines
and mountains.
Vasquez spoke of the moral ecology and spiritual responsibility to preserve
the land and protect it from exploitation. He also spoke of the preciousness
of water. “The world’s demand for water is exceeding its supply.”
Warning for the future, he said, “Wars will be fought not just
for oil, but water as well.”
Source: Indian Country Today
Prognosis gloomy for already ailing environment
By Diego Cevallos
Mexico City, Mar. 6 (IPS) — If Latin America and the Caribbean
continue on the path to market liberalization without changes in values
or structural transformations, by 2032 the environment will be in deep
crisis, warns a broad investigation sponsored by the United Nations Environment
Program (UNEP).
This “worst possible” scenario does not seem outrageous because
it is based on the projection of variables that already exist today, Kaveh
Zahedi, coordinator of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO ) Latin America
and Caribbean Study 2003, told IPS.
The inhabitants of the region lose as many as 11 years off their lives
due to causes related to environmental degradation, says the report.
The study, which the regional UNEP office presented in Mexico this week,
is the most complete environmental assessment of Latin America and the
Caribbean to date.
In the past 30 years, environmental deterioration has worsened, evident
in critical areas such as loss of forests and biodiversity, degradation
of soil and water supplies, urban pollution — and the effect of all
this on the health of the region’s population, says the report.
“The current reality is leading us to a worse future,” said
Zahedi, who is also regional coordinator UNEP’s division for early
warning and assessment.
But there is room for hope. If the region were to begin a profound transformation
towards sustainable development, which would imply a change in public
values, or if at least reforms were made with emphasis on the environment,
allowing regulatory intervention in the market, the future could be different,
suggests the study.
In the meantime, and despite the efforts and promises made by governments,
there is little encouragement to be found in the environmental map of
the region, which is also the world leader in the disparity between rich
and poor.
GEO is a scientific analysis which proves that environmental deterioration
is advancing, “something nobody can deny any longer,” said Zahedi.
The study conducted by a group of experts and research centers over the
past three years was entrusted to UNEP by Latin America’s environmental
officials, who meet periodically to discuss related agreements and policies.
The idea of the environment ministers is that GEO will serve to guide
their strategies for achieving full sustainable development — still
a distant goal.
According to GEO figures, based on information from the Economic Commission
for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a UN regional agency, there
were 225 million Latin Americans living in poverty in 2003.
From 1990 to 2000, Latin America lost 4.6 percent of its forest cover,
that is, 46.7 million hectares.
During that decade, annual deforestation in the region was 0.5 percent,
more than double the world average.
For these and other reasons, such as ever-worsening pollution, one-fifth
of the regional population is exposed to air contaminants that surpasses
the recommended limits, especially in the region’s mega-cities and
the major metropolitan areas. This problem is also expanding to small
and medium-sized cities, says the study.
Atmospheric pollution is an ongoing threat to the health of more than
80 million people in the region, and each year causes 2.3 million cases
of respiratory insufficiency in children and some 100,000 cases of chronic
bronchitis in adults.
Biological diversity is one of Latin America’s strong points, but
it also faces difficult challenges. The study underscores extinction of
species, introduction of exotic flora and fauna, pressures created by
habitat loss, fragmentation of ecosystems, and trafficking in endangered
plant and animal species.
Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, four of the countries with the greatest
biodiversity in the region and the world, are home to 75 percent of the
western hemisphere’s endangered bird species.
Various estimates indicate that South America is the source of 47 percent
of the illegally captured wild animals worldwide.
Under current consumption patterns, warns GEO, water will become one of
the critical issues that the region will have to confront in the coming
decade.
This gloomy prognosis exists despite the fact that Latin America, which
represents 15 percent of the world’s land mass and eight percent
of the global population, holds one-third of the Earth’s freshwater
resources.
The coastlines are also in danger. Thirty-three percent of the seashores
of the Mesoamerican sub region — extending from southern Mexico through
Central America — are seriously threatened by degradation, as is
half of the seaboard of South America.
Despite the discouraging panorama in most environmental areas, GEO points
to some positive signs, such as the fact that the past 30 years have seen
an intensification of “internalization” of the environmental
agenda.
Latin America now has new legal and institutional resources to attend
to these matters, and the participation of civil society is on the rise,
states the report.
Increased transparency and access to information, as well as the deterioration
of the environment itself, have helped raise public awareness about the
impacts of today’s patterns of production and consumption, and with
it, greater citizen participation in the search for solutions, it adds.
In Zahedi’s opinion, the future could be different because children
today, unlike previous generations, have already begun to incorporate
concepts of sustainable development and respect for the environment as
personal values.
When they grow up and lead the region, the outlook could change, and the
environment may once again breathe a little easier, said the UNEP official.
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