Eco-Oppression
Ashley Herzog
Thursday, April 23, 2009

A few months ago, my school deemed April 2009 Ohio Earth Month (because, obviously, Earth Day just isnt enough). Ever since, Ive been waiting for the sociology department to speak up about how Western environmentalists oppress Third World people in the interest of Saving The Planet.

Its not an unreasonable expectation. Plenty of my professors believe that all academic subjects should be taught through the prism of racial and economic injustice, with Americans and Europeans as villains and Third World inhabitants as victims. Last year, when a columnist for our student newspaper wrote a satirical column comparing illegal immigrants to party crashers, the paper was flooded with gasbag letters whining about colonial oppression. Therefore, it seems Earth Month is the perfect time to confront the Wests burgeoning eco-imperialism.

Take, for example, the use of the chemical DDT. Environmentalists in the West congratulate themselves for nearly ridding the Earth of DDT, but the people of South America, Asia and Africa are not celebrating. They need DDT to ward off malaria, a mosquito-borne infection that thrives in tropical climates and is often lethal.

Thanks to Westerners fear of all things inorganicand Rachel Carsons scare-mongering book Silent Springone million inhabitants of third-world countries die of malaria every year. Although studies show that DDT has no harmful effects on humans, environmentalists have pressured Western governments to ban imports from countries that use the chemical for disease control. Under threat of trade sanctions from the West, African nations have been forced to use less effective and more expensive methods to fight the malaria epidemic, such as mosquito-repellent bed netseven though many Africans dont own beds.

I lost my son, two sisters and two nephews to malaria, Ugandan businesswoman Fiona Kobusingye told reporters in 2007. Dont talk to me about birds. And dont tell me a little DDT in our bodies is worse than the risk of losing more children to this disease. African mothers would be overjoyed if that were their biggest worry.

Last spring, several Third World nations erupted in riots because the people didnt have enough to eatthe cost of food staples had soared over 80 percent in three years. Among the chief causes? The Wests decision to divert food resources toward the development of Earth-friendly biofuels.

When millions of people are going hungry, it's a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels, Palaniappan Chidambaram, India's finance minister, said during the food riots.

But the complaint barely registered with the Planeteers. Instead of providing food for the poor, theyre more interested in pushing sustainable farmingwhich consigns Third World people to a life of backbreaking labor without the benefit of modern agricultural technology.

Warming alarmists use climate change to justify inhumane policies and shift the blame for problems that could be solved with the very technologies they oppose, says Paul Driessen, a senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality. Eco-colonialism keeps Africans traditional and indigenous, by insisting that modern technologies are harmful and not sustainable in Africa.

Under pressure from the West to fight climate change, the government of Chad banned the use of charcoal, the primary source of power for 99 percent of Chadians. The ban sent rural women and children scrambling to collect cow dung, sticksanything they could burn in order to cook and boil water for bathing. Others took to the streets in protest of the new Save-the-Earth policy.

We will not give up, one woman said. Better to die swiftly than continue dying slowly.

I hope the people behind Ohio Earth Month are listening. But for Western colonialists, some causes have always been worth letting Third World people suffer for. And, sadly, it seems fighting climate change is one of them.



Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

some causes have always been worth letting Third World people suffer for. And, sadly, it seems fighting climate change is one of them.

April 24, 2009
Climate Policy: Free Trade Promotes a Cleaner Environment
by Daniella Markheim
WebMemo #2408

Regardless of the scientific merit behind doomsday predictions of global warming, President Obama and Congress seem intent on instituting a U.S. policy regime to address the specter of climate change.

The debate on the most effective way to "green" America--cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, tough energy standards and regulations, some hybrid approach, or sticking to open markets--will be a heated one. With affordable green technologies still in development, policymakers need to recognize that the economic cost of limiting U.S. production of greenhouse gases on U.S. consumers and companies will be high--high enough to question whether the costs are worth the equally uncertain benefits such measures would bring.

Costs and Benefits

The projected cost of a climate scheme on the U.S. economy--evidenced from Europe's problematic climate program and the Kyoto Protocol's failure to affect emissions in signatory nations--illustrate how difficult it is for governments to impose binding climate restrictions without undermining economic growth.[1]

If Congress and the President do embark on such a potentially treacherous course, households and firms will face much higher costs for energy and energy-intensive goods, categories that include virtually every product in our economy. Hard-pressed U.S. consumers and producers will find no relief from artificially inflated prices by turning to lower-cost imports, as the climate change zealots propose to erect trade barriers to raise the costs of foreign products produced under less severe environmental policy constraints.

