by OTTO POHL

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/science/earth/06euro.html

BRUSSELS - When Darcy White of Raytown, Mo., chose to breast-feed her baby daughter two years ago, she had never heard of brominated flame retardants. But after randomly participating in a study, she learned that her breast milk carried unusually high levels of the chemicals.

Since then, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced an agreement with chemical manufacturers to phase out the worst of these toxic compounds, which are present in a wide variety of consumer goods like furniture and computer monitors, and Congress is considering legislation to make the ban permanent.

But it was only after the chemicals had been banned here in Europe that sufficient political pressure built for a phaseout in the United States.

That cycle was no accident. Globalization has often been condemned as encouraging a race to the bottom as multinationals seek the cheapest and least regulated place to do business. But increasingly, American environmental and public health advocates see globalization as a way to start a race to the top. They are taking their issues to the European Union, hoping to use regulations there as a lever for regulations in the United States.

"We are putting more resources into Europe than we otherwise would have done," says Charlotte Brody, coordinator of Health Care Without Harm, a Washington-based group attempting to reduce harmful substances in hospital supplies. "We desperately need the E.U. to be raising the bar and show what is possible."

Environmental groups, too, are working more closely with European lawmakers.

"We feel that Europe is a real opportuni ty," says Ned Helme, executive director for the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington. Once Europe moves ahead on programs to curb the gases believed to cause global warming, Mr. Helme believes, it will promote change in the United States. "We're pushing where the opportunity for innovation is greatest," he said.

The regulations affect a broad range of American chemical, energy and electronics companies, and industry groups say bureaucrats they did not elect are wielding unprecedented power over them, based on insufficient evidence of harm.

"The E.U. is going where no man has gone before," says James Lovegrove, managing director of the European division of the American Electronics Association, a United States industry lobby. "The moment the ink hits the paper in Europe it becomes a global piece of legislation.''

The generally stricter European laws reflect a different philosophical approach to regulation, says Dr. Indra Spiecker, a lawyer specialized in comparative law and assistant professor for American law at the
University of Osnabrück in Germany. American lawmakers primarily look to cost-benefit analysis, which holds that the benefit of imposing regulation should outweigh its cost. European nations have more readily embraced what is called the precautionary principle. Essentially, Europeans emphasize the cost of inaction, while Americans tend to focus on the cost of action.

"Fifteen years ago consumer issues would start in the United States and sweep over to Europe," says Ursula Schliessner, a product safety lawyer at McKenna Long & Aldridge in Brussels. "Now when there are consumer issues in the E.U. they trigger reactions in the United States."

In the case of the flame retardants, scientists from the Environmental Working Group, researching the prevalence of the chemicals in American mothers, discovered that Ms. White, an outwardly healthy 31-year-old practicing nurse, had some of the highest levels ever recorded. Studies have shown that, in laboratory animals, the chemicals can cause severe damage to the brain, especially in the first months of life. No one has proved that the substances are dangerous to humans, and Ms. White's daughter, Katelyn, is thriving.

Although concerned, Ms. White does not warn expectant mothers who come to her maternity ward to be tested for the chemicals. "You don't want to freak out mothers more than they already are," she says.

But Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the experimental toxicology division at the E.P.A., says the risk identified in the European studies, which then triggered additional research in America, was high enough to warrant action.

A co-author of the current legislation in Congress, Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, also says the European action against the substance was important to raise the issue in the United States. "The fact that the E.U. is taking steps really helps give us an argument" to ban the substances, she said.

European legislation can have an even more immediate impact in an area like consumer electronics. Because of the global nature of the electronics business, a multinational that redesigns its product to eliminate a substance banned in the E.U. often finds it cheaper to sell that product worldwide.

One such law that came into force last year limits or eliminates metals used in electronics considered particularly noxious when they leach into the environment.

The E.U. is now considering sweeping new regulation of its chemical industry that has unleashed what analysts here say is the biggest lobbying effort in Brussels ever mounted by American industry.

The new law, known as Reach, would place the burden of proof of safety on the producers before its sale, rather than waiting for problems to spur regulation later. It would force American chemical companies to comply with the legislation in order to continue exporting to Europe - and raises the fear of similar legislation in the United States.

The chemical industry points out that few if any of the unregulated chemicals are causing obvious health crises and says the legislation is overly bureaucratic and expensive. The American Chemical Council has marshaled its members to alter or derail the legislation.

But American environmental groups are eagerly supporting the law. "This is the place where the action is," says Tony Long, director of the World Wildlife Fund European policy office. He sees the potential effects of Reach broader than its technical jurisdiction. "This will have results around the world," he says.


