Featured stories in this issue…
Who Benefits from Disasters?
In her book, Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein offers a new
interpretation of recent American history, arguing in detail that
disasters and catastrophes are now highly profitable, as well as
essential for maintaining the power of political elites. This new
hypothesis has great explanatory power, helping us make sense out of
the headlines.
A New Report Tells How To ‘Stop Trashing the Planet’
If we all aimed for zero waste and got serious about recycling and
composting, we could quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an
amount equal to the emissions of 87 coal-fired power plants (1/5 of
the nation’s 417 plants). This would be huge, and could be done
quickly. But we’d have to get serious.
Trans-fats Linked To Breast Cancer Risk
“A high serum level of trans-monounsaturated fatty acids,
presumably reflecting a high intake of industrially processed foods,
is probably one factor contributing to increased risk of invasive
breast cancer in women.”
Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer
“More and more kids are using cellphones,” said Dr. Paul J. Rosch,
clinical professor of medicine and psychiatry at New York Medical
College. “They may be much more affected. Their brains are growing
rapidly, and their skulls are thinner.”
Genetically Modified Foods Will Worsen the Global Food Crisis
Two scenarios are unfolding for the future of farming: organic and
local vs. industrialized and dependent on seed-varieties owned by
transnational corporations.
Packer Twp, Pennsylvnia, Passes Law Controlling Corporations
Another muncipality has passed a local law extinguishing the rights
claimed by corporations. They said it couldn’t be done, but it
is being done.
Has the End of Cheap Oil Arrived?
“Some oil optimists are wavering. Not only have oil prices soared
to historic levels, but unlike past spikes, those prices haven’t
generated a surge in new output…. The change is so stark that the
oil industry itself has lost some of its cockiness.”
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: NaomiKlein.org
January 27th, 2008
WHY THE RIGHT LOVES A DISASTER
[Rachel’s introduction: In her book, Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein offers a new interpretation of recent American history, arguing in detail that disasters and catastrophes are now highly profitable, as well as essential for maintaining the power of political elites. This new hypothesis has great explanatory power, helping us make sense out of the headlines.]
By Naomi Klein
Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, claims the key to solving the United States’ economic woes is slashing spending on Social Security. The National Association of Manufacturers says the fix is for the federal government to adopt the organization’s wish-list of new tax cuts. For Investor’s Business Daily, it is oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, “perhaps the most important stimulus of all.”
But of all the cynical scrambles to package pro-business cash grabs as “economic stimulus,” the prize has to go to Lawrence B. Lindsey, formerly President Bush’s assistant for economic policy and his advisor during the 2001 recession. Lindsey’s plan is to solve a crisis set off by bad lending by extending lots more questionable credit. “One of the easiest things to do would be to allow manufacturers and retailers” — notably Wal-Mart — “to open their own financial institutions, through which they could borrow and lend money,” he wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal.
Never mind that that an increasing number of Americans are defaulting on their credit card payments, raiding their 401(k) accounts and losing their homes. If Lindsey had his way, Wal-Mart, rather than lose sales, could just loan out money to keep its customers shopping, effectively turning the big-box chain into an old-style company store to which Americans can owe their souls.
If this kind of crisis opportunism feels familiar, it’s because it is. Over the last four years, I have been researching a little-explored area of economic history: the way that crises have paved the way for the march of the right-wing economic revolution across the globe. A crisis hits, panic spreads and the ideologues fill the breach, rapidly reengineering societies in the interests of large corporate players. It’s a maneuver I call “disaster capitalism.”
Sometimes the enabling national disasters have been physical blows to countries: wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters. More often they have been economic crises: debt spirals, hyperinflation, currency shocks, recessions.
More than a decade ago, economist Dani Rodrik, then at Columbia University, studied the circumstances in which governments adopted free-trade policies. His findings were striking: “No significant case of trade reform in a developing country in the 1980s took place outside the context of a serious economic crisis.” The 1990s proved him right in dramatic fashion. In Russia, an economic meltdown set the stage for fire-sale privatizations. Next, the Asian crisis in 1997-98 cracked open the “Asian tigers” to a frenzy of foreign takeovers, a process the New York Times dubbed “the world’s biggest going-out-of- business sale.”
To be sure, desperate countries will generally do what it takes to get a bailout. An atmosphere of panic also frees the hands of politicians to quickly push through radical changes that would otherwise be too unpopular, such as privatization of essential services, weakening of worker protections and free-trade deals. In a crisis, debate and democratic process can be handily dismissed as unaffordable luxuries.
Do the free-market policies packaged as emergency cures actually fix the crises at hand? For the ideologues involved, that has mattered little. What matters is that, as a political tactic, disaster capitalism works. It was the late free-market economist Milton Friedman, writing in the preface to the 1982 reissue of his manifesto, “Capitalism and Freedom,” who articulated the strategy most succinctly. “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
A decade later, John Williamson, a key advisor to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (and who coined the phrase “the Washington consensus”), went even further. He asked a conference of top-level policymakers “whether it could conceivably make sense to think of deliberately provoking a crisis so as to remove the political logjam to reform.”
Again and again, the Bush administration has seized on crises to break logjams blocking the more radical pieces of its economic agenda. First, a recession provided the excuse for sweeping tax cuts. Next, the “war on terror” ushered in an era of unprecedented military and homeland security privatization. After Hurricane Katrina, the administration handed out tax holidays, rolled back labor standards, closed public housing projects and helped turn New Orleans into a laboratory for charter schools — all in the name of disaster “reconstruction.”
