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It may
be immoral to destroy and squander resources that belong to our children |
So were passenger pigeons darkening the sky; so were buffalo herds shaking the plains; so were ancient forests piercing the sky. Now there are only echoes -- and even those we hardly care about. Congress, for instance, still contemplates drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, breeding grounds of one of the worlds last big caribou herds. Perhaps its a good thing our memories are so short. Perhaps we couldn't live with ourselves otherwise. Bill McKibben is the author of 'The End of Nature'. The last few years have shown us what happens when an entire subculture loses its moral compass: Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, et al. And it's becoming increasingly clear that the current administration has embraced the unethical ethos of the corporate oligarchy from which so many of its members came -- and which all of them continue to serve. The same inability to distinguish right from wrong that characterized the corporate scandals is now dominating public policy. It's the Enronization of Washington. As in 2001, the administration softened the profile of a tax cut mainly aimed at the wealthy by including a credit for families with children. But at the last minute, a change in wording deprived 12 million children of some or all of that tax credit. "There are a lot of things that are more important than that," declared Tom DeLay, the House majority leader. (Maybe he was thinking of the "Hummer deduction," which stayed in the bill: business owners may now deduct up to $100,000 for the cost of a vehicle, as long as it weighs at least 6,000 pounds.) As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn't exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today's tax rates? We can't. Ecocide Jubilant Republicans may imagine that the most significant
harbinger of America's future was the banging of a gavel on January 6,
opening the 108th Congress. Finally, GOP partisans may conclude, they
call the shots. But it may be that the Earth itself is in charge. In 2002, the
second hottest year on record, scientists saw Arctic Ocean ice
coverage shrink by more than at any time since satellite measurements
were first made a quarter century ago. And, they say, continued
melting could leave the Arctic nearly ice-free by summer 2050. Americans need to pay attention to the winds of change blowing in
from the Arctic and then decide just how much Republican environmental
policies contradict clear messages relayed by our planet. Our leaders
could be viewing the world through a distorted lens, with their
corporate worldview and sometimes their fundamentalist Christian faith
guiding them to an interpretation of reality based not on scientific
fact, but on dogma. The federal government – with Republicans in control of the White
House, Congress and the judiciary – has launched the largest
rollback of environmental laws and regulations ever. The Bush
administration seems determined to undo much of the good done since
Earth Day 1970, when 20 million Americans defended the planet in the
biggest mass demonstration of U.S. history. The New Leadership Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma is poised to become
Bush's lieutenant in the assault. As new chair of the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee, he unseated Independent Jim
Jeffords – an environmental champion who advanced legislation to
curb global warming. Inhofe, by contrast, is a Big Oil backer who once characterized the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as "the Gestapo
bureaucracy," and has earned a zero rating from the League of
Conservation Voters (LCV) three years running. Under Inhofe, hearings to oppose Bush's anti-environmental agenda
are improbable, as are subpoenas for administration documents
divulging shoddy science or corporate complicity. "Teddy
Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave," Alys Campaigne,
legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC),
said in the Bureau of National Affairs "Environmental
Report." Bush and Inhofe will likely move to modify or overturn the National
Environmental Policy Act. This Magna Carta of environmental law
demands study, disclosure and public comment on the environmental
impacts of federal projects. Bush has already demanded "excessive
red tape" be hacked from the law, fast-tracking road and airport
construction and cutting the public out of the democratic process. The President is also attacking the Clean Air Act of 1970, another
cornerstone of environmental law. Late last year, Bush proposed Bush's proposed "Clear Skies" Initiative also undermines
air quality. "Clear Skies" won't enhance the air at all, but
will further pollute it, says NRDC. Bush's "Healthy Forests"
initiative likewise suffers from Orwellian doublespeak, felling
Western forests to save them. Disguised as a measure for curbing
wildfires, the plan invites logging companies to cut healthy trees in
national forests while reducing public oversight. Ironically, the
probable cause of recent catastrophic fires is global warming, a
problem that many Republican lawmakers deny. California last year passed the nation's first law to control
greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. But the Bush
administration has virtually gone to war against the state's
environmental initiatives, seeking to extend oil-drilling rights off
the California coast and to overturn regulations requiring automakers
to sell zero-emissions vehicles. This Congress will likely discontinue the requirement that
corporate polluters contribute to Superfund, leaving taxpayers to pay
for toxic waste cleanup. Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.
