US plays dirty as planet chokes
Squabbles as America fights to avoid reducing emissions

By Robin McKie

The Hague, Netherlands, Nov. 19— It took a surprisingly short time to sandbag the Hague yesterday. In only two hours, environmentalists managed to surround the city’s great conference center with a 5ft wall made up of 50,000 sacks filled with soil and grit.

The activists -- some from Latvia and Estonia, a few from Japan, several coach-loads from Britain and hundreds from other nations -- had gathered to lay siege to the building in which diplomats and civil servants were trying to thrash out ground rules for limiting global warming. It was a maneuver replete with irony.

Rising industrial emissions of carbon dioxide are now heating the world alarmingly, say scientists, and are accelerating natural climatic warming, threatening to melt ice caps and flood low-lying areas. Hence the sandbag, a particularly potent symbol in climate-vulnerable Holland.

However, the real eyebrow-raiser was the speed of the Friends of the Earth stunt which contrasted starkly with the lumbering negotiations that have been taking place within the convention center. For the past week, delegates have been trying to hammer out a framework for a climate-saving deal that their ministerial bosses can then knock into shape when they arrive tomorrow.

There have been few signs they are going to succeed. Despite evidence that the greenhouse effect is now at its strongest in 20 million years, that Europe’s growing season has lengthened by 11 days in the past century and that scientists are predicting all Arctic ice will have disappeared by 2080, delegates remain obsessed with the minutiae of conference protocol. As one leading UK negotiator put it: “This could turn out to be the most important conference in human history, yet all we get is haggling over trivia.”

These squabbles threaten to erupt into full-scale war, particularly between the United States and Europe, which began an alarming exchange of insults late last week. One European Union statement even accused the Americans of “threatening the integrity” of the entire climate change convention.

At heart, the problem is simple: how can the world halt the global warming that is increasing global temperatures, sea levels and climatic instability? At the Kyoto environment summit three years ago, the industrialized nations agreed, in principle, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to a figure 7 per cent below their 1990 output. Unfortunately, no one has been able to agree on how to achieve this, or even to ratify the Kyoto summit. That is the purpose of the Hague summit.

The prime problem is the US, the world’s greatest emitter of carbon dioxide, which presses, with increasing insistence, that it should be spared from reducing its output and should instead be allowed to create new forests, both in the US and the Third World. These trees and plants, known collectively as carbon sinks, will soak up all that carbon dioxide, say US delegates, and will obviate the need for Americans to abandon their profligacy.

The US also believes that by planting crops specially designed to soak up carbon dioxide, it could extend its ‘sink’ philosophy from the wild to the farmyard, thus strengthening its case for unabated industrial emissions. It was this idea, introduced at the Hague last week, that provoked the outburst of fury by Europe’s delegates.

Other US agricultural innovations circulating last week included the idea of feeding sheep, pigs and cows special anti-flatulence diets to reduce levels of methane, another greenhouse gas. This notion merely induced derisive laughter.

Europe and most developing nations, as well as most non-governmental agencies, scorn the idea of carbon sinks. Only the real thing -- cuts in emissions -- will definitely work, they say.

In the words of the Environment Minister Michael Meacher, who will lead Britain’s negotiations this week: “There is no substitute for taking domestic action to reduce the emissions by burning less fossil fuels.”

Yet America remains obsessed with the idea it can use the dollar to buy itself out of trouble and has proposed other ploys including the concept of buying ‘carbon credits’ from countries such as Russia and Ukraine whose industrial collapse over the past decade means they have already reached their Kyoto reduction targets. The US wants to buy these non-existent “saved” emissions to put towards its own target.

In short, the nation with the greatest output of carbon dioxide, the cheapest gasoline in the West, and the most inefficient energy industry is struggling to avoid any domestic action that might help the planet. Its delegates claim its stance is scientifically valid, though there is little evidence at the Hague to support the claim. For example, planting trees that gobble up carbon dioxide is a dangerous game, as researchers at Britain’s Hadley climate center revealed. “Yes, trees do soak up gases produced by factories but they also contribute to global warming,” said a meteorologist, Richard Betts.

“Trees have dark leaves and bark and stand out against light backgrounds, particularly in higher, snowy latitudes. As a result, they stop sunlight being reflected back into space. Our calculations show that in places like Canada and Siberia, planting new trees would actually increase global warming.”

So is it simply a matter of Americans trying to keep their styles of life while the rest of the world struggles just to keep their lives?

Many at the Hague privately think so, although the US delegation, emollient and polished to a man, insisted theirs was the only way forward. “We have just as much to lose as the rest of the world,” said David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of state for international environmental affairs.

At the end of the conference its organizer, the United Nations, hopes that a group of developed nations that represent a total output of 55 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions will be able to ratify the Kyoto protocol. If that magic number is reached, the deal becomes an international treaty. However, without the cooperation of the US, which accounts for 24 per cent of the world’s total output of carbon dioxide, there is little likelihood of success.

