# US to ignore Montreal Protocol - and destroy Ozone Layer



## Incognito (Nov 17, 2003)

As if the Bush administration hasn't destroyed enough global treaties already, they've decided to cripple another one this week - the Montreal Protocol on the banning of chemicals seen to destroy the Ozone Layer.

No doubt if the USA withdraws from the protocol, we'll see well presented "research" in the US media "proving" that: either there is no direct relationship between use of methyl bromide and destruction of the ozone; or else argue instead that there is no clear consensus on whether the Ozone hole is actually threatened, or not.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3272361.stm

excerpt:


> *UN talks on protecting the ozone layer have ended without a deal, after the US asked permission to continue using a chemical it had earlier agreed to ban. *
> 
> 
> The US team at the Nairobi conference said its farmers needed methyl bromide, but other delegates disagreed.
> ...


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 17, 2003)

Incognito said:
			
		

> As if the Bush administration hasn't destroyed enough global treaties already, they've decided to cripple another one this week - the Montreal Protocol on the banning of chemicals seen to destroy the Ozone Layer.
> 
> No doubt if the USA withdraws from the protocol, we'll see well presented "research" in the US media "proving" that: either there is no direct relationship between use of methyl bromide and destruction of the ozone; or else argue instead that there is no clear consensus on whether the Ozone hole is actually threatened, or not.
> 
> ...


I know we don't generally discuss religion here, but I have to say that I believe this continuing anti-environmental stance by the U.S. government stems from the fact that so many high officials are Christians of the type who believe that "since Jesus is coming soon, it doesn't matter what we do to the environment."  This is not a new stance - it has been articulated at least since the Reagan administration, when James Watt was Secretary of the Interior, and actually said something very like this in public.

And, as far as farmers and methyl bromide.  Yeah, well.  I live in a farming area, and I've seen how stubborn farmers are about changing anything they do.  This area has a very, very high incidence of cancer which many people trace to the use (overuse) of chemicals on crops.  But mention this to a farmer and they just get all stone-faced and insist that their ability to have a high crop yield is more important than people's health.  It constantly irritates me that I can drive by orchards of fields and see the spraying going on, with the person operating the spraying rig all suited up like an astronaut with respiratior and all, but there is no warning out that spraying is going on so that people driving by with their windows down can avoid breathing in the stuff.  They just don't care.

And of course, "research" will support the administration's position.  We've already seen how this affects research in other areas.  There have been several stories in the past year or so about how there are political tests that research in the medical field, especially having to do with HIV/AIDS research.  Any research in this area that is perceived by the government as being sensitive to or sympathetic with the gay community, or with the use of condoms as barriers to the spread of disease, just are not funded.  So of course it will not be difficult to extend those political tests to environmental research.  If I can find the links to articles talking about this problem, I will post them.


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 17, 2003)

Certainly there's a strong Christian Right presence in Washington - after all, Bush was bank-rolled to a significant extent by Christian lobby groups in his Republican nomination. I was actually suprised that Bush didn;t outlaw abortion the moment he sat in the Oval Office. I guess the current actions on Sex Education are part of the compromise on this, of what can be realistically achieved.

Not sure how it effects the world view - I'm personally hesitant to draw conclusions about the issue of religion in the US political world-view. Certainly, there's the possibility I've seen raised elsewhere that a lot of US support for Israel comes very much from the Christian Right. Others claim a Jewish conspiracy (I definitely don't buy that). Seriously, I'd put it all down to a number of factors.

However, in terms of capitalist pressures, I'd say that was an overwhelming concern here. Even Clinton wasn't looking to sign the Kyoto Protocol with a hell of a fight - only, the moment the US agreed to the principle, the French Environment minister cocked up the deal because she didn't like having to work with Britain's John Prescott, and walked out on him (you can always trust Europeans to argue their way out of agreement!).

I see the business factor as the main thrust here - it's always been a common theme in international negotations. To be expected, really - every country wants to protect their own economic interests.

The difference is that, being the largest economy, the interests of the US can have global significance - not least here that the subsidised crops that must have methyl bromide dumped on them will most likely be sent overseas to wreak havoc on developing countries internal grain markets - thus keeping third world farming trapped in a cycle of dependency on grain imports. (I should add here that the European Union is also guilty of dumping it's own heavily subsidised agricultural produce onto smaller overseas markets, keeping grain prices artifically low, preventing subsistence farmers from raising the investment capital they would otherwise gain if the grain markets remained at local production prices).

A point being - on the issue of trade negotiations - is that ultimately a compromise is supposed to be reached. When the most powerful country in the world says that it's not particularly prepared to compromise, then there are issues at stake for global diplomacy. I guess that's precisely why so many treaties have been broken or disrupted under the current US administration.

Oh - and I quite agree about the spraying and cars. Amazed that US-style litigation hasn't choked the farmers on this issue.


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 17, 2003)

Well, farmers are a huge lobby in Washington, D.C., and in the state capitals.  They are protected six ways from Sunday - agriculture isn't even subject to the same labor laws as other businesses.  For example, packing houses can work their workers unlimited hours.  I can remember, the one summer I worked packing peaches, nectarines and plums (until I figured out that I was allergic to them), having to work from 8 a.m. until 2 a.m., and then having to back at 8 a.m. again, for about a week straight.

