Western forests are dying from drought and the fire season in the west has come earlier than ever with officials now reporting conditions in early May like those not formerly seen until July. We are destroying ourselves Shortsighted men ... in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things. -- Theodore Roosevelt. "If the world were a huge airplane about to crash, would it really matter that you were seated in first class?" With carbon levels having risen by only 90 parts per million (from their pre-industrial level of 280 ppm to more than 370 ppm today), glaciers are now melting into puddles, sea levels are rising, violent weather is increasing and the timing of the seasons has changed--all from a 1-degree Fahrenheit rise in the past century. Carbon concentrations of 450 ppm will most likely result in a deeply fractured and chaotic world...The Nation  Now the Pentagon tells Bush:  climate change will destroy us · Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war · Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years · Threat to the world is greater than terrorism Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York Sunday February 22, 2004 The Observer Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.. A secret report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that 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, say the few experts privy to its contents. 'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.' The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defense is a priority. The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defense adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network. An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions. Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change. Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change. A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch. One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible. Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change. Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.' Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored. 'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defense. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson. 'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace. Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated. Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.' Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said. 'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.' So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign. The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense. Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.' Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 National Artic Wildlife Refuge “Ninety-five percent of the great arctic coastal plain – thousands of square miles – already is open to oil exploration… But they want more. They want to invade a small, 110-mile strip of coastline in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – all for an oil supply that would take 10 years or more to bring to market and then may satisfy only about six months of our national demand.”--Defenders of Wildlife “Even modest gains in energy efficiency would far exceed anything we could get from the Arctic refuge. Just raising the fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles by three mpg, for instance, would save more oil, in less than 10 years, than all the crude we could pump from the Arctic refuge.”-- Brooks Yeager, World Wildlife Fund-US The great diversity of vegetation and topography in this compact area, together with its relatively undisturbed condition, led to its selection as ... one of our remaining wildlife and wilderness frontiers."--Frederick Seaton, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Interior, 1960 In 1960, when [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] was established, we made a promise to future generations. If we can't keep that promise, how can we trust ourselves to save the rest of our treasures . . . the Everglades, Yellowstone, the Hawaiian rainforest. Where does it end? I say it ends now . . . at Arctic.”-- Jamie Rappaport Clark, Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 11/1/00 The Blue Frontier Campaign to Save Our Living Seas by Ralph Nader The oceanic crises are obvious. The decline in ocean fisheries has driven some species close to extinction. Giant trawlers scrape the bottom of the seas over a region equal to the size of the United States, wreaking eco havoc. Fish-catching giant nets and their accompanying technology shrink the giant oceans and their underwater denizens. Environmentalist Barry Commoner's insightful phrase-"the technosphere against the ecosphere" comes to mind. There is more. Nutrient runoff from factory farms and urban storm drains create massive algal blooms, dead zones (as in the Gulf of Mexico) and spread disease. Floods of chemicals are pouring into the seas, and the growing economies of China and India are seriously affecting their coastlines.India for years has been dumping radioactive waste into its seas in containers that do not last for more than a few decades. For more information go to the website www.bluefront.org Americans are “energy illiterate"  "The GOP Energy Bill: An Infinite Mirage and a Boundless Facade"   U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd The Center for Responsive Politics reports that the energy industry gave more than $2.65 million to the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2000. The oil and gas industry gave 68% of that total. Not surprisingly, the media accounts are ripe with stories of the Administration's contributors who have been tripping over themselves to curry favors for their particular energy interest. What about other groups? Were the interests of the state and tribal interests, labor unions, consumer groups, and environmental organizations at the table?   