Given this track record, Washington lobbyists had every reason to believe that the current recession fears would provoke a new round of corporate gift-giving. Yet it seems that the public is getting wise to the tactics of disaster capitalism. Sure, the proposed $150-billion economic stimulus package is little more than a dressed-up tax cut, including a new batch of “incentives” to business. But the Democrats nixed the more ambitious GOP attempt to leverage the crisis to lock in the Bush tax cuts and go after Social Security. For the time being, it seems that a crisis created by a dogged refusal to regulate markets will not be “fixed” by giving Wall Street more public money with which to gamble.
Yet while managing (barely) to hold the line, the House Democrats appear to have given up on extending unemployment benefits and increasing funding for food stamps and Medicaid as part of the stimulus package. More important, they are failing utterly to use the crisis to propose alternative solutions to a status quo marked by serial crises, whether environmental, social or economic.
The problem is not a lack of ideas “alive and available” — to borrow Friedman’s phrase. There are plenty available, from single-payer healthcare to legislating a living wage. Hundreds of thousands of jobs can be created by rebuilding the ailing public infrastructure and making it more friendly to public transit and renewable energy. Need start-up funds? Close the loophole that lets billionaire hedge fund managers pay 15% capital gains instead of 35% income tax, and adopt a long-proposed tax on international currency trading. The bonus? A less volatile, crisis-prone market.
The way we respond to crises is always highly political, a lesson progressives appear to have forgotten. There’s a historical irony to that: Crises have ushered in some of America’s great progressive policies. Most notably, after the dramatic market failure of 1929, the left was ready and waiting with its ideas — full employment, huge public works, mass union drives. The Social Security system that Moody’s is so eager to dismantle was a direct response to the Depression.
Every crisis is an opportunity; someone will exploit it. The question we face is this: Will the current turmoil become an excuse to transfer yet more public wealth into private hands, to wipe out the last vestiges of the welfare state, all in the name of economic growth? Or will this latest failure of unfettered markets be the catalyst that is needed to revive a spirit of public interest, to get serious about the pressing crises of our time, from gaping inequality to global warming to failing infrastructure?
The disaster capitalists have held the reins for three decades. The time has come, once again, for disaster populism.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: Ecolocalizer ………………………………….
June 6, 2008
WANT TO CURB GLOBAL WARMING? START RECYCLING AND COMPOSTING.
[Rachel’s introduction: If we all aimed for zero waste and got serious about recycling and composting, we could quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to the emissions of 87 coal-fired power plants (1/5 of the nation’s 417 plants). This would be huge, and could be done quickly. But we’d have to get serious.]
By Shirley Siluk Gregory
Looking for ways to reduce your carbon footprint beyond changing lightbulbs and taking the train? Turns out we all could make a big difference in greenhouse gas emissions by composting our food waste and not throwing out so much trash.
That’s the message from “Stop Trashing the Climate,” a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Eco-Cycle, a non-profit recycler. The study finds that waste prevention and increased recycling and composting could reduce as many greenhouse gas emissions as are produced by 21 percent of the U.S.’s 417 coal-fired power plants.
Why? There are two basic reasons. One, by trashing stuff instead of reusing or repairing it, we create the demand for new resources… and extracting, manufacturing and transporting those resources generates carbon dioxide. And, two, by tossing biodegradable materials into landfills instead of composting them, we’re creating emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is shorter-lived but 72 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
“Recycling is as important for climate stability as improving vehicle fuel efficiency, retrofitting lighting, planting trees and protecting forests,” said Brenda Platt, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and lead author of the “Stop Trashing the Climate” report. “By avoiding landfill methane emissions, composting in particular is a vital tactic in the battle to stop Arctic ice melting. Biodegradable materials are a liability when buried and burned but an asset when composted.”
The report asserts that “A zero waste approach based on preventing waste and expanding reuse, recycling and composting is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective strategies to protect the climate.” It also notes that, per megawatt-hour, a trash incinerator produces more carbon dioxide emissions that a coal-fired power plant. Incinerators also waste three to five times as much energy as recycling helps to conserve.
“A zero waste approach is not only good news for climate stability, it’s also good news for America’s businesses and economy,” said Eric Lombardi, a report co-author and director of the Boulder, Colorado- based Eco-Cycle.
“Stop Trashing the Climate” urges a local and national 20-year goal of zero waste. We can get there, the authors argue, by not subsidizing landfills and incinerators, putting an end to waste incineration, composting biodegradable materials and expanding the nationwide infrastructure for reuse, recycling and composting.
As part of World Environment Day, community supporters of better recycling and composting lobbied officials in several parts of the country, including Tallahassee; Providence, Rhode Island; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Los Angeles; and Massachusetts.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: Boston Globe …………………………………
April 12, 2008
TRANS-FATS LINKED TO BREAST CANCER RISK
[Rachel’s introduction: “A high serum level of trans-monounsaturated fatty acids, presumably reflecting a high intake of industrially processed foods, is probably one factor contributing to increased risk of invasive breast cancer in women.”]
By Reuters
WASHINGTON — Trans-fats, which are being phased out of food because they clog arteries, may raise the risk of getting breast cancer, European researchers reported yesterday.
They found that women with the highest blood levels of trans-fats had about twice the risk of breast cancer compared with women with the lowest levels.
“At this stage, we can only recommend limiting the consumption of processed foods, the source of industrially produced trans-fatty acid,” the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Trans-fats or trans-fatty acids are made in creating artificially hardened fats — in the process of hydrogenization, for instance.
They were, ironically, meant to be healthful replacements for artery- clogging saturated fats such as butter and lard.