supported Superfund; the younger Bush is the first Republican
President not to back reauthorization. Congressional Republicans blocked many of President Clinton's
judicial appointments, leaving over 100 federal judgeships open. With
the Senate Judiciary Committee now in GOP hands, the courts could take
a hard swing to the right, putting the environment further at risk.
The U.S. District Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. holds almost
exclusive jurisdiction over environmental law, hearing cases
concerning federal authority, those involving the powers of the EPA,
for example. Senate Republicans blocked two Clinton appointments to
the court, setting the stage for a bench packed with conservative
judges who, appointed now, could shape environmental law for decades. The GOP's War on the Environment The reasons behind Republican anti-environmentalism have often been
stated but deserve review: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are former
oil men who believe in the efficiency of the marketplace. Market
conservatives tend to see environmentalists as either frivolous
tree-huggers or dangerous monkey-wrenching eco-terrorists. They
dismiss good environmental science as the doomsaying of the loony
left. Almost by definition, they lack an understanding of such concepts
as sustainability, carrying capacity, biodiversity or webs of
interdependence. And of course, promoting any policies that go against
immediate economic goals would put the administration up against
strong corporate interests. The American auto industry, for example,
remains a powerful economic engine in many states; if SUV sales are
keeping domestic automakers afloat, the automakers will resist
spending millions to impose tough new fuel efficiency standards on
these vehicles. Hence, the power of corporate campaign contributions. Earthjustice,
a nonprofit public interest law group, reports that in the 2000
campaign, Bush-Cheney and the Republican National Committee
received $44 million in contributions from the fossil fuel, chemical,
timber and mining industries – far more than was offered by
these interests to all federal Democratic candidates and party
committees combined. Know-Nothing Science In the early days of the current administration, the news was full
of Bush appointments of foxes to guard the hen house. Gale Norton, a
mining industry lobbyist, became Secretary of the Interior. Steven
Griles, a lobbyist for Big Coal, was appointed Norton's
second-in-command. Now, the Washington Post reports an even more
disturbing trend: Bush "has begun a broad restructuring of the
scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy." These
largely anonymous committees of scientists, lawyers and academics make
recommendations vital to determining health and environmental risk. Replaced, for example, were 15 members of a 17-person Department of
Health and Human Services committee that assesses the impacts of
low-level exposure to environmental chemicals on human health. New
Bush-imposed panel appointees include chemical industry advocates and
a California scientist who helped defend Pacific Gas and Electric
Company against the real-life Erin Brockovich. More troubling is the case of W. David Hager, one of Bush's
nominees to the influential Food and Drug Administration panel on
women's health policy. Hager, says the New York Times, has a resume
"more impressive for theology than gynecology." Hager
emphasizes the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life and
recommends specific Scripture readings to treat headaches, eating
disorders and premenstrual syndrome. The administration has repeatedly turned a blind eye toward good
science. When the National Academy of Sciences came to Bush in 2001
with a report saying that global warming was real, serious and
human-caused, he ignored it. When the EPA sent a 2002 report to the
United Nations saying that global warming will result in "rising
seas, melting ice caps and glaciers, ecological system disruption,
floods, heat waves and more dangerous storms," Bush rejected it
as a document "put out by the bureaucracy." In a move to blunt new U.S. global warming research, Bush has
launched a four-year study to ascertain "precisely how much
climate change between 1950 and now was human-caused." Prominent
climate experts, including Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer,
say the study may merely rehash issues most scientists consider
settled. "The danger is that while they're continuing to do the
research, the window of opportunity to avoid dangerous global warming
is closing," says Oppenheimer.
