MORE NITPICKING LEGAL HARASSMENT OF GM RESEARCH

A federal judge has ruled that U.S. agriculture officials violated environmental laws in permitting four companies to plant genetically modified crops in Hawaii to produce experimental drugs. The order involves plantings of corn or sugarcane on Kauai, Maui, Molokai and Oahu between 2001 and 2003. U.S. District Judge Michael Seabright said the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service flouted both the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act by not conducting preliminary environmental reviews before issuing the planting permits.

The islands are home to 329 rare species _ a quarter of all threatened and endangered species in the nation, the judge noted in the order issued late last week. Even if the inspection service is correct in its assertion that no habitats or species listed as endangered were harmed by the plantings, the agency's actions still are "tainted" because it failed to comply with a basic procedural requirement, Seabright said. EarthJustice, which represents plaintiffs in the cases, said in a news release Monday that the decision is the first federal court ruling involving biofarming.

Rachel Iadicicco, a spokeswoman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the agency can't comment on pending litigation but has established procedures to guide it in complying with federal environmental laws.

The four companies issued the permits were ProdiGene, Monsanto, Hawaii Agriculture Research Center and Garst Seed. All of the companies' plants used to make pharmaceutical crops already have been harvested and the companies have stopped planting the crops under the permits. The practice of using genetically engineered food crops to produce proteins that can be turned into medicines has faced growing opposition from farmers, environmentalists and big-time corporate food interests whose businesses might be affected by crop contamination. Concerns center around the fear that the altered crops will crossbreed with conventional crops and thereby make it on to the plates of unknowing consumers. But there is also the concern that such crops could hurt local endangered species.

In his order, Seabright said the service skipped the mandatory step under the Endangered Species Act of gathering information about local listed species and critical habitats. The National Environmental Policy Act also requires federal agencies to evaluate the impact of their actions on the environment. Both sides of the case have been ordered to appear in court on Aug. 22 to discuss remedies for the violations.

Source






RECENT INTERVIEW WITH BJORN LOMBORG ON AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC RADIO

MARK COLVIN: There are few people more controversial in the environmental world than the Danish economist and writer Bjorn Lomborg. His book The Sceptical Environmentalist caused a firestorm with its contention that many of the claims of the environmental movement, including much of the case for global warming, were exaggerations. He came under strong counter-attack in the scientific press, in a fight that continues to this day. Mr Lomborg is in Australia at the moment talking about a new book he's edited, called How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place . He invited a panel, including four Nobel Prize-winning economists to write about the priorities involved in such an exercise. And once again, tackling global warming was low on the list. I asked Bjorn Lomborg this week what were the priorities his experts had recommended.

BJORN LOMBORG: What they told us was that the best investments the world can do, is to prevent HIV/AIDS, to prevent malnutrition with micronutrients, to ensure free trade, and to prevent malaria. Those were the top four things that the world should do.

MARK COLVIN: Is all of this basically a big agenda to back up your ideas about global warming?

BJORN LOMBORG: No, it's not about validating my personal discussion, but it's much more about saying, isn't it curious that we've had the UN for more than 50 years, yet we have never asked ourselves, what should be our top priorities? We're a little bit like the people who walk into a restaurant and look at this big menu card and say, wow lots of different things to do, but we have no idea of what the prices are. We have no idea of the sizes of the menus that we're going to get. What the Copenhagen Consensus essentially does is, it gives you a sense of what do you get for your money? Do you get an enormous amount of good or do you get little good? And what the economists told us was, if you put a dollar into prevention of HIV/AIDS, you end up doing $40 of social good in those areas where you do it. That's a great investment.

MARK COLVIN: How do you sell a list of priorities like this to people say in Tuvalu or Kiribati who are worried about the waters lapping around the foundations of their houses?

BJORN LOMBORG: Well, of course they're concerned, and that's entirely right of them to be so. But there are many people concerned about many things. I'm sure if you go to some places, people whose mum and dad are dying from HIV/AIDS, they also have a very convincing argument. What the Nobel's told us was, if you spend a dollar on Kyoto, you will do good. But you'll only do somewhere between 2 and 25 cents worth of good. Now, in my world, I would rather spend that dollar, and do $40 worth of good, rather than spend it and just do 2 cents worth of good...

MARK COLVIN: Was Kyoto the only choice you gave them? Because everyone knew that Kyoto was a massive compromise...

BJORN LOMBORG: Oh, absolutely...

MARK COLVIN: You said it's Kyoto or...

BJORN LOMBORG: No...

MARK COLVIN: AIDS, or Kyoto or malaria?

BJORN LOMBORG: No, no. We also gave them other opportunities, for instance carbon taxes, which is a more efficient way of doing climate change regulation, and it came out higher. But still, it's not a very good investment. Now, low carbon tax, to $5 carbon tax. It's probably a good idea, it's not a tremendous idea, but it's probably a good idea. But the carbon tax that most people talk about, which is in the 30's, or even hundreds of dollars, that's certainly not a good idea.

MARK COLVIN: If climate change came, according to the worst forecasts, there are going to be millions and millions of refugees, environmental refugees.

BJORN LOMBORG: Yes.

MARK COLVIN: Surely that's going to be a bigger problem than any of the problems you're trying to address?

BJORN LOMBORG: Yeah. It's important to say, we don't look at what are the biggest problems in the world, because if there's not a good solution to it, it really doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you could say the biggest problem in the world is that we all die. But we don't have a good technology to avoid that. So we start at looking at, what are the solutions? Now, reasonably we can expect, as the Kyoto Protocol shows us, we can expect perhaps to cut carbon emissions by 30 per cent from what they would otherwise have been over the next 10, 20 years.