A lack of consensus on energy legislation has rightfully raised concerns that the final product will be a 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.   We cannot continue to conduct the nation's business this way. The stakes are too high. Partisanship alone is threatening enough to our ability to develop comprehensive solutions to our energy problems. But, it is not just partisanship that worries me. It is the utter contempt with which this Administration apparently views the role of the Legislative Branch. As the General Accounting Office has learned, this Administration simply will not tolerate legislative inquiry. We need a comprehensive approach to our energy policy. What do I mean by comprehensive? A comprehensive approach fully integrates four fundamental principles: energy security to encourage fuel diversity; fiscal soundness to increase economic growth and the efficiency of production; consumer protections to guard against fraud, market manipulation, and abuse; and environmental sensitivity to minimize the impacts from waste and emissions. These are essential elements for any comprehensive energy policy. These elements must be fully integrated through a policy that is designed to maximize fuel diversity and efficiency of production while minimizing consumer abuse and environmental degradation. These elements could provide a complementary path forward, but this energy bill is a significant detour. Ozone Layer 'Sacrificed' to Lift Bush's Re-Election Prospects by Geoffrey Lean   President George Bush has brought the international treaty aimed at repairing the Earth's vital ozone layer close to breakdown, risking millions of cancers, to benefit strawberry and tomato growers in the electorally critical state of Florida, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. His administration is insisting on a sharp increase in spraying of the most dangerous ozone-destroying chemical still in use, the 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. The layer is made up of a type of oxygen so thinly scattered though the upper atmosphere that, if gathered together, it would girdle the globe with a ring no thicker than the sole of a shoe. But it screens out harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun that otherwise would wipe out life. As the layer weakens, increasing amounts of rays get through, causing skin cancer and blindness from cataracts. The provisions of the treaty, forecast to prevent two million cancers in the West alone, have been progressively tightened as the use of ozone-destroying chemicals has been phased out in industrialized countries, developing countries follow after a period of grace. Methyl bromide, which has also been linked with prostate cancer, is one of the last to be controlled; developed countries agreed in 1997 to stop using it by the end of next year. So far they have succeeded in reducing it to 30 per cent of its former level by introducing substitutes. Several countries, however, foresee difficulties in completing the phase-out in time, and have asked for year-long "critical exemptions" for some limited uses, as permitted under the treaty. But uniquely, the US, which already accounts for a quarter of the world's use of the pesticide, is demanding that it should indefinitely increase its use. Published on Sunday, December 7, 2003 by the lndependent/UK Global Warming: Melting Ice 'Will Swamp Capitals' by Geoffrey Lean   Measures to fight global warming will have to be at least four times stronger than the Kyoto Protocol if they are to avoid the melting of the polar ice caps, inundating central London and many of the world's biggest cities, concludes a new official report. The report, by a German government body, says that even if it is fully implemented, the protocol will only have a "marginal attenuating effect" on the climate change. But last week even this was thrown into doubt amid contradictory signals from the Russian government as to whether it will allow the treaty to come into effect. Global warming already kills 150,000 people a year worldwide and the rate of climate change is soon likely to exceed anything the planet has seen "in the last million years" says the report, produced by the German Advisory Council on Global Change for a meeting of the world's environment ministers to consider the future of the treaty in Milan this week. It concludes that the protocol must urgently be brought into force, but only as a first step, insisting that "catastrophic" climate change "can now only be prevented if climate protection targets are set at substantially higher levels than those agreed internationally until now". The report, written by eight leading German professors, says that "dangerous climatic changes" will become "highly probable" if the world's average temperature is allowed to increase to more than 2 degrees centigrade above what it was before the start of the Industrial Revolution. Beyond that level the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice cap would begin gradually to melt away, eventually raising sea levels world wide by up to 30 feet, submerging vast areas of land and key cities worldwide. London, New York, Miami, Bombay, Calcutta, Sydney, Shanghai, Lagos and Tokyo would be among those largely submerged by such a rise. Above this mark too, other "devastating" and "irreversible" changes would be likely to take place. These include a cessation of the Indian monsoon and the ending of the Gulf Stream, which would dramatically worsen the climate in Britain and western Europe, even as the world warms. Another risk is the so-called "runaway greenhouse" where rising temperatures lead to the release of huge reservoirs methane stored in permafrost and the oceans, adding to global warming and starting a self-reinforcing cycle that would eventually make the earth uninhabitable. To avoid such catastrophe, the report says that industrialized countries will have to cut emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide by at least 20 per cent by 2020, and by up to 60 per cent by 2050. The Kyoto Protocol would at best cut them by 5 per cent by 2012, and probably less, even if it were brought into force and fully implemented. In the meantime the world looks as if it will greatly exceed the targets. Writing in The Independent on Sunday today, Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, calculates that global emissions of greenhouse gases could increase by 75 per cent by 2020, "putting the world well on the way to doomsday". © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd Nothing Virtual About Global Warming by Richard Steiner December 19, 2003 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer President Bush recently chided Saddam Hussein for his cowardly attempt to hide, saying that "when the heat got on, you dug yourself a hole and you crawled in it." These same words also describe the attempts by Bush and friends to evade the issue of global warming. It's time for them to crawl out of their hole. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is real, it's serious, it's caused mostly by humans and it is to some extent correctable. But due to the intransigence of the Bush administration and comrades, virtually nothing has been done to correct it. These folks have not only tried to scuttle the Kyoto Protocol but the U.S. Senate recently voted down an even more modest attempt to cap greenhouse gas emissions -- the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 -- in the United States at the year 2000 levels by year 2010. That would be far less extensive than cuts proposed by Kyoto. The act was broadly supported by mayors, unions and insurers and would have saved the U.S. economy some $48 billion a year in energy savings alone. But the administration and Senate conservatives would have nothing of it. Worse, Congress is on the verge of passing a disastrous energy bill that only digs our fossil-energy hole deeper. This was the bill that was drawn up behind closed doors by Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- a group of old-guard fossil-fuel tycoons. Such policy is steering us to a train wreck, and it is time all Americans said enough is enough. If the present impacts of global warming are of concern, the future looks far worse. But instead of acting on this information, the current administration is issuing calls for more studies and voluntary actions. Administration officials have fabricated "scientific uncertainty" as a reason to do nothing. With an issue so important to the future of humanity, such paralysis-by-analysis is outrageous. We need to reduce global carbon emissions by about two-thirds, and we know exactly how to do this: more energy efficient cars and power plants, mass transit and alternative energy sources, improved building and appliance standards, efficiency subsidies, and so on. We need an energy bill to do precisely that, and Americans should insist that Congress kill the current energy bill and make a real attempt to solve the energy/warming problem. Despite the administration's deceits, such precautionary action would not only alleviate global warming but also help relieve our energy crisis, reduce health impacts of air pollution and improve our economy as well. The only real question left in the global warming debate is how long we will let Bush and his political allies hide in their hole. Richard Steiner is a conservation specialist with the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program in Anchorage.     