Greening The Globe: Earth News

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Published on Thursday, September 20, 2007 by OneWorld.net
Groups Urge New Drive to Fight Oil-Climate Crisis

<img align="left" src="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0920_04.jpg" border="0" style="margin-right:6px" alt="" width="" height="" />WASHINGTON - Activists and foreign policy experts held a public forum this weekend to launch what they hope will be “a combined international movement” to respond to the threats of climate change and the depletion of oil and other cheap energy sources.

They said no less than “planetary survival” is at stake.

“Confronting the Triple Crisis” brought 60 speakers from 16 countries to Washington, DC, the capital of a nation “whose way of life is one of the key drivers behind the global crises we face,” according to a statement from conference organizer International Forum on Globalization (IFG).

The 3-day summit was the first of its kind to examine climate change, peak oil, and the extinction of species as one interconnected problem with common solutions, according to the IFG and co-sponsor Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

“We hope that this diversity [of speakers] and cross-fertilization will help build a really strong movement,” said IFG co-director Jerry Mander, addressing the opening session.

Speakers urged attendees to lobby their governments for more proactive climate change and energy policies and to make specific adjustments in their own lives to help mitigate the challenges the world faces. Among other personal initiatives, they suggested using more public transportation and consuming fewer — not just “greener” — products.

The Forum, which the organizers called a “Teach-In” to emphasize the activism they hoped it would inspire, coincided with the IPS and IFG’s joint release of a major scientific report critiquing biofuels like ethanol, the plant-based fuel that has become the centerpiece of energy proposals from U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

“The False Promises of Industrial Biofuel Production” addresses the positioning of biofuels as a panacea for the imminent emergency of global fuel deficiency, which is being propelled by “diminishing access to oil reserves and geopolitical conflicts.” Corn ethanol, in particular, was singled out by experts at the forum as a counterproductive use of resources that is exacerbating hunger in poorer areas of the world.

The same amount of corn needed to fill a Sport Utility Vehicle tank one time could feed a person for a whole year, Mander emphasized.

The Teach-In also coincided with the publication of the “Manifesto on Global Economic Transitions,” an international call to action that upholds the idea of “less and local” — buying fewer things and those that are produced nearby — as a way to ensure a global transition towards a safer, more equitable, and sustainable world.

The speakers included leaders of human rights, indigenous rights, and anti-war movements, as well as economists, scientists, and agricultural activists searching for alternative solutions to climate change.

Their efforts to reform global economic and climate change policies is “a marathon, not a race,” said Mander, counseling persistence to the opening-day crowd of about 500 activists and other interested Washingtonians.

Piling a host of disheartening statistics on the audience about the state of today’s planet, Mander added that “with great crisis also comes great opportunities,” and contemporary generations hold the potential to accelerate transitions to more sustainable standards of living.

According to Mander, the “Triple Crisis” is rooted in a globalized economic system that prioritizes exponential growth, which is in turn dependent on the unrestrained use of natural resources. This growth is also propelled by a near-universal culture of consumerism and the destruction of societies that are sustainable, such as indigenous and agricultural communities. Finally, Mander added, population pressures, which continue to intensify, exacerbate all these realities.

Vandana Shiva, and Indian activist and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology, emphasized that “we must reclaim the generative concept of energy” and bring people back into the process of generating energy, not just consuming it.

Similarly, American David Korten of the Positive Futures Network advocated for a new economy based on healthy communities, families, and living systems.

“[We must strive] to live well because we do not aspire to live better than others,” said Council of Canadians chair Maude Barlow, summing up the central message of the forum and echoing the words of Bolivia’s president and indigenous rights leader Evo Morales.

“Confronting the Triple Crisis” was held at the George Washington University Lisner Auditorium and co-sponsored by the Progressive Student Union of George Washington University, Greenpeace-USA, the Nation Institute, the Sierra Club, Pacifica Radio Station WPFW/89.3, and SALSA, the Social Action and Leadership School for Activists of the Institute for Policy Studies.

© 2007 OneWorld. net

Groups Urge New Drive to Fight Oil-Climate Crisis - CommonDreams.org

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Published on Thursday, September 20, 2007 by Inter Press Service
‘Incentives Offered to Destroy Forests’

<img align="left" src="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0920_01.jpg" border="0" style="margin-right:6px" alt="" width="" height="" />Instead of providing positive incentives to tropical nations to conserve their rainforests and so reduce greenhouse gases emissions, the world indirectly gives “perverse incentives” to destroy them by demanding goods produced by intensive logging, a leading environmental activist says.
by Julio Godoy

VIENNA - “The Kyoto protocol does not give incentives to rainforest nations to protect their forests,” Kevin Conrad, special envoy of the environment and climate change permanent mission of Papua New Guinea to the United Nations told IPS.

The Kyoto protocol is the international agreement that establishes how industrialised countries should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by an average of five percent relative to 1990 levels. The treaty does not assign targets to developing nations.

One of the instruments of the Kyoto protocol is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an arrangement that allows industrialised countries with a GHG reduction commitment to invest in projects in developing countries that reduce emissions. This then counts towards their domestic ‘clean’ record. Conservation of rainforests is not included in such projects.

Between 1989 and 1995, global emissions as a result of deforestation amounted to 5,000 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, studies show.

“Instead of giving us incentives to protect our forests, the world gives countries like mine incentives to destroy them,” Conrad said. Coffee, soy beans, sugar, flowers and wood furniture, he said, can only be produced in developing countries through systematic deforestation.

“Tropical rainforest nations deserve to be treated equally,” Conrad said. “If we reduce deforestation, we must receive fair compensation for reductions. A tonne (of carbon dioxide) is a tonne is a tonne.”

Conrad is also executive director of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations (CRN), a worldwide coalition of developing countries with significant rainforests cover. The coalition has a secretariat at Columbia University in New York, and facilitates development of proactive strategies towards environmentally sustainable economic growth.

Among the causes of deforestation in developing countries, other than the production of export goods, appear to be the need for cheap energy, and infrastructure projects, such as roads, mining and power lines.

Deforestation is particularly dramatic in Brazil and Indonesia, where some five million hectares of forest are lost every year due to such causes, and more recently, the plantation of palm trees to produce bio-fuels.

Other tropical countries such as Sudan, Burma and Zambia lose more than 400,000 hectares per year of forest. Africa is losing the most forest, with some five million hectares lost every year between 1990 and 2000, according to the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA).

The RFA, produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in cooperation with governments and specialists in the field, is a comprehensive assessment of forests.

Conrad told IPS that loss of rainforest has a large environmental impact, from degradation of the quality of water in lakes and rivers to decimation of biological diversity, damage to ecosystems, and prevention of natural processes such as pollination.

According to CRN, deforestation threatens to annihilate some 60 percent of all species.

Conversely, protecting rainforests represents major benefits for the environment, since it is a significant source of carbon emission reductions outside the framework of the Kyoto protocol. In addition, it can create substantial new revenue streams to addresses poverty in rural areas.