Kennedy Warns on Nuclear Tests
Humans are the dominant force behind the sharp global warming trend seen in the 20th century, according to this analysis of the climate over the last 1,000 years. The report found that natural factors like volcanic eruptions and fluctuations in sunshine, which were powerful influences on temperatures in past centuries, can account for only 25 percent of the warming since 1900. The rest of the warming was caused by human activity, particularly rising levels of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses, according to the study's author, Texas A&M geologist Thomas J. Crowley. Crowley notes that "natural variability plays only a subsidiary role in the 20th century warming and that the most parsimonious explanation for most of the warming is that it is due to the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gasses" (GHGs). The study presents the most direct link to date between people and the 1.1 degree Fahrenheit rise in average global temperatures over the last 100 years.
. Plutonium cleanup on Kalama (Johnston Atoll Hawai`i) March 18, 2002 Hilo, Hawai`i Johnston (Kalama) Atoll --site of 12 U.S. nuclear weapon tests between 1958-1962 including two aborted nuclear weapon tests in 1962. I have reviewed the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) draft final corrective measures study/feasibility study and preferred option for the disposition of radioactive coral, metal and concrete debris located at Kalama (Johnston) Atoll. I find the study terribly lacking in objectivity and facts and with recommendations that cannot be trusted to be in the best interest of the land and sea and all their beings. The list of six preparers of the study include four military officers and two apparent civilians-- all members of DTRA. Where is independent objectivity? This appears to be the equivalent of “The Fox Guarding the Chicken Coup Security Agency.” What is needed is a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that is independent and objective. I made that point in written testimony on May 23, 2001 in Hilo and I make it again today. Until a full EIS is done NO ACTION should be taken. One of the obvious facts that should be front and center is that plutonium is named after the Greek god of death, Pluto, and is one of the most carcinogenic substances known. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years which means it is potentially toxic to humans for at least a half million years. I also made these points in my written May 23, 2001 testimony and the matters were not included in the draft final study. The public needs to be properly informed about what plutonium is. By not stating Plutonium’s half-life front and center shows intent to hide the truth. The total amount of plutonium that was scattered as a result of the accidents was not reported. That’s classified! So you understated the amount to be 8 kilograms. (A-5) Given the length of plutonium’s toxicity, and the study’s shortcomings and bias, a few more years’ consideration by an unbiased EIS study about what to do with the mess appears to be a prudent way to proceed. Let me also put the nuclear mess at Johnston in a global perspective. I recently read an interview of Philip Berrigan, who a U.S. Federal Court Judge has called “the conscience of the Nation.” The interview appeared in the February 2002 Los Angeles Catholic Worker newspaper. In that interview Berrigan talks of the global nuclear mess created since the first nuclear weapon was exploded by the U.S. in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945. Berrigan cites studies done by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, an epidemiological and world health scientist from Toronto, Canada. Bertell says that the nuclear club has killed, maimed or diseased 1.3 billion people since the first nuclear test. She bases these figures on studies she has done worldwide and on UN statistics. She is talking about global radiation from the whole nuclear adventure. America’s responsibility is roughly half or 650 million people who have died of cancer, been maimed or diseased in the 57 years nuclear weapons have been around. That’s a holocaust each and every year since 1945. 12 - 13 million people each year. It’s unprecedented and hair raising. Yet study after study by “The Fox Guarding the Chicken Coop Security Agencies,” including the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the very people who brought us the increasing threat of nuclear horrors, conclude time and time again they find “NO SIGNIFICANT RISK TO HUMANS OR THE ENVIRONMENT.” In effect they tell us, like Dr. Strangelove, --stop worrying and learn to love THE BOMB. We’ll bulldoze and dump it into the ocean so we can proceed with nuclear testing. What high level waste is left we’ll put in a whole, cover it with low level waste, erect a sign that says National Wildlife Refuge, walk away and forget about it. And the pattern is repeated over and over at site after site where the military has made a mess. A few non-nuclear examples closer to home, right here in Hawaii. 1. Kaho`olawe --EIS determined there were 80,000 unexploded bombs on the island some as deep as 20 feet into the aina. $400 million appropriated for clean up. Those funds are nearly exhausted and the surface area hasn’t even been cleaned up let alone a depth where it will be safe to put a spade in the ground to plant a tree safely. 