Global Warming Climate Change and Low Income and Communities of Color

GLOBAL WARMING LEADING to WORLD WAR 3

How Will Global Warming Lead to Global War?

According to the United Nations, over the past decade climate change has been
responsible for nearly 500,000 people killed, over 2.5 billion impacted and
economic losses of over $690 billion. Ninety-five percent of climate change
casualties belonged to countries of middle to low-level income. Rising sea
levels will soon displace over 100 million people living in low-lying areas,
including entire islands in the South Pacific.

The United States, as the world’s largest polluter producing 25% of annual
global carbon emissions, refuses to sign on to any international climate change
treaties. Instead the U.S. is waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to
monopolize some of the world’s largest remaining oil and natural gas supplies,
ensuring U.S. hegemony over these resources, and furthering its agenda for
global domination.

The Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN) writes that the World Bank,
entrusted in 1992 by the Rio Earth Summit to promote sustainable energy
development, has instead spent $28 billion on fossil fuel projects. (Seventeen
times more than they spent on renewable energy.)

The U.S., with defacto veto power over the World Bank in June of 2005 appointed
Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz as the Bank’s new president. Following the
July, 2005 G-8 meeting, Wolfowitz announced that the G-8 had put the World Bank
in charge of financing a “new framework for mobilizing investment in clean
energy and development.” Ken Newcombe, the Bank’s Carbon Finance Business
Manager stated that proposals for this “new framework” would be discussed at
the fall meetings of the World Bank this September in Washington, DC. SEEN
points out that over 80% of the World Bank’s fossil fuel projects exported oil
to G-8 countries.

As long as neoliberalism and oil fuel the world’s economies, global warming and
resource wars will continue to intensify, leading to widespread instability and
violence. “In a world already riven with imperialist war, and by economic and
military tensions, the potential for [global warming induced] upheaval to spark
armed conflict, including the ultimate spectre of nuclear annihilation, is not a
morbid fantasy, but all too likely,” stated Paul McGarr in his article
“Capitalism and Climate Change.”

A 2003 report by the U.S. Pentagon agrees, stating, “…abrupt climate change
could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear
threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The
threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism… Disruption and
conflict will be endemic features of life. Once again, warfare would define
human life.”

Governments, corporations and international bodies like the World Bank,
entrenched in the neoliberal model, cannot and will not move toward real
solutions to the oncoming climate crisis. The solution will come in the form of
a global grassroots movement that unites to take real action to stop global
warming and its catastrophic impacts.

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Global Justice Ecology Project advances global justice and ecological awareness
by identifying issues, creating strategies, organizing campaigns, building
alliances and disseminating photographic images that demonstrate the
interconnections between the social and the ecological, promoting a crucial
holistic analysis to unify and strengthen movements.

http://www.globaljusticeecology.org

Our World is on a precarious course, like gently turning up the heat on the water with a frog in it. The frog won't notice until after it is too late to get themselves Out of Harms Way. This is a wake up call to all of us Save our Earth and to restore an Ecological Balance.

Apocalypse Now
How Mankind Is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth
by Maria Gilardin
http://www.dissidentvoice.org
September 21, 2005

This headline appeared in the London Independent in early February of 2005, following a conference at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, England, where 200 of the world’s leading scientists issued the most urgent warning to date: that dangerous climate change is taking place today, and not the day after tomorrow.

Floods, storms, and droughts. Melting polar ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. Scientists from the fields of glaciology, biology, meteorology, oceanography, and ecology reported seeing a dramatic rise over the last 50 years of all the indicators of climate change: increase in average world temperatures, extreme weather events, in the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and in the level of the oceans.

The award winning environmental writer Geoffrey Lean wrote: “Future historians, looking back from a much hotter and less hospitable world . . . will puzzle over how a whole generation could have sleepwalked into disaster -- destroying the climate that has allowed human civilization to flourish over the past 11,000 years.”

The overwhelming majority of scientists and international climate monitoring bodies now agree that climate change is taking place, that humans are responsible, and that time is running out. In fact, we could reach “the point of no return” in a decade, reported Lean.

Melting glaciers all across the world include: the Broggi in the Peruvian Andes, Glacier Ururashraju in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru, the Pasterze in Austria, Portage Glacier near Anchorage, Alaska, Mount Hood in Oregon, Mount Kilimanjaro in northeastern Tanzania, the Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, and the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland.

The earth is getting warmer. While average warming is just under 1 degree Celsius worldwide, the Polar Regions show warming of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius, due to feedback effects. With the melt of white snow, that previously reflected some of the heat back into the atmosphere (albedo effect), newly exposed darker surfaces absorb heat, and accelerate melting of more ice and snow.

A world average warming of under 1 degree Celsius may seem small. However, historically, the difference between warm periods and an ice age has been only 5 to 6 degrees Celsius. The transformation from the last ice age to the present climate resulted from a slow rise in temperature, which took 5,000 years to fully complete, allowing life on Earth to adapt to the changes. We could bring about a 5- to 6- degree change in only 150 years if we don’t start constraining the use of fossil fuels.

It is not only the fundamental change in the composition of air, water, and soil that we need to consider. The speed at which these changes are forced upon the planet already leads to high extinction rates.

Scientists at the Exeter meeting agreed that warming over 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures would be dangerous -- and we are almost half way there. To burn up the world’s remaining coal reserves, they estimated, would raise the average temperature by 3 to 8 degrees C in less than 150 years.

Quite a few climate “skeptics”, fossil fuel executives, and members of the Bush administration are still denying that there is such a thing as human-caused global warming. Many of them claim that the sun has just grown hotter. However, a warmer sun would have heated the stratosphere as well. In contrast, the stratosphere is cooling -- suggesting a blanket of greenhouse gases that prevents the earth’s heat from radiating back into space.

We know how the greenhouse effect works. Venus, with a thick greenhouse cover is hot; Mars, with a thin greenhouse is cold. Earth’s blanket of greenhouse gases is made up of the byproducts of the industrial age and an outdated Victorian technology. Even though methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, it is CO2 that makes up over 80% of the greenhouse gas mix. Ice core studies show that CO2 concentrations on this planet had been stable for the last millennium, never rising or falling more than 10 ppm, and fluctuating between 275 and 285 ppm. Now CO2 concentrations are beginning to exceed 370 ppm, and are rising from year to year. Other greenhouse gases show the same dramatic increase -- mainly in the past 40 to 50 years. We are already living under a dome of air that no one has breathed in a million years.

Ocean Warming and Acidification

The average temperature of the surface waters of the oceans, extending to a depth of several hundred meters, has risen by a 1/2 degree Celsius. This has occurred in just the past 40 years. The oceans have also become more acidic, due to the uptake of anthropogenic CO2. The Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England estimates that 48% of fossil-fuel CO2, or 400 billion tons, have been absorbed by the oceans, making them the largest reservoir of carbon, a load greater than that borne by the atmosphere or the earth. CO2, while more inert in the atmosphere, becomes highly reactive in oceans, leading to physical, biological, and geological changes.

Carol Turley, head of science at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, warns that no such ph changes in oceans have occurred in the past 20 million years, and that the capacity of oceans to take up CO2 is limited.

