|   Speech by Michael Crichton on the Environmental Movement | Michael Crichton
Dec 11, 2003 11:05 PM | | Remarks to the Commonwealth Club by Michael Crichton best selling author of the Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Terminal Man, Time Line and the The Great Train Robbery.
San Francisco
September 15, 2003
The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking.
Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk-and as the years go on, and the world population grows increasingly urban, it's uninformed talk. Farmers know what they're talking about. City people don't.
It's all fantasy.
I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.
As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act
in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future. I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved.
But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of nvironmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why.
I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is
environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of
faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs.
There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?
And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process. And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly: the early peoples of the
New World lived in a state of constant warfare. Generations of hatred, tribal hatreds, constant battles. The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated, or learned to build their villages high in the cliffs to attain some measure of safety.
How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes
it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction.
There was even an academic movement, during the latter 20th century, that claimed that cannibalism was a white man's invention to demonize the indigenous peoples. (Only academics could fight such a battle.) It was some thirty years before professors finally agreed that yes, cannibalism does inbdeed occur among human beings. Meanwhile, all during this time New Guinea highlanders in the 20th century continued to eat the brains of their enemies until they were finally made to understand that they risked kuru, a fatal neurological disease, when they did so.
More recently still the gentle Tasaday of the Philippines turned out to be a publicity stunt, a nonexistent tribe. And African pygmies have one of the highest murder rates on the planet.
In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die.
And if you, even now, put yourself in nature even for a matter of days, you will quickly be disabused of all your romantic fantasies. Take a trek through the jungles of Borneo, and in short order you will have festering sores on your skin, you'll have bugs all over your body, biting in your hair, crawling up your nose and into your ears, you'll have infections and sickness and if you're not with somebody who knows what they're doing, you'll quickly starve to death. But chances are that even in the jungles of Borneo you won't experience nature so directly, because you will have covered your entire body with DEET and you will be doing everything you can to keep those bugs off you.
The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk-and as the years go on, and the world population grows increasingly urban, it's uninformed talk. Farmers know what they're talking about. City people don't. It's all fantasy.
One way to measure the prevalence of fantasy is to note the number of people who die because they haven't the least knowledge of how nature really is. They stand beside wild animals, like buffalo, for a picture and get trampled to death; they climb a mountain in dicey weather without proper gear, and freeze to death. They drown in the surf on holiday because they can't conceive the real power of what we blithely call "the force of nature." They have seen the ocean. But they haven't been in it.
The television generation expects nature to act the way they want it to be. They think all life experiences can be tivo-ed. The notion that the natural world obeys its own rules and doesn't give a damn about your expectations comes as a massive shock. Well-to-do, educated people in an urban environment experience the ability to fashion their daily lives as they wish. They buy clothes that suit their taste, and decorate their apartments as they wish. Within
limits, they can contrive a daily urban world that pleases them.
But the natural world is not so malleable. On the contrary, it will demand that you adapt to it-and if you don't, you die. It is a harsh, powerful, and unforgiving world, that most urban westerners have never experienced.
Many years ago I was trekking in the Karakorum mountains of northern
Pakistan, when my group came to a river that we had to cross. It was a glacial river, freezing cold, and it was running very fast, but it wasn't deep---maybe three feet at most. My guide set out ropes for people to hold as they crossed the river, and everybody proceeded, one at a time, with extreme care. I asked the guide what was the big deal about crossing a three-foot river. He said, well, supposing you fell and suffered a compound fracture. We were now four days trek
from the last big town, where there was a radio. Even if the guide went back double time to get help, it'd still be at least three days before he could return with a helicopter. If a helicopter were available at all. And in three days, I'd probably be dead from my injuries. So that was why everybody was crossing carefully. Because out in nature a little slip could be deadly.
But let's return to religion. If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn't ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn't fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don't get down on our knees and conserve every day?
Well, it's interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15
billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears
expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true. As we have moved into the future, these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert. They were never there---though they still appear, in the future. As mirages do.
Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on.
With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts,
because they have nothing to do with facts.
So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly
children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.
I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a
blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC
reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.
I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigeous science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.
Most of us have had some experience interacting with religious
fundamentalists, and we understand that one of the problems with fundamentalists is that they have no perspective on themselves. They never recognize that their way of thinking is just one of many other possible ways of thinking, which may be equally useful or good. On the contrary, they believe their way is the right way, everyone else is wrong; they are in the business of salvation, and they want to
help you to see things the right way. They want to help you be saved. They are totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view. In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.
I want to argue that it is now time for us to make a major shift in our thinking about the environment, similar to the shift that occurred around the first Earth Day in 1970, when this awareness was first heightened. But this time around, we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We
need to start doing hard science instead.
There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism.
First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It's not a good record. Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth---that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric. The effort to promote effective legislation for the environment is not helped by thinking that the Democrats will save us and the Republicans won't. Political history is more complicated than that. Never forget which president started the EPA: Richard Nixon. And never forget which president sold federal oil leases, allowing oil drilling in Santa Barbara: Lyndon Johnson. So get politics out of your thinking about the environment.
The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing.
Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our
fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover. We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish. We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs. Religions are good at none of these things.
How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There's a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren't true. It isn't that these "facts" are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present
it in the strongest way. Not at all---what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false.