Now, there is a reason for the long hours - when there is a hot spell and the fruit all ripens at the same time, it has to be packed and shipped or it is lost.  However, the packing house owners refuse to hire two crews, as would be logical, because a) it would cost them more in unemployment and disability insurance and b) because they don't have to because the law allows them to work one crew those long hours.  This is not about to change because the ag industry is so powerful a lobby.

I'm sure that business in general has a lot to do with the refusal of the U.S. to act progressively concerning the environment.  However, I don't know that much about big business - just that one international business class I took (and slept through) - so I don't know enough to comment much on that aspect.

As far as the influence of the Religious Right - in the Bush administration, that comes more from the people surrounding Bush than it does from Bush himself, I think.  While he professes a born-again experience, Bush doesn't seem to be as nearly fanatical about religion as some of his minions - John Ashcroft, for example.

And as far as Bush outlawing abortion - he couldn't do that on his own.  Because Roe v. Wade was decided on the right to privacy issue, it would take either very, very carefully worded legislation or, more likely, a constitutional amendment, to completely outlaw abortion here.  Not that there aren't a lot of folks trying.  In fact, Bush recently signed a bill that outlaws what the pro-life forces call "partial-birth abortion" last week.  However, within a few hours of this action, two different courts held up the enforcement of the new law, pending judicial review.



> Federal judges in San Francisco and New York ruled Thursday that the government's day-old ban on certain types of abortions was probably unconstitutional and issued orders protecting virtually all of the nation's abortion doctors from prosecution.
> 
> The rulings, following a similar but far more limited decision Wednesday by a federal judge in Nebraska, gave abortion rights groups a clean sweep in the first round of lawsuits challenging the first-ever federal criminal law against any abortion procedure. The law, titled the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, was vetoed twice by President Bill Clinton before it was signed Wednesday by President Bush, who declared that the American people and their government "have come to the defense of the innocent child.'' It took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday but became almost entirely unenforceable by the end of the day.


 

The article this excerpt comes from appeared in the Friday, November 7, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle.  The whole article can be found at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archieve/2003/11/07/MNG4Q2SGC81.DTL


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## dwndrgn (Nov 17, 2003)

I am so not surprised by this.

As far as agricultural labor laws (at least in Florida) they follow very similar rules to the rest of businesses out there.  They have to follow the same minimum wage rate for their state, they have to pay overtime for hours worked over 40 in a week, people 16 or under must have permission to work and can only work a certain number of hours and must stay current in school at the same time.  They miss school, they can't work.  There are more hourly work laws up until 18.  Once 18, when employees are considered to be full adults they can work as any other adult within the regular wage laws.

Having said that, I know (from personal experience) that it is heavily abused.  Farm workers can be paid by piecework (they get paid a certain dollar amount for each crate of fruit picked or whatever they are harvesting) and this does not take into account the number of hours they physically worked.  While the employee could conceivably make a lot more than minimum wage this way (by working harder), quite often the opposite is the case.

Unfortunately, farmers have built their lives around the subsidies and allowances that were created after the depression.  How to change something so ingrained in the culture?  I wish I knew.  If we could fix our agricultural economy, we could probably fix quite a few other things while we were at it.


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 18, 2003)

Don't even get me started on subsidies.  Those subsidies were created to benefit small family farmers.  But for a long time (and maybe still, as far as I know), many of those subsidies have been going to doctor and laywer types from southern California who bought acerage here in the San Joaquin Valley as an investment.  Basically, the subsidies became welfare for the rich.  Supposedly, there were some reforms a few years ago, but I don't know how far-reaching they were or how effective in keeping the subsidies in the hands of the small family farmer rather than in the hands of big agribusiness.  Probably not very, considering the number of small farmers who have had to sell out the big companies because they can't make it on their own.

I'm really looking forward to reading a new book about the effect of agribusiness on the valley where I live, "The King of California: J. G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire", by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman.  This is the publisher's blurb from the Barnes and Noble website:



> "When Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman set out to write the story of James Griffin Boswell II and his hold on the geographical heart of California, they knew they had a cagey subject on their hands. For a half century he had stood atop a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions and every journalist who had tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields." Upon first meeting Boswell, it was easy to think of him as just another farmer tooling around in his dusty pickup. But this was a titan who owned more agricultural acreage and controlled more river water than any other land baron in the West. He grew more cotton than anyone on the planet, and he grew cities, too, including the first major retirement community in the country - Sun City, Arizona." The King of California is a narrative that will carry readers from the Catholic fathers who built their missions up and down El Camino Real to the psychotic murderers incarcerated at the infamous Corcoran State Prison. Along the way, Arax and Wartzman tell the story of how the Boswells, a Georgia slave-owning family who migrated from California in the early 1920s, drained one of America's biggest lakes and carved out the richest cotton kingdom in the world. It is the biography of a forbidding landscape tamed by the vision of one man. From the clay bottoms of old Tulare lake to the corridors of Washington, Jim Boswell had won just about every battle. And yet the question lingered: Was his farming miracle worth the heavy price that America had paid?


Should be a good book.  Boswell is a big, big name around here.


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## Incognito (Nov 18, 2003)

It does sound like an interesting book - shame the geo-cultural references tend to be lost on me.

As for farming subsidies - yes, that's a big issue here in Europe as well. I don't have time for another rant here, though.


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