OIL President Bush expressed their sentiments best: “We need an energy policy that encourages consumption.” What more need be said? THE OIL TRIBE In 1859 oil was struck in Pennsylvania. The magic fluid unleashed Yankee ingenuity, put America on wheels, and helped to create the world’s richest superpower. The transformation was unimaginably swift: In 1859 Americans traveled on 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. BLESSED BY GEOLOGY Cheap oil has always been an American birthright. Through fate and geology, the United States was extravagantly blessed. Our original cargo was about 260 billion barrels; only one country, Saudi Arabia, had more. Oklahoma alone possessed more oil than Germany or Japan. California had more than Germany, Japan, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Italy combined. The U.S. has—or rather had—20 times as much oil as India, 16 times as much as Brazil, 3 times more than China. STRENGTH THROUGH EXHAUSTION As recently as 1950 the U.S. was producing half the world’s oil. Forty-eight years later, we don’t produce half our own oil. Domestic production peaked in 1970, 27 years ago, and today we produce just 45% of the crude we consume. To fuel our economy we’ve drilled more and pumped longer than any nation on Earth, pursuing an oil policy that’s been called "Strength Through Exhaustion." Although the U.S. remains the world’s third largest producer, about 65% of our petroleum has been burned. It’s downhill from here. The U.S. is already one of the most thoroughly explored and drilled countries on Earth. Of the 4.6 million wells worldwide, 3.4 million have been drilled in this country. Very very few prospects remain. With the exception of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a few deep water basins, we’ve been there and done that. From the oil industry’s perspective, the U.S. is Swiss cheese. 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. COLLISION IN SLOW MOTION A decline in world oil production? The thought takes some getting used to. What seems impossible is inevitable. The crunch may arrive suddenly. Or in slow motion. As Reagan’s former Energy Secretary Donald Hodel says, "We’re sleepwalking to disaster." When it happens, journalists will shout, "We’re running out of oil." That’s not true. Rather, we are running out of cheap oil. After production peaks oil still will be readily available at a higher price, though in slowly declining amounts, for at least 50 years. What we face is not a short-term crisis but a chronic shortfall. No one will freeze in the dark (America still has a century of coal and 50 years worth of natural gas), but the transition to more expensive oil could be bumpy. CRUDE CRUNCH As global oil production nears the peak, oil prices will rise, perhaps overnight with staggering impacts on the global economy. This absolutely predictable, absolutely inevitable oil crunch will likely have tremendous economic impacts. Hitting as the Baby Boomers retire, it could rock our economy, psychology, and sense of self. ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL There are many ways to soften the inevitable transition to a world in which oil is more expensive. They include more efficient cars, smarter land use planning, mass transit, and alternative fuels—but we won't begin implementing them, at the local or national level, until we recognize that a grave problem looms. At the moment, this nation is asleep at the wheel. Time is short. If we want to retool our transportation systems, a world oil peak in 2010 or even 2020 is next month. A peak in 2005 is a train wreck tomorrow. But few are talking about this predictable development. Even fewer are planning for it CAR BOMB You hear about the population explosion. And yes, the population has doubled from 3 billion to 6 billion since 1950. In the same period, car numbers shot up from 50 million to 500 million. Cars, in other words, are reproducing five times faster than people. They’re breeding like (VW) Rabbits. SPORT UTES In recent years, as oil prices have plummeted, Americans have fallen in love with gas guzzling minivans, light trucks, and sport utility vehicles. In Seattle Microsoft millionaires drive Humvees. Light trucks and sport utes command 45% of the new car market in the U.S., a powerful trend aimed in exactly the wrong direction. That these vehicles sell well is not surprising. They tower above traffic, can summit Everest, and are safe in a crash (good because sport utes have more than their share.) If they’re thirsty, so what? Gasoline costs are only 1/8th the total cost of driving. Driving a car that gets 30 miles per gallon rather than a 15-mpg sport ute saves about $520 a year—not much in many budgets. Americans care little about fuel efficiency because gasoline is inexpensive. In Europe motorists pay $3 to $5 a gallon. Most is tax, added by governments to encourage conservation. A Suburban has a 40-gallon tank. Filling up in Finland would cost 200 bucks. Needless to say, Finns shun Suburbans. Bargain-rate gasoline has a hidden cost, but we don’t pay it at the pump. Rather, we pay $50 billion in taxes to protect access to Persian Gulf oil, we pay in smog and premature deaths from air pollution, we pay in climate change. But when gasoline is less expensive than milk, Americans have little incentive to conserve. People aren’t dumb. Every 24 hours the global economy burns 73 million barrels of oil. If you poured all that oil into a river it would be the size of the Colorado as it flows through Glenwood Springs. That modest river propels all motorized motion on the planet. Every car in Carbondale, China, and Chile. Every Boeing, every Airbus. Semis, autos, trucks, bulldozers, B-1 bombers, motorcycles, supertankers, tugboats, tractors, lawn mowers, snowmobiles, jet skis, snowblowers… if it moves it’s powered by oil. Looking ahead, oil demand is projected to increase rapidly. By 2010 most experts predict the world will be consuming 90 million barrels a day, 25% more than it does now. Sometimes between 2005 and 2020, world oil production will reach an apex, an all-time high, a peak. A plateau in production will be followed by a relentless inexorable decline. This petroleum primer was written by Randy Udall, Director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, with Steve Andrews, a Denver-based energy analyst. In 1995, Petroconsultants published a report for oil industry insiders titled WORLD OIL SUPPLY 1930-2050 ($32,000 per copy) which concluded that world oil production could peak as soon as the year 2000 and decline to half that level by 2025. Large and permanent increases in oil prices were predicted after the year 2000. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/98/0615/6112084a.htm -- http://dieoff.com/page116.htm. Petroleum experts Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrere, Brian Fleay, Roger Blanchard, Richard Duncan, Walter Youngquist, and Albert Bartlett  (using various methodologies) have all estimated a "peak" in "conventional oil" around 2005. Moreover, the CEOs of Agip, ENI SpA, (Italian oil companies) and Arco have all published estimates of peak in 2005. So it seems like a reliable estimate. This much is certain," he writes. "No initiative put in place starting today can have a substantial effect on the peak production year. No Caspian Sea exploration, no drilling in the South China Sea, no SUV replacements, no renewable energy projects can be brought on at a sufficient rate to avoid a bidding war for the remaining oil." We find that in 1993 total USA fuel use was 4.78 x 10e24 sej (increasing about 2% per year ever since). We find that total net solar radiation absorption for Alaska and the lower 48 was 4.48 x 10e22 sej. In other words, the USA is presently using fossil fuels more than 100 times greater than the total absorption of solar radiation across the entire USA!  The fact that our society can not survive on alternative energy should come as no surprise, because only an idiot would believe that windmills and solar panels can run bulldozers, elevators, steel mills, glass factories, electric heat, air conditioning, aircraft, automobiles, etc., AND still have enough energy left over to support a corrupt political system, armies, etc.   Population To put this in context, you must remember that estimates of the long-term carrying capacity of Earth with relatively optimistic assumptions about consumption, technologies, and equity (A x T), are in the vicinity of two billion people. Today's population cannot be sustained on the 'interest' generated by natural ecosystems, but is consuming its vast supply of natural capital -- especially deep, rich agricultural soils, 'fossil' groundwater, and biodiversity -- accumulated over centuries to eons. In some places soils, which are generated on a time scale of centimeters per century are disappearing at rates of centimeters per year. Some aquifers are being depleted at dozens of times their recharge rates, and we have embarked on the greatest extinction episode in 65 million years. -- Paul Ehrlich (Sept. 25, 1998)   World's Farmers Stand in Solidarity Against WTO Published on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 by the Madison (WI) Capital Times by James Goodman U.S. Trade Minister Robert Zoellick and European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy were both feeling rather miffed after the World Trade Organization ministerial meetings in Cancun, Mexico, collapsed last month. It was all supposed to go their way, after all. They had always had their way; the economic power of the United States and European Union were not to be challenged. But the bullies lost their grip; their best-laid plans swept aside by the "G-20 " - a group of developing nations that said, "No more; listen to our needs," and then walked out of the meetings.. ..The WTO is an ugly creature, the lapdog of corporate greed, but the campesinos saw through it, saw what it was doing to farmers around the world. Workers and environmentalists saw through it as well. They all came together in Seattle in 1999 and stopped it; every time the WTO gathered, protesters confronted it and slowed it down. In Cancun we stopped it again. Until governments begin to value people more than corporate profit, the protests will continue, the struggle will survive. James Goodman is a dairy farmer from Wonewoc who participated in the campesino march in Cancun, Mexico, on Sept. 10. WASHINGTON - December 18 - Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, issued the following statement today on Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA): "CAFTA not only rhymes with NAFTA, but will extend the economic 'disasta' that Ohio knows something about to more Americans, especially in the South. That is because CAFTA will cause the textile mills of the Carolinas and Georgia to close in the face of imports made cheaper by the agreement. "Some industry experts estimate that dozens of mills, and tens of thousands of textile mill workers, that are currently hanging on, will go bankrupt. The only beneficiaries will be companies with Central American and Asian factories. The President has also betrayed the millions of poor people in Central America. Under CAFTA, they'll no longer be able to get access to low-cost pharmaceuticals, which will be made illegal under CAFTA."   