What might the consequences of such changes in the oceans be? An August 2005 article in the Globe and Mail, on starving sea birds washing up on Pacific coast beaches from California to British Columbia, reports that scientists believe that, at least for this year, the “bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain.” Off the Oregon coast, the waters near the shore are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal. A layer of warm water along the whole Pacific coastline prevents the usual upwelling of cool water rich in phytoplankton, the base of the food web for all marine life.

Zooplankton, such as krill, depend on phytoplankton. The disappearance of zooplankton in turn affects seabirds and fish from sardines to whales. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found a 20 to 30 per cent drop in juvenile salmon off the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia; and monitoring in Central and Northern California shows the lowest number of juvenile rockfish in more than 20 years.

The world has not yet felt the real impact of global warming since the oceans have absorbed so much heat and CO2. The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) put out two studies in March 2005. They suggest that due to the thermal inertia of the oceans global temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise for the next 100 years - even if greenhouse gas emissions come under control.

First Signs of a Gulf Stream Collapse
The opening presentations at the Exeter, UK conference gave the most comprehensive assessment of so-called “wild cards”, climate change events that risk feedback loops no longer responsive to human intervention. The run-away events, or ecological landslides include accelerated melting of the enormous ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, as well as the decline and possible reversal of the Gulf Stream that conveys heat from the tropics to Europe.

In the Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” the Gulf Stream stops flowing in a matter of days, creating an instant ice age on the Atlantic coast and Western Europe. Scientists at Exeter said it would take at least ten years for such an event to unfold and a few hundred years to set up the conditions. But they warned that the Thermohaline Circulation, as they call the Gulf Stream, has stopped flowing before -- and that we have already a greater than 50% likelihood of a shutdown if we do not enact strict climate policies.

The amount of heat transported North by the Gulf Stream, which keeps Western Europe 5 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer than it would normally be at its latitude, equals one million billion watts -- sufficient to satisfy the energy needs of 100 Earths. Even a partial failure of the Gulf Stream would have huge consequences.

The Gulf Stream picks up heat from the equatorial sun. Driven by warmth, the stream flows northeast towards Europe and the Greenland ice sheets, where the water cools and sinks. The cooler and saltier the water, the stronger the sinking motion. Dense cool and salty water from the Gulf Stream then flows back to the tropics at a deeper ocean level.

As the Polar Regions and the oceans are warming, melt-water from ice sheets and glaciers is changing the salinity of the ocean. A combination of the rising ocean surface temperature, and the decreasing salinity, already visibly changes the movement of sea currents that depend on differences in warmth and coolness, and the weight that higher salinity adds to the water as the driving force.

Large-scale salinity changes in the Arctic and sub-Arctic Seas were reported in June 2005, in the journal Science. Ruth Curry from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, analyzed temperature, salinity, and density data, collected in the North Atlantic Ocean over the last 55 years. Curry warned that excessive amounts of freshwater dumped into the North Atlantic could affect the flow of the Gulf Stream.

We know, from ice-core data, when the Gulf Stream has stopped flowing before. The most recent collapse, 15,000 years ago during the Younger Dryas, was caused by the sweetening of the North Atlantic Ocean, when glaciers covering North America melted and began flowing through the St. Lawrence waterway into the Atlantic, instead of into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi. Today’s accelerated melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets may recreate these conditions, not just for the Gulf Stream but also for other parts of the global ocean circulation.

In May of this year, the London Times reported that first signs of a slow down of the Gulf Stream had been detected by a Cambridge University researcher, who hitches rides on a Royal Navy submarine to one of the three areas where the Gulf Stream reverses its course. Peter Wadhams said that “until recently we could find giant ‘chimneys’ in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 meters below, but now they have almost disappeared.”

Off the coast of Greenland, the Odden Ice Shelf once grew out into the Greenland Sea every winter, and receded in the summer. The Odden triggered the annual formation of sinking water columns in that area. However, since 1997, the shelf has ceased to form. Where Wadhams had once observed 12 giant columns of sinking water under the ice, he now found only two -- and they were so weak that they were unable to reach the seabed.

Wadhams also predicts complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020. On his submarine journeys, using sonar to survey the ice cap from underneath, he has observed a 46% thinning over the past 20 years.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is Melting
The biggest danger to the Gulf Stream comes from melt-water off the Greenland ice sheet, the second largest store of fresh water on this planet. If all of it were to melt, sea levels around the world would rise by 7 meters -- over 20 feet. However even a partial meltdown would affect the Gulf Stream, by diluting the salt water right at the crucial point where the Gulf Stream sinks and returns to the tropics.

Prof. Michael Schlesinger from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, whose climate model already predicts a 50% chance of Gulf Stream shutdown if we do not enact climate policies, and a 25% shutdown even if we limit greenhouse gases, based his estimate only on increased rainfall, due to global warming. He now says he will have to include additional melt-water from the Greenland ice sheet into his next set of data, because it appears that the melt has begun.

Observations on the Greenland ice sheet are done by G.P.S. (global positioning systems) and radar and laser via satellites and airplanes. G.P.S. data of the past 5 years show accelerated melting, and even the beginning of a possible feedback effect: the more the ice sheet melts the faster it starts to move. The reason for this acceleration, it is believed, is that melt-water from the surface of the ice sheet makes its way down to the bedrock below, where it acts as a lubricant, further speeding up the slippage and disintegration.

The question now is, when does this feedback process reach the point of no return? James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says that if greenhouse-gas emissions are not controlled now, the total disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet could be set in motion in a matter of decades. Although it could take hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years to fully play out, once begun the process would become self-reinforcing and cannot be halted.

The Gulf Stream is just one part of a complex global system of ocean currents that affect temperatures, winds, and rain across the whole planet. We now have charts of these powerful currents driven by heat and coolness, traversing all oceans, - Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian. And they are all interconnected via the huge circumpolar current flowing around the Antarctic. Changes at the South Pole therefore would have an even larger effect than those in the Arctic.

Ice Shelf Collapses and the Melting of Antarctica
The Antarctic is the 5th largest continent. It holds 90% of the world’s fresh water. A comparison in scale to the Greenland ice sheet shows that if all Antarctic ice were to melt, sea levels would rise by over 169 feet. The Antarctic has had a permanent ice sheet for the last 30 million years.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge now reports rapid warming on the West Antarctic Peninsula and the WAIS, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Of the 224 glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula, over 87% are in retreat. Major ice shelves have collapsed. BAS scientists believe disappearing ice shelves are now contributing to more rapid melting of glaciers formerly protected by the floating ice shelf at their base.
Antarctica’s huge Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in just 35 days after a NASA satellite detected the first ruptures at the end of January 2002; it was roughly the size of Luxembourg. Soil sediments from that ice shelf reveal that Larsen B had been intact for 20,000 years - since the peak of the last ice age. No collapse of this size has happened since the end of the last Ice Age.



Larsen B's smaller neighbor, Larsen A, broke off in 1995. According to studies by the BAS, other much bigger ice shelves nearby, such as the Ross and Ronne, each larger than France, are also considered at risk of disintegrating.



Another troubling development in the Antarctic, according to the director of the BAS, Chris Rapley, is the accelerated flow of melt streams underneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Until recently, scientists were unable to explain the 20th century’s world-wide sea-level rises of between 1 and 2 mm per year, by the amount of ice that has melted from glaciers and ice sheets. Even after taking into account thermal expansion, they wondered where the extra water was coming from.