And so the world’s nations will square up to their climatic “High Noon” at the Hague tomorrow. On one side, Europe -- led by Britain and Germany and supported by the developing nations and green groups -- is pressing for real emission cuts. On the other, the US is backed by Canada, Australia and Japan, nations which are desperate to avoid taking any action that might risk the wrath of voters.

These, then, are the hate figures of the environment movement, a motley crew that also includes any representative of an oil company, China, which wants to build more nuclear power stations, and the environmentalists’ special bogeyman, Saudi Arabia, which is trying to scrap the entire Kyoto protocol because it fears a downturn in gasoline use.

The Saudis claim they should be compensated by the rest of the world for any loss of revenue. “Nothing is too outrageous for them,” said Kerr Davies, of Greenpeace.

It is against this background that more than 2,000 official delegates have struggled over the fine print of the Kyoto protocol in a bid to make it acceptable to their political masters. Most negotiations have been conducted behind closed doors, though those held in open session may as well have been held in secret so inscrutable is their terminology, with phrases like “biome-specific threshold values” and “verified sink credits” causing nothing but general bafflement.

Added to these hard-pressed bureaucrats are 3,500 official observers from 180 nations and more than 700 journalists, as well as a phalanx of interested parties, including green groups, wind generator suppliers and climate researchers. “We have about 80 different meetings going on, as well as press conferences,” said the conference organizer, Michael Williams. “This is bigger than any UN arms conference. I don’t think there has been a bigger, more complex conference.”

It may be the biggest conference show on Earth. But will it save the planet? The conference president, Jan Pronk, warned delegates on Friday that if they could not agree on a deal that was “environmentally credible” then the “whole thing will fall apart.” Given America’s hardening stance and Europe’s mounting irritation, such an agreement looks unlikely.

The best the world can hope for is continued negotiations in coming months. The worst is an American victory, won through its vast industrial muscle.

As Lars Georg Jensen, of the World Wildlife Fund, said: “If America gets its way, it won’t cut emissions until its people can actually smell the carbon in the air. It will be too late for the rest of us by then, of course.”

Source: London Observer

NAFTA flouts global toxic waste dumping treaty

Toronto, Canada, Nov. 15— Environmentalists expressed outrage at what is the first known instance of a trade treaty openly undermining and flouting a multilateral environmental agreement (MEA). The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) tribunal ruled Monday that the Canadian government must pay compensation of up to $50 million to S.D. Myers Inc., an Ohio-based toxic waste disposal company which claims it was denied the “right” to import hazardous polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) waste from Canada while Canada banned the export of PCBs. Under NAFTA rules, there is no further chance for Canada to appeal the decision.

Canada, which is a party to the United Nations international treaty known as the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, argued correctly that their 1995-1997 PCB export ban was justified under the Basel Convention. Under the Basel Convention, member parties to that treaty are obligated to reduce their exports of hazardous wastes to a minimum and instead provide adequate technical capacity for dealing with the wastes at home.

However, the NAFTA tribunal argued that the Basel Convention does not obligate countries to avoid transboundary movements and “where a party has a choice among equally effective and reasonably available alternatives for complying … with a Basel Convention obligation, it is obliged to choose the alternative that is … least inconsistent … with the NAFTA.”

“The proponents of Free Trade treaties such as the WTO and NAFTA have been telling environmentalists for a long time now that they would refrain from undermining environmental treaties convened on a multilateral basis,” said Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network (BAN). “Now we see that three lawyers, representing a trade agreement consisting of but 3 nations has the arrogance to shoot down a treaty with over 130 member parties,” he said. “The very worst fears of those that protested in Seattle have come to pass.”

The Basel Action Network (BAN), an international environmental network which serves as watchdog with respect to international waste dumping, claims that the tribunal erred seriously by failing to cite and note that the Basel Convention (in Article 4.9) does explicitly limit transboundary movement to 3 possibilities: a) when the state of export lacks adequate technical capacity; b) when the wastes in question are required as a raw material for recycling or recovery industries in the State of import; or c) according to criteria decided by the parties as long as such criteria do not differ from the objectives of the Convention.

In this case, Canada possessed adequate technical capacity, PCBs are not ever recycled these days, but rather destroyed, and in fact the Basel parties have produced no criteria with respect to Article 4.9. Thus BAN argues that under the Basel Convention, Canada not only had the right to ban the export of PCB waste, but was actually obliged to do so.

Further, as Canada is a Party to the Basel Convention and the United States is not, the only hazardous waste trade that is allowed between the countries must be subject to a specially allowed bilateral agreement. Yet nowhere is it stated in the treaty that countries are obligated to enter into bilateral agreements or make use of them at all times, particularly with respect to non-parties.

“The entire reason the Basel Convention came into existence was to minimize the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes,” said Jim Puckett. “NAFTA has just told Canada that it must actually violate the Basel Convention and all that it was designed to do, yet nowhere has it been stated that NAFTA holds dominance over the Basel Convention or any other international treaty. We urge Canada to refuse to abide by this outrageous and dangerous ruling.”

