[A-List] Destructive creation: US deregulation, GM exploitation

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Pollution rules for US oil and coal eased

Oliver Burkeman in New York and John Vidal
Friday June 14, 2002
The Guardian

The US government gave the energy industry a big victory yesterday by
relaxing the air pollution rules for coal-burning power stations and oil
refineries

Democrat politicians and environmentalists condemned it as a huge step
backwards in the battle against global warming.

The environmental protection agency's long-awaited recommendations - the
object of years of intense lobbying by the US power industry - give
electricity producers greater flexibility in expanding their output
without having to install additional emission controls.

Its administrator, Christie Todd Whitman, said the reforms were "common
sense", and would reduce pollution by increasing efficiency. The US is
by far the biggest emitter of fossil fuel gases in the world.

The industry has argued for years that regulations inhibited the
expansion energy production, a position boosted last year when
Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy taskforce recommended that the rules
should be re-examined.

"The need for reform is clear and has broad-based support," Ms Whitman
said. "Our common commitment to environmental protection need not be an
obstacle to having the most modern and efficient energy infrastructure
in the world."

The EPA plans will raise the threshold of expansion that must be reached
before power plants are required to introduce additional controls on
smog, soot and acid rain.

The utilities will also be allowed to choose to use the pollution levels
from any 24-month period in the last 10 years to set the baseline above
which that threshold will be set.

And the currently vague definition of "routine repairs", which do not
require additional controls, is to be clarified in ways which
campaigners fear will define almost any modification as "routine".

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, argued that the new rules
would reduce pollution. "Many of these people who are affected have
chosen to leave in place old equipment, which pollutes more, rather than
replace it and modernise it, which pollutes less," he said.

But environmentalists said the measures would produce millions of tons
of additional pollution from older, dirtier coal-burning plants:
amounting to a dilution of the Clean Air Act.

The US has been condemned for refusing to sign the Kyoto protocol, which
would force it to reduce carbon emissions.

"The Bush administration appears determined to be the most
anti-environmental force our nation has ever endured," said Mark Helm of
Friends of the Earth USA.

"There is an undisputed link between air pollution and premature death.
We're moving in the [wrong] direction."

Buck Parker, of the Californian group Earthjustice, said the government
had "dropped a dirty bomb, and it's going to cost thousands of American
lives."

Their concern was echoed by the Democratic leader of the Senate, Tom
Daschle, who said he was "very, very saddened by the news again today,
that once again clean air takes a back seat to the polluters and the
special interests that seem to have such power in this administration."

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GM firms the only winners at food talks summit

Rory Carroll in Rome
Friday June 14, 2002
The Guardian

A world food summit ended in recrimination yesterday when it was branded
a waste of time for everyone except the United States, which
successfully sold genetically modified crops as a solution to famine.

The UN denied that the exercise in the Italian capital had been
ineffective, despite the event being snubbed by western governments,
complaints from leaders of developing countries and disagreements on
strategies to avoid malnutrition and famine.

Environmental and agricultural groups accused the US of steamrollering
the summit into approving biotechnology, after robust lobbying by
Washington.

"The US played very hard and succeeded. They now have the moral
authority to use genetically modified food for aid purposes," said
Fernando Almansa of Oxfam.

He hoped the defeat would shock opponents of GM food into mobilising for
the UN summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg in August.

The US delegation was led by the agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman, and
made no secret that its priority was to promote the wider use of
biotechnology, an industry dominated by American companies.

"Biotechnology has tremendous potential to develop products that can be
more suited to areas of the world where there is persistent hunger," Ms
Veneman said. "There is no food safety issue whatsoever."

Another delegate was more forthright: "We're here to sell biotech, and
that's what we've done."

Advocates say GM crops with improved yields, resistance to drought and
tolerance of salt could ease food shortages in stricken areas. But
critics say it could destroy biodiversity and force poor farmers to buy
seeds from US corporations.

Fred Kalibwani, an ecology activist from a Zimbabwe-based
non-governmental organisation, said that the patented GM seeds in effect
placed food security in the hands of a few corporations. "This will be
tragic for Africa in the next few years," he said.

Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN's Food and Agriculture
Organisation which hosted the summit, said the event was a success
because it reaffirmed the pledge of a 1996 food summit to halve world
hunger by 2015.

But little headway has been made in the past six years: more than 800
million people are still hungry, famine is looming in southern Africa
and a request for an extra £16bn each year fell flat.

Some 181 countries were represented, but of the 74 heads of state or
government, only two were from the west. South Africa's president, Thabo
Mbeki, accused the west of indifference.

Clare Short, Britain's secretary of state for international development,
said the summit was a waste of time, and the EU's aid commissioner, Poul
Nielson, accused organisers of trying to build an empire rather than
tackling the real problem of hunger.

Other delegations expressed frustration they were unable to address
western leaders about the damage their tariffs inflict on poor farmers.

Some UN officials said the £1.6m cost of the event would have been
better spent on grain for the poor.