Greening The Globe: Earth News

Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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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Are Hemp And Lime Carbon Neutral ?
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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

 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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.
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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 https://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).
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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

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Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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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Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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="https://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
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

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="https://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
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

Published on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 by TruthDig.com
Global Consensus, Not Global Conquest
by Amy Goodman

As world leaders gather this week to address the United Nations General Assembly, President Bush’s refusal to negotiate on the two key issues of our day-war and global warming-has been stunning. And the media haven’t helped. Focusing on whether Columbia University should have invited Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak, the Bush administration’s drumbeat for war with Iran goes unchallenged. Let this not be a reprise of the war on Iraq.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his new memoir: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq War is largely about oil.” I asked him to elaborate: “It’s clear to me that were there not the oil resources in Iraq, the whole picture of how that part of the Middle East developed would have been different.”

It is an obvious point. It’s just too bad that he wasn’t willing to admit this before the invasion; his every utterance during his tenure at the Fed influenced decision-makers around the world, particularly in his own backyard at the White House.

As Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” listened to Greenspan, she pointed out, “Under international law … it is illegal to wage wars to gain access to other countries’, sovereign countries’, natural resources.”

Which brings us to Iran, another oil-rich country. As with Iraq, the Bush administration doesn’t talk about Iran’s oil, but rather claims that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb. Sound familiar? The answer isn’t war; it’s diplomacy. Earlier this week, I spoke with one of Israel’s top political columnists, Akiva Eldar, with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He opposes an attack on Iran: “[T]he Middle East is going to be nuclearized in no time. I think that solution should be a regional agreement … the Middle East should be nuclear-free, including Israel. I think this has to be part of an agreement.”

The U.N. gathering of world leaders is an ideal moment to hammer out agreements like Eldar recommends, as it is to take on the other crisis fueled by oil: climate change.

On the global-warming front, the opening of the U.N. General Assembly this week coincided with a major meeting on climate change, attended by more than 80 world leaders. As U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon kicked off the meeting, he said: “We hold the future in our hands. Together we must ensure that our grandchildren will not have to ask why we have failed to do the right things and left them to suffer the consequences. So let us send a clear and collective signal to people everywhere. Today, let the world know that you are ready to shoulder this responsibility and that you will address this challenge head-on.”

Yvo de Boer, a top U.N. climate expert, said: “The United States is still the largest emitter worldwide of greenhouse gases. For that reason and for a number of others, the participation of the U.S. is essential.” Yet Bush did not participate in the global meeting. Instead, Bush is hosting an invitation-only gathering of “major economies” in Washington, D.C., to discuss voluntary caps on greenhouse gas emissions. This is simply not enough. Ban Ki-moon criticized the Bush meeting, saying, “The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action.”

One of those leaders who came to address the U.N. General Assembly was Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. While the U.S. rarely looks south for leadership, Morales’ example is worth considering. He has restored diplomatic relations with Iran. Against tremendous internal opposition, he nationalized Bolivia’s natural gas fields, transforming the country’s economic stability, and, interestingly, enriching the very elite that originally criticized the move. (Contrast this with the U.S. pressuring the Iraqi parliament to pass an oil law that would virtually hand over control of Iraq’s oil to the major U.S. oil corporations.) President Morales told me: “Neither mother earth nor life are commodities. We are talking about a profound change of models and systems.”

The twin crises of war and climate change, inexorably linked by our thirst for oil, need a concerted global solution-one that won’t be obtained by cowboy diplomacy. The United States must pursue global consensus, not global conquest-before it is too late.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.

© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate

Global Consensus, Not Global Conquest - CommonDreams.org

HEMP = :peace:
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

The Bush Administration’s Sideshow on Global Warming:
It’s Time to Join The Rest of The World, says Science Advocacy Group
Statement by Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists


WASHINGTON - September 25 - Yesterday, the United Nations convened a high-level global warming summit attended by top officials from more than 150 countries, including 80 heads of state. President Bush will host a meeting of 16 of the world's largest global warming pollution emitters later this week to discuss "aspirational" goals for reducing emissions. Rather than joining with virtually every other industrialized country to lock into place mandatory reductions, the president is expected to propose that each country decide for itself how to reduce emissions.