But the process of making vegetable oil behave like butter made it as unhealthful as butter. New York and California have banned trans-fats in restaurant foods. Canada and Britain have considered it and countless food companies have dropped them as an ingredient.
Veronique Chajes of the French national scientific research center at the University of Paris-South and colleagues studied women taking part in a large European cancer trial. They looked at blood samples collected between 1995 and 1998 from 25,000 women who had volunteered to report on their eating and lifestyle habits and then be followed for years to see if they developed cancer.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: New York Times ……………………………….
June 3, 2008
EXPERTS REVIVE DEBATE OVER CELLPHONES AND CANCER
[Rachel’s introduction: “More and more kids are using cellphones,” said Dr. Paul J. Rosch, clinical professor of medicine and psychiatry at New York Medical College. “They may be much more affected. Their brains are growing rapidly, and their skulls are thinner.”]
By Tara Parker-Pope
What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?
Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars- Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”
Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.
Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cellphone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cellphones and cancer.
That supposed link has been largely dismissed by many experts, including the American Cancer Society. The theory that cellphones cause brain tumors “defies credulity,” said Dr. Eugene Flamm, chairman of neurosurgery at Montefiore Medical Center.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, three large epidemiology studies since 2000 have shown no harmful effects. CTIA — the Wireless Association, the leading industry trade group, said in a statement, “The overwhelming majority of studies that have been published in scientific journals around the globe show that wireless phones do not pose a health risk.”
The F.D.A. notes, however, that the average period of phone use in the studies it cites was about three years, so the research doesn’t answer questions about long-term exposures. Critics say many studies are flawed for that reason, and also because they do not distinguish between casual and heavy use.
Cellphones emit non-ionizing radiation, waves of energy that are too weak to break chemical bonds or to set off the DNA damage known to cause cancer. There is no known biological mechanism to explain how non-ionizing radiation might lead to cancer.
But researchers who have raised concerns say that just because science can’t explain the mechanism doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. Concerns have focused on the heat generated by cellphones and the fact that the radio frequencies are absorbed mostly by the head and neck. In recent studies that suggest a risk, the tumors tend to occur on the same side of the head where the patient typically holds the phone.
Like most research on the subject, the studies are observational, showing only an association between cellphone use and cancer, not a causal relationship. The most important of these studies is called Interphone, a vast research effort in 13 countries, including Canada, Israel and several in Europe.
Some of the research suggests a link between cellphone use and three types of tumors: glioma; cancer of the parotid, a salivary gland near the ear; and acoustic neuroma, a tumor that essentially occurs where the ear meets the brain. All these cancers are rare, so even if cellphone use does increase risk, the risk is still very low.
Last year, The American Journal of Epidemiology published data from Israel finding a 58 percent higher risk of parotid gland tumors among heavy cellphone users. Also last year, a Swedish analysis of 16 studies in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine showed a doubling of risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma after 10 years of heavy cellphone use.
“What we’re seeing is suggestions in epidemiological studies that have looked at people using phones for 10 or more years,” says Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, an industry publication that tracks the research. “There are some very disconcerting findings that suggest a problem, although it’s much too early to reach a conclusive view.”
Some doctors say the real concern is not older cellphone users, who began using phones as adults, but children who are beginning to use phones today and face a lifetime of exposure.
“More and more kids are using cellphones,” said Dr. Paul J. Rosch, clinical professor of medicine and psychiatry at New York Medical College. “They may be much more affected. Their brains are growing rapidly, and their skulls are thinner.”
For people who are concerned about any possible risk, a simple solution is to use a headset. Of course, that option isn’t always convenient, and some critics have raised worries about wireless devices like the Bluetooth that essentially place a transmitter in the ear.
The fear is that even if the individual risk of using a cellphone is low, with three billion users worldwide, even a minuscule risk would translate into a major public health concern.
“We cannot say with any certainty that cellphones are either safe or not safe,” Dr. Black said on CNN. “My concern is that with the widespread use of cellphones, the worst scenario would be that we get the definitive study 10 years from now, and we find out there is a correlation.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: Organic Consumers Association ………………….
June 5, 2008
GMOS WILL ONLY MAKE THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS WORSE
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho warns that further indulgence in GMOs will severely damage our chances of surviving the food crisis and global warming; organic agriculture and localised food systems are the way forward Invited lecture at conference on TRADITIONAL SEEDS OUR NATIONAL TREASURE AND HERITAGE, 17 May 2008, Bewelder, Warsaw, Poland
[Rachel’s introduction: Two scenarios are unfolding for the future of farming: organic and local vs. industrialized and dependent on seed- varieties owned by transnational corporations.]
By Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
The Brave New World of GM Science
In 1994, I met some of the most remarkable leaders in the Third World: Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher (Institute of Sustainable Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Martin Khor (Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia), and Vandana Shiva (Navdanya, New Delhi, India), who persuaded me to look into genetically modified organisms (GMOs), especially GM crops, which they rightly saw as a special threat to small family farmers. The biotech industry was promising miracle GM crops that would boost yield to feed the world, improve nutrition, and clean up and protect the environment. Monsanto’s Flavr Savr tomato, the first GM crop, had just been commercialised, though it turned out to be a complete flop, and was withdrawn several years later..
The biotech industry’s aggressive campaign of disinformation and manipulation of science did nothing to obscure the signs that the dream would soon turn into nightmare; and I said so in my book first published in 1997/1998 [1] Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare, the Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, which became an international bestseller, translated into many languages, and recently reprinted with an extended introduction to coincide with its translation into Indonesian. Everything predicted in that book has happened. It also explained why the science behind GM is obsolete; a story elaborated further in Living with the Fluid Genome [2] published in 2003.