Recent discoveries show a major hidden source of water comes from polar ice sheets. In the Antarctic, ice streams, and a newly discovered network of tributaries underneath the ice sheets, drain 33 major basins. Flow rates are much faster than previously assumed. Ice streams, from the feed glaciers behind the collapsed Larsen A and B ice shelves, also show accelerated flows. The BAS calls this a “cork out of the bottle” effect.



These “wild cards,” the melting of the polar ice caps and the acidification of the oceans, were only the most dramatic events on the agenda of the Exeter, UK, meeting on the dangers of climate-change. The number of scientific papers, recording changes in ecosystems due to global warming, escalated in five years, from 14 to more than a thousand. In one presentation after another, scientists described a crisis they had dedicated their lives to avoid.



Geoffrey Lean, who attended the conference, wrote that there were few in the room that did not sense their children or grandchildren standing invisibly at their shoulders. The formal conclusion of the meeting, that climate change was “already occurring” and that “in many cases the risks are more serious than previously thought,” appeared in the press all over the world -- except in the United States. However even in the European press, very few writers took on the scientific details of this story, without which political action and organizing are impossible. Geoffrey Lean wrote: “Mankind is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth.”



Bush-Wars on Climate Science



After the Exeter meeting, in an interview for TUC Radio, the director of BAS, Chris Rapley, spoke about how, in public appearances, he bridges the gap between science, and popular understanding of these dramatic changes.



He said he always refers to the picture of Earth in space taken by Apollo 17: the small blue planet, tilted back to show the Antarctic, surrounded by inky blackness. The image, he says, shows that this is all there is, no other life-support system trails behind; and, that on the planet all is interconnected.



Earth is the most complex and complicated object in the universe that we know of, says Rapley, a radio astronomer by training. Only Earth has an ocean and clouds. Only Earth has physics, biology, geology, chemistry, and anthropology.



Humans have transformed the earth in a dramatic way, especially in the last 50 years. Not only have we drastically changed the carbon cycle by the burning of fossil fuel and coal, and by increasing forest fires; we have also changed the nitrogen cycle worldwide by the amount of nitrogen being fixed by industrial agriculture and fertilizer use.



We have transformed more than half the land surface through agriculture, deforestation, mining, industry, paving, and ever-growing cities. These changes have altered the climate systems by the way moisture is exchanged between Earth and the atmosphere.

We have destroyed biodiversity by shifting plants and animals into places and conditions where they cannot survive. Our own survival, as humans, is only slightly more secure. We are seeing the most basic of our needs -- air, water, housing, and energy -- disappear before our eyes. Rapley concluded that there is no way to imagine that humans could do all these things without an effect.

The demise of our common life-support system is accelerated by even more energy-intensive activities, by which a privileged group of people attempts to secure its survival.

The meeting in Exeter was held explicitly to convince the Bush administration to join the rest of the industrialized world, and to use the July 2005 G8 meeting to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The United States and Australia, the world’s two largest polluters, are -- to this day -- refusing to be part of any global agreement to limit CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The G8 meeting came and went. The US, with 42% of global fossil fuel CO2, and 34% of combined greenhouse gas emissions, not only remained outside the climate- stabilization effort but also fought vigorously to prevent any progress in setting limits. Given the extraordinary amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the US, this country alone can dramatically slow climate change, or bring the planet to the boiling point.

Three weeks before the G8 summit, The Observer (UK) printed a set of leaked documents revealing how the Bush White House derailed attempts to address global warming. These submissions to the G8 action plan show that Washington officials deleted even the suggestion that global warming has already started.

Among the key sentences removed were: “Our world is warming. Climate change is a serious threat that has the potential to affect every part of the globe. And we know that ... mankind's activities are contributing to this warming. This is an issue we must address urgently.”

At the Exeter conference the International Climate Change Task Force, UK, said that if we do nothing the climate system will collapse. Stephen Byers, the co-chair of that task force and an advisor to Tony Blair, said the point of no return could be reached in a decade. The Bush delegation to the July 2005 G8 summit in Scotland, probably even George Bush himself, is aware of that deadline.

However the warning disappeared under the same blanket of denial and outright lies produced by industry, their paid scientists, and the Bush administration. Among all official documents that deny climate change, only one sends a different message: the report on “Climate Change as a National Security Concern,” commissioned for Donald Rumsfeld by Pentagon defense adviser Andrew Marshall, and made public in February 2004.

The Global Business Network wrote for the Pentagon: “the focus in climate research has slowly been shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. A year later, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two decades.”

Whether in a decade as the UK scientists say, or two as the Pentagon study says, a consensus is developing that we are reaching a phase of dangerous, abrupt, and irreversible climate shifts. However, for the Bush administration, this is not an ecological or humanitarian, but only a military issue. They question only how to protect US borders from environmental refugees, how to overpower nations collapsing under the environmental pressures, how to keep access to food, water, and energy as other parts of the world go hungry and thirsty; how to keep nuclear pre-eminence, while those weapons in other countries fall into the hands of insurgents.

The eerie similarity of these goals and methods, with those of the so-called war on terrorism, raises the question of whether that war on terrorism is not really already a war on the Earth. And, as in the war on terrorism, the already occurring ecological disasters -- like the Osama bin Ladens -- are needed and promoted. And the religious fundamentalists are driving this forward because God has given them dominion over the planet to do as they wish.

And, as irrecoverable time passes, more bad news of ecological landslides emerges: In early August 2005, the New Scientist reported that, in Western Siberia, a permafrost area, the size of France and Germany combined, is thawing for the first time since the ice age, 11,000 years ago. What was until recently an expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometer across. The area’s peat bog contains an estimated 70 billion tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2, which, if released, could dramatically increase the rate of global warming.

Even in a best-case scenario, were the methane to be released slowly over a period of 100 years, it would effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10% to 25% increase in global warming, said scientists at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK. The scientists from Tomsk State University and Oxford, who discovered the melt, said that this was yet another feedback effect, an “ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming.”

There may be some, cynical enough to think that climate change is an interesting science fiction experiment, or greedy enough to want to extract the last drop of oil from the dying Earth for a profit.

But what about the rest of us: not cynical, not greedy and arrogant? It is pretty clear that there need to be BIG changes in the way we live -- and that is frightening for many, since we have become so dependent on this technological civilization. However scientists tell us that the extreme weather events to come, such as floods, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and unprecedented heat waves, are more frightening than any change in the way we choose to live now.

There is a set of figures that is both deeply depressing and hopeful. The last published World Bank data for CO2 emissions per capita indicate that, while every man, woman, and child in the US puts out 20 metric tons of CO2 per annum, those in the European Union put out 8 per person per year; China 2; and the output of Nigerians, who supply us with much of the oil that we burn into CO2, is zero -- below scale. In 2002, US-Americans used over 12,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per person; Europeans used less than half the amount, while the use in China is 987 kilowatt-hours per person. The US per-capita use of oil is twice that of the European Union, and more than 8 times that of China.

What if China aspires to our standard of living? And why not, if we are not willing to cut back? Europe gets by with so much less CO2-output and energy-input, while already planning for further cuts. Where is the measure of global justice, between those who cause no harm and those whose extravagant use of fossil fuels harms everybody else?