Some U.S. companies and policymakers may find it fair for the government to prop up domestic businesses, whose profitability will have been destroyed by new climate change regulations, against foreign competitors whose governments have chosen to be less draconian. America's trade partners are unlikely to agree.

Many such trade restrictions could violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and lead to legal sanctions against the U.S. Even if some of the proposed measures hold up against legal scrutiny in the WTO, the potential for nations to retaliate against U.S. trade measures is very real. Any U.S. restrictions, whether consistent with WTO agreements or not, would undermine development in poorer countries and make it more difficult to achieve a multilateral consensus on the rules of trade that best support environmental objectives.

When all these negative effects are taken into account, it is clear that the adoption of protectionist polices as a part of a U.S. climate regime does far more harm than good and should be avoided.

Climate Legislation and Trade

With little substantive progress in establishing a consensus on global climate policy and developing countries (especially India and China) unwilling to adopt greenhouse gas restrictions that will undermine their economic development, U.S. policymakers are faced with the possibility that companies facing higher costs under unilateral climate restrictions will find it much harder to compete with foreign competitors with lower business costs. Consequently, American firms may fail or may take their jobs and flee to countries with less costly business environments.

While such productivity-boosting moves are good for the U.S. economy in the long run, they can impose short-term costs on specific firms and individuals and are a political lightening rod. Unfortunately for those who would attempt to control global climate, such measures also undermine any impact U.S. greenhouse gas restrictions might have on reducing global levels of emissions.

For the advocates of climate change legislation, trade-related measures can potentially counteract the loss of competitiveness that such environmental regulations impose on U.S. businesses and, in theory, compel other countries to adopt similar climate regimes.

Tax credits, subsidies, government loan guarantees, and other policy mechanisms designed to compensate partially for the cost of carbon controls on U.S. firms would then work hand in hand with more explicit tariffs or quotas on imports from countries without comparable environmental restrictions.

The idea that punitive trade measures against carbon-intensive products would motivate countries to implement carbon restrictions depends on the ability to measure carbon intensity in imports and on the level of trade that would be affected by U.S. policy.

Countries may not export enough carbon-intensive products to the U.S. for trade measures to drive nations to adopt carbon restrictions. More problematic, because production processes, energy sources, and capital stock vary by country, industry, and even by product, the information needed to accurately tax imports for carbon content would be very difficult to obtain.[2]

Therefore, the most likely result is the imposition of a more bureaucratically feasible one-size-fits-all approach to taxing carbon-intensive products at the border. Unfortunately, such an approach has the perverse effect of penalizing clean foreign producers, who may have higher costs, at the expense of dirtier ones while reducing the incentive to better internalize the cost of carbon in traded goods.

Moreover, energy standards and regulations may run up against trade rules that dictate that domestic and foreign firms should be treated identically and may create technical barriers to trade disallowed under WTO agreements. Punitive trade measures, direct subsidies, tax credits, government loans, and other government support programs could violate WTO rules against subsidies and countervailing duties.[3] Trade measures that treat countries differently undermine the non-discriminatory basis for global trade that has helped promote prosperity around the world.

The gains from trade include economic growth and rising incomes in all countries. For developing countries--which would likely be hardest hit by trade restrictions in climate legislation--the economic stress will be particularly great. This, perversely, will likely increase the harm done to the environment: Economic growth increases the ability for developing countries to afford protecting the environment.

Historically, as a nation's prosperity increases, its desire--and more importantly, the resources available--to adopt environmental protections become stronger and result in policies that accommodate the individual needs of the country. Engaging in freer trade can better promote the evolution of good regulations by empowering countries with the economic opportunity to develop and raise living standards.

Markets Work, Protectionism Doesn't

Trade measures in carbon-control legislation may appear necessary for protecting U.S. competitiveness and promoting broader international participation in such schemes. However, in reality, such measures will likely create a more hostile trade environment that costs U.S. firms access to global markets.