Genetic modification based on an obsolete theory and hence ineffective and dangerous
Genetic engineering of plants and animals began in the mid 1970s in the belief that the genome (the totality of all the genetic material of a species) is constant and static, and that the characteristics of organism are simply hardwired in their genome. But geneticists soon discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic and “�fluid’, and constantly in conversation with the environment. This determines which genes are turned on, when, where, by how much and for how long.
Moreover, the genetic material itself could also be marked or changed according to experience, and the influence passed on to the next generation.
The best thing about the human genome project is to finally explode the myth of genetic determinism, revealing the layers of molecular complexity that transmit, interpret and rewrite the genetic texts [3] (Life Beyond the Central Dogma series, SiS 24). These processes are precisely orchestrated and finely tuned by the organism as a whole, in a highly coordinated molecular “�dance of life’ that’s necessary for survival.
In contrast, genetic engineering in the laboratory is crude, imprecise and invasive. The rogue genes inserted into a genome to make a GMO could land anywhere; typically in a rearranged or defective form, scrambling and mutating the host genome, and have the tendency to move or rearrange further once inserted, basically because they do not know the dance of life. That’s ultimately why genetic modification doesn’t work and is also dangerous.
Independent science against GM
In 1999, I co-founded the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) with my husband and long-time collaborator Peter Saunders, Professor of Mathematics at King’s College, London, to work for science, society and sustainability and to reclaim science for the public good. We are fortunate to have the support of wonderful fellow scientists, especially Prof. Joe Cummins, who joined ISIS from the start and continues to play the leading role in monitoring GM science. (Joe Cummins has been honoured with the ISIS Distinguished Fellow Award 2008.)
In 2003, dozens of scientists from around the world joined us in ISIS to form the Independent Science Panel, and produced a report, The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World [4], documenting all the problems and hazards of GM crops as well as the successes and benefits of non-GM sustainable agriculture. The report was republished within a year, translated into many languages and widely circulated. We presented the report to the European Parliament in 2004 [5] (Keep GM Out of Europe, SiS 24), with the help of Jill Evans MEP.
In 2007, we updated the ISP report with a dossier containing more than 160 fully referenced articles from the archives of ISIS’ magazine Science in Society, spelling out the scandals of serious hazards ignored, scientific fraud, the regulatory sham and violation of farmers’ rights [6] (GM Science Exposed: Hazards Ignored, Fraud, Regulatory Sham, Violation of Farmers Rights). Duped farmers in India are driven to suicide in hundreds of thousands. GM science is a crime against humanity.
In a scientific review paper [7] (GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham), we documented how national and international regulators and advisory bodies such as the European Food Safety Authority have been ignoring the precautionary principle (which is accepted by the European Commission), abusing science, sidestepping the law, and helping to promote GM technology in the face of evidence piling up against the safety of GM food and feed.
We presented our dossier and review paper to the European Parliament in June 2007, once again to press for a GM-Free Europe and a GM-free world, thanks to the sponsorship of Polish MEP Mr. Janusz Wojciechowski and his office. Our panel consisted of key scientists from six countries including Poland, and friends of independent scientists, including MEPs Dr. Caroline Lucas and Jill Evans.
The case for a GM-free world has grown much stronger since 2004, not only because so much more evidence has stacked up against GM crops; but especially because accelerating global warming, the depletion of water and fossil fuels, and the current food crisis make it that much more urgent to shift comprehensively to sustainable food and energy systems as proposed in ISIS/TWN’s energy report Which Energy? [8].
There is neither the time nor resources to waste on GM.
We’d had 30 years of GMOs and more than enough damage done, as detailed in the ISP Report [4], in our GM Science dossier [6], and more recent evidence has been piling up.
Thirty years of GMOs are more than enough
** No increase in yields; on the contrary GM soya decreased yields by up to 20 percent compared with non-GM soya [4], and up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton have been recorded in India [6]. New studies confirmed these findings. Research from the University of Kansas found a 10 percent yield drag for Roundup Ready soya [9] that required extra manganese applied to the soil to make up the yield deficit. A team of scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia found growing GM cotton in the US could result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent [10, 11] (Transgenic Cotton Offers No Advantage, SiS 38)
** No reduction in pesticides use; on the contrary, USDA data showed that GM crops increase pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the United States [4]. New data paint an even grimmer picture:
** The use of glyphosate on major crops went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides [12] in order to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds [6]. Roundup tolerant canola volunteers are top among the worries of Canadian farmers [13, 14] (Study Based on Farmers’ Experience Exposes Risks of GM Crops, SiS 38)
** Roundup herbicide is lethal to frogs and toxic to human placental and embryonic cells [6]. Roundup is used in more than 80 percent of all GM crops planted in the world
** GM crops harm wildlife, as revealed by UK’s farm scale evaluations [6], and more recently in a study led by Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois in the United Stated, which found that wastes from Bt corn impaired the growth of a common aquatic insect [15, 16] (Bt Crops Threaten Aquatic Ecosystems, SiS 36)
** Bt resistance pests and Roundup tolerant superweeds render the two major GM crop traits practically useless [6]. A recent review concluded that [17] “evolved glyphosate-resistant weeds are a major risk for the continued success of glyphosate and transgenic glyphosate-resistant crops.”