Informant: Teresa Binstock

EARTH MEANDERS

Letting land rest as an act of love, independence and Gaia worship

By Dr. Glen Barry
http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/

July 1, 2004

Gaia is the global ecosystem in total and it is alive, with the biospheremaintaining conditions conducive for life. Cataclysmic destruction to the Earth's land ecosystems threatens these processes.

They are not making much new land, and much of what exists is in a poor state. Millennia of poor land management practices which have intensified in the past few centuries have degraded or even made uninhabitable huge swathes of land. Gaia is not dead yet - but she is hemorrhaging badly.

If land is to continue providing humans their habitat, a profound shift is needed in how we relate to land and all nature. We must learn to live with and not on the land, as productive and symbiotic member of the land's natural community. Our and Gaia's salvation lies in letting damaged lands rest and wild lands be.

This essay will focus on the land imperative - the urgent need to reduce humanity's burden upon the land. I will recommend that you find a piece of land to love and become its long term custodian. The task of our time is to wrest a small piece of the biosphere from the global economic growth machine, protecting and restoring land in a manner that maximizes its life-giving potential.

A disciple of Gaia may choose to devote their being to protection of the wild end of the spectrum - working as an advocate for large, natural ecosystems. Alternatively one may work to temper the excesses of urban industry - bringing smart growth, green spaces and urban habitat to our cities. Or one may focus on sustainably living with the Earth on the pastoral lands that lie in between. Each is a highly worthy activity that would provide the basis for a satisfying life of service to Gaia and her humanity.

In my own modest effort to live an ecologically righteous life, I spent over a decade organizing for the protection of Papua New Guinea's rainforests. I tried many avenues to agitate for their continued existence - ranging from landowner awareness to propaganda to protests to working for the World Bank.

That whole period of my life proved to be a mixture of extreme joy and utter despair. But I can say with pride that as I "handed off" the task to others that the rainforests had largely been protected on my watch. I am convinced that my efforts in conjunction with others lead to more - perhaps much more - intact PNG rainforests today than would otherwise be the case.

I exhort you to find a special wild place to love and defend. There are innumerable large natural landscapes and smaller biodiverse remnants that need stewards. The best conservation in the world is being done by a handful of dedicated people around a kitchen table with the beverage of their choice, working to establish biotic preserves as no go zones for industry.

Organize, educate and agitate. Begin by learning about the place, organizing information, and using it creatively to keep wild lands wild.

You may diversify into community based ecologically sustainable development, radical protest to inform and obstruct, related social struggles and/or seeking to broaden the movement including identifying your successor(s).

Further, in making a call to get back to the land, I wish to emphasize the need to rewild the pastoral portion of the natural spectrum. In the countryside - not city or wilderness but somewhere in between - there exists much potential to achieve land sustainability, while pursuing self-sufficiency and personal ecological sustainability.

Much of the world's countryside has been over managed - as industrial farming and resource extraction have caused much diminishment. Yet much that is natural remains and there exists great potential to assist fragmented nature to expand and reconnect. In areas where land is managed as gardens, there is great potential to create agricultural ecosystems that are resilient, stable and sustainable, and which are integrated with natural ecosystems.

On my small piece of land in northern Wisconsin I have begun to work to liberate seven acres from the megalomaniacal American marketplace. I was raised there by parents that had gone back to the land to homestead. I grew up raising animals and growing a large garden, and couldn't wait to leave for the city as I came of age. Twenty years later to the day I am back.

The vision for these old farm fields is of a self-sufficient organic ecologically sustainable homestead. This will take time and hard work.

An initial focus is ecological restoration of woodland - hundreds of trees went in this year. Given the strength, I plan to expand into permaculture and homesteading, integrating ecological restoration with sustainably producing my family's sustenance. Appropriate technologies such as the Internet allow me to continue my activism on behalf of Gaia while living with and restoring particular land.

As the industrial economy bursts, land will provide a refuge from ecological and social collapse. Those that are connected to land will have a better time of it. Only autonomous collectives of dark greens are likely to provide know how and vision to pursue post-industrial livelihoods and conservation rehabilitation of the natural world.

From green seeds, landed communities of hope that are just, equitable and sustainable will spring forth.

The task of our time is to protect what land remains, restore what has been ripped asunder, and find a new way to live as a member of the land community. Land gives you something you can not buy - life. Gaia - the sum of all Earthly life - will be maintained one piece of land at a time.

July 01, 2004

Thirty years ago, a book called The Limits to Growth created an international sensation by stating what now -- to most people -- seems obvious: that industrial and population growth would reach real limits in the future, and that global society could suffer severe damage, depending on how we respond to a world of finite resources.

Now a 30-year update of the book, based on massive amounts of new date, provides the most comprehensive analysis of our global future ever assembled. The new 30-year update suggests that the central problem for the next 70 years will not be averting environmental decline -- which the authors view as inevitable -- but containing and limiting damage to the planet and humanity.