Conrad has called for a new approach to conserving rainforests, to be considered in negotiations towards a new international framework on climate change from 2012, when the operative period of the Kyoto protocol ends. The proposal is likely to come up at the conference the United Nations is organising in Bali in Indonesia in December.

According to the CRN, a new approach should begin in 2008. Conrad said new initiatives must consider both aforestation and reforestation. Aforestastion is the artificial establishment of forests in non-forest land, while reforestation is re-establishment of forest in an area previously under forest cover.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

‘Incentives Offered to Destroy Forests’Instead of providing positive incentives to tropical nations to conserve their rainforests and so reduce greenhouse gases emissions, the world indirectly gives “perverse incentives” to de

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Published on Thursday, September 20, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Oil and Betrayal in Iraq
by George Lakoff

Alan Greenspan should know. It was oil all along. The former head of the Federal Reserve writes in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Greenspan even advised Bush that “taking Saddam Hussein out was essential” to protect oil supplies.

Yes, we suspected it. In a deep sense, many of us knew it, just as those in Washington did. But now it’s in our face. Greenspan put the mother of all facts in front of our noses, and we can no longer be in denial. The US invaded Iraq for the oil.

Think about what it means for our troops and for the people of Iraq. Our troops were told, and believed because they trusted their president, that they were in Iraq to protect America, to protect their families, their homes, their friends and neighbors, our democracy. But they were betrayed . Those troops fought and died and were maimed and had their marriages break up for oil company profits. An utter betrayal of our men and women in uniform and their families, a betrayal of their sacrifices, day after day, month after month, year and year - and for some, forever! Children growing up fatherless or motherless. Men and women without legs or arms or faces - for oil company profits.

And hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, more maimed, and millions made refugees. For oil profits.

And what profits they are! Take a look at the study of Iraqi oil contracts by Global Policy Forum, a consultant to the United Nations Security Council. Or read this editorial from The Daily Times in Pakistan.

The contracts that the Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqi government to accept are not just about the distribution of oil among the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The contracts call for 30-year exclusive rights for British and American oil companies, rights that cannot be revoked by future Iraqi governments. They are called “production sharing agreements” (or “PSA’s”) - a legalistic code word. The Iraqi government would technically own the oil, but could not control it; only the companies could do that. ExxonMobil and others would invest in developing the infrastructure for the oil (drilling, oil rigs, refining) and would get 75% of the “cost oil” profits, until they got their investment back. After that, they would own the infrastructure (paid for by oil profits), and then get 20% of oil profits after that (twice the usual rate). The profits are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And the Iraqi people would have no democratic control over their own major resource. No other Middle East country has such an arrangement.

Incidentally, polls show the Iraqi people overwhelmingly against “privatization”, but “production sharing agreements” were devised so they are technically not “privatization,” since the government would still own the oil but not control it. The ruse is there so that the government can claim it is not privatizing.

But none of this will work without military protection for the oil companies. That is what would keep us there indefinitely. The name for this is our “vital interests.”

Greenspan’s revelation and the contracts need to be discussed openly. The question must be asked, “Is our military there for the sake of oil?”

I have been struck by the use of the word “victory” by the right wing, especially by its propaganda arm, Freedom’s Watch. Usually, “victory” is used in reference to a war between countries over territory, where there is a definable enemy. That is not the case in Iraq, where we have for four years had an occupation, not a “war,” and there has been no clear enemy. We have mostly been fighting Iraqis we were supposed to be rescuing. “Victory” makes no sense for such an occupation. And even Petraeus has said that only a political, not a military, settlement is possible. In what sense can keeping troops there for 9 or 10 years or longer, as Petraeus has suggested, be a “victory”?

What is most frightening is that they may mean what they say, that they may have a concept of “victory” that makes sense to them but not to the rest of the country. If the goal of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been to guarantee access to Iraqi oil for the next 30 years, then any result guaranteeing oil profits for American oil companies would count as “victory.” Suppose the present killing and chaos were to continue, forcing us to keep our troops there indefinitely, but allowing the oil companies to prosper under our protection. That would be a “victory.” Or if the Iraqi army and police force were to develop in a few years and keep order there protecting American investments and workers, that too would be “victory.” If the country broke up into three distinct states or autonomous governments, that too would be “victory” as long as oil profits were guaranteed and Americans in the oil industry protected. And it doesn’t matter if a Republican president keeps the troops there or a Democratic president does. It is still an oil company “victory” - and a victory for Bush.

Indeed, Kurdistan’s PSA contract last week with Hunt Oil suggests the latter form of “victory.” As Paul Krugman observed in the New York Times on September 14, “the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.” Hunt Oil seems to have had the first taste of “victory.”

If that is “victory,” what is “defeat” and who is being “defeated?” The troops who would have to stay to protect the oil investments would, person by person, suffer defeat - a defeat of the spirit and, for too many, of the body. And most of America would suffer a defeat, especially our taxpayers who have paid a trillion dollars that could have gone for health care for all, for excellent schools and college educations, for rebuilding Louisiana and Mississippi, for shoring up our infrastructure and bridges, and for protecting our environment. Victory for the oil companies, defeat for most of America.

Is Greenspan right? Is this what “victory” could possibly mean? I do not want to even think that the answers might be “yes.” The thought itself is too disgusting. But Greenspan has put the questions before us, and we have a duty to pursue the answers. Because, if the answer is even half “yes,” then the troops and most Americans have been, and continue to be, betrayed beyond measure.

Perhaps the most honest and straightforward way to pursue such answers would be for Congress to frame the issue directly in terms of oil, as Greenspan did. Here’s a way to do it: The Constitution gives Congress authority over military matters through its power to fund continued military action. Without such funding, the troops cannot continue. Suppose Congress were to pass a bill saying that no funding would be forthcoming for military action in Iraq unless the Iraqi government drops all provisions for PSA’s - production sharing agreements - in its legislation. This would actually give the Iraqi government sovereignty over its oil indefinitely and take oil control away from Western oil companies. Even proposing such a bill seriously would have two effects: To raise the constitutional issue: the president has been overriding the constitution. And it would bring the oil issue front and center, so we can all see if “victory” is really about oil interests.

Suppose Greenspan is right, that oil was a primary factor in the Iraq invasion, that “victory” means victory for oil companies, and that “sacrifice” means sacrifice for the American oil industry. While I held the very possibility that this might be true, I clicked on the following website. Perhaps you will feel as I felt.

George Lakoff is the author of Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, Whose Freedom?, and Thinking Points (with the Rockridge Institute staff). He is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and a founding senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute.

Oil and Betrayal in Iraq - CommonDreams.org

<img src="http://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/569/medium/buryoil.jpg" border="0" style="margin-right:6px" alt="" width="400" height="300" />

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United States Must Reduce Heat Trapping Emissions by at Least 80 Percent by Mid-Century to Avoid Dangerous Warming

WASHINGTON - September 20 - To avoid the most severe effects of climate change, the world must stabilize the concentration of heat trapping gases in the atmosphere at no more than 450 parts per million, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and scientists at Stanford University and Texas Tech University. (To read the report, go to: A Target for U.S. Emissions Reductions.) This limit aims to avoid exceeding a two degree Celsius increase in a global average temperature above pre-industrial levels (roughly equivalent to a two degree Fahrenheit rise above current temperatures).