� And the evolution of Bt resistant bollworms worldwide have now been confirmed and documented in more than a dozen fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 and 2006 [18]
** Vast areas of forests, pampas and cerrados lost to GM soya in Latin America, 15 m hectares in Argentina alone [6]; and this has worsened considerably with the demand for biofuels (see later)
** Epidemic of suicides in the cotton belt of India involving 100 000 farmers between 1993-2003, and a further 16 000 farmers a year have died since Bt cotton was introduced [6]
** Transgene contamination unavoidable, scientists find GM pollination of non-GM crops and wild relatives 21 kilometres away [19]
** GM food and feed linked to deaths and sicknesses both in the fields in India and in lab tests around the world (more below)
GM food and feed inherently hazardous to health [7]
Here are some highlights from our GM Science dossier [6] on the hazards of GM food and feed. Dr. Irina Ermakova of the Russian Academy of Sciences showed how GM soya made female rats give birth to severely stunted and abnormal litters, with more than half dying in three weeks, and those remaining are sterile. Hundreds of villagers and cotton handlers in India suffer allergy-like symptoms, thousands of sheep died after grazing on the Bt cotton residues, goat and cows as well were reported in 2007 and 2008 [20] (Mass Protests against GM Crops in India, SiS 38). A harmless bean protein transferred to pea when tested on mice cause severe inflammation in the lungs and provoked generalised food sensitivities. Dozens of villagers in the south of the Philippines fell ill when neighbouring GM maize fields came into flower in 2003, five have died and some remain ill to this day. A dozen cows died having eaten GM maize in Hesse Germany and more in the herd had to be slaughtered from mysterious illnesses. Arpad Pusztai and his colleagues in the UK found GM potatoes with snowdrop lectin damaged every organ system of young rats; the stomach lining grew twice as thick as controls. Chickens fed GM maize Chardon LL were twice as likely to die as controls. And finally, GM maize Mon 863 was claimed to be as safe as non-GM maize by the company, and accepted as such by European Food Safety Authority. But independent scientists of CriiGen in France re-analysed the data and found signs of liver and kidney toxicity.
[A longer version of this article, with charts and illustrations is available online.]
[1] Ho MW. Genetic Engineering Dream of Nightmare? The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, Third World Network, Gateway Books, MacMillan, Continuum, Penang, Malaysia, Bath, UK, Dublin, Ireland, New York, USA, 1998, 1999, 2007 (reprint with extended Introduction).
[2] Ho MW. Living with the Fluid Genome, ISIS & TWN, London and Penang, 2003.
[3] Ho MW. Life beyond the Central Dogma series, Science in Society 24, 4-13, 2004.
[4] Ho MW and Lim LC. The Case for a GM-Free Sustainable World, Independent Science Panel Report, Institute of Science in Society and Third World Network, London and Penang, 2003; republished GM-Free, Exposing the Hazards of Biotechnology to Ensure the Integrity of Our Food Supply, Vitalhealth Publishing, Ridgefield, Ct., 2004 (both available from ISIS online bookstore.
[5] Lim LC. Keep GM out of Europe! Science in Society 24, 26-27, 2004.
[6] GM Science Exposed: Hazards Ignored, Fraud, Regulatory Sham and Violation of Farmers’ Rights, ISIS CD book, 2007.
[7] Ho MW, Cummins J and Saunders PT. GM food nightmare unfolding in the regulatory sham. Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease 2007, Disease 2007, 19, 66-77.
[8] Ho MW, Bunyard P, Saunders PT, Bravo E and Gala R. Which Energy? 2006 ISIS Energy Report, Institute of Science in Society, London, 2006.
[9] Gordon B. Better Crops 2007, 91, 12-14.
[10] Jost P, Shurley D, Culpepper S, Roberts P, Nichols R, Reeves J and Anthony S. Economic Comparison of transgenic and montransgenic cotton production systems in Georgia. Agronomy Journal 2008, 100, 42-51. (doi:10.2134/agronj2006.0259)
[11] Ho MW and Saunders PT. Transgenic cotton offers no advantage, Science in Society 38 (in press).
[12] Who benefits from gm crops? The rise in pesticide use, executive summary, Friends of the Earth International, Amsterdam, January 2008.
[13] Mauro IJ and McLachlan SM. Farmer knowledge and risk analysis: postrelease evalulation of herbicide-tolerant canola in Western Canada. Risk Analysis 2008, 28, DOI:10.1111/j.1539-6924.200801027.x
[14] Ho MW. Study based on farmers’ experience exposes risks of GM crops. Science in Society 38 (in press).
[15] Rosi-Marxhall EJ, Tank JL, Royer TV, Whiles MR, Evans-White M, Chamgers C, Griffiths NA, Pokelsek J and Stephen ML. Toxins in transgenic crop byproducts may affect headwater stream ecosystems. PNAS 2007, 104, 16204-8.
[16] Ho MW. Bt crops threaten aquatic ecosystems. Science in Society 36, 49, 2007.
[17] Powles, SB. Evolved glyphosate-resistant weeds around the world: lessons to be learnt. Pest Management Science 2008, 64, 360-5.
[18] “First documented case of pest resistance to biotech cotton” Science Daily, 8 February 2008.
[19] Van de Water PK, Watrud LS, Lee EH, Burdick C and King GA. Long- distance GM pollen movement of creeping bentgrass using modelled wind trajectory analysis. Ecological Applications 2007, 17, 1244-56.
[20] Kurunganti K. Mass protests against GM crops in India. Science in Society 38 (in press).
[21] Cummins J and Ho MW. Approval of GM crops illegal, US federal courts rule. Science in Society 34, 24, 2007.
[22] “An American court bans genetically modified alfalfa — How will Ottawa react: CNW TELBEC, 4 May 2007.