Source: Basel Action Network: www.ban.org

Shell receives Greenwash award for “clouding the issue”

By Kenny Bruno

Nov. 15— As the Sixth UN conference on Climate Change in the Hague gets underway, one of the planet’s largest corporate climate culprits has dared to raise its profile by taking out an advertisement in the Financial Times about the global warming issue. Shell, the world’s third largest oil company, is continuing its clever but misleading series “Profits or Principles” with its “Clouding the Air” ad.

The ad is pretty, of course, and it sounds reasonable, caring and honest. But Shell has a history of “greenwash” — green-themed advertising and public relations aimed at presenting an environmentally responsible image. So let’s take a deeper look at the “Clouding the Air” ad.

Shell asks: “Is the burning of fossil fuels and increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the air a serious threat or just a lot of hot air?” It sounds like a tough question, but it’s not. There is overwhelming scientific opinion that both fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions are a serious threat. The main reason for the “hot air” theory is a major effort by the oil industry, among others, to discredit climate change science in the eyes of policy makers and the public. Shell has been among the companies questioning the science since 1988, although in recent years it has finally admitted that enough is known to call for a precautionary approach.

Shell says that “last year, we renewed our commitment not only to meet the agreed Kyoto targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but to exceed them.” This is a fine step, but not nearly as significant as it might seem. Like the other fossil fuel giants, Shell’s impact on the climate stems not primarily from its use of oil and gas, but from its production. Oil produced by Shell alone accounts for more carbon dioxide than most countries in the world. Steps to address this much larger role would be significant, but instead Shell continues a worldwide effort to locate and produce more oil and gas that the world cannot afford to burn if it is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Shell says, “We’re working to increase the provision of cleaner burning natural gas...” In theory, natural gas leads to somewhat lower carbon emissions than burning of oil for the same amount of energy. But if you count gas leaks, known as fugitive emissions, the difference between gas and oil for the climate is slim to none, and impacts on the local environment and communities are similar to those of oil. Natural gas is at best an incremental improvement over oil, and at worst a distraction from the real challenge of moving our economies beyond fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, other ads in the “Profits or Principles” series tout Shell’s commitment to renewable energy sources. They feature Shell photos of lush green forests accompanied by earnest discussion of this purported commitment. But, according to Greenpeace, Shell spends a miniscule 0.6% of its annual investments on renewables. In true greenwash fashion, Shell’s actions do not match its words.

Says Shell, “It’s all part of our commitment to sustainable development.” Their ad writer should read an essay in Shell’s own glossy “Profits and Principles” booklet. Buried in the expensive and lovely pages of that publication is this nugget of truth: “…a sustainable oil company is a contradiction in terms.”

“Cloud the Issue or Clear the Air?” Long-time Kyoto Protocol watchers are aware of the powerful role the oil industry has played in slowing and weakening the agreements on climate change. Self-proclaimed corporate environmentalist leaders like Shell and BP take credit for voluntary initiatives that do not harm their bottom line, while allowing others to do the dirty work of making sure international agreements do nothing to curtail their activities.

The pictures and copy in Shell’s ads are clear. But in the atmosphere of the climate negotiations, they have clouded the issue once again.

Source: Corporate Watch: www.corpwatch.org

Contaminated corn
dumped on EPA

San Francisco, California, Nov. 16— Greenpeace activists today dumped two tons of StarLink-contaminated corn in front of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) local headquarters. The activists, wearing biohazard suits, demanded that the agency deny approval of the gene-altered corn for human consumption, as requested by the corn’s producer, Aventis, due to scientific concerns about potential health risks.

EPA has refused to approve the animal feed corn for human consumption due to its potential to cause food allergies. The corn has widely contaminated the US food supply, resulting in the recall of nearly 300 food products. Costs to Aventis from the recall are estimated to approach $1 billion dollars. To forestall further losses, the company is now seeking temporary approval of the feed corn for human consumption.

“The EPA must not risk public health to protect corporate profits,” said Kimberley Wilson, Greenpeace genetic engineering campaigner. “By approving StarLink, EPA would be rewarding the company for unlawfully contaminating the nation’s food supply.”

StarLink corn produces an insecticidal protein called Cry9C that could cause dangerous allergic reactions in some people. The EPA’s review of StarLink found that many of the allergenicity data submitted on StarLink were “either inconclusive or indicate that Cry9C exhibits some characteristics of known allergens.” In October, an EPA advisory panel heard from scientists who warned that there is no known safe level of allergens in food.

“For two years, EPA has refused to approve StarLink because scientists say the genetically engineered corn could cause dangerous allergies,” added Wilson. “But now that the industry is facing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, the agency says they will make a decision in less than two months.”

The Greenpeace activists were joined outside EPA by members of the Organic Consumers Association, Pesticide Action Network, the Ecology Center, Center for Food Safety, and the Ruckus Society, demanding that the EPA protect the food supply from StarLink corn.

“EPA’s own scientific advisors say they don’t know if this corn is safe for people,” said Simon Harris of the Organic Consumers Association. “The health of Americans should not be put at risk simply for the convenience of the biotech industry.” On November 28, EPA will hear from a Scientific Advisory panel that will present its findings by December 1. EPA is expected to rule shortly after that.

Source: ban@dojo.tao.ca