Regardless of who is driving this: industry, the military, religious fundamentalists, or any permutation of government, be it red or blue, responsibility for the approaching climate collapse will fall overwhelmingly on the United States. Since the US government and corporations not only refuse to cut back but are driving eco-collapse forward, it is up to ordinary people to refuse collaboration and to control the perpetrators. For us living in the US, the opportunity and time to make a difference that will affect the entire planet is now.

Maria Gilardin produces TUC Radio, a weekly half-hour radio program that is distributed for free to all radio stations via Pacifica Radio's KU Band, and as an mp3 file on TUC Radio's web site: http://www.tucradio.org. She may be reached at: tuc [at] tucradio.org

Superfund Sites are the nation's worst toxic waste sites: 1,305 are scheduled for cleanup on the National Priorities List (NPL). About 11 million people in the U.S., including 3-4 million children, live within 1 mile of a federal Superfund site and confront potential public health risks. Scorecard profiles the risks these sites pose to public health and the environment.

Heather Hatfield, WebMD Medical Writer
March 6, 2003

How would your health be affected if your home were near a hazardous-waste landfill, chemical plants, steel mills, abandoned waste dumps, or sewage treatment facilities?

Epidemiological studies have so far failed to find categorical evidence of higher rates of disease among people who live near sites known to be contaminated with environmental toxins from manufacturing or materials handling centers. But it has become increasingly clear over the last 10 years that poor and minority communities are more often the reluctant hosts of "dirty" industries than are wealthier or white communities.

Minorities Bear a Disproportionate Burden

In the United States, 6 billion tons of waste is produced annually, nearly 50,000 pounds per person. Minority and poor communities bear the burden of environmental pollution, according to the National Research Council and the Commission for Racial Justice.

An estimated 50% of African-Americans and 60% of Hispanics live in a county in which levels of two or more air pollutants exceed governmental standards. Communities with the greatest number of commercial hazardous-waste facilities have some of the highest proportions of minority residents. Half of all Asian/Pacific Islanders and American Indians live in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites. Communities with existing incinerators have 89% more minorities than the national average.

African-Americans are heavily overrepresented in cities with the largest number of abandoned toxic waste sites, such as Memphis, St. Louis, Houston, Cleveland, Chicago, and Atlanta.

Minorities across the United States are fighting the war against environmental racism. Our government is struggling to create environmental justice. But what do the terms environmental racism and justice mean? And how do they affect the health of minorities across our nation and across the world?

Environmental racism is:


What environmental justice seeks to remedy.
Discrimination in environmental law-making and law enforcement.
Targeting communities of color as sites for toxic-waste disposal and polluting industries.



Environmental justice is equal protection under environmental laws and regulations without discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and/or socioeconomic status.

Polluted Communities--Case Histories

The 85-mile stretch of land from Baton Rouge to New Orleans is known as Cancer Alley. Cancer (digestive, uterine, breast, lung, and prostate, among others) is rampant here. Are the cancer rates higher here than elsewhere? Debate rages continually. But the families of cancer victims and cancer survivors in Cancer Alley say they believe environmental racism is at work here. They say the hundreds of petrochemical facilities surrounding their homes cause cancer.

One major cause of inner-city childhood asthma is pollution. Dr. Robert Bullard, an expert on environmental justice and a sociology professor at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia, tells the Reading Eagle newspaper (in Pennsylvania) that "the number one reason for hospitalization of poor and minority children in major cities in the US is asthma that is environmentally induced."

Augusta, Georgia, is home to the community of Hyde Park. For years, residents pumped water from wells in their backyards and ate homegrown vegetables. But in 1980, the largely African-American community realized that a local factory that manufactured wood preservative had been leaking creosote, a probable cancer-causing chemical mixture, into their water and soil. By the time the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) closed the factory, people were already suffering from skin diseases, cancer, and other conditions related to chemical exposure.

The Heavy Burden of High-Lead Blood Levels

Lead is a natural element and a heavy metal. Only a few years ago, it was commonly an ingredient in gasoline, paint, food cans, and other consumer products found in houses and schools.

Anyone can suffer from high lead levels in their blood, but the burden falls disproportionately on low-income families of color. In the United States, African-American children are five times more likely to suffer from lead poisoning than white children, and 22% of African-American children living in older housing are lead poisoned.

Legislating Good Nature

Why do minorities seem to bear the burden of environmental pollution? Historically, it has simply been easier for industry and government to take advantage of the powerlessness of minorities, especially low-income minorities, and to put polluting facilities near their homes.

ENVIRONMENT:
Climate Change Hits African Americans Harder
Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - The impact of climate change in the United States is felt disproportionately by African American communities, so that measures to mitigate the trend would also benefit that group more than others, says a groundbreaking new report.

The study, commissioned by the Centre for Policy Analysis and Research (CPAR), the policy arm of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBCF), asserts that African American communities are unfairly burdened by the health effects of climate change, including deaths during heat waves and sickness caused by growing air pollution.

Moreover, the report, 'African Americans and Climate Change: An Unequal Burden', argues that African American communities, both historically and today, emit less greenhouse gas and are therefore less responsible for climate change than others.

The study, released Wednesday, concludes that effective and successful policies to mitigate climate change could generate large health and economic benefits for African Americans.

"This is the first ever comprehensive exam of health and climate change on African Americans," said Weldon J Rougeau, president of the Congressional Black Caucus -- a non-partisan group that advocates for sustainable change in African American communities -- at the release of the report.

The study focuses largely on the immediate health effects felt by African Americans as a result of climate change.

They include sickness caused by a reduction in air quality, deaths from heat waves and other extreme weather events and the spread of infectious diseases, according to Redefining Progress, the California research firm that conducted the study.

Seventy percent of African Americans live in counties that violate federal air pollution standards, and in every one of the 44 major metropolitan areas in the United States, blacks are more likely than whites to be exposed to higher concentrations of toxins in the air they breathe, says the CBCF report.

"(African American) communities are the canaries in the mineshaft," said Michael Gelobter, executive director of Redefining Progress, at a press conference to release the report.

"Children in West Oakland (a predominantly African American California neighbourhood) are seven times more likely to be diagnosed with asthma than anywhere else in the country," added Barbara Lee, a member of the House of Representatives from California.

Public health disparities between white and black neighbourhoods across the country follow a "cradle to grave cycle", she added, suggesting that the administration of President George W Bush commit to the Kyoto Protocol.

The protocol is a treaty negotiated by over 100 countries that calls for 38 of the largest industrial nations to reduce their emissions of the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming -- led by carbon dioxide -- to 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012.

In March 2001, Bush, a Republican, announced the United States would not be bound by the treaty, which had been signed by his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton.

"The current stalling and denial tactics of the Bush administration and congressional leadership are leaving communities, especially low-income communities of colour, at risk simply for the benefit of energy industries," David Hamilton, director of the global warming and energy programme at the Sierra Club, a major environmental group, told the news conference.

Related health concerns, highlighted in the report, included the disproportionate number of deaths from extreme heat waves, in central-city African American communities and the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever, specifically in southern states.

For example, in the 1995 Chicago heat wave mortality rates for African Americans were roughly 50 percent higher than whites, echoing statistics during a heat wave in St. Louis in 1992.