[23] “D.C. Circuit Court says “no” to Scotts and Monsanto on biotech grasses”, Center for Food Safety Press Release, 19 March 2008.
[24] History of AB 541, Californians for GE-Free Agriculture,
[25] “Montville: first U.S. town outside of California to ban genetically engineered crops”, Food for Maine’s Future, 29 March 2008.
[26] “GM crop ban extended indefinitely in SA”, The Land, 18 April 2008.
[27] “Romania joins EU members in GM crop ban”, Matt Williams, The Parliament.com, 28 March 2008.
[28] Ho MW, Saunders PT and Jost M. Croatia to be organic and GM-Free. Science in Society 38 (in press)
[29] “Greenpeace applauds Greek ban on GMO corn,” ANA-MPA, 7 May 2008.
[30] “Germany tightens restrictions on genetically modified corn,” Der Spiegel, 9 May 2007.
[31] “Government to back bid to ban GM crops in Europe”, Sunday Herald, 25 November 2007.
[32] “French state body upholds decision of GM crop ban”, Reuters.com, 21 March 2008.
[33] “French Senate approves GMO law”, Reuters, 18 April 2008.
[34] “Wales set to ban GM crops”, Steve Dube, icWales.co.uk, 18 March 2008.
[35] GMO-free regions, biodiversity and rural development, GENET, May 2008.
[36] Ho MW. GM-free Europe beginning? Science in Society 36, 51, 2007.
[37] “EU food agency under fire as commission debates GMOs”, Friends of the Earth Europe, Greenpeace Press Release, 7 May 2008.
[38] International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science & Technology (IAASTD) Synthesis Report 25 November 2007.
[39] Ho MW, Burcher S, Lim LC, et al. Food Futures Now, Organic, Sustainable, Fossil Fuel Free, ISIS and TWN, London, 2008.
[40] Ho MW. GM-free organic agriculture to feed the world. International panel of 400 Agricultural scientists call for fundamental change in farming practice. Science in Society 38 (in press).
[41] “Puncturing the GM myths”, Interview of Dr. Mae-Wan Ho by Anastasia Stephens of the Evening Standard, Science in Society 22, 23-25, 2004.
[42] “Farmers ask why GM crops worse in drought”, Network of Concerned Farmers, 30 June 2005.
[43] Manifesto on Climate Change and the Future of Food Security, The International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, Florence, Italy, 2008.
[44] Ho MW. Beware the new “doubly green revolution”. Science in Society 37, 26-29, 2008.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund ………
June 12, 2008
PACKER TWP, PENNSYLVNIA, PASSES LAW CONTROLLING CORPORATIONS
[Rachel’s introduction: Another muncipality has passed a local law extinguishing the rights claimed by corporations. They said it couldn’t be done, but it is being done.]
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania — On June 11, 2008, the Board of Supervisors for Packer Township in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, voted unanimously to enact a law that bans corporations from dumping sewage sludge as “fertilizer” and for “mine reclamation.”
The Ordinance also states as a matter of law that, within the community, corporations possess no constitutional “rights,” privileges or immunities intended for people. The community included this provision as a challenge to corporate representatives who use court- bestowed constitutional “rights” and legal privileges to nullify local laws and override the legitimate rights of citizens.
Board Chairman Thomas Gerhard stated, “We felt that it was in the best interests of the residents to adopt the ordinance.”
In adopting the law, Packer Township became the third local government in the country to define liability and impose penalties for chemical bodily trespass, following the lead of the Town of Halifax, Virginia, and Mahanoy Township in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
The people of Packer Township also included a provision that recognizes the right of natural communities and ecosystems to exist and flourish within the Township, joining nine other communities that have asserted environmental protection as an enforceable right rather than a matter of discretionary convenience.
The Packer Township law
1) Bans corporations from engaging in the land application of sewage sludge;
2) Bans persons from using corporations to engage in the land application of sewage sludge;
3) Provides for the testing of sewage sludge prior to land application by individuals, with testing costs to be borne by the applicant;
4) Prohibits chemical bodily trespass upon residents of the Township;
5) Establishes strict liability and burden of proof standards for chemical trespass;
6) Removes claims to legal rights and protections from corporations within the Township;
7) Recognizes and provides for enforcement of rights of residents, natural communities and ecosystems;
8) Subordinates sludge hauling and disposing corporations to the People of Packer Township;
9) Adopts Pennsylvania regulations as locally enforceable concerning the land application of sewage sludge by individuals.
In the Ordinance, the Township Board of Supervisors declared that if state and federal agencies — or corporate managers — attempt to invalidate the Ordinance, a Township-wide public meeting would be hosted to determine additional steps to expand local control and self- governance within the Township.
The Ordinance was adopted following an attempt by nearby Tamaqua Borough’s Council Member Cathy Miorelli to investigate the dumping of over thirty loads of sludge uphill from the Still Creek Reservoir in Packer Township. The reservoir is the source of drinking water for surrounding communities, including Tamaqua.
Ms. Miorelli said that when she contacted the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) she hit a roadblock. “I asked [Tim Craven, the DEP representative] if the substance was permitted. He said he didn’t know and it would be pretty difficult for him to find out.” Craven then suggested the Council Member contact the land owner, but Ms. Miorelli advised the DEP rep that such an investigation seemed to be his responsibility. Pressing the issue, she was able to convince Mr. Craven to contact the land-owner, and in a follow-up call was told the land owner reported the substance to be “lime.”