It's too late for sustainable development, the authors conclude. The world must now choose between uncontrolled collapse or a carefully planned reduction of energy and materials consumption, back down to supportable levels.

The original Limits was compiled by an international team of experts assembled at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Using system dynamics theory to construct a global computer model called "World3," the book presented 12 scenarios that revealed different possible patterns -- and environmental outcomes -- of world development from 1900 to 2100. Eventually, The Limits to Growth became a bestseller with some 9 million copies sold in more than 30 languages.

The 1972 text was the object of intense criticism by economists of the time, who dismissed it as Malthusian hyperbole. But events over the past three decades have turned out to be remarkably consistent with the 1972 book's scenarios.

The new Limits to Growth, published this spring by Chelsea Green Publishers, presents 10 new scenarios, positing what may happen if certain steps are -- or are not -- taken. In most scenarios, the gap between rich and poor will widen, vital nonrenewable resources like oil will become much more difficult and expensive to obtain, and industrial production in developed countries will decline.

In 1972 the authors found the world's population and economy were still comfortably within the planet's carrying capacity. There was still room to grow safely while we examined longer-term options. Today this is no longer true. In this new examination, the authors cite numerous studies confirming that humanity has dangerously "overshot" our limits, expanding our demands on the planet's resources beyond what can be sustained even for the remainder of this century.

Although the past 30 years have shown some progress -- including new technologies, new institutions, and a new awareness of individual environmental problems -- the authors are far more pessimistic than they were in 1972. Humanity has squandered the opportunity to correct its current course over the last 30 years, they conclude, and much must change if the world is to mitigate the most harmful consequences of overshoot in this century.

The message that current growth trends cannot be sustained is now confirmed every year by thousands of headlines, hundreds of conferences, and dozens of new scientific studies. But these focus on specific problems like global warming, soil loss, extinction of species, and declining tropical forests.

Unfortunately, according to Limits authors Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, all these well-intentioned efforts are destined to fail -- until they are grounded in understanding the entire complex system which governs the world's physical economy, population, materials and energy flows. Limits to Growth is so far the only book to provide that understanding.

http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000148.php

The House of Representatives has rejected yet another attempt to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to massive oil development. In the face of opposition from his colleagues, House Resources Committee chair Pombo (R-CA) withdrew H.R. 4529, a bill that would have authorized drilling in the refuge. This great victory is due in no small part to pressure applied by nearly 50,000 BioGems Defenders who sent electronic messages urging their representatives to oppose the bill.

The fight to protect the Arctic Refuge is far from over, however. The Bush administration is determined to let oil and gas companies drill in this unspoiled sanctuary, and the leadership of both houses of Congress has vowed to keep trying. We will undoubtedly be calling on you to take action yet again in defense of this irreplaceable natural treasure.

I also wanted to let you know about another BioGems victory -- also in the House of Representatives -- for Alaska's Tongass National Forest. On June 16th, by a vote of 222-205, the House passed an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill that would prohibit the Forest Service from spending money to build logging roads in the Tongass for the next year. The proposed roads are a crucial first step in opening up pristine rainforest valleys to industrial-scale clearcutting.

Though it passed in the House, the amendment still faces an uphill climb: to become law, it must pass the Senate and be signed by President Bush. Logging companies are determined to clearcut the Tongass, and the Bush administration is doing everything possible to assist them. By sending more than 300,000 messages to defend the Tongass, you and other BioGems Defenders have played a crucial role in protecting this vast and thriving temperate rainforest.

On behalf of all of us at NRDC, thank you for taking action to save our hemisphere's wildest places. With your continued help, we will keep fighting in defense of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Tongass National Forest and all of our other BioGems.

Sincerely,

John H. Adams
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

BioGems: Saving Endangered Wild Places
A project of the Natural Resources Defense Council
http://www.savebiogems.org

http://www.climate-standards.org/news/index.html


Informant: Earth First! Media Center

http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0628-06.htm


Informant: Teresa Binstock

YOUR calls and faxes made the difference -- House turns back Arctic drilling. THANK YOU!!!

Every once in a while, Congress provides us with a surprise that makes us smile. In one of the most cynical efforts we've seen in a long time, the U.S. House of Representatives prepared a bill for floor action on June 16th that would have authorized oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and then earmarked the speculative revenues from drilling to the abandoned mine reclamation fund -- a source of money that is used to reclaim old mines and to provide health benefits for retired miners.

What the House leadership did not count on was opposition from the very mine workers union that they had been courting. The United Mine Workers came out against the proposal when they realized the bill was attempting to replace the current revenue stream -- a coal tax -- with revenues that are speculative. Moreover, the miners union had been negotiating diligently and in good faith with the coal industry and members of Congress from eastern and western coal states to reauthorize the program, and saw the linkage with the Arctic Refuge as undercutting all of their work.