Below is a statement by Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

"The vast majority of world leaders at yesterday's U.N. meeting were in agreement that the world must sharply curtail global warming pollution emissions by mid-century and that such reductions must be mandatory for industrialized nations such as the United States. The cost to make these reductions is small compared with the mounting costs of global warming-induced damages to both human communities and natural ecosystems.

"There was also broad consensus that while other processes can help, the U.N. is the only legitimate forum for negotiations on international agreements after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's first round of binding restrictions expire.

"The U.N. meeting's clarion call to action makes it even more clear that President Bush must put concrete proposals on the table in his speech at the State Department this Friday or risk confirming the belief that he is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world on strategies to confront this global threat.

"He must start by spelling out what reductions in global emissions he believes are needed by mid-century to avert severe, and potentially irreversible, consequences from climate change. If he disagrees with the European Union, Japan and many other countries that global reductions of at least 50 percent are needed by 2050, he should say so, and explain why he's willing to take a greater risk with the Earth's climate than they are.

"The president also must put forward specific new proposals to halt and reverse the inexorable growth in U.S. global warming emissions. In sharp contrast to Europe, Japan and other industrialized countries, U.S. emissions have increased by nearly 18 percent since 1990, and are projected to increase another 35 percent by 2030. This demonstrates the fallacy of the administration's claims that its mostly voluntary approach is working and will get the job done.

"If the president fails to make specific proposals for both long-term global and near-term U.S. emissions reductions, it will confirm the fears of some that his summit is merely an effort to delay, or even derail, meaningful international progress on confronting the climate crisis. It will make it abundantly clear to the entire world that President Bush is continuing to fiddle around while the world burns."

Union of Concerned Scientists: he Bush Administration&rsquo;s Sideshow on Global Warming: It&rsquo;s Time to Join The Rest of The World
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

Published on Thursday, September 27, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Bush, Oil — and Moral Bankruptcy
by Ray McGovern

<img align="left" src="https://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/569/oil_war.jpg" border="0" style="margin-right:6px" alt="" width="" height="" />It is an exceedingly dangerous time. Vice President Dick Cheney and his hard-core “neo-conservative” protégés in the administration and Congress are pushing harder and harder for President George W. Bush, isolated from reality, to honor the promise he made to Israel to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.On Sept. 23, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned pointedly:

“If we escalate tensions, if we succumb to hysteria, if we start making threats, we are likely to stampede ourselves into a war [with Iran], which most reasonable people agree would be a disaster for us…I think the administration, the president and the vice president particularly, are trying to hype the atmosphere, and that is reminiscent of what preceded the war in Iraq.”

So why the pressure for a wider war in which any victory will be Pyrrhic-for Israel and for the U.S.? The short answer is arrogant stupidity; the longer answer-what the Chinese used to call “great power chauvinism”-and oil.

The truth can slip out when erstwhile functionaries write their memoirs (the dense pages of George Tenet’s tome being the exception). Kudos to the still functioning reportorial side of the Washington Post, which on Sept. 15, was the first to ferret out the gem in former Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan’s book that the Iraq war was “largely about oil.”

But that’s okay, said the Post’s editorial side (which has done yeoman service as the White House’s Pravda) the very next day. Dominating the op-ed page was a turgid piece by Henry Kissinger, serving chiefly as a reminder that there is an excellent case to be made for retiring when one reaches the age of statutory senility.

Dr. Kissinger described as a “truism” the notion that “the industrial nations cannot accept radical forces dominating a region on which their economies depend.” (Curious. That same truism was considered a bad thing, when an integral part of the “Brezhnev Doctrine” applied to Eastern Europe.)

What is important here is that Kissinger was speaking of Iran, which-in a classic example of pot calling kettle black-he accuses of “seeking regional hegemony.”

What’s going on here seems to be a concerted effort to get us accustomed to the prospect of a long, and possibly expanded war.

Don’t you remember? Those terrorists, or Iraqis, or Iranians, or jihadists…whoever…are trying to destroy our way of life.