According to a Times-News report “Everything changed on April 2, when Miorelli got a phone call from Craven, apologizing to her and saying that she in fact was correct and it was biosolid material [a PR term for sewage sludge developed by industry and adopted by State and federal agencies] from Philipsburg, N.J. that was dumped in the fields.
“Mayor Christian Morrison took issue with the fact that the DEP officials apparently lied and did not perform the appropriate inspections.
“‘This community has lost faith in DEP and this just doesn’t help,’ he said.”
Ben Price, Projects Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, the organization that helped draft the Packer Township Ordinance said, “Once again, the people living within Pennsylvania municipalities have concluded that they must rely on themselves, and assert their right to govern locally on issues that directly impact the local community and environment. In the face of an apparent State policy of covering up and enabling waste hauling corporations to wield unjust law against Pennsylvanians and profit at the expense of our communities, Pennsylvanians are standing up.”
Passage of this Ordinance is especially significant at this time, since the Pennsylvania Attorney General is suing neighboring East Brunswick Township for adopting a similar Ordinance. Acting as private litigator for agribusiness and sludge corporations, under authority of a State statute lobbied for heavily by these industries, the PA Attorney General recently filed a legal brief requesting the court overturn East Brunswick’s Ordinance without giving the community its day in court. In that brief, the top law enforcement officer in Pennsylvania made this unequivocal statement his core argument for nullifying the local law: “There is no inalienable right to local self-government.”
It’s a point of view we see played out every day in communities across Pennsylvania and the United States. By enacting their new Ordinance, the community government of Packer Township has outshone its State counterpart by recognizing that the consent of the governed is a prerequisite for just governments and law.
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, located in Chambersburg, has been working with people in Pennsylvania since 1995 to assert their fundamental rights to democratic self-governance, and to enact laws which end destructive and rights-denying corporate action aided and abetted by state and federal governments.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: National Geographic …………………………..
June 1, 2008
TAPPED OUT
[Rachel’s introduction: “Some oil optimists are wavering. Not only have oil prices soared to historic levels, but unlike past spikes, those prices haven’t generated a surge in new output…. The change is so stark that the oil industry itself has lost some of its cockiness.”]
By Paul Roberts
In 2000 a Saudi oil geologist named Sadad I. Al Husseini made a startling discovery. Husseini, then head of exploration and production for the state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, had long been skeptical of the oil industry’s upbeat forecasts for future production. Since the mid-1990s he had been studying data from the 250 or so major oil fields that produce most of the world’s oil. He looked at how much crude remained in each one and how rapidly it was being depleted, then added all the new fields that oil companies hoped to bring on line in coming decades. When he tallied the numbers, Husseini says he realized that many oil experts “were either misreading the global reserves and oil-production data or obfuscating it.”
Where mainstream forecasts showed output rising steadily each year in a great upward curve that kept up with global demand, Husseini’s calculations showed output leveling off, starting as early as 2004. Just as alarming, this production plateau would last 15 years at best, after which the output of conventional oil would begin “a gradual but irreversible decline.”
That is hardly the kind of scenario we’ve come to expect from Saudi Aramco, which sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves — some 260 billion barrels, or roughly a fifth of the world’s known crude — and routinely claims that oil will remain plentiful for many more decades. Indeed, according to an industry source, Saudi oil minister Ali al- Naimi took a dim view of Husseini’s report, and in 2004 Husseini retired from Aramco to become an industry consultant. But if he is right, a dramatic shift lies just ahead for a world whose critical systems, from defense to transportation to food production, all run on cheap, abundant oil.
Husseini isn’t the first to raise the specter of a peak in global oil output. For decades oil geologists have theorized that when half the world’s original endowment of oil has been extracted, getting more out of the ground each year will become increasingly difficult, and eventually impossible. Global output, which has risen steadily from fewer than a million barrels a day in 1900 to around 85 million barrels today, will essentially stall. Ready or not, we will face a post-oil future — a future that could be marked by recession and even war, as the United States and other big oil importers jockey for access to secure oil resources.
Forecasts of peak oil are highly controversial — not because anyone thinks oil will last forever, but because no one really knows how much oil remains underground and thus how close we are to reaching the halfway point. So-called oil pessimists contend that a peak is imminent or has actually arrived, as Husseini believes, hidden behind day-to-day fluctuations in production. That might help explain why crude oil prices have been rising steadily and topped a hundred dollars a barrel early this year.
Optimists, by contrast, insist the turning point is decades away, because the world has so much oil yet to be tapped or even discovered, as well as huge reserves of “unconventional” oil, such as the massive tar-sand deposits in western Canada. Optimists also note that in the past, whenever doomsayers have predicted an “imminent” peak, a new oil-field discovery or oil-extraction technology allowed output to keep rising. Indeed, when Husseini first published his forecasts in 2004, he says, optimists dismissed his conclusions “as curious footnotes.”
Many industry experts continue to argue that today’s high prices are temporary, the result of technical bottlenecks, sharply rising demand from Asia, and a plummeting dollar. “People will run out of demand before they run out of oil,” BP’s chief economist declared at a meeting early this year. Other optimists, however, are wavering. Not only have oil prices soared to historic levels, but unlike past spikes, those prices haven’t generated a surge in new output. Ordinarily, higher prices encourage oil companies to invest more in new exploration technologies and go after difficult-to-reach oil fields. The price surge that followed the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, for example, eventually unleashed so much new oil that markets were glutted. But for the past few years, despite a sustained rise in price, global conventional oil output has hovered around 85 million barrels a day, which happens to be just where Husseini’s calculations suggested output would begin to level off.