Stabilizing above this level would likely lead to severe risks to natural systems and human health. Sustained warming of this magnitude could, for example, result in the extinction of many species and increase the threat of extensive melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

"Hitting this target for heat trapping gases would give us a fighting chance to avoid the worst consequences of global warming," said Dr. Amy Luers, UCS California Climate Manager and one of the study authors. "The study assumes both developing and industrialized countries would cut their emissions to avoid such a temperature increase. However, even with other countries taking aggressive action, the United States must make deep cuts."

The study found the United States must cut its emissions by at least 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050 if the world is to stay within the prescribed atmospheric concentration limit. According to the study, cutting emissions soon is essential.

"The cost of delay is high," said Dr. Michael D. Mastrandrea, research associate at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. "If we wait until 2020 to start emission reductions, we'll have to cut twice as fast than if we start in 2010 to meet the same target."

Policies under consideration in the United States vary in the timing and levels of emissions cuts they call for and many fail to achieve the minimum pollution cuts needed.

"This report makes clear that the United States must make meaningful cuts in global warming pollution, and soon, to reduce the risk of severe climate impacts," said Alden Meyer, UCS Director of Strategy and Policy. "President Bush should drop his opposition to mandatory emissions limits, and put forward a specific proposal to aggressively reduce U.S. emissions at the meeting of major emitting countries that he is hosting next week."

Congress must also act to help the world avoid the worst consequences of global warming. Several pieces of legislation have been introduced that set mandatory reductions, but only two bills would keep U.S. emissions within the overall limits called for in the UCS study. One measure was introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif), and the other by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. Founded in 1969, UCS is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has offices in Berkeley, California, and Washington, D.C. For more information, go to Union of Concerned Scientists.

Union of Concerned Scientists: US Must Reduce Heat Trapping Emissions by at Least 80% by Mid-Century to Avoid Dangerous Warming

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Published on Friday, September 21, 2007 by The San Francisco Chronicle
Record Sea Ice Melt This Summer Larger Than Texas and Alaska
by Jane Kay

Shattering previous records, the sea ice in the Arctic shrank 1 million square miles more this summer than the average melt over 25 years, an area larger than Alaska and Texas combined, according to NASA satellite data released Thursday.

Scientists at the federally financed National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado attributed the big melt to a global increase in ocean and air temperatures. The melting was made worse by a cloudless summer in the Arctic, the researchers said.



“The Arctic sea ice is the first signal, and the biggest signal, of the effects of rising global temperatures,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the center.

Data show the sea ice also is thinner. It’s breaking up earlier in the spring and is freezing over later in the fall. There are more days with greater expanses of open water.

That changes centuries-old patterns for Alaskans and others living in the Arctic Circle. They’re having to alter their land travel routes and how they store food. Traditional hunting is changing, and buildings are collapsing as the permafrost melts. Storm patterns are unpredictable - waves are eroding coastlines.

Some see benefits. The Northwest Passage stays open longer to vessel traffic between Europe and Asia, cutting the voyage from London to Tokyo to 9,950 miles. That voyage via the Suez Canal is 13,000 miles; the Panama Canal route is 14,300 miles. Also, less ice over the Arctic land means more space exposed for oil and gas extraction.

In other effects, Arctic wildlife such as the polar bear, the walrus, the ring seal and seabird species are finding it harder to find food and habitat, pushing them closer to extinction, scientists say.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Geological Survey scientists predicted that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears would be gone by 2050, including all of the Alaskan bears. The animals don’t do well when they are forced to come to land, and some bears appear to have drowned trying to make the long swim between the shrinking ice and the land. The federal government is considering listing the bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Walruses feed in near-shore shallow ocean water but keep calves on the sea ice. As the pack ice shrinks, the females face the choice of finding food or abandoning their young, according to Defender of Wildlife scientists who are monitoring the animals’ behavior.

Marine mammal researchers say that the Pacific gray whale also could be affected by a changing food supply in the Bering Sea as the climate warms.

Arctic temperatures are rising faster than the global average. The summer sea ice has shrunk about 8 percent each decade since the late 1970s, but that percentage is likely to be higher when the latest data are considered, Meier said.

On Thursday, after hearing about the new low in sea ice, Kassie Siegel, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned the federal government to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, said, “the stunning thing is that there’s less sea ice in the Arctic now than most climate models project for 2050.”

The USGS scientists who predicted the loss of polar bears also cautioned that they might be underestimating the animals’ decline because the models seem to be underestimating the ice loss, Siegel added.

NASA has been providing satellite images of the Arctic floating pack ice since 1979.

Scientists use a baseline average between 1979 and 2000 to compare with current sizes. There are usable data going back to the 1950s from vessel navigational reports. Sporadic satellite data started in the 1960s.

Melting sea ice doesn’t raise ocean levels as do melting glaciers and other land-based ice. But what happens in the Arctic affects the globe as a whole, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body of experts preparing studies of Earth’s physical functions as well as effects on humans and the economy.

The Arctic melt is expected to amplify the Earth’s warming, as there is less sea ice to reflect sunlight back into space and more dark ocean to absorb solar energy. Warmer water flowing from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and fresher water flowing into the North Atlantic from the Arctic also will change ocean temperatures and currents.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the local weather conditions in the Arctic this summer played into establishing the record low. A persistent high-pressure condition in June and July and into August meant fewer clouds to reflect energy into space. Instead, that energy gets absorbed in Earth’s surface and helps melt the ice.

The sea ice hit its annual low Sept. 16. After that date, the pack ice started to reform, and will reach its largest size in January or February.

“We have this long-term trend, but there is a lot of variability,” Meier said. “Some years it goes up. Some years it goes down.”

© 2007 San Francisco Chronicle
Record Sea Ice Melt This Summer Larger Than Texas and Alaska - CommonDreams.org

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The Chemical That Must Not Be Named
Published on Friday, September 21, 2007 by Inter Press Service

Delegates from 191 nations are on the verge of an agreement under the Montreal Protocol for faster elimination of ozone-depleting chemicals, but the United States insists it must continue to use the banned pesticide methyl bromide.
by Stephen Leahy

MONTREAL - Even as another enormous ozone hole forms over the Antarctic this week, the rest of the world appears to be giving in to U.S. demands despite the fact that the use of methyl bromide in developed countries was supposed to have been completely phased out by Jan. 1, 2005 under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

‘It’s a black mark on this meeting. It is the chemical that must not be named,’ said David Doniger, climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defence Council, a U.S. environmental group.

‘There is a powerful lobby group of strawberry and vegetable growers in Washington,’ Doniger told IPS.

Methyl bromide is a highly toxic fumigant pesticide which is injected into soil to sterilise it before planting crops. It is also used as a post-harvest decontaminant of products and storage areas. Although it is highly effective in eradicating pests such as nematodes, weeds, insects and rodents, it depletes the ozone layer and poses a danger to human health.