All of these health problems are compounded by the fact that blacks are 50 percent more likely than non-blacks to not have health insurance, according to Redefining Progress statistics.

The report also says African American workers suffer more than others economically from climate change. For example, they are more likely to be laid off due to economic instability caused by events triggered by climate change, such as drought.

Furthermore, African Americans, per capita, tend to use cleaner fuels than other citizens, relying much more heavily on natural gas than on home heating oil or gasoline. African Americans used 30 percent less gasoline than whites, per capita, in 2002, the study says.

But blacks are not to blame for being hit harder by climate change, because their households emit 20 percent less carbon dioxide than white households, says the report. As consumers African Americans use fewer products that produce carbon emissions than other Americans, it adds.

The study concludes that well-crafted energy policies could protect African Americans' health and jobs in three basic ways.

First, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 15 percent below 1990 levels would greatly mitigate many of the health effects of climate change, including air pollution-related mortalities, and save an estimated 10,000 African American lives a year by 2020.

Secondly, properly designed energy policies could create large net benefits for African Americans. For instance, if the revenue from carbon charges (taxes on fossil fuel emissions) were used to offset distortionary taxes -- such as payroll taxes -- dramatic employment benefits, on the order of 800,000 to 1.4 million new jobs, would be felt across the country, suggests the study.

Finally, moving the economy away from fossil fuel dependency would create greater economic stability for the United States, and significantly benefit low-income African American communities through job creation and labour force stability.

Shifting from fossil fuel dependency to renewable energy sources would create more jobs in labour intensive industries, in which many African Americans are employed, and reduce the U.S.' vulnerability to recessions (during which African Americans are twice as likely to lose their jobs) added the study. (END/2004)

ARTICLES
Publication Date: October 1, 1997


On February 11, 1994, President Clinton issued an executive order titled "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low Income Populations." The administration therewith announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal programs would begin "identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects...on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States."

Described thus, "environmental justice" (also called "environmental equity") certainly seems a reasonable concern. After all, minorities and low-income persons suffer disproportionately from many illnesses and often cannot obtain adequate health care. And because lack of money or education can seriously limit residential and employment options, such persons might have more difficulty avoiding polluted localities. Moreover, communities populated largely by minorities or low-income persons might be politically weak and thus more susceptible than affluent neighborhoods to becoming locales for dumps, waste-treatment plants, and other land uses unwanted by residents in the vicinity. And if pollution causes disease, such susceptibility could be very important.

A Movement Is Born

But some troubling misconceptions accompany these plausible arguments. The executive order and related EPA policy innovations stemmed from allegations by the "environmental justice" (EJ) movement of institutionalized "environmental racism."

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Commercial hazardous-waste....facilities process only a small fraction (perhaps 4 percent) of all hazardous waste in the United States.
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The EJ movement is a diverse coalition of "people of color" grassroots organizations and their allies. EJ activism, like most other forms of grassroots environmentalism, differs somewhat from traditional—"hiking, biking, and spotted owls"—environmentalism. Escalating public concern about toxic pollutants (especially hazardous waste) in the wake of the Love Canal scare of 1980, and the costly congressional overreaction to that scare (Superfund), heightened the visibility and credibility of appeals based on purported environmental hazards in minority communities.

Suddenly, environmentalism wasn't just a "middle-class white folks" issue. The EJ movement made its first splash in 1982, with a protest against a proposed landfill for PCB-contaminated soil in Warren County, North Carolina. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested in the failed endeavor to prevent the landfill. District of Columbia Congressional delegate Walter Fauntroy returned from Warren County to spur the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), an investigative arm of Congress, to pursue an inquiry.

Shallow Evidence

The GAO found that predominately Black communities were the sites of three of the four "offsite" (i.e., not adjacent to or part of an industrial facility) hazardous-waste landfills in a region comprising eight southeastern states. That the GAO could not address whether these landfills would affect the health of the populations living near them did not deter the activists from using the GAO's findings as evidence of significant pollution-burden disparities between races and between income groups.

In 1987, a few years after the release of the GAO report, the United Church of Christ (UCC)'s Commis-sion for Racial Justice unveiled Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites—a classic of advocacy research (research influenced by outcome preference and a policy agenda)—at the National Press Club, in Washington, DC. The UCC report—which had not undergone prepublication peer review—suggested a correlation between race and the likelihood of living near either a commercial hazardous-waste facility or an "uncontrolled" toxic-waste site: "Residential ZIP code areas with the highest number of commercial hazardous waste facilities also had the highest mean percentage" of minority residents. According to the report, minorities averaged 24 percent of the total population in ZIP Code (postal-delivery) areas with a commercial hazardous-waste facility, but in ZIP Code areas without such a facility minorities averaged only 12 percent.

But the UCC report also stated, in passing, that more than half the population of the United States lived in ZIP Code areas with a commercial hazardous-waste facility. In any case, such facilities process only a small fraction (perhaps 4 percent) of all hazardous waste in the United States. The UCC report did not provide a comprehensive picture of the distribution of hazardous waste in the U.S., much less evidence of social disparity in that distribution. Moreover, the report did not provide any information on exposure, much less on the possible health consequences thereof.

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The cry of "environmental racism," buoyed by misleading research, is belied by more careful studies.
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The UCC report also suggested that minorities were disproportionately endangered by "uncontrolled" toxic-waste sites—i.e., any site specified in the EPA's Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compen-sation, and Liabilities Information System (CERCLIS)—stating that "three out of every five Black and Hispanic Americans" lived in communities with such sites. But since the 1987 release of the UCC report, the EPA has pronounced 27,000 of what originally were 40,000 "uncontrolled" toxic-waste sites clean or of little or no risk.

The cry of "environmental racism," buoyed by misleading research, is belied by more careful studies. For example, researchers at the University of Massachusetts based their study not on ZIP Code areas, but on census tracts. Census tracts are both smaller and more definable as neighborhoods than ZIP Code areas. The researchers found that commercial hazardous-waste facilities "are no more likely to be located in tracts with higher percentages of blacks and Hispanics than in other tracts."

In 1992 several partisan EJ papers were published as a group in The National Law Journal without prepublication peer review. The articles purported to show racial discrimination in the environmental enforcement process, claiming: (a) that hazardous-waste sites in nonminority communities became members of the National Priorities List of Superfund sites more quickly than did those in minority communities, and (b) that penalties imposed for violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act were lighter in minority communities.

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This diverse "people of color" coalition could not be maintained without faith in the illusion that priorities and tradeoffs are unnecessary.
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But this study had "serious statistical methodological problems," according to Bernard R. Siskin, Ph.D., a statistician retained by the EPA. These problems included the presentation of statistically insignificant findings. Dr. Siskin ascribed the aforementioned time-lag claim to a "failure . . . to account for the correct date on which the site is first discovered."

Even the GAO, whose 1983 report had provided EJ partisans with ammunition, concluded in a much more elaborate (and widely ignored) 1995 study: "The percentage of minorities and low-income people living within one mile of nonhazardous municipal landfills was more often lower than the percentage in the rest of the country. When the data from our sample were used to make estimates about all nonhazardous municipal landfills in the nation, neither minorities nor low-income people were overrepresented in any consistent manner."