The White House spin machine is determined to justify the war in ways they think will draw popular support from folks like the well-heeled man who asked me querulously before a large audience, “Don’t you agree that several GIs killed each week is a small price to pay for the oil we need?”

Consistency in U.S. Policy?

The Bush policy toward the Middle East is at the same time consistent with, and a marked departure from, the U.S. approach since the end of World War II.

Given ever-growing U.S. dependence on imported oil, priority has always been given to ensuring the uninterrupted supply of oil, as well as securing the state of Israel. The U.S. was, by and large, successful in achieving these goals through traditional diplomacy and commerce.

Granted, it would overthrow duly elected governments, when it felt it necessary-as in Iran in 1953, after its president nationalized the oil. But the George W. Bush administration is the first to start a major war to implement U.S. policy in the region.

Just before the March 2003 attack, Chas Freeman, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia for President George H.W. Bush, explained that the new policy was to maintain a lock on the world’s energy lifeline and be able to deny access to global competitors.

Freeman said the new Bush administration “believes you have to control resources in order to have access to them” and that, with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. is uniquely able to shape global events-and would be remiss if it did not do so.

This could not be attempted in a world of two superpowers, but has been a longstanding goal of the people closest to George W. Bush.

In 1975 in Harpers, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger authored under a pseudonym an article, “Seizing Arab Oil.”

Blissfully unaware that the author was his boss, the highly respected career ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins, committed the mother of all faux pas when he told a TV audience that whoever wrote that article had to be a “madman.” Akins was right; he was also fired.

In those days, cooler heads prevailed, thanks largely to the deterrent effect of a then-powerful Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in proof of the axiom that bad ideas never die, 26 years later Kissinger rose Phoenix-like to urge a spanking new president to stoke and exploit the fears engendered by 9/11, associate Iraq with that catastrophe, and seize the moment to attack Iraq.

It was well known that Iraq’s armed forces were no match for ours, and the Soviet Union had imploded.

Some, I suppose, would call that Realpolitik. Akins saw it as folly; his handicap was that he was steeped in the history, politics, and culture of the Middle East after serving in Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, as well as Saudi Arabia-and knew better.

The renaissance of Kissinger’s influence in 2001 on an impressionable young president, together with faith-based analysis by untutored ideologues cherry picked by Cheney explain what happened next-an unnecessary, counterproductive war, in which over 3,800 U. S. troops have already been killed-leaving Iraq prostrate and exhausted.

A-plus in Chutzpah, F in Ethics

In an International Herald Tribune op-ed on Feb. 25, 2007, Kissinger focused on threats in the Middle East to “global oil supplies” and the need for a “diplomatic phase,” since the war had long since turned sour. Acknowledging that he had supported the use of force against Iraq, he proceeded to boost chutzpah to unprecedented heights.

Kissinger referred piously to the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), which left the European continent “prostrate and exhausted.” What he failed to point out is that the significance of that prolonged carnage lies precisely in how it finally brought Europeans to their senses; that is, in how it ended.

The Treaty of Westphalia brought the mutual slaughter to an end, and for centuries prevented many a new attack by the strong on the weak-like the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003.

It was, it is about oil-unabashedly and shamefully. Even to those lacking experience with U.S. policy in the Middle East, it should have been obvious early on, when every one of Bush’s senior national security officials spoke verbatim from the talking-point sheet, “It’s not about oil.”

Thanks to Greenspan and Kissinger, the truth is now “largely” available to those who do not seek refuge in denial.

The implications for the future are clear-for Iraq and Iran. As far as this administration is concerned (and as Kissinger himself has written), “Withdrawal [from Iraq] is not an option.” Westphalia? U.N. Charter? Geneva Conventions? Hey, we’re talking superpower!

Thus, Greenspan last Monday with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now:

“Getting him [Saddam Hussein] out of the control position…was essential. And whether that be done by one means or another was not as important. But it’s clear to me that, were there not the oil resources in Iraq, the whole picture…would have been different.”

Can we handle the truth?

“All truth passes through three stages.
“First, it is ridiculed.
“Second, it is violently opposed.
“Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
-Schopenhauer

When the truth about our country’s policy becomes clear, can we summon the courage to address it from a moral perspective? The Germans left it up to the churches; the churches collaborated.