2. Pohakuloa right here on this island. 115,000 acres which is three times the size of Kaho`olawe. Minimum surface cleanup if the bombing was stopped today --$1 billion dollars estimate by the Military Toxic Project. If depleted uranium was used, if burn sites exist, if chemical weapon dumpsites exist, the cost escalates dramatically. Defense Threat Reduction Agency likely proposed solution. Put a fence around the site and signs which say: National Wildlife Refuge. Walk away and forget about it! 3. If DTRA wants to reduce a threat, go do soil samples and clean up the nuclear mess around present and former nuclear weapon storage and maintenance sites on Oahu such West Loch, Waikele, and Lualualei Naval Ammunition Depots. Throughout the DTRA study, the mess at Johnston Atoll is referred to by the initials JA. I take this very seriously. Those are my initials JA. Indeed as someone born an American, the mess at JA is my mess. It’s the mess of all of us. All of our initials are on that mess. As a child my mother taught me to clean up after myself. As a boy scout I learned that on hiking adventures what cannot be composted “if you pack it in you pack it out.” By your own estimate the Johnston Atoll sea wall will fail in 30-50 years. (J-12) It appears likely that as a result of a hurricane, rising sea level, or normal wave action that the nuclear waste if left on Johnston atoll will end up in the ocean and who knows where due to currents and shifting sands. The basic issues comes down to this. We need to malama the aina and malama the sea. If we take care of the earth --the land and the sea, our mother the earth will take care of us. If we abuse the earth we will destroy ourselves. We are on that path of destruction. Your proposed action is testimony to this fact. Is there hope? Perhaps, if as Americans, we humble ourselves. Acknowledge the U.S. as an empire that has ravaged the world. Repent of our terrorist ways by changing the way we live and treat others and the earth. We need to learn and show by example that non-violence, not nuclear arms, is the law of our being. Peace and environmental friends who visited from Germany recently shared an important vision for dealing with the horrors of the nuclear age. They said industry and government cannot be trusted to do what is right with nuclear waste. They will cut corners, lie, sweep matters under the rug so to speak. We need NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) like the monks and monasteries of the middle ages who preserved the sacred books, who can be trusted to do the right thing for many generations and the earth. This is the mighty task before us all. Jim Albertini President, Center For Non-violent Education & Action
Jim
Albertini
Malu 'Aina Center For Nonviolent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Ola'a (Kurtistown), Hawaii 96760 Phone 808-966-7622 fax: same as phone, call first email ja@interpac.net
To the Board of Land & Natural Resources State of Hawaii March 21, 2002 I attended hours and hours of testimony on more than one occasion at the University of Hawaii at Hilo a few years ago on the Mauna Kea issue. Over and over I heard people say enough is enough. And yet here we are today having to say enough again to another proposal for additional telescopes. Malu Aina Center For Non-violent Education & Action stands in solidarity with Kanaka Maoli concerns to respect the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea from industrial development. We assert the primacy of spiritual/cultural concerns over science and economic development. We join with other organizations in calling for a denial of the Conservation District Use Permit or at a minimum a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) before any CDU permit is even considered. If NASA refuses to do a full EIS, then the Board of Land & Natural Resources (BLNR) is obligated to deny NASA’s request for a Use Permit. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the Board’s stewardship responsibility. In addition, Malu Aina is concerned about plans for military expansion at Pohakuloa and the heavy involvement of NASA with military matters. We are particularly concerned about the possible future NASA links on Mauna Kea to First Strike Nuclear war plans. At the break in this hearing I asked the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy Director what percentage of NASA’s budget is military related? He said his best guess is 75%. I think it may be more like 90%. But even at 75%, that’s $10.5billion of its $14billion budget for military related activities. The Pentagon calls its new objective “Full Spectrum Dominance,” meaning superiority to project military power over land, sea, air, and space to protect corporate interests and investments. What we really have on Mauna Kea and this Pentagon/NASA plan for “Full Spectrum Dominance,” is really a new form of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was the justification the American pioneers used to move west, killing the native of the land as they went and exploiting their land for its resources.