Nuclear Waste Technical Review  WASHINGTON - October 22 - Statement by Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board’s letter to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) warning that man-made storage containers at Yucca Mountain will probably leak should come as no surprise. Despite a mound of sound scientific evidence demonstrating the flaws of the Yucca Mountain plan, officials at the DOE have been influenced by the nuclear industry instead of by fact in their drive to build a high-level nuclear waste repository. The new finding by the board — the same body that in January 2002 called evidence supporting Yucca Mountain "weak to moderate" — further confirms that the project is unworkable and should be abandoned. The reliance on engineered barriers to permanently contain dangerously radioactive waste for thousands of years is a huge safety compromise. The original law mandating construction of a permanent waste repository, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, called for a geologic barrier to permanently isolate the waste from the surrounding environment, not a man-made one. When it became apparent that the volcanic rock forming Yucca Mountain could not adequately perform that critical function, the government waived the requirement. This concession is part of a larger pattern of making the laws fit the site, not making the site fit the laws. There are now more cars registered in the United States than there are drivers’ licensees Road to Ruin: How America is Ravaging the Planet America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage Those of us without a degree in climatology can have no sensible opinion on the truth about climate change, except to sense that the weather does seem to have become a little weird lately. Yet in America the subject has become politicized, with rightwing commentators decrying global warming as "bogus science". They gloated when it snowed unusually hard in Washington last winter (failing to notice the absence of snow in Alaska). When the dissident "good news" scientist Bjorn Lomborg spoke to a conservative Washington thinktank he was applauded not merely rapturously, but fawningly. While newspapers report that Kilimanjaro's icecap is melting and Greenland's glaciers are crumbling, the US government has been telling its scientific advisers to do more research before it can consider any action to restrict greenhouse gases; the scientists reported back that they had done all the research. The attitude of the White House to global warming was summed up by the online journalist Mickey Kaus as: "It's not true! It's not true! And we can't do anything about it!" What terrifies all American politicians, deep down, is that it is true and that they could do something about it, but at horrendous cost to American industry and lifestyle. "Remember, this country is built very heavily on the frontier ethic," says Clapp. "How America moved west was to 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." Americans made crops grow in places that are entirely arid. They built dams - about 250,000 of them. They built great cities, with skyscrapers and symphony orchestras, in places that appeared barely habitable. They shifted rivers, even reversed their flow. "It's the American belief that with enough hard work and perseverance anything - be it a force of nature, a country or a disease - can be vanquished," says Clapp. "It's a country founded on the idea of no limits. The essence of environmentalism is that there are indeed limits. It's one of the reasons environmentalism is a stronger ethic in Europe than in the US." There is a second reason: the staggering population growth of the US. It is approaching 300 million, having gone up from 200 million in 1970, which was around the time President Nixon set up a commission to consider the issue, the last time any US administration has dared think about it. A million new legal migrants are coming in every year (never mind illegals), and the US Census Bureau projections for 2050, merely half a lifetime away, is 420 million. This is a rate of increase far beyond anything else in the developed world, and not far behind Brazil, India, or indeed Mexico. This issue is political dynamite, although not for quite the same reasons as in Britain. Almost every political group is split on the issue, including the far right (torn between overt xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan and the free marketeers), the labor movement and the environmentalists. The belief that the US is the best country in the world is a cornerstone of national self-belief, and many Americans still, wholeheartedly, want others to share it. They also want cheap labor to cut the sugar cane, pluck the chickens, pick the oranges, mow the lawns and make the beds. Not long ago I went for a walk in the Vallecito Mountains in California. After a while, I got myself into a position where the contours of the land blotted out everything and, after the noise of a plane had died away, there was no sight or sound at all that was not produced by nature. This lasted about a minute. Then, from somewhere, a motorcycle roared into earshot. Sure, there are still places in this vast country where it is possible to escape, but they get harder and harder to find except for the fit, the adventurous and those unencumbered by children or jobs. Most Americans