“There is only us; there never has been any other.”
-Annie Dillard

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President’s Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This article originally appeared on Consortium News. Bush, Oil — and Moral Bankruptcy - CommonDreams.org

:peace:
Hemp Peace​
 
Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

Bush Agenda on Climate Change at Odds with International Push

NEW YORK - September 27 – While dozens of heads of state convened at the United Nations (UN) in New York this week for a forum to address the threat of climate change and the need for a global reduction in emissions, President Bush did not attend these discussions. Instead, today the US will begin a two-day parallel conference, setting forth the Bush administration’s approach in a meeting of sixteen nations. MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, today highlighted the need for worldwide partnership to tackle climate change and condemned President Bush’s lack of engagement.

Political mobilization at the UN has intensified, in preparation for a climate conference to be held in Bali, Indonesia in December. This gathering is set to forge commitments for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases to pre-1990 levels. While the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, the US has refused to sign on and continues to oppose international limits on emissions, citing a risk to the US economy.

Vivian Stromberg, Executive Director of MADRE, said today, "In a time when the focus of governments around the world must be on working together to counter the dangers of climate change, Bush has, time and again, chosen unilateralism over cooperation. Meanwhile, reports from the UN warn that soaring temperatures are likely to lead to rising seas and droughts. These dramatic changes threaten the lives of millions of people across the planet, and women—who are responsible for food production and maintaining natural resources in much of the world—will bear the brunt. This is the time for urgent action to halt this trend and for the Bush administration and the US Congress to require US industries to curb emissions."

President Bush’s proposals center on allowing industries to regulate themselves and on promoting "clean" energy, including "biofuels." However, MADRE cautions that the promises of these "biofuels" are a false remedy and are more likely to perpetuate the injustices of land rights violations against Indigenous and local people, increase global hunger and destroy biodiversity. More information can be found in the MADRE statement "Feed People, Not Cars: Agrofuels are no Solution to Climate Change," located here: Feed People, Not Cars: Agrofuels are no Solution to Climate Change | MADRE: An International Women's Human Rights Organization.

MADRE emphasizes that the damages of climate change will be felt most severely among those least at fault and at the greatest risk. The organization further stresses the centrality of Indigenous Peoples, particularly women, in this discussion, whose input is often ignored by governments but whose knowledge is essential to preserve local biodiversity and food security.

Yifat Susskind, MADRE’s Communications Director, worked for several years as part of a joint Israeli-Palestinian human rights organization in Jerusalem before joining MADRE. She has written extensively on US foreign policy and women’s human rights; her critical analysis has appeared in online and print publications such as TomPaine.com, Foreign Policy in Focus, and The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women, published by the Feminist Press in 2004. Ms. Susskind has been featured as a commentator on CNN, National Public Radio, and BBC Radio. She is the coordinator of MADRE’s upcoming Food for Life Campaign.

Victoria Tauli Corpuz is Executive Director of the Tebtebba Foundation (Indigenous Peoples' International Center for Policy Research & Education), which has United Nations consultative status and is based in Baguio City, Philippines. Ms. Tauli Corpuz was the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations; serves as the Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples (UNPFII); and is a member of the Asia Indigenous Women's Network. She has a Nursing degree; is an Indigenous activist who is committed to the recognition, protection, and promotion of Indigenous Peoples' rights worldwide; and has been defending the rights and cultures of Indigenous Peoples for more than 30 years.

MADRE is an international women's human rights organization that works in partnership with community-based women's organizations worldwide to address issues of health and reproductive rights, economic development, education, and other human rights. MADRE provides resources, training, and support to enable our sister organizations to meet concrete needs in their communities while working to shift the balance of power to promote long-term development and social justice. Since we began in 1983, MADRE has delivered over 22 million dollars worth of support to community-based women's organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and the United States.