While alternatives exist for more than 93 percent of the applications of methyl bromide, some countries such as the U.S., Japan and Israel claimed that because of regulatory restrictions, availability, cost and local conditions, they had little choice but to continue its use as a pest control. And so despite the ban, the Montreal Protocol allows ‘critical use exemptions’ for countries to continue to use banned substances for a short period of time until they can find a substitute.

In 2006, the United States received an exemption to use 8,000 tonnes of methyl bromide, compared to 5,000 tonnes for the rest of the developed world combined.

At the 19th Meeting of the Parties here in Montreal, the committee reporting on methyl bromide use reported ‘excellent progress’ in the continuing phase-out of the chemical and that not many applications for critical use exemptions had been received. The notable exception continues to be the U.S., which has applied for 6,500 tonnes for 2008 and 5,000 tonnes for 2009, even as the rest of the developed world has dropped significantly to just 1,900 and 1,400 tonnes, respectively.

The delegate from Switzerland expressed concern that some countries were asking for large amounts and that 40 percent of the stocks were not being used for critical uses. The United States maintains a large inventory of methyl bromide in excess of 8,000 tonnes, but the U.S. representative said these would be used up by 2009.

Emissions of methyl bromide have an immediate impact on the ozone layer, noted Janos Mate of Greenpeace International.

‘Scientists think it has three to 10 times the impact of other chemicals,’ Mate told IPS.

The ozone layer will be at its ‘most delicate’ over next few decades before it begins to significantly recover. Climate change is slowing this recovery, and the impacts are not fully understood, he said.

The ozone layer is the part of the atmosphere 25 kilometres up that acts as a shield protecting life on Earth from damaging ultraviolet rays, which can cause sunburns, skin cancer and cataracts. The rays can also harm marine life.

In the past two years, ozone holes larger than Europe have opened over the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. The World Metrological Organisation reported this week that the hole is back and bigger than ever. And it could grow larger as spring returns to the southern hemisphere.

Climate change appears to playing a role in the formation of these holes. Paradoxically, as the Earth warms at the surface, in the polar regions the upper atmosphere is getting colder, creating just the right conditions for chemicals like chlorine and bromine to destroy ozone.

Last year, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that winds circling high above the far northern hemisphere have a much greater impact on upper stratospheric ozone levels than previously thought. Those winds appear to be increasing with climate change, translating into less ozone in the upper stratosphere.

Meantime, the U.S. growers lobby group is upset that the U.S. delegation isn’t pushing for higher volumes of methyl bromide, claiming that they could get far higher amounts under the Protocol’s rules because economically viable alternatives are not yet available.

‘It’s time to inject some common sense into this process,’ said Charles Hall of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association in a statement.

U.S. growers have never understood that methyl bromide is destroying the ozone layer, said Doniger.

Italy, Greece and Spain have nearly eliminated their use in agriculture, he added.

‘We’re all suffering with a thinner ozone layer just to benefit a few U.S. companies,’ said Mate.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service
Common Dreams | News & Views

How Hemp Can Help Solve This Problem: Cannabis As A Repellent And Pesticide

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Published on Friday, September 21, 2007 by The San Francisco Chronicle
The Fall of The Godmongers: Praise Jesus, It’s The Collapse of Evangelical Christian Rule in America. Rejoice!
by Mark Morford

Oh yes, by all means please take a moment to look around, ye who might be feeling a bit hopeful and optimistic right now.

Because indeed, you’ve got your wonderful and ever-accelerating green movement, your lovely mixed-blessing organic food movement and your rejuvenated attention to solar power and sustainable buildings and organic cotton and free-trade coffee and clean energy and CFLs and urban recycling and sleek gorgeous modern vibrator design to make hip women of the world swoon.

We’ve got urban smoking bans and Smart cars and women finally rising to the most powerful positions in the land. We’ve even got an increasing awareness (BushCo, the Middle East, and China gruesomely excepted) of industrial pollution and global warming, all maybe indicating a subtle but still profound shift away from traditional modes of waste and war and our everlasting thirst for death and all possibly pointing to a happy delicious karmic sea change toward light and health and love for all beings everywhere for all time, as the butterflies and bunnies and birds all hum and smile and sing. Mmm, utopian.

But wait, why stop there? While we’re wearing these swell rose-colored glasses of momentary progressive bliss, let us go one big step further.

Because right now, there is perhaps no greater item we as a struggling human ant farm can be grateful for, no single social emetic we can look to for inspiration or hope or a happy tingly sensation in our collective groinal region indicating a possible move away from our long-standing Dick-Cheney-in-hell attitude of shrill bleakness, alarmism and religious righteousness than the simply wonderful implosion of the evangelical Christian right that’s happening right now in America.

Do you know this clenched and panicky group? Of course you do. They’re the throngs of megachurch lemmings Karl Rove masterfully manipulated and rallied and whored to Bush’s very narrow advantage in two elections.

They’re the ones who’ve made all the headlines and influenced all sorts of laws and national policy changes lo, this past half-decade concerning everything from stem cell research to gay marriage to evolution, sanitized school textbooks to failed abstinence programs to RU-486 restrictions to silly anti-science rhetoric, the ones who gasped in horror at a woman’s bare nipple and made a disgusting mockery of Terri Schiavo and actually applauded when John Ashcroft spent $8,000 of taxpayer money to throw some heavy drapery over the shamefully exposed breasts of the bronze (female) Spirit of Justice statue in the Hall of Justice. And so on.

They are, in short, responsible for a great many of the most notable social and intellectual embarrassments in America since the new millennium took hold, and rest assured, we and the rest of the civilized world shall recall their bleak accomplishments for much of our natural born lives, and shudder.

Now then, your evidence of a new hope? Your reason for rejoicing? Right here: It seems the remaining core of politicized evangelicals, far from realizing its diminished influence and far from realizing the GOP has largely imploded and far from sensing, therefore, that it might perhaps be time to dial down some of its more unpopular, virulent agenda items, this group is actually aiming to step up its dogmatic demands from various GOP candidates this next election.

That’s right. They want more. Or rather, less.

Apparently, Bush’s GOP has let them down. They have not been content with BushCo’s anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-sex, pro-abstinence, anti-women, anti-science, pro-war, God-hates-Islam stance, nor have they been content with having their trembling hands around the throat of the preceding Republican Congress for half a decade and clearly they have been insufficiently humiliated by the happy slew of right-wing preachers and politicians who’ve been revealed as meth-loving, restroom-lurking, boy-fetishizing gay hypocrites.

According to the new plan, any current GOP candidate who now wants the valuable evangelical vote will have to prove himself not merely guided by conformist religious zealotry in all things (Hi, Mitt!), but will have to prove his unflappable support for the GOP stance in key issues across the evangelical board, primarily regarding the Big Duo: abortion rights and gay rights. Or, more specifically, the total annihilation of both.

Do you see? This is exactly why we can now rejoice. Because this is the delightful thing about the fundamentalist worldview (and, for that matter just about any strict religious worldview you can name), the thing that absolutely and forever guarantees its frequent and eventual downfall: It can never be sated.

It’s true. No matter how clamped down we as a culture become, no matter how much misinterpreted Biblical dogma we’re forced to swallow, no matter how many insidious laws are passed limiting behaviors and restricting independent thought and repressing sexuality and banning dildos in Texas, it will never be enough.