Even if countries do not file complaints within the WTO or resort to outright retaliation against America for raising trade barriers, protectionism cannot guarantee a cleaner environment. Current efforts to find a multilateral consensus within the WTO on lowering trade and non-tariff barriers against trade in clean technologies will be more difficult as climate-related trade disputes rise. Worst of all, the general contraction in trade that protectionism would induce will only make developing countries poorer and less willing and able to address environmental concerns.

Rather than using trade policy as a weapon, America should keep markets open. Policymakers--regardless of the shape of any final climate bill--should maintain the integrity and freedom of global markets as a means to transfer clean technologies, keep international investment flowing, and promote economic growth and prosperity in the U.S. and around the world.

Daniella Markheim is Jay Van Andel Senior Trade Policy Analyst in the Center for International Trade and Economics at The Heritage Foundation.

The 'Green Jobs' Myth
European workers aren't believers.


From today's Wall Street Journal Europe


Opinion Journal (no author given)

The United Nations is huddling in Poznan, Poland, this week to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, but the real news is that part of the global "consensus" on climate change seems to be unraveling. To wit, the myth of "green jobs."

In Brussels last week, some 11,000 metal workers clogged the EU quarter to protest global-warming policies. They worry that their industry could be harmed and their jobs forced overseas; some of them carried coffins as props. Most of the marching workers were from Germany, where auto makers are also still fuming over new emissions standards. Audi and BMW and other carbon-using industries have argued both for shallower emissions cuts and a longer phase-in period.

Meanwhile, Poland is threatening to veto a new EU climate-change accord unless restrictions on its coal use are eased. And Italy's government complains that new green policies could cost its industry up to 20 billion a year over the next decade. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared at Poznan by video, asserting that green measures "will also revive our economies."

But not everyone is buying it. As Stefania Prestigiacomo, Italy's environment minister, has noted, "Some people claim environmental measures are a way to relaunch industry, but we have to be realistic. Resources are limited, and they will be even more so because of the economic crisis."

This is certainly a new tune for the Europeans, who have lectured Americans for more than a decade to sign Kyoto because the planet is in peril. Their happy talk of a painless 20% reduction in emissions by 2020 has been mugged by reality. Carbon emission regulations come at a high price in lost jobs and lost competitiveness.

No wonder, then, that the Europeans are delighted over the pledges by the incoming Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress to adopt similar legislation to tax U.S. industries. The EU members may differ on their own limits. But they all agree that the U.S. should "show leadership" by committing to meet the same target they're setting for themselves -- reducing emissions by 20% to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020. Never mind that most European countries aren't close to meeting their Kyoto goals, and in all likelihood will fall short of any new targets. The point is to impose those same burdens on the Yanks.

China and India, two of the globe's biggest carbon emitters, have even called Mr. Obama's goals for combating climate change "inadequate" and have advised the U.S. to speed up its time table for carbon reductions. And why not? They would be first in line to gobble up the jobs and production lines that the U.S. would lose if energy costs rise sharply in America.

We hope the incoming Obama economics team is paying attention to the worker and industry backlash in Europe. Mr. Obama is still embracing the line from Greenpeace and the Environmental Defense Fund that cap and trade can generate five million "green jobs." If you throw enough tax subsidies at something, you're bound to get some new jobs. But if the money for those subsidies comes from higher energy taxes -- and a cap and trade regime would amount to as much $1.2 trillion of new taxes -- millions of jobs in carbon-using industry are also going to be lost.

The Europeans once believed the "green jobs" myth too. Now, as blue-collar workers take to the streets, they have learned that climate-change legislation means green unemployment.

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122886086448792609.html

j

but they let gillis and his butt boys feel good about being lazy, ignorant, do nothing slobs who refuse personal responsibility.

The lie? That DDT was banned for anti-malerial use in 3rd world or any countries. This has been debunked before but the hate media puppet masters are shameless liars and their audience is too in love with taking the easy way out that they swallow it whole sale.

---nvironmentalists in the West congratulate themselves for nearly ridding the Earth of DDT, but the people of South America, Asia and Africa are not celebrating. They need DDT to ward off malaria, a mosquito-borne infection t----

here is the short version from the maleria foundation . org

#
#
MALARIA FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL

DDT is one tool of many in the malaria control worker's toolbox. ... (5) it does NOT restrict DDT use to malaria control, but allows for controlling any ...
www.malaria.org/DDTpage.html - 33k - Cached - Similar pages -



They are lying to you gillis, wake up!!!!!

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan

I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.