MADRE: Bush Agenda on Climate Change at Odds with International Push

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Re: Its The End Of The World As We Know It

Published on Friday, September 28, 2007 by Reuters
Arctic Thaw May Be at ‘Tipping Point’
by Alister Doyle

<img align="left" src="https://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0928_06.jpg" border="0" style="margin-right:6px" alt="" width="" height="" />OSLO - A record melt of Arctic summer sea ice this month may be a sign that global warming is reaching a critical trigger point that could accelerate the northern thaw, some scientists say.

“The reason so much (of the Arctic ice) went suddenly is that it is hitting a tipping point that we have been warning about for the past few years,” James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Reuters.

The Arctic summer sea ice shrank by more than 20 percent below the previous 2005 record low in mid-September to 4.13 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles), according to a 30-year satellite record. It has now frozen out to 4.2 million sq km.

The idea of climate tipping points — like a see-saw that suddenly flips over when enough weight gets onto one side — is controversial because it is little understood and dismissed by some as scaremongering about runaway effects.

The polar thaw may herald a self-sustaining acceleration that could threaten indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears — as Arctic sea ice shrinks, the darker ocean soaks up ever more heat than reflective snow and ice.

In Germany, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says Arctic sea ice has “already tipped.”

Among potential “tipping elements” that are still stable, it lists on its Web site a melt of Siberian permafrost, a slowdown of the Gulf Stream and disruptions to the Indian monsoon.

“I’d say we are reaching a tipping point or are past it for the ice. This is a strong indication that there is an amplifying mechanism here,” said Paal Prestrud of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

“But that’s more or less speculation. There isn’t scientific documentation other than the observations,” he said.

Many experts now reckon Arctic ice may disappear in summer before mid-century, decades before earlier forecasts. The thaw would open the region to oil and gas exploration or shipping.

Reuters will host a summit of leading newsmakers on Oct 1-3 to review the state of the environment. Speakers will include Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Climate Panel and Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power.

“All models seem to underestimate the speed at which the ice is melting,” said Anders Levermann, a Potsdam professor.

“I do not believe that this is alarmist… not all tipping points are irreversible,” he said. And societies can weigh up remote risks, such as planes crashing or nuclear meltdowns.

Hansen said he is seeking more study of causes of the melt, widely blamed on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels but perhaps slightly stoked by soot from forest fires or industries in Russia and China. Ice darkened by soot melts faster.

“It is a very good lesson, because the ice sheets (on Greenland and Antarctica) have their own tipping points, somewhat harder to get started but far more dangerous for humanity around the globe,” he said.

A melt of floating Arctic sea ice does not affect sea levels but Greenland has enough ice to raise oceans by 7 meters and Antarctica by about 57 meters, according to U.N. estimates.

Pachauri’s authoritative climate panel, in a summary report due for release in November, does not use the phrase “tipping point” but does say: “Climate change could lead to abrupt or irreversible climate changes and impacts.”

It says, for instance, that it is “very unlikely” that the Gulf Stream bringing warm water north to Europe will switch off this century. That could bring a big regional cooling.

And it says that a melt of ice sheets could lead to big sea level rises over thousands of years. “Rapid sea level rise on century time scales cannot be excluded,” it adds.

© 2007 Reuters

Arctic Thaw May Be at ‘Tipping Point’ - CommonDreams.org
 
Greenpeace Activists Protest US Inaction on Global Warming
Nearly Fifty Arrested at International Climate Meeting at State Department

WASHINGTON, DC - September 28 - Greenpeace USA Executive Director John Passacantando and nearly fifty other activists were arrested at a protest today outside the Bush administration’s ‘Big Emitters’ meeting on global warming as they sent the message: “Bush: Wrong way on global warming.” “We’re here to register our protest at this charade,” Passacantando said. “President Bush is trying to take the world in the wrong direction on global warming, and this meeting is nothing more than a propaganda effort to deflect international criticism.”

The four environmental organizations involved in the protest are calling on the countries attending the meeting to take real action on global warming and resist endorsing the Bush agenda of undermining the Kyoto Protocol and substituting voluntary pledges for binding commitments. Those groups include: Greenpeace; Oil Change International; Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and the U.S. Climate Emergency Council.