And why? Because the fundamentalist mind-set is not so much a firm and rational set of beliefs based on thoughtful interpretation of strict Biblical screed as it is, well, a paranoid wallowing in fear. Fear of the Other, fear of change, of progress, of the new and different and young and the sexual and the truly spiritual. And as we all know from almost seven years of Bush, fear knows no reason. It knows no stability. Fear is simply insatiable, voracious, and about as un-Godlike as Jesus with a machine gun.

But let’s not get carried away. Make no mistake, tremendous damage has indeed been done. After all, this last batch of hotly politicized evangelicals that just passed through our nation like a giant kidney stone enjoyed one hell of a run, and much of what they accomplished will be felt for years and decades to come. The Supreme Court, by way of just one example, has now been so front-loaded with righteous misogynists, we’ve already lost great hunks of women’s rights, environmental protections and many of the cornerstones of America’s moral foundation.

Truly, the evangelical movement is still a significant enough threat, at least regionally, in areas where its megachurches still wield tremendous power and where cultural conservatism has held sway for decades and where the laws are already so misogynistic and homophobic and backwards we might as well lump them all into one giant state and call it Alabama.

But then again, the cheerful upside is tough to resist. Jerry Falwell is dead. Pat Robertson is so politically dead he’s become nothing more than a sad punch line, a guy who makes the devil himself smile every time he opens his “gays-caused-9/11″ mouth. Then there’s the truly spectacular list of scandals and meltdowns and moral collapses that have befallen the “family values” party. Indeed, while cultural conservatives have certainly won a few nasty battles (and they’ll doubtlessly win a few more), they’re very much losing the war.

But when you come right down to it, the Great Truism has been validated once again: Righteous fundamentalism, be it Christian, Islamic, or otherwise, has the seeds of its own destruction built right into its very framework, a priori and de facto and by default. Powered by the deeply joyless engines of fear and shame, it can never quench its own impotent desires.

And for that, we can all praise Jesus indeed.

Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. Mark Morford’s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle.

© The San Francisco Chronicle
The Fall of The Godmongers: Praise Jesus, It’s The Collapse of Evangelical Christian Rule in America. Rejoice! - CommonDreams.org

note: marijuana related because these are the sort of backwards thinkers that help keep marijuana illegal.

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Environmental Groups Say Carbon Credit Company Made False Claims to SEC


September 21 - Several environmental organizations have filed a letter with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to express concern about potentially illegal statements made by the "eco-restoration" firm Planktos, which is planning a massive iron dump into the Pacific ocean near the Galapagos Islands in a scheme designed to produce carbon offset credits that can be sold for profit.

The International Environmental Law Project, the International Center for Technology Assessment, Fishwise, Greenpeace, the ETC Group, and Friends of the Earth today notified the SEC that Planktos' recent SEC filings contain false information regarding the applicability of U.S. environmental laws to its activities. Additionally, the groups' letter said statements made by Planktos CEO Russ George may mislead investors about the financial and environmental benefits of selling the carbon offset credits that Planktos claims it will be able to generate.

"Scientists warn that large-scale iron fertilization schemes such as the one that Planktos is pursuing are risky and could disrupt ocean ecosystems in harmful ways, yet Planktos misleads the public by portraying itself as a 'green' company," said Ian Illuminato of Friends of the Earth.

"It appears as though Planktos is misleading its investors too, and we've alerted the SEC to that fact. In recent SEC filings, Planktos has been less than forthcoming about the legal obstacles its scheme faces in the U.S. and about the potential market value of any carbon offsets that it might manage to generate," said ICTA Staff Attorney George Kimbrell.

Planktos' planned experiment is to spread iron dust into the ocean to create plankton blooms that suck carbon from the atmosphere and therefore mitigate global warming. Leading biochemists and oceanographers have cast doubt about how much of the absorbed carbon will actually remain in the ocean in a lasting way, which it is intended to do. They also warn of unintended consequences of such manipulation of ocean ecosystems. However, Planktos portrays itself as a savior of the oceans and atmosphere and stated in an information statement filed with the SEC on June 20, 2007 that its process "will sequester tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide."

A copy of the letter filed with the SEC is available at http://www.foe.org/Planktos/Letter_to_SEC.pdf.

To read more about the controversy surrounding the Planktos iron dumping scheme, see recent reports from the Washington Post (Iron to Plankton To Carbon Credits - washingtonpost.com) and a Wall Street Journal blog (Energy Roundup - WSJ.com : Upset About an Offset).

[User]

Published on Sunday, September 23, 2007 by the Associated Press
Bush To Be No-Show At U.N. Climate Summit

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore and the leaders of some 80 nations converge on the United Nations on Monday for a summit on the warming Earth and what to do about it.

The unprecedented meeting comes just days after U.S. scientists reported that melting temperatures this summer shrank the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap to a record-low size.

“I expect the meeting on Monday to express a sense of urgency in terms of negotiating progress that needs to be made,” said the U.N. climate chief, Yvo de Boer.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who has long opposed negotiated limits on the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, will not participate in the day’s meetings, but will attend a small dinner Monday evening, a gathering of key players hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

On Thursday and Friday, Mr. Bush will host his own two-day climate meeting in Washington, limited to 16 “major emitter” countries, the first in a series of such gatherings that environmentalists fear may undercut the global U.N. negotiating process.

What is being discussed under the U.N. umbrella is an effort, focused on December’s annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, to launch negotiations for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

The 1997 Kyoto pact, which the U.S. rejects, requires 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases - emitted by power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources - by an average 5 percent by 2012.

“A breakthrough is absolutely essential” at Bali to advance uninterrupted from Kyoto to a new, deeper-cutting regime, de Boer told reporters.

Monday’s event here, designed to build political momentum for the Bali talks, will feature California Gov. Schwarzenegger as one opening speaker, representing local governments worldwide.

The Republican governor and his Democrat-led legislature have pioneered state-level greenhouse-gas caps in the United States, with a law phasing in mandated 30-percent cuts in vehicles’ carbon dioxide emissions starting in 2009.

Former U.S. Vice President Gore, who gained prominence as a climate campaigner after the 2000 presidential election, will be a luncheon keynote speaker, and such international leaders as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will address sessions on such topics as ways to cut emissions and how to pay for it.

The U.N. summit and Bali conference will cap a year in which a series of authoritative reports by a U.N. scientific network warned of temperatures rising by several degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and of a drastically changed planet from rising seas, drought and other factors, unless nations rein in greenhouse gases.

“What is particularly significant is the acceleration of the increase of temperatures in recent years,” Indian climatologist Rajendra Pachauri, head of that U.N. panel, told reporters here.

To try to spur global negotiations, the European Union has committed to reducing emissions by at least an additional 20 percent by 2020.

The Bush administration has shown no sign of ending its opposition to internationally-mandated targets under a binding treaty. Mr. Bush has said he believes Kyoto-style mandates would damage the U.S. economy, and they should have been imposed on fast-growing poorer countries, such as China and India, as well as on developed nations.