Color Them Egalitarian

Unsettling as the attachment of EJ activists to dubious empirical findings may be, such attachment is not the movement's only serious shortcoming. Another serious, but more subtle, defect is its very nature as a diverse coalition of grassroots groups seeking "redress" of an unlimited number of grievances. For example, Native American activists are often spurred by tribal-culture and sovereignty concerns, while others focus on occupational exposure to chemicals among migrant farmworkers. All such constituencies have been encouraged to vent their claims to the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) and to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), the activist-dominated federal advisory committee with which the OEJ closely collaborates.

This diverse "people of color" coalition could not be maintained without faith in the illusion that priorities and tradeoffs are unnecessary. In the world of EJ activism (as in grassroots environmentalism generally), all environmental concerns—childhood lead poisoning, global climate change, nuclear waste, pesticide use, Superfund sites, urban air pollution, and so forth—have equal rank. Of course, prioritization of these concerns would result in neglect of some of them and contention among members of the coalition.

Prioritization of environmental issues is at variance with what makes the EJ movement tick: egalitarianism. In the realm of such activism, the downgrading of any concern amounts to something intolerable to many activists: victimization. The only priority shared by grassroots activists of all ethnicities is citizen involvement. It seems never to have occurred to many activists that the attention they demand for minor, unsubstantiated, or nonexistent problems might distract attention from serious real-life problems, such as lead exposure among urban minority children.

In the final analysis, EJ activism is not a public health movement but a loose aggregation of advocates for grassroots democracy and social justice—including, at an extreme, some who oppose industrial capitalism. Its major political aims include unifying residents and increasing their collective profiles in policy debates and governmental decision-making. Its ultimate aim is to reallocate society's resources. Because of these aims, the movement can ill afford pursuing a health-centered agenda; alleged health hazards that do not readily outrage the public have little utility in mobilizing citizens. Personal danger due to personal behavior—such as smoking—tends not to outrage the public and thus lacks such utility. More useful for mobilization purposes are alleged hazards perceivable as having been imposed on communities by corporations (especially those considered intrusive) or by governmental entities that appear distant, unaccountable, or racist.

An understanding of the fundamental ideals of the EJ movement (and of grassroots environmentalism overall)—democratization and wealth redistribution—facilitates comprehension of the activists' persistent emphasis on such minor or weakly documented hazards as dioxin, environmental "hormone disrupters," or most toxic-waste sites. These ideals also account for the movement's acceptance of intuition as a means of perceiving risk. This is exemplified by the longevity of the thoroughly debunked folklore that the concentration of petrochemical facilities in Louisiana created a "cancer alley."

On the other hand, because smoking is both voluntary and common, tobacco use is not an EJ issue. The approximately 47,000 annual tobacco-related deaths in the African-American community elicit little outrage among EJ activists, partly because these deaths are perceived as proportionate. Even the remarkably high smoking rates among low-income and Native-American citizens provoke little activist concern.

Urban Tobacco Roads

In a change of pace, minority activists tackled a worthy issue in 1990 when R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company proposed to pitch "Uptown," a then-forthcoming cigarette brand, to the African-American market. This issue had all the elements most useful for mobilizing a community: A distinct, formidable, outside entity explicitly announced that it would target an ethnic group for the marketing of a new and tangible source of harm. Once Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan, an African-American, publicly denounced R.J. Reynolds for fostering a "culture of cancer" in the Black community, the company canceled test-marketing of "Uptown."

If only corporations would propose to burn tobacco in urban incinerators, or to bury it in minority-neighborhood landfills. Now that would be an environmental justice issue!

Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution and author of the forthcoming book The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice.

EJ Semantics

Some EJ activists will argue that "environmental equity" simply means "equal protection under environmental laws" while the meaning of "environmental justice" is broader, covering universal provision of a positive, nurturing, healthful environment. Many activists dislike the expression "environmental equity" because they fear it implies merely shifting environmental poisons from nonwhites to whites—a political nonstarter if there ever was one.

I do not take these distinctions very seriously. The expressions "environmental justice," "environmental equity," and "environmental racism" are intentionally ill-defined and versatile. They are merely rhetorical, "bumper-sticker" tools, devised and embraced for building coalitions and setting agendas. The label "environmental racism" is just a verbal rock that EJ activists throw at "polluters" and their "handmaidens" in the Establishment.

—Christopher H. Foreman, Jr.

Americans care a great deal about the health of our environment. According to a March 2002 Gallup poll, 82 percent of Americans worry a "great deal" or a "fair amount" about pollution of drinking water; 85 percent about pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs; and 82 percent about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste.1

There is reason to worry. Although the United States is widely considered a global leader in economy, trade, education, arts, and innovation, we lag miserably when it comes to the environment. The U.S. ranks first in the world for achievement in science and technology out of a field of 142 nations, but we trail the rest of the world in every other major indicator of environmental sustainability, according to the 2002 Environmental Sustainability Index published by Columbia and Yale Universities.2 The U.S. ranks 18th in water quality, 52nd in air quality, and 49th in environmental health. As for effort toward improving the environmental situation, the U.S. record gets even worse. The U.S. ranks 122nd in reducing air pollution, 133rd in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and 136th in reducing waste and consumption pressures. Overall, the U.S. ranks 45th in environmental sustainability.

Something doesn't compute. In a democracy, public policy is supposed to correlate more closely with public opinion. Look at who is financing our representatives' campaigns for office, however, and the political equation suddenly becomes easy to solve: campaign cash from polluting industries opposed to strong environmental laws trumps the efforts of environmental groups lobbying for greater environmental protection. Oil and gas, electric utilities, mining, chemical, and the auto manufacturing industries have poured $292 million into federal campaigns and party coffers since 1989, 71 percent of that to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). That's 30 times as much as the $9.8 million contributed by environmental groups over the same time period. On issue after issue, when it comes to the environment, we have a dollar democracy.



Global Warming
Heat waves, droughts, floods, the spread of infectious diseases, an increase in severe, life-threatening storms—these are the very real threats that global warming poses to the world. A majority of the world's scientists agree that global warming is a serious problem, and that pollution is the main cause. Production of excess carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that contribute to global warming could be controlled. But the oil and gas, electric utilities, and auto manufacturers that are among the industries opposed to such controls have been the source of more than $225 million for political campaigns since 1989, according to CRP. President George W. Bush alone received $2.5 million from these industries for his 2000 presidential campaign, plus another $2.9 million for his inaugural festivities. The results of their largesse are evident in the actions of Congress and the administration.

On Valentine's Day 2002, President Bush announced his "Clear Skies" voluntary initiative to reduce global warming. Environmental groups quickly criticized its weaknesses. The Bush policy, which is supposed to be a substitute for U.S. participation in the international Kyoto Protocol, would allow emissions to grow by 36 percent more than allowed under that treaty by 2010 and 50 percent more by 2020, according to the Sierra Club.3

Meanwhile, Congress rejects other measures that could help curb global warming, such as increasing fuel economy standards. Better fuel economy is the "biggest single step" America can take to curb global warming, according to the Sierra Club. However, in March 2002, the Senate voted 62 to 38 to turn aside a proposal sponsored by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard to 36 miles per gallon for cars and trucks by 2015. On average, the 62 Senators who voted with the industry to avoid any immediate toughening of CAFE rules received $18,800 from auto companies. The 38 Senators who wanted stronger standards received just $5,590.4 Over all, since 1989, auto manufacturing companies have given $10.7 million to federal candidates and parties. Of that, $1.7 million was soft money and the rest was hard money contributions from PACs and individuals.