“This week’s meeting is all about talk with no word of action by the Bush administration,” said Christopher Miller, global warming campaigner with Greenpeace USA. “And it is an effort to deflect the criticism that Bush deserves for refusing to introduce mandatory emissions cuts and targets in the U.S. The Bush administration has called the meeting under the guise of appearing concerned about global warming. However, the U.S. is one of only two countries at this week’s meeting that are not engaging with the Kyoto Protocol; the other is Australia.”

All the developing countries attending the meeting – including China and India – have signed, and are actively working with, the Kyoto Protocol and its mechanisms. China also has introduced its own binding renewable energy targets of 15 percent by 2020 along with energy efficiency targets. In contrast, Bush has threatened to veto the energy bill currently on the table in the U.S. Congress.

Greenpeace pointed to the Kyoto negotiations in Bali in December as the “only legitimate game in town.” If successful, the meeting would establish a two-year timetable for negotiating a strengthened second phase of Kyoto, beginning in 2013.

Kyoto received widespread support at the UN High Level meeting in New York on Monday. Greenpeace is calling for cutting emissions by more than half globally by mid-century, with industrialized countries leading the process by cutting emissions by at least 30 percent by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050 – from 1990 levels.

Greenpeace Activists Protest US Inaction on Global Warming

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Published on Sunday, September 30, 2007 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Bush’s EPA Pursues Fewer Criminal Cases
Civil lawsuits also decline; critics see other efforts flag
by John Solomon / Juliet Eilperin

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency’s pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.

The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics.

Critics of the agency say its flagging efforts have emboldened polluters to flout U.S. environmental laws, threatening progress in cleaning the air, protecting wildlife, eliminating hazardous materials and countless other endeavors overseen by the EPA.

“You don’t get cleanup, and you don’t get deterrence,” said Eric Schaeffer, who resigned as director of the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement in 2002 to protest the administration’s approach to enforcement and now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group. “I don’t think this is a problem with agents in the field. They’re capable of doing the work. They lack the political support they used to be able to count on, especially in the White House.”

The slower pace of enforcement mirrors a decline in resources for pursuing environmental wrongdoing. The EPA now employs 172 investigators in its Criminal Investigation Division, below the minimum of 200 agents required by the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush.

The actual number of investigators available at any time is even smaller, agents said, because they sometimes are diverted to other duties such as service on EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s eight-person security detail.

Johnson, President Bush’s chief environmental regulator, foreshadowed a less confrontational approach toward enforcement when he served as the EPA’s top deputy in late 2004. “The days of the guns and badges are over,” Johnson told a group of farm producers in Georgia the day before Bush won re-election, according to a news account of the speech.

Administration officials said they are not ignoring the environment but are focusing on major cases that secure more convictions against bigger players.

“We have been on an unprecedented run of success in the enforcement arena,” said Granta Nakayama, EPA assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. “These are major cases we are pursuing.”

Nakayama said that in the past three fiscal years the EPA has cut between 890 million and 1.1 billion pounds of air pollution through enforcement.

He added that he hopes to boost the number of criminal investigators and said that over the past five years the agency has won convictions against 95 percent of the people indicted for environmental crimes.

Administration officials acknowledge taking a new approach to environmental enforcement by seeking more settlements and plea bargains that require pollution reductions through new equipment or participation in EPA compliance programs.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department secured $13 billion in such corrective measures from polluters in 2005-06, up from about $4 billion in the final two years of the Clinton administration.

“Environmental prosecutions continue to be very important to the department,” Roehrkasse said. Settlements and judgments that impose corrective measures “protect the nation’s environment and safeguard the public’s health and welfare,” he said.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, whose panel oversees environmental enforcement, disagrees. “Where once a polluter could expect criminal prosecution, there are now civil settlements. Where once there were criminal penalties, there are now taxpayer subsidies,” said Dingell, D-Mich.

The environmental crimes unit at Justice Department headquarters in Washington has grown to a record 40 prosecutors. Last year, it secured near-record highs in years of confinement and criminal penalties, Roehrkasse said.

But environmental prosecutions by U.S. attorneys’ offices have sharply dropped as prosecutors facing new pressures on issues such as terrorism and immigration take away resources for environmental prosecutions and try to divert cases to the main Justice Department, EPA agents said.