don't live that way. And nowhere now is entirely safe from being ravaged, sometimes in ways that prejudice the future of the whole planet. Al-Qaida and the Iraqi bombers have no need to bother. America is destroying itself. To view the Bush Administration environmental record www.environment2004.org/index.php   Global Warming Gas Seen Increasing Dramatically - - New View of Data Supports Human Link to Global Warming Global Warming Gas Seen Increasing Dramatically Wed November 19, 2003 09:18 PM ET By Jeff Franks HOUSTON (Reuters) - Worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, considered a culprit in global warming, are expected to increase by 3.5 billion tonnes, or 50 percent, annually by the year 2020, an executive for ExxonMobil Corp said on Wednesday. At the same time, global demand for energy will rise by 40 percent as the world population increases and economies grow, said Randy Broiles, global planning manager for Exxon's oil and gas production unit. "Between now and 2020 we estimate increases of some 3.5 billion tonnes per year of additional carbon emissions, so it's definitely increasing," Broiles said at an energy conference sponsored by accounting and consulting firm Deloitte. He said about 7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, go into the earth's atmosphere each year from power plants, cars and other sources. Experts say the United States, which has the world's largest economy and 4 percent of its population, is responsible for about 25 percent of so-called "greenhouse" gases now produced, but Broiles said most future growth in output will come from developing countries. "Eighty percent of that number, 80 percent of 3.5 billion tonnes, is going to be driven by those developing countries, those economies that are growing at the 4 to 5 percent range, so that's where it's coming from," he said. A huge increase in the number of cars will cause part of the pollution growth. Broiles said there are now 15 cars for every 1,000 people in the world, but ExxonMobil expects that number to rise to 50 cars per 1,000 by 2020. He said ExxonMobil foresees a 40 percent increase in energy demand even though humans are boosting their energy efficiency by about 1 percent a year. Despite advances in technology most energy will still come from fossil fuels, and in particular oil and gas, of which there remain very large reserves, he said. "The oil resource base is huge -- it's huge -- and we expect it to satisfy world demand growth well beyond 2020," he said.  Crimes Against Nature Crimes Against Nature Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans. http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2154&reset=true What Did the EPA Know and When Did It Know It? WASHINGTON - September 9, 2003 - JOEL KUPFERMAN,  Kupferman is the executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project. He said today: "On September 19, 2001, one day after the EPA declared that the 'air was safe to breathe,' we took samples in lower Manhattan and sent them to two respected labs -- the results came back with alarmingly high levels of toxins such as asbestos and fiberglass. We filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA, resulting in 800 pages of raw data which revealed that -- in spite of their assurances to the contrary -- EPA, OSHA and the various other health and environmental agencies knew of the dangers present at Ground Zero and beyond, on the ground and in the air." Kupferman said the documents showed that: * "Analyses prepared for the EPA by scientists were held back from publication, though their findings were highly relevant to health care providers trying to diagnose and treat those with acute symptoms, to say nothing of the public at large, which deserved to know its own risks." * "High concentrations of dangerous contaminants remained even three weeks after the towers collapsed -- after, at EPA's urging, people were back in the area, living and working full-time." * "In the three weeks following September 11, the agency was testing the ambient air but not releasing the results, and it was not testing settled dust with the highest-scrutiny techniques available -- choosing, instead, cheaper and non-aggressive techniques that, predictably, yielded lower results. Nor was it testing air inside offices or apartments near Ground Zero, where people were told it was safe to return within three days of the disaster." * "EPA also failed to reveal that, for its own headquarters cleanup, it used a particular type of high-sensitivity sampling method, called micro-vacuum. EPA then took a position that micro-vac testing was unnecessary for schools and residences in lower Manhattan. EPA cleaned up its own headquarters using professional abatement methods while directing residents to follow the city's Department of Health instructions which recommended using 'a wet rag or wet mop.' EPA also actively discounted results obtained when the micro-vac was used independently in the neighborhood." Kupferman added: "In April 2002, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, concerned about members' exposure, asked my organization to conduct testing on fire engines; our testing showed up to 5 percent chrysotile asbestos, five times the level at which the law requires immediate de-contamination, on vehicles that had already been 'decontaminated' by a city contractor."