Toxic Waste: The Superfund
At a very young age, most schoolchildren are taught a basic civic responsibility: if you make a mess, you clean it up. But the nation's top polluting companies apparently never learned this lesson. With the help of large amounts of campaign cash, they're convincing politicians to let them off the hook for cleaning up toxic waste sites across the nation.

In 1980, Congress established the "Superfund" to clean up the worst toxic waste sites—relics of a time when less was known about the harm that chemicals could do to human health and the environment. From its inception, the program has operated under the principle that the "polluter pays." The companies responsible for the pollution—not the taxpayers—are supposed to shoulder the cost of cleanups. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determines which companies are responsible for pollution at a specific site. These companies, in turn, can seek funds from other companies or groups that also contributed to the contamination to a lesser degree. To cover costs of cleaning up sites where polluters cannot be determined or are no longer in existence, Congress also set up the Superfund Trust Fund, funded by taxes on the oil and chemical industries.

Since 1995, however, Congress has refused to reauthorize the taxes on the oil and chemical industries—the source of $190 million in campaign contributions since 1989, three-quarters of that to the GOP. The Superfund Trust Fund budget has dwindled significantly, from a high of $3.8 billion in 1995 to a mere $28 million projected for 2003. In that time, polluting corporations have saved paying $10 billion in Superfund-related taxes. Although the previous three presidents supported reauthorization of industry taxes, President Bush opposes it, instead favoring an increase in the amount paid by taxpayers.5

In June 2002 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that the Bush administration would cut funds dramatically for cleanups. These cuts are expected to halt the clean up of 33 of the most heavily polluted sites in the Superfund program.6 According to the US Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG), the program will be under-funded by at least $1 billion to $1.4 billion by 2003, and the pace of clean up has already been reduced by 50%, dropping from 87 sites in 2000 to a projected 40 by the end of 2002.7 The Bush-Cheney campaign collected $2.5 million from the oil and gas and chemical industries for the 2000 presidential campaign.

Nuclear Waste
Some 70,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste could soon be moving on highways across 44 states and the District of Columbia.8 In fact, according to the Environmental Working Group, one in seven Americans live within one mile of the proposed routes for shipping the highly radioactive waste, the product of the nation's nuclear labs and power plants, to a proposed permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.9

The hazardous radioactive waste will be moving through American cities and neighborhoods thanks to a heavy lobbying campaign by the nuclear industry, the source of $8.7 million in campaign contributions to federal candidates and party committees in the 2002 election cycle alone, according to CRP.10 Top Senate recipients include Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-NH), who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has gotten more than $90,000, and who cast a "yes" vote on the bill. Overall, Senate Democrats who voted for the nuclear waste bill received, on average, twice as much money from nuclear interests as those Democrats who voted no.11 Top House recipients are Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), who has received more than $83,000 and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who has gotten more than $63,000. Both have leadership positions on House environmental committees, both voted in favor of moving nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, and, indeed, Barton was the bill's lead sponsor in the House.

Under the Yucca Mountain plan, nuclear waste will start to move in 2010, and early estimates indicate that it will take 53,000 truck shipments or 10,700 rail cask shipments from commercial and Department of Energy sites all over the nation to get the waste to Nevada over the course of 24 years.12 Adding to the danger inherent in this process, they will be transported in containers vulnerable to terrorist attacks and accidental ruptures. Moreover, this mass relocation does little to solve the existing problem. The proposed facility at Yucca Mountain will be able to hold 77,000 tons of waste. However, the nuclear energy industry's waste production will exceed the holding capacity of the Yucca facility even before it opens.13


When Contributors Write Energy Rules
In the past the energy industry was content with giving money to political campaigns in exchange for access to government policymakers. Today, with the help of big campaign contributions these corporations have put themselves in the enviable position of actually being able to write government policy themselves.

Even before he was sworn in as president, George W. Bush formed a transition team dominated by industry interests. A month after President Bush's inauguration, Vice President Dick Cheney formed an Energy Task Force.14 The mission of this office was to evaluate the energy needs of the country and decide how best to facilitate them. Instead of conducting balanced research, the task force spent its time accommodating the president's contributors. From January through September 2001, task force officials had 714 direct contacts with industry representatives, and only 29 with non-industry representatives.15 The companies involved were the source of $85.7 million in campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties from 1999 through 2002, nearly two thirds of that to Republicans, according to CRP.16

All of this was done in secret. For several months, the White House refused to release the names, times or dates of any parties they met with, despite repeated requests from the General Accounting Office and from public interest groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Finally, in February 2002, a federal district court ruling ordered the Department of Energy to release documents related to the taskforce to NRDC.17 They reveal that while forming the National Energy Policy, the Bush administration collaborated heavily with utility, oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries, incorporating their recommendations often verbatim into its energy plan.18

Meanwhile, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA) carried the water in Congress, sponsoring energy legislation similar to the Bush energy plan. Tauzin is among the top five recipients in the House of Representatives for contributions from the chemical, electric utility, and oil and gas companies during the 2002 election cycle. In August 2001, the House approved the legislation, which contained $33 billion in tax breaks for energy companies.19 The House bill also included a provision allowing drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), home to more than 241 different species of birds, fish, and land and marine mammals, three of which are endangered.20 Although the Senate version of the bill, approved in April 2002, does not include the provision to open ANWR to drilling, there are other provisions considered harmful to the environment. Among these are sections weakening safe drinking water requirements, nuclear safety standards, and efficiency standards for air conditioners, according to New Energy Future, a project of the state PIRGs.21 As of August 2002, the House and Senate were negotiating a final version of the energy bill.

Clean Money + Clean Elections = Clean Environment
The current campaign finance system is fundamentally flawed. Corporations and wealthy individuals, many of whom benefit from the weakening of laws created to protect the environment, are able to give the most money to candidates. These candidates come to depend on special interest contributions and when they start writing laws, they look out for their contributors' interests over the interests of the public and their constituents. As long as we maintain our system of privately financed campaigns, public policy will continue to be unduly influenced by special interest contributions.

Comprehensive campaign finance reform should aim to create a system that reduces special interest influence and creates a level playing field so qualified candidates without access to wealth can run viable campaigns. Public Campaign believes that a system of "Clean Money/Clean Elections" can alter the political landscape. Under a Clean Money system, candidates who agree to forego private contributions—including money from their own pockets—and accept strict spending limits receive an equal and limited amount to run their campaigns from a publicly-financed clean elections fund. In return, voters will get an end to special interest influence and a level playing field so that environmental policy will no longer be polluted by campaign contributions.

Clean Money is already law in four states: Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Grassroots organizations in nearly forty states are working on behalf of Clean Money Campaign Reform. If you care about protecting our natural surroundings to safeguard people and wildlife, then you should support Clean Money Campaign Reform.