Prosecutors counter that the EPA has fewer agents and is bringing them fewer cases. “We’re not turning away environmental crimes in order to prosecute other crimes. They are just not being presented in the first case,” said Don DeGabrielle, the U.S. attorney in Houston.

EPA memos show that investigators also have encountered new obstacles to their long-standing practice of directly referring cases to federal or state prosecutors. A new policy distributed May 25 requires agents to seek prior approval from the head of their division and establishes new paperwork procedures. This has slowed agents’ ability to make referrals, congressional investigators said.

The number of environmental prosecutions plummeted from 919 in 2001 to 584 last year, a 36 percent decline, according to Justice Department statistics collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Those same Justice Department data also show that the number of people convicted for environmental crimes dropped from 738 in 2001 to 470 last year.

Similarly, the number of cases opened by EPA investigators fell 37 percent, from 482 in 2001 to 305 last year, according to data that the EPA provided to congressional investigators.

Bush's EPA pursues fewer criminal cases / Civil lawsuits also decline; critics see other efforts flag

This article appeared on page A - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
Bush’s EPA Pursues Fewer Criminal CasesCivil lawsuits also decline; critics see other efforts flag - CommonDreams.org
 
Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by Reuters
Bush Draws Fire at Climate Talks

WASHINGTON - Some of the world’s biggest greenhouse polluters took aim at President George W. Bush on Friday, calling him “isolated” and questioning his leadership on the problem of global warming.

Bush, who convened the two-day meeting of the 17 biggest emitters of climate-warming gases, stressed new environmental technology and voluntary measures to tackle the issue.

“Our nations have an opportunity to leave the debates of the past behind and reach a consensus on the way forward and that’s our purpose today,” Bush told an audience that included delegates from Europe, Japan and Australia as well as fast-growing developing countries such as China and India.

But his speech did little to dampen doubts from participants and environmentalists that the climate session at the State Department would help advance crucial U.N. talks in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

“It is striking that the (Bush) administration at the moment in the international conversation seems to be pretty isolated,” said John Ashton, Britain’s climate envoy. “I think that the argument that we can do this through voluntary approaches is now pretty much discredited internationally.”

Bush’s rejection of mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that warm the planet is at odds with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and with many who attended on Friday.

“Our message to the U.S. is this: what they placed on the table at this meeting is a first step, but is simply not enough,” South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a statement. “We think that the U.S. needs to go back to the drawing board.”

The United States has long been the world’s biggest greenhouse emitter but at least one study this year put China in the lead. Given the U.S. role in contributing to the problem, van Schalkwyk said the United States should contribute its “fair share” to a solution.

LOOKING TOWARD BALI

By mid-2008, Bush said heads of state of the biggest emitting countries should set a long-term target to fight climate change and that there should be “a strong and transparent system for measuring our progress toward meeting the goal we set.”

That drew a muted response from delegates, according to Yvo de Boer, the special U.N. envoy on climate change.

De Boer said he found Bush’s speech “encouraging” because it acknowledged the urgency of the issue.

But asked to predict the outcome of the Washington meeting, de Boer replied, “The very strong indication I got is that people said, ‘This is a very interesting discussion but we need to continue it after Bali.’”

In fact, delegates applauded when Bush stressed this meeting was meant to lay the groundwork for the Bali conference. Some critics have questioned whether the Bush administration was attempting to get around the U.N. climate process with its own set of meetings.

At the meeting’s conclusion, James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and chairman of the conference, described “very vigorous discussion” and said the parties were committed to continuing the talks among the big emitters as a contribution to U.N. climate negotiations.

There was no consensus document. Instead, Connaughton offered a chairman’s summary: “I think different participants would emphasize different aspects of the summary so this is merely my attempt to capture the sense of the meeting.”

Bush said a long-term goal for reducing global warming was needed but that each nation should design its own strategy. He suggested a global clean-technology fund could be led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, to be financed by global contributions.

The Bali talks will aim to launch a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that set limits on industrial nations’ emissions. Its first phase ends in 2012. (Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

© Reuters 2007.
Bush Draws Fire at Climate Talks - CommonDreams.org
 

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