The U.S. administration has instead urged industry to reduce emissions voluntarily, and it is promoting research into clean-energy technology as one answer. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, leading the U.S. delegation, will address a technology session at Monday’s summit.

But environmentalists say mandatory emissions reductions are a necessary incentive for industry to buy such clean technology.

At the Washington meeting, the Bush administration will likely advocate “some kind of vague aspirational voluntary stuff,” said David Doniger, a veteran climate campaigner with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. “That will interfere with the serious discussion of limits.”

De Boer, the U.N. climate chief, sounded a more positive note, pointing out that the Washington sessions will involve China and India, nations that all sides agree must eventually accept emissions limitations.

“This initiative of President Bush, when taken back to the larger U.N. process, can make a very valuable contribution,” he said.

But the U.S. would have to accept commitments, too, he said, or a Bali breakthrough would prove “very difficult” to achieve.

© 2007 The Associated Press

Bush To Be No-Show At U.N. Climate Summit - CommonDreams.org

More:
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A Grown-Up Conversation About Hemp

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Published on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 by Inter Press Service
An International Court to Try Ecological Crimes?
by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS - As the United Nations takes an increasingly dominant role in guiding the climate change debate, there is renewed interest in a longstanding proposal for the creation of an international court to try environmental crimes.

But some diplomats and environmentalists are sceptical whether such a court will have the political support of the overwhelming majority of the U.N.’s 192 member states for it to be a reality.

“It took ages for the creation of an international war crimes tribunal,” says one Third World diplomat, “and a world court for environmental crimes can take generations.”

Satish Kumar, an avowed environmentalist and editor of the London-based environmental magazine Resurgence, is a strong advocate of such a court.

“We have no right to make waste,” he argues. “And if I dump my waste on your house, it’s a crime. You can take me to court.”

“But if we put our waste on nature, nature can’t take us to court? Nature should have a right to take us to court. And the United Nations should establish a nature court,” Kumar told IPS.

He pointed out that environmental crimes — from the dumping of toxic wastes to the military destruction of natural resources — should be deemed “crimes against nature”.

Dr. Franoise Burhenne-Guilmin, senior counsel at the Environmental Law Centre of the Switzerland-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), thinks the proposal may hit legal and logistical snags.

“IUCN has never taken a formal position on this matter, but members of the Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) have discussed the issue in the past,” he told IPS.

He pointed out that the idea of a specific international court for environmental crimes was not supported by the CEL on the basis that they thought it would not be feasible.

“To establish such a court, people would need to agree on what constitutes an environmental crime,” Burhenne-Guilmin said.

Even if such a court were established, the rules which would have to be put in place in order for it to function would be very difficult to agree on, he added.

In recent years, some of the cases involving “environmental damages” have been tried in local courts because of the absence of an international judicial body.

A landmark environmental case involved the spilling of over 11 million gallons of crude oil when the oil tanker Valdez hit a reef. A court in Anchorage, Alaska, awarded a record five billion dollars in damages to some 34,000 fishermen whose livelihoods were affected by the oil spill spread over 1,500 miles of the Alaskan coastline.

The award was later reduced by half by a U.S. appeals court. The damages were against Exxon Mobil Corporation, which appealed the ruling at several judicial levels.

And more recently, a privately owned commodity trader was fined about 200 million dollars for dumping toxic waste off the coast of Cote d’Ivoire. The payment was described as one of the largest for environmental damage in Africa.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told reporters last week that dramatic changes in consumer lifestyles could make a great difference, “though that did not mean that humankind had to go back to the stone age”.

Rather, he said, it was time to start evaluating “the size of the footprint that humans were imposing on ecosystems through carbon dioxide emissions and other impacts.”

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said the fact that over 80 world leaders were meeting Monday at the United Nations at a high-level summit on climate change was “a sign of growing consensus on the need for the international community to act on climate change.”

An equally important meeting, under the auspices of the United Nations, is also scheduled to take place in Bali, Indonesia in December, he added.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who initiated Monday’s summit, says that climate change will be one of the top priorities during his five-year tenure in office.

But Kumar, editor of Resurgence, sounds very sceptical of the U.N. role in global environment.

“The U.N. approach to environment is very limited and rather shallow because the United Nations still thinks that the environment is there for the benefit of human kind and therefore we need to protect the environment,” he told IPS.

This is a very utilitarian approach. Human beings are seen as in charge, as superior and somehow more important than all other species, he pointed out.

“This is a very old and out of date concept. The United Nations needs to see environment and ecology and humanity as one interconnected and inter-dependent web of life,” Kumar said.

And human beings are no more important and no more superior than animals, plants, forests, rivers, oceans — and they have intrinsic value.

“The United Nations does not accept the intrinsic value of the natural world. It says the value of the environment is only in relation to its usefulness to humans. That’s a very anthropocentric, very human-centred, and a very narrow view,” he added.

Therefore, the United Nations needs to do a lot of work to embrace this bigger vision which has a more respect and reverence and recognition of the intrinsic value of all living beings and humanity as part of it, he declared.

Asked if he was blaming member states or the U.N. Secretariat, Kumar said: “I think it’s the Secretariat, because member states have no one single view.”

He said each member state has its own particular emphasis and its own particular angle. The Secretariat can bring together a cohesive and more holistic view. “And the Secretariat lacks that holistic view and that’s where I think the United Nations is weak.”

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

An International Court to Try Ecological Crimes? - CommonDreams.org

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Published on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 by the San Francisco Chronicle
How the White House Worked to Scuttle California’s Climate Law
by Zachary Coile

WASHINGTON - President Bush’s transportation secretary, Mary Peters, with White House approval, personally directed a lobbying campaign to urge governors and two dozen House members to block California’s first-in-the-nation limits on greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, according to e-mails obtained by Congress.

The e-mails show Peters worked closely with the top opponents in Congress of California’s emissions law and sought out governors from auto-producing states, who were seen as likely to oppose the state’s request that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allow the new rules to go into effect.

“The administration is trying to stack the deck against California’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, wrote Monday to the White House. “It suggests that political considerations - not the merits of the issue - will determine how EPA acts.”

Waxman released the e-mails, which are available on the committee’s Web site, along with his letter to the White House. The documents show that the idea to launch the lobbying effort started with Peters.

The secretary “asked that we develop some ideas asap about facilitating a pushback from governors (esp. D’s)” - Democrats - “and others opposed to piecemeal regulation of emissions, as per CA’s waiver petition,” Jeff Shane, the Transportation Department’s undersecretary for policy, wrote to top staffers on May 22.

It was not an unbiased outreach effort: Peters targeted officials who agreed with her agency’s opposition to California’s landmark effort to regulate auto emissions.

“Are we making any headway in identifying sympathetic governors?” Shane wrote on May 23. “(Peters) asked me about them again this morning.”

The release of the e-mails comes at an awkward time for the White House. President Bush was scheduled to meet Monday night with global leaders in New York to convince them he is serious about the United States’ efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He has convened a meeting in Washington this week to talk about climate change with the world’s 15 biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.