Hurricane Katrina and Climate Justice

by Joshua Karliner, Special to CorpWatch
September 12th, 2005




cartoon by Khalil Bendib
For nearly five years George Bush has infuriated much of the world by refusing to take action on global warming. Instead, he has called for more study. In a way, he got what he wanted with Hurricane Katrina.

One of the strongest storms on record, Katrina provided an epic and horrific laboratory for observing what happens when corporations and consumers pump more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The world’s top climate scientists have long documented the effects of burning fossil fuels--oil, coal and gas-- and predicted dire consequences for the world’s climate, including increasingly severe and frequent storms and floods.

That future is now. Katrina and its ugly aftermath are harbingers of world torn asunder not only by global warming’s howling winds and towering waves, but also by deepening fissures between rich and poor, black and white.

Of course, mother nature does not discriminate by race or class. The flood waters swallowed up plenty of rich folks’ property and billions in corporate capital. But when nature makes her wrath felt, the wealthy are far more able to get out of the way and write off their losses, while the poor are trapped in her fury. In New Orleans, the poorest neighborhoods lay on lowest ground; the people without cash or cars had no way to evacuate. They are now environmental refugees--the ones the government utterly failed to help for days; the ones who will find it most difficult to relocate, to recover, to start anew.

The least powerful—whether they live in New Orleans or in the low-lying coastal areas of Bangladesh, Nigeria, Honduras, or on islands from Jamaica to Fiji to the Maldives—are the ones who will suffer most from the hurricanes, typhoons, and rising tides of climate change. As entire coasts come under threat, the wealthy can buy sandbags and create super levies and sea walls, or just up and move to higher ground. The poor—tens of millions of climate refugees--will be stranded; no gas, no food, nowhere to go; up the toxic creek without a paddle.


It’s the Oil, Stupid
The Katrina tragedy is intertwined with oil. Along with gas and coal, when burned, oil produces carbon dioxide, which makes up the bulk of the global warming gases that the world’s people and corporations release into the atmosphere. The United States consumes vast quantities of these fossil fuels. With 4 percent of the planet’s population, it is responsible for about a quarter of all the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Ironically, Louisiana is a major center for refining oil into gasoline and many other petrochemical products. The area right next to New Orleans—an area devastated by Katrina—has been dubbed Cancer Alley for all of the pollution its refineries spew onto adjacent poor communities of color, and for the cancer clusters found to correlate with this contamination.

The people of Cancer Alley have suffered the scourge of oil several times over. Every day they breathed the filthy air and drank the contaminated water that the neighboring petrochemcial corporations served up. Many are sick. Some are dead. Now their homes are gone, swept away by a hurricane likely fueled by global warming caused in part by the oil refining that poisoned their community in the first place.

On top of this, almost all 140 chemical plants between New Orleans and Baton Rouge have sustained damage. “At least two hazardous waste sites are underwater, at least two oil refinery sites in Chalmette are shut down and possibly flooded,” said Darryl Malek-Wiley a grassroots Environmental Justice Organizer in Louisiana. Rigzone.com, an oil and gas industry website reports that refineries and drilling rigs in 13 different sites have spilled tens of thousands of barrels of oil. A toxic stew of this oil, gasoline, vinyl chloride, and other hazardous chemicals threatens to profoundly contaminate the area for generations to come.

“In the midst of the flooding, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and an ExxonMobil employee claimed that no toxics were being released," environmental justice organizer Ann Rolfes of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade told her colleagues. "These institutions may have faced reality by now. However, given the woeful track record, the government and industry need monitoring now more than ever,” she said. Indeed, in the midst of the chaos, the Exxon Mobil refinery manager abandoned his command post, and only one company employee remained in town. “This,” says Rolfes, “is what happens when corporate chiefs with no ties to the community are in charge.”

The corporate leaders weren’t the only absentees. “Where was the government in this hour of need?” everyone asks. Where was the National Guard when the poor people of Cancer Alley and New Orleans needed rescuing? At least thirty percent of them were off in Iraq, occupying a land with some of the largest oil reserves in the world. They took with them heavy equipment, generators, and helicopters that would have been invaluable to rescue efforts.

And soon, the military may also lay claim to some of Katrina’s younger, poorer victims as they try to get back on their feet. With few options, these climate refugees may become new fodder in Iraq, helping secure US access to a resource whose combustion promotes catastrophic climate change and more hurricanes like Katrina. In the beginning, in the middle and at the end of this disaster... there is oil.


Imagining a Green New Orleans
As the 21st century unfolds, the ravages of global warming will only increase. Certainly if the US government does not dramatically reverse course, the whole world will be studying the issue from an uncomfortably, and often lethally close vantage point.

There are, however, many things we can do to address Katrina’s impact, to avoid the scientists’ worst predictions, and to promote just solutions to the climate change that is already happening.

For starters, “This clean up cannot be left in the hands of a state that cannot protect its citizens from toxics even under ordinary circumstances,” says Ann Rolfes. Her organization, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade is working to assure that both industry and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality provide an honest and accurate accounting of what toxics have been released. And they are seeking help and funding from experts at all levels to monitor pollution levels once the floods recede. Such efforts can help protect the short- and long-term health of hurricane victims while providing important guidance for addressing issues of chemical safety and environmental justice in the future.

Meanwhile, “America, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast have an opportunity to be visionary and think well into the future in our recovery efforts," says environmental justice organizer, Darryl Malek-Wiley. "In rebuilding New Orleans, and the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast, we can help make America more energy independent by using green building practices that emphasize energy conservation and use renewable sources of energy. We can ensure that the neighborhoods that we rebuild are public transit-oriented and people-friendly. And, we can rethink how toxic chemicals are stored and shipped through our communities. This is also an opportunity to take people who have no hope and give them jobs to rebuild their future while they rebuild their communities.”

Rebuilding a more green and just New Orleans and Gulf Coast could be an example to the rest of the country and the world of how to use clean energy and environmentally sustainable construction and production to diminish our negative impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.

If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change we need to move quickly elsewhere as well. We need to transcend the narrow interests of the oil, coal, petrochemical, and automobile corporations and institute a grand and just transformation of our economy away from fossil fuels and toward clean, sustainable energy. In doing so we can both create well-paying jobs and stem the rising tides of climate change.

Unfortunately we are faced with an administration that is not only out of touch with what’s happening on the ground, but all too in touch with the most callous side of American society. It abandoned 150,000 mostly African Americans to sink or swim in flooded New Orleans while continuing to stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of Exxon Mobil and Halliburton who put oil, power, and profits above peace, justice, and environmental sanity.

President Bush and his far-right administration have “studied” the problem enough. Katrina and the devastation she wreaked clearly demonstrate the need to take serious action on climate change. Unless he changes course drastically, history will mark George W. Bush for time immemorial as GW, the Global Warming president.


1.Joshua Karliner is CorpWatch’s founder. He is co-author of the 1999 publication Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice

global warming??????????


Plants.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060111/sc_nm/environment_methane_dc

Hey "j"---how far did you go in school?

Obviously those scientists are smarter than you. I put up a factual link. So because someone has a different opinion you call them a troll or have to be rude.

Did you rich mommy and daddy pay for your school, and now you rebelled cause you toked up and started looking at the world differently.
Have you worked a soup kitchen, handed cloths to the poor in Guatemala or do you stay at home collecting welfare and go protest when the Government starts taking your free stuff away.