The change is so stark that the oil industry itself has lost some of its cockiness. Last fall, after the International Energy Agency released a forecast showing global oil demand rising more than a third by 2030, to 116 million barrels a day, several oil-company executives voiced doubts that production could ever keep pace. Speaking to an industry conference in London, Christophe de Margerie, head of the French oil giant Total, flatly declared that the “optimistic case” for maximum daily output was 100 million barrels — meaning global demand could outstrip supply before 2020. And in January, Royal Dutch Shell’s CEO, Jeroen van der Veer, estimated that “after 2015 supplies of easy- to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.”
To be sure, veteran oilmen like de Margerie and van der Veer don’t talk about peak oil in a geologic sense. In their view, political and economic factors above ground, rather than geologic ones below, are the main obstacles to raising output. War-torn Iraq is said to have huge underground oil reserves, yet because of poor security, it produces about a fifth as much as Saudi Arabia does. And in countries such as Venezuela and Russia, foreign oil companies face restrictive laws that hamper their ability to develop new wells and other infrastructure. “The issue over the medium term is not whether there is oil to be produced,” says Edward Morse, a former State Department oil expert who now analyzes markets for Lehman Brothers, “but rather how to overcome political obstacles to production.”
Yet even oil optimists concede that physical limits are beginning to loom. Consider the issue of discovery rates. Oil can’t be pumped from the ground until it has been found, and yet the volume discovered each year has steadily fallen since the early 1960s’despite dazzling technological advances, including computer-assisted seismic imaging that allows companies to “see” oil deep below the Earth’s surface. One reason for the decline is simple mathematics: Most of the big, easily located fields — the so-called “elephants” — were discovered decades ago, and the remaining fields tend to be small. Not only are they harder to find than big fields, but they must also be found in greater numbers to produce as much oil. Last November, for example, oil executives were ecstatic over the discovery off the Brazilian coast of a field called Tupi, thought to be the biggest find in seven years. And yet with as much as eight billion barrels, Tupi is about a fifteenth the size of Saudi Arabia’s legendary Ghawar, which held about 120 billion barrels at its discovery in 1948.
Smaller fields also cost more to operate than larger ones do. “The world has zillions of little fields,” says Matt Simmons, a Houston investment banker who has studied the oil discovery trend. “But the problem is, you need a zillion oil rigs to get at them all.” This cost disparity is one reason the industry prefers to rely on large fields — and why they supply more than a third of our daily output. Unfortunately, because most of the biggest finds were made decades ago, much of our oil is coming from mature fields that are now approaching their peaks, or are even in decline; output is plummeting in once prolific regions such as the North Sea and Alaska’s North Slope.
Worldwide, output from existing fields is falling by as much as 8 percent a year, which means that oil companies must develop up to seven million barrels a day in additional capacity simply to keep current output steady — plus many more millions of barrels to meet the growth in demand of about 1.5 percent a year. And yet, with declining field sizes, rising costs, and political barriers, finding those new barrels is getting harder and harder. Many of the biggest oil companies, including Shell and Mexico’s state-owned Pemex, are actually finding less oil each year than they sell.
As more and more existing fields mature, and as global oil demand continues to grow, the deficit will widen substantially. By 2010, according to James Mulva, CEO of ConocoPhillips, nearly 40 percent of the world’s daily oil output will have to come from fields that have not been tapped — or even discovered. By 2030 nearly all our oil will come from fields not currently in operation. Mulva, for one, isn’t sure enough new oil can be pumped. At a conference in New York last fall, he predicted output would stall at 100 million barrels a day — the same figure Total’s chief had projected. “And the reason,” Mulva said, “is, where is all that going to come from?”
Whatever the ceiling turns out to be, one prediction seems secure: The era of cheap oil is behind us. If the past is any guide, the world may be in for a rough ride. In the early 1970s, during the Arab oil embargo, U.S. policymakers considered desperate measures to keep oil supplies flowing, even drawing up contingency plans to seize Middle Eastern oil fields.
Washington backed away from military action then, but such tensions are likely to reemerge. Since Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries control 75 percent of the world’s total oil reserves, their output will peak substantially later than that of other oil regions, giving them even more power over prices and the world economy. A peak or plateau in oil production will also mean that, with rising population, the amount of gasoline, kerosene, and diesel available for each person on the planet may be significantly less than it is today. And if that’s bad news for energy-intensive economies, such as the United States, it could be disastrous for the developing world, which relies on petroleum fuels not just for transport but also for cooking, lighting, and irrigation.
Husseini worries that the world has been slow to wake up to the prospect. Fuel-efficient cars and alternatives such as biofuels will compensate for some of the depleted oil supplies, but the bigger challenge may be inducing oil-hungry societies to curb demand. Any meaningful discussion about changes in our energy-intensive lifestyles, says Husseini, “is still off the table.” With the inexorable arithmetic of oil depletion, it may not stay off the table much longer.
==============
Paul Roberts is author of The End of Oil, published in 2004. His new book, The End of Food, will be out this summer from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Rachel’s Democracy & Health News highlights the connections between issues that are often considered separately or not at all.
The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining because those who make the important decisions aren’t the ones who bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy, intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and therefore ruled by the few.
In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than, “Who gets to decide?” And, “How DO the few control the many, and what might be done about it?”
Rachel’s Democracy and Health News is published as often as necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject.
Editors:
Peter Montague – peter@rachel.org
Tim Montague – tim@rachel.org
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
To start your own free Email subscription to Rachel’s Democracy & Health News send a blank Email to: rachel-subscribe@pplist.net
In response, you will receive an Email asking you to confirm that you want to subscribe.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 160, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903
dhn@rachel.org
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::