The Department of Transportation and the White House responded to Waxman’s letter Monday with statements arguing that they did nothing wrong by urging lawmakers and governors to oppose California’s efforts to curb emissions.

“Our efforts to inform elected officials about the petition before EPA were legal, appropriate and consistent with our long-held position on this issue,” the Transportation Department said. “For over 30 years, the Department has supported a single, national fuel economy standard as part of our effort to save fuel, ensure safety, preserve the environment and protect the economy.”

“With respect to California’s request to be allowed to set its own standards, there are a wide variety of strongly held views across the country,” said Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Outreach by federal officials to state government counterparts and members of Congress on issues of major national policy is an appropriate and routine component of policy development.”

But California officials, including one of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s top environmental aides, said the e-mails suggest the Bush administration is working behind the scenes to deny California’s waiver. The EPA is expected to make its decision by December.

“We’re deeply disappointed to hear of confirmed reports of back-room maneuvering to deny our request,” said Mary Nichols, who chairs the state’s Air Resources Board. “We will move ahead with our lawsuit if the EPA fails to act in the next few weeks.”

California has taken the initial steps to sue the federal government if it turns down the state’s request for a waiver under the federal Clean Air Act that would approve California’s plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The e-mails paint a picture of the administration working closely with Michigan’s powerful congressional delegation, which strongly opposes California’s new rules. U.S. automakers fear a huge drop in sales if California and 12 other states implement the new rules - which would cut emissions by 30 percent by 2016.

In one e-mail, Peters asks if she needs to call Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., who was rallying opposition in Congress to California’s proposal.

“Do I need to touch base with Knollenberg to coordinate our efforts?” she wrote in a June 7 e-mail to her deputy chief of staff, Simon Gros.

“His staff is also going to ping other members of the automotive caucus for us,” Gros replied. “My staff this morning called just about every auto-friendly member of this issue.”

Gros, in an interview with House investigators, said Peters personally called two to four governors to urge them to lobby the EPA. The Transportation Department would not identify the governors, but one cited in the e-mails was Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat.

The documents also reveal that Peters sought - and received - approval for her effort from the White House. Her executive assistant, Sandy Snyder, reported in a May 25 e-mail that the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s chief of staff, Marty Hall, approved the idea.

Hall was “OK with (Peters) making calls,” Snyder wrote.

Snyder added that Hall had spoken the day before with EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson - suggesting he may have known of the effort to lobby his agency. Johnson, at a Senate hearing in July, said he’d talked with Peters only about extending the comment period for the waiver request.

Waxman has suggested the actions could violate the Anti-Lobbying Act, which restricts the ability of federal employees or agencies to lobby. The law prohibits “grassroots lobbying” - efforts to get members of the public to lobby Congress.

The Transportation Department has said it did not engage in grassroots lobbying. But Thomas Susman, an attorney at Ropes & Gray in Washington and co-author of “The Lobbying Manual,” said contacting governors - who are called “grasstops,” in lobbying parlance - is usually considered grassroots lobbying.

“In my experience, there is no distinction in the statute or any interpretations between governors and the public,” he said.

But Peters could have a legal out: The president, vice president and Cabinet members can’t be barred from speaking out or instigating grassroots actions on issues of public concern, Susman said.

The law is enforced if a “substantial” amount of money - $50,000 - is spent on lobbying, and it’s unlikely the Justice Department would go after members of the administration, he said.

Waxman said the debate over the legality of the actions misses the point. Peters could have submitted comments to the EPA, stating her views, he said.

“Instead … she apparently sought and received White House approval to use taxpayer funds to mount a lobbying campaign designed to inject political considerations into the decision,” Waxman said.

Online resources
Find the e-mails released by Rep. Henry Waxman

links.sfgate.com/ZXF

Status of law

What California wants: A waiver from federal law that would allow the state to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

Who decides: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

When: A decision is expected by December.

To comment: If you want to weigh in on the lobbying effort against California’s greenhouse gas emissions law, call the U.S. Department of Transportation at (202) 366-4000 or e-mail dot.comments@dot.gov. Or call the White House’s comment line at (202) 456-1111 or e-mail comments@whitehouse.gov.

Efforts to block California’s climate rules

E-mails from top Transportation Department officials show that Secretary Mary Peters directed an effort to block California’s first-in-the-nation regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. Here are excerpts. Note: Secretary Peters is often referred to as “S1″ in the e-mails:

“S1 asked that we develop some ideas asap about facilitating a pushback from governors (esp. D’s) and others opposed to piecemeal regulation of emissions, as per CA’s waiver petition. She has heard that such objections could have an important effect on the way Congress looks at the issue.”

- e-mail from Jeff Shane, undersecretary of transportation for policy, to top staffers on May 22

“Marty Hall … OK with S1 making calls, spoke with (EPA Administrator) Steve Johnson yesterday.”

- e-mail from Sandy Snyder, executive assistant to Peters after getting approval from Marty Hall, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, May 25

“Tyler/Jenny mentioned yesterday that they thought the WH had approved calls to the Gov’s on the issue I had discussed with Administrator Johnson. If so, I should get those worked in today or tomorrow.”

- e-mail from Peters to her chief of staff, Robert Johnson, May 31

“Mary - I spoke with Tyler and Husein after your call with Gov. Granholm today. They said that you’d like to call some members of the MI delegation on the waiver issue.”

- e-mail to Peters from Simon Gros, her deputy chief of staff, referencing a conversation with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and potential calls to Michigan lawmakers, June 4

“S1 wanted me to touch base with you asap regarding the California Clean Air Act Waiver request. She would like us to contact Members (of Congress).”

- e-mail from Katherine Stusrud, policy assistant to Peters, to Gros, June 7

“Do I need to touch base with Knollenberg to coordinate our efforts?”

- e-mail from Peters to Gros, June 7, 2007, referring to Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., who was rallying House members to oppose California’s rules

“If you’d like but he is very much on point. His staff is also going to ping other members of the automotive caucus for us. My staff this morning called just about every auto-friendly member of this issue.”

- e-mail reply from Gros to Peters, June 7

“Simon - we are a bit concerned about the conversation on this task … appears to sound more like lobbying. So we want to be careful on what exactly we say. … I have already made a bunch of calls … looking back, I may have said more that I should have.”

- e-mail from Heidah Shahmoradi, special assistant for governmental affairs at the DOT, to Gros, June 7

Source: House Oversight and Government Reform Committee

© 2007 San Francisco Chronicle
How the White House Worked to Scuttle California’s Climate Law - CommonDreams.org

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Published on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 by Reuters
Global Majority Wants Action on Climate Change

LONDON - Almost two-thirds of the world’s people say there must be urgent action to tackle global warming, a poll for the BBC World Service showed on Tuesday.

<img align="left" src="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0925_02.jpg" border="0" style="margin-right:6px" alt="" width="" height="" />Overall, 65 percent of the 22,000 people polled in 21 countries said there was a need “to take major steps very soon” ranging from 91 percent in Spain to 37 percent in India.

In the United States, the world’s biggest emitter of climate changing carbon gases, 59 percent called for urgent action and in China, which builds a coal-fired power station every five days to feed its booming economy, it was 70 percent.