It's also clear that Members of Congress heard your calls and read your faxes opposing Arctic drilling. Those were a key part of this victory. THANK YOU!!!

The House's leadership action highlights the fact that the bill to drill in the Arctic Refuge was purely a political ploy that would have done nothing to address America's energy needs or to reduce gas prices for American consumers. Unfortunately, in Washington, bad ideas never die. Until the Refuge is permanently protected, we aren't taking anything for granted, and all of us will continue to work with our friends in the House and Senate to remain vigilant.
>> Read how the events unfolded on June 16th
http://www.wilderness.org/OurIssues/Arctic/ArcticVictoryInHouse-June2004.cfm

Four years ago, we launched one of our most successful cyberactivist campaigns ever, against Coca-Cola's use of climate-killing chemicals in their refrigerants at the Sydney Olympics:

http://www.cokespotlight.org

Thanks to folks around the world who emailed the CEO, posted banners, sent postcards, and downloaded stickers to put on Coke machines, the soft-drink giant bowed to pressure and vowed to phase out HCFCs by 2004. This week, Coke was joined by Unilever and McDonalds in making good on that pledge, adopting a Greenpeace solution, Greenfreeze technology, which has revolutionized the refrigeration industry:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/news/details?item_id=504623

by KIRK MAKIN

JUSTICE REPORTER

Saturday, June 12, 2004 - Page A16

The Supreme Court of Canada has opened the door for governments to sue polluters who damage trees, wildlife and water that lack commercial value. In a ruling that delighted environmentalists yesterday, the court said governments may act as trustees of the public good, seeking compensation for damage from negligence ranging from oil spills and poisoned air to forest fires.

The virtues of an unspoiled environment are inarguable, the court said, and there is no reason members of the public cannot have recourse to the courts through their governments when corporations negligently damage it.

"This is a major environmental law precedent in Canada on an issue -- compensation for environmental harm to public assets -- never before tackled by the Supreme Court," said Jerry DeMarco, a lawyer who argued on behalf of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

"The court specifically recognized the inherent value of forests and recognized that trees are much more than timber waiting to be cut," Mr. DeMarco said. "This case will have repercussions well beyond forestry law to air pollution, water contamination, oil spills and the like -- indeed any case where a natural asset or resource is held in common for the benefit of everyone and is harmed by corporate negligence."

Mr. DeMarco said one of the great virtues of the ruling is its implicit warning to companies that they may pay a high price for polluting. He said that in future cases, judges and juries will reach damage awards after hearing expert testimony evaluating the loss of nature and wildlife in monetary terms.

The case before the Supreme Court involved a 1992 forest fire that burned 1,491 hectares in Northern British Columbia. The province sought compensation from Canadian Forest Products Ltd. because the fire, near Prince George, had harmed a vast number of trees, fish and a drinking-water source. Fifteen per cent of the destroyed trees were protected from commercial logging.

At trial, Canfor was ordered to pay almost $2.5-million. However, the judge refused to award damages over and above what it had cost the province to fight the fire and to reforest and rehabilitate the area.

In a limited sense, yesterday's ruling was actually a triumph for Canfor. The court left the trial judge's award as it was, refusing to add an award for the loss of the non-harvestable trees.

However, Mr. Justice Ian Binnie said this was because the province did not submit its claim until the litigation was well-advanced. He also faulted it for using "overly arbitrary and simplistic" methods to estimate the losses.

"The valuation of a few trees plucked from a leafy urban boulevard poses fewer problems than valuing the environmental benefit of 1,491 hectares of trees clothing the slopes and valleys of the B.C. Interior," Judge Binnie said. "No evidence was led about the nature of the wildlife, plants and other organisms protected by the environmental resource in question . . . the environmental services provided or recreational opportunities afforded by the resource, or the emotional attachment of the public to the damaged or destroyed area."

Three of the judges dissented on this point, saying they could have figured out how much to award B.C. regardless of its inadequate evaluations. "These trees have intrinsic value at least equal to their commercial value, despite their non-commercial use," Mr. Justice Louis LeBel said on behalf of Mr. Justice Michel Bastarache and Mr. Justice Morris Fish.

On the broader point, however, the court disagreed with Canfor that only governments can compensate for environmental damage through funds set up for that purpose. "There is no reason to neglect the potential of the common law, if developed in a principled and incremental fashion, to assist in the realization of the fundamental value of environmental protection," Judge Binnie said. He said future courts will develop specific rules and procedures, since there are "clearly important and novel policy questions raised by such actions."

Informant: Deborah Barrie

News Links w/ Summaries
http://forests.org/news/