Hawaii has become a laboratory for military destruction and corporate exploitation of the land. In the saddle area between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa is Pohakuloa Military Training area of 115,000 acres. That’s roughly 150 square miles or three times the size of Kaho`olawe. The conservative estimate to clean up the surface of Pohakuloa, if military bombing and shelling of Pohakuloa was stopped today, is $1 billion. If depleted uranium shells were used, if weapon burn sites exist, if chemical weapon dumpsites exist, the cost |
point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic
change.
patchwork of compromises that do not truly solve our urgent
problems. The Republican Majority and the White House have put
together what amounts to a "pig-in-a-poke" energy bill
that include a number of items that remain enormously
controversial and have little to do with building the bipartisan
consensus essential for the development of a national energy
strategy. The legislation passed by this Senate last year and
this year has been largely ignored. Now, the Majority is
preparing to ram this hodgepodge through the conference, and we
are being forced to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. It is no
way to legislate, and it certainly is no way to develop such an
important national policy.
pesticide methyl bromide, even though it
is due to be phased out under the Montreal Protocol in
little more than a year. And it has threatened that the
United States could withdraw from the treaty's provisions
altogether if its demand is not met.
horseback; in 1969
they drove Mustangs and flew to the Moon. Today it is
difficult to overstate oil's importance to our economy.
Four percent of the world's people, we use 25% of the
world's oil. We are an Oil Tribe, the Petroleum Clan,
imbibing about 3 gallons per person per day. The
automobile is our most cherished icon, a new car our
symbol of success. The local gasoline station is our
secular temple where each week 150 million Americans
"fill ‘er up." An average American drives
1,000 miles a month, 12,000 miles a year, the distance to
the Moon every 20 years. The Oil Tribe numbers 265
million. Together we weigh about 34 billion pounds. Hungry
for speed, addicted to motion, we consume our weight in
petroleum every 7 days.
THE
COMING PEAK In the same way that U.S. oil production
peaked in 1970, global production is destined to peak
during the first two decades of the coming century. Some
analysts expect a peak around 2005; some suggest it will
be 2010; others believe it will come as late as 2020. The
exact date can’t be predicted, since it will depend as
much on economic and political factors as on geology. The
biggest wild card? Saudi Arabia, the world’s most
prolific oil province. If the Saudis invest hundreds of
billions of dollars they could double their output to meet
expected demand. But they may decide not to double
production, choosing instead to produce somewhat less oil
and charge more for it. Although predicting the peak is
impossible, this great turning point is imminent.
exhaust the land and move on. The original settlers, such
as the Jefferson family, moved westward because families like
theirs planted tobacco in tidewater Virginia and exhausted the
soil. My own ancestors did the same in Indiana."
'We have forgotten what we used to have,'' Jeremy
Jackson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told reporters who
asked him about the Nature study. ``We had oceans full of heroic fish
-- literally sea monsters. People used to harpoon 10-foot-long
swordfish in rowboats. Hemingways 'Old Man and the Sea' was for
real.''
rules
to weaken the Act's New Source Review, which requires the installation
of state-of-the-art pollution control equipment in the modernizing of
factories. The new rules allow industrial air pollution to continue at
levels that, according to the American Lung Association, now kill
10,000 Americans annually. 
Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1,000 Years