The poll showed nine out of 10 people want some action on climate change, and 79 percent said human activity was contributing significantly to the problem that scientists say will cause major hardship worldwide.

The poll surveyed people in 14 of the 16 nations invited to a meeting of major world carbon emitters in Washington this week by George W. Bush, who has rejected calls for the United States to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions.

Washington is still opposed to timetables or targets and argues technology holds the answers.

The poll showed 73 percent of people on average agreed developing states should limit their emissions in return for financial aid and technological transfer from developed nations.

Support for this ranged from 90 percent in China to 47 percent in India. It was 70 percent in the United States, 81 percent in Britain and 78 percent in France.

Knowledge of climate change varied widely across the world, with 62 percent in France but just 5 percent in Russia saying they had heard or read a great deal about it, while in Indonesia 47 percent said they knew little about it.

The poll was conducted for the BBC by PIPA, the Programme on International Policy Attitudes, at the University of Maryland, using a combination of face-to-face and telephone interviews.

© 2007 Reuters
Global Majority Wants Action on Climate Change - CommonDreams.org

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New Reactors in South Texas Would Set U.S. Energy Policy on Misguided Course

September 25 - Today, NRG Energy said it is submitting an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two new reactors at its South Texas nuclear site. This is the first full application for a new reactor in the U.S. in more than 30 years.

This project is emblematic of the failures of U.S. energy policy to effectively meet the needs of our nation. Nuclear power is a 20th century technology in a new world of climate crisis and a future that demands a distributed, sustainable approach to energy. Nuclear power requires massive taxpayer subsidies and yet still cannot compete environmentally with the sustainable energy technologies that will power our future.

NRG Energy already has been quoted in the media (Washington Post, September 25, 2007) as saying that “the whole reason” the company is considering new nuclear reactors is taxpayer subsidies provided by Congress and the Bush Administration in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. These multi-billion dollar subsidies include taxpayer loan guarantees for new reactors, tax credits for the first six reactors built, the Price-Anderson Act limitation of utility liability for nuclear accidents, and “risk insurance” to cover possible delays in the licensing process.

Without taxpayer support, no utility would build a new atomic reactor, and no financial institution would invest in a new reactor.

Moreover, the NRG Energy application would repeat one of the fundamental mistakes of the first generation of nuclear power: the construction of nuclear reactors without a feasible facility or plan for storage of the lethal radioactive waste the reactor would produce. The Yucca Mountain, Nevada, radioactive waste dump is on its last legs, and appears increasingly unlikely to ever open. Even if it did, a new round of nuclear construction would necessitate construction of another radioactive waste dump as well—something no state in the country likely would accept. After 50 years, one would think the lesson would have been learned: building atomic reactors without a scientifically-sound waste plan is folly.

Texas is blessed with enormous potential for wind and solar power, while aggressive energy efficiency programs remain the cheapest, fastest and cleanest method of addressing both electricity demand and the need to quickly reduce carbon emissions. Construction of new reactors in Texas would divert the resources needed to implement those efficiency programs and help solar and wind reach their full potential—to the detriment of Texans and all Americans.

Both Texas and the United States deserve better than a greedy utility feasting at the taxpayer trough to build another large polluting power plant. We expect Texans to oppose the NRG Energy project, and we expect to help Texans with their opposition.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service: New Reactors in South Texas Would Set U.S. Energy Policy on Misguided Course

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Published on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 by McClatchy Newspapers
Alaskans Warn House Panel about Global Warming’s Effects
by Erika Bolstad

<img align="left" src="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0926_03.jpg" border="0" style="margin-right:6px" alt="" width="" height="" />WASHINGTON - Scientists, conservationists and even the mayor of the eroding village of Shishmaref painted a grim picture of the effects of climate change in Alaska, including the loss of habitat for polar bears and the end of a way of life for native people.
“Going, going, gone,” said Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions, speaking to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “We must take action now; it is urgent. We want to be part of the solution, not just the poster child of the problem.”

Williams and other Alaskans, including a professor of forestry from the University of Alaska, came to Washington for the meeting of the House committee, which no Republican committee members attended. The Democrats who were there had little positive to say about the Bush administration’s efforts to slow or reverse global warming.

“Where is the urgency to deal with this crisis?” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. “Not in our government. This week, President Bush sat out the U.N. summit on climate change.”

But this week in Washington also functioned as something of a mini-summit on climate change, as congressional committees considered a host of global warming-related questions.

Monday, a Senate committee heard testimony about the effect of global warming on forest fires. Another Senate committee heard Tuesday about the economic effects of efforts to reduce the country’s carbon footprint. Later this week, the president is set to host a climate meeting with 16 so-called “major emitter” countries, including China and India.

On Tuesday, though, the House committee focused on Alaska. The meeting was a substitute for a tour Markey was supposed to lead to Alaska in August, which he canceled after he ruptured his Achilles tendon. On Tuesday, Alaskans came to him with a plea for help in addressing the effects of global warming.

The committee heard from a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who summarized its findings about the faster-than-forecast declines in arctic sea ice and projected declines in polar bear populations. It also heard from scientists who discussed the effects of global warming on Alaska’s forests.

“The bottom line is, it is warmer, and it is warmer a whole lot more,” said Glen Juday, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “The warming is very substantial, in temperature terms, and has reached, the last few years, the highest values in the record.”

The higher temperatures mean that permafrost will melt, Juday said, simply because the sustained temperatures needed to keep it frozen no longer will exist. His most recent studies show that higher temperatures have led to more tundra fires; when tundra burns, it releases a tremendous amount of stored carbon dioxide. This year alone, 100,000 acres of tundra burned, Juday said.

“The tundra is starting to burn and that means, potentially, a very large amount of carbon could be released in the atmosphere,” further concentrating greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming, he said.

Tuesday’s meeting also focused on some of the more immediate concerns of global warming, such as the Alaskan villages that have seen their coastlines battered as the ice that used to protect them from fall storms has retreated.

“We have lived here for 4,000 years,” Shishmaref Mayor Stanley Tocktoo said, as he showed the committee photos of the erosion that’s washing away his village and its way of life. “We are unique and need to be valued as a national treasure. We are worth saving.”

Tocktoo first visited Washington last spring, testifying before a Senate committee at the invitation of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. Tocktoo’s village, just below the Arctic Circle on the Bering Strait, has seen such severe erosion that there are efforts to move it.

Stevens visited Shishmaref to see the progress of a seawall that the Army Corps of Engineers is building, spokesman Aaron Saunders said.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., who’s about to release a book about the efforts of ordinary people in fighting global warming, said the information he’d heard in the past year had terrified him and that Tuesday’s committee meeting amplified his concerns.

“This has been a doom and gloom session, and it’s discouraging, the picture we’ve painted,” Inslee said.

But he added as the meeting concluded, “I’m going to try to end on an upbeat note. Things are moving here in Congress. The ice is melting in the Arctic, but the political ice and resistance is melting as well.”

© 2007 McClatchy Newspapers
Alaskans Warn House Panel about Global Warming’s Effects - CommonDreams.org