The problem is, that will do virtually no good. So if we get the worst-case outcomes, with millions of people for instance, being refugees, and a lot of people in the developing world having huge problems from climate change, the real question is, would we have spent a lot of money doing fairly little good for these people anyway in 100 years? Or would we rather have given them clean drinking water, sanitation, basic healthcare, education and done a lot of good, and made them better able to deal with the problems that they will have in 100 years?

MARK COLVIN: So are you not going to address the problem of whether there will be massive climate change or not? I mean, do you address that?

BJORN LOMBORG: We look at the standard forecasts of what is going to happen. It is important to say a lot of the things that you hear, for instance from Al Gore's movie is vastly overblown, in the sense that it's, in my understanding, beyond worse-case scenario analysis. For instance, Al Gore will show us what happens if the water level will rise seven metres. But the UN Climate Panel is telling us it'll rise somewhere between 30 and 50 centimetres. Now, there's a huge difference. Thirty to 50 centimetres will be a problem, but it will be a problem that we will deal with. So the argument again is to say do you want to spend a lot of money doing very little good, or do you want spend the same amount of money and do an incredible amount of good? I think that is the bottom line that we try to get people to focus on.

Source






An interesting Leftist comment on Australia's Federal environment policies

With its strongly pro-business orientation, the Howard Government has found it difficult to gain credibility for its environmental policies. It has nevertheless made considerable headway through the use of a clever and aggressive strategy of dividing the environment movement by cultivating friendly organisations and individuals and punishing those that refuse to fall into line.

WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature) is the foremost of the friendly organisations. It is close to the Government, providing a stream of favourable commentary on its policies and bestowing several awards for the Government's environmental achievements, including three "Gift to the Earth" awards, which the Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, displays in his office. In return, the Government has been generous, sending tens of millions to the fund for various programs.

The force behind the emergence of the organisation as the leading group backing the Government's environment policy is the businessman Robert Purves. He has made a very large donation to WWF and is now its president. Purves has drawn Tim Flannery into the orbit of conservative environmentalism by funding the preparation of Flannery's book on climate change, The Weather Makers. Flannery, who came late to the climate change debate, has eloquently summarised the work of hundreds of climate scientists and his book has undoubtedly raised public awareness and understanding of the threats posed by global warming. Purves is said to have spent $1 million promoting Flannery's book, including costly backlit billboards outside Qantas Club lounges around the country.

But isn't there an inconsistency here? Why would Purves, sympathetic to the Government, spend large sums funding and promoting a book that rings alarm bells about climate change, which can only make life more difficult for the Government? The answer is that Flannery's book does not make life harder for the Government, but sends the sort of message the Government wants us to hear.

Flannery is an advocate of individual consumer action as the answer to environmental problems. Instead of being understood as a set of problems endemic to our economic and social structures, we are told we each have to take personal responsibility for our contribution to every problem. Flannery concludes his book by arguing that "there is no need to wait for government action" - voluntary action by well-meaning consumers is the only way to save the planet. "It is my firm belief that all the efforts of government and industry will come to naught unless the good citizen and consumer takes the initiative, and in tackling climate change the consumer is in a most fortunate position." He then lists 11 things concerned citizens can do to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, urging each of us to "do the right thing" in the belief that these noble appeals will transform the market: "If enough of us buy green power, solar panels, solar hot water systems and hybrid vehicles, the cost of these items will plummet."

This is music to the Government's ears. The assignment of individual responsibility is consistent with the economic rationalist view of the world, which wants everything left to the market, even when the market manifestly fails. Yet it is at best a naive, and at worst a reckless, approach to the looming catastrophe of climate change. The world did not eliminate the production of ozone-depleting substances by relying on the good sense of consumers in buying CFC-free fridges. We insisted governments negotiate an international treaty that banned CFCs. We did not invite car buyers to pay more to install catalytic converters, the greatest factor in reducing urban air pollution. We called on government to legislate to require all car makers to include them.

When pressed, Flannery will call on government to act, too, but his consistent headline message is an appeal to consumers. Thus, when accepting a prize for his book recently, he gave a four-word acceptance speech: "Install a solar panel." Green consumerism such as that advocated by Flannery privatises responsibility for environmental decline, shifting blame from elected governments and industry onto the shoulders of individual citizens. The cause of climate change becomes the responsibility of "all of us", which, in effect, means nobody. It is obvious why a government that wants to do nothing finds such an approach appealing: it can pretend to be concerned while protecting powerful business interests.

Flannery's "firm belief" that we can be saved only if consumers take the initiative is one he shares with the ideologues of the right-wing think tanks who argue that environmental problems should be left to the unfettered market. If consumers don't make green choices then it is obvious they don't care much about the environment. But it is not just his advocacy of do-nothing green consumerism that endears Flannery to the Government. Alone among Australian environmental advocates, he has declared his support for the development of a nuclear industry. The Prime Minister, John Howard, now regularly buttresses his nuclear push by saying that even some environmentalists "like Tim Flannery" support nuclear power.

Even Howard knows it would be folly to build nuclear power plants in Australia, a fact that his nuclear inquiry will conveniently affirm. The Prime Minister's game is to provide cover for his plan to expand uranium mining and get an enrichment industry established. Flannery is now part of the climate change debate, and whether he likes it or not, has become a trump card in Howard's hand.

Source

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************