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'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.''

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'.

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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.

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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.

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Ecocide

By Glenn Scherer, 
May 5, 2003

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 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.

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.

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Kennedy Warns on Nuclear Tests
Julian Borger
The Guardian

Wednesday 30 April 2003

WASHINGTON -- Senator Edward Kennedy yesterday warned that the Bush administration was preparing to restart the testing of nuclear weapons so it could develop a new generation of bunker-busting bombs and tactical "mini-nukes", potentially triggering a new arms race.

The veteran Democrat from Massachusetts was speaking before a congressional debate on an administration proposal to lift the legal restrictions on research into "mini-nukes" with an explosive force of less than five kilotons.

The proposal is the latest in a series of steps taken by the White House to reduce the hurdles to producing the new nuclear weapons it says may be necessary to confront threats from "rogue states" or terrorist groups.

Mr Kennedy said the Congress and the American public had not fully realised the scale of the changes under way in US nuclear policy. "They have been eclipsed for too long by the war on terrorism and the war against Iraq. We can ignore them no longer."

The administration has repeatedly said it has no current plans to resume nuclear testing, after an 11-year moratorium, but Mr Kennedy said the details of the defence budget suggested that such plans were quietly under way.

"The best way to get the indication of the seriousness of the administration is to follow the request of the money in the defence authorisation," he said. "We budgeted $700m for fiscal year 2004 [for special projects related to the nuclear arsenal], including funds that could be used to prepare for new tests and cut in half the time needed to conduct them."

In the next few days, congressional committees will debate a proposal by the departments of defence and energy to repeal a 1994 ban on the research and development on low-yield nuclear bombs.

Justifying the repeal, the Pentagon said it was necessary to "train the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists and engineers and restore a nuclear weapons enterprise able to respond rapidly and decisively to changes in the international security environment, or unforeseen technical problems in the stockpile."

Under the Pentagon's classified nuclear posture review, late last year, nuclear weapons could be used against rogue states such as North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya, and to pre-empt an attack with chemical and biological weapons.

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Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1,000 Years
Science v. 289:270-277
(July 2000)

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.

 

• For more information: Full study

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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

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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 escalates dramatically. Kaho`olawe can be used for comparison. The EIS done on Kaho`olawe shoed there were 80,000 unexploded bombs on Kaho`olawe, some buried as deep as twenty feet into the aina. Congress appropriated $400 million for Kaho`olawe clean up. It was suppose to cover the cleanup of the entire surface area and two thirds of the island to a depth of four feet. Well, the money is almost completed gone and the surface is not even cleaned up.

We request that the BLNR expressly prohibit any military related activity and/or classified research on Mauna Kea --this most sacred mountain in the Ocean of Peace.

Allow me to end with a spiritual reflection. In all the great spiritual traditions of the world, the sacred mountains are places for atonement and repentance. Yet here is Hawaii we have transformed the sacred temple and burial grounds of Mauna Kea into an industrial park. America and the State of Hawaii need to atone and repent for having lost site of the sacred for the science and the dollar. Atonement needs to begin Mauka to Makai, from the mountain to the sea and we all need to participate in the process. Atonement means to put Native Hawaiian cultural and spiritual values above concerns for science and economic development. Atonement means to be concerned for justice of Hawaii’s native people. We will never discover where we came from no matter how many or how big the telescopes unless justice is the first order of business.

The bottom line is this. We need to look within, not outside, our hearts to answer the fundamental questions of life. Atonement begins with denying this permit request.

Thank you for your consideration. Aloha!

James V. Albertini

President

 

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