This trend began with the DDT campaign, and it persists to this day. At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results, that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field get honest
fast.
Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that. Non-text portions of this message have been removed.
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| Disappointing bids from loggers hamper efforts to replant | Regarding Michael's points
Dec 12, 2003 7:16 AM | | The L.A Times ran an article titled "Dead Trees Fail to Bring Life to Forest - Disappointing bids from loggers hamper efforts to replant and clear deadwood for fire safety" on November 8th:
How did the closing of the saw mills mentioned in the article and this statement from the article "California's timber industry has shrunk dramatically" come to be - thus making it costly to harvest these trees?
Here are a few clues contained in the article:
"For one thing, the commercial strategy assumes a vibrant logging economy that does not exist in California."
"California's timber industry has shrunk dramatically, forest economists say, hurt by cheap Canadian competition, A STEEP DROP IN TIMBER OUTPUT IN NATIONAL FORESTS IN THE 1990'S AND THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS IN THE STATE."
"The basic problem is that the industry in California, especially production in the Sierra Nevada, has just gone away in the last decade," observed Rich Thompson, a resource economics and management professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo."
"THE NUMBER OF MILL CLOSURES IS PHENOMENAL. They're gone. The few [companies left] know they practically have the wood basket to themselves and don't have to be competitive."
"In 1992, there were 56 timber mills in California. TODAY THERE ARE 29."
"FEWER MILLS MEAN FEWER BIDS."
What part did the environmental movement in making it impossible to harvest timber, resulting since 1992, in the reduction of mills from 56 to 29 - as well as to make the logging industry and the rural economies that provided labor and services disappear? How much does it cost to transport trees to mills, of which there are fewer of?
The Los Angeles Times recently reported in an article titled "Return of the Mills:"
Due to the closure of the mills in Southern California, lumber recovered in the Lake Arrowhead, located in the San Bernardino Forest, is being sent to mills in Terra Bella, about 220 miles north of Lake Arrowhead.
The Terra Bella yard is full and at capacity. The General Manager of the plant said about 40% of their supply in the last six months has been coming from Southern California, something he considers unusual.
The wood brought to the mill brings about $1,400 to $1,500 a load, but it costs about $600 to transport a load. This substantial transportation cost per load brings in marginal earnings.
Has the Sierra Clubs decimation of the logging industry helped to decrease or increase the cost to do fuel reductions and salvage? How much of these areas that burned would not have burned so devastatingly if some of these areas had been logged to restore a mosaic pattern to the forest?
A recent Associated Press article explained the ramifications of practically stopping all logging in California, one being the increased cost of addressing overgrowth and the other shifting production to outside California. The state imports about 75 percent of its wood and paper products.
According to U. C. Berkeley forestry professor William J. Libby, for every acre of forestland not harvested for timber here, 2 acres must be harvested in tropical forests of the Third World. In Indonesia, for example, timber is harvested from an area the size of Connecticut every year to supply U.S. demand.
California uses a tremendous amount of lumber, it must come from somewhere. Where do the Sierra Club and their allies suggest we get that lumber? Continue the Sierra Club's policy of stopping production in the U.S. and continuing to import lumber, a portion of it from 3rd countries with no effective environmental oversight?
Or do they suggest we use other materials, such as brick, steel or plastic to replace the use of lumber. Brick and steel comes from mining, and plastic from drilling for oil. Trees are a renewable resource they grow back
What about this statement from the L.A. Times article describing mill closures?
"When the Forest Service has "to go through all those hoops and construct an environmental document that is so extremely bulletproof, the whole thing takes time," said Tomascheski, whose firm logged some of the Red Star land. "It's barely economical when it's time to sell the timber. And then the environmentalists say, 'See it wasn't worth anything.'"
The Sierra Club and their allies believe they know better than Forest managers, and they will continue to put up roadblocks and blame others for the fact they in a large part are the reason for these devastating fires and why it is almost prohibitively expensive to address these fires - they've decimated our ability to cost effectively address forest management.
The key to funding the salvage of trees from burnt areas and economically viable thinning projects is in the last statement of this article:
"The federal government, he suggested, has to prove it will be a reliable supplier."
Only in a communist state is "profit" not supposed to be part of the equation in motivating people to act. But what does the Sierra Club know about economics?
They survive on the goodness of the money donated by people who must produce to earn a living. Their political ideology embraces socialistic policies and a hatred of profit and private property rights.
What has been another result of "no logging policies?"
Timber that could have been put to good use, timber that would not have to be imported from other countries impacting their forests, is in many cases treated as waste and burned or buried in our landfills.
Is that being good stewards of the land, is that a responsible use of our natural resources?
So let's list what the L.A. Times article on mill closures doesn't state:
How have the policies of the environmental movement resulted in the closure of nearly half of the mills that could have been used in these thinning and salvage projects?
How has stopping logging increased the density of our forests and their susceptibility to devastating fires?
How have these policies increased the importation of lumber to the detriment of the forests of 3rd world countries that have no oversight?
That's the article I'd like to read. |
| He should stick to his trashy writing. | Fergie
Dec 12, 2003 9:14 AM | | While I agree that environmentalism should be based on facts, not emotion, his whole Eden/religious angle is bull shlt. Of course life was short and tough during caveman times... What is his point? Reverence and respect for the planet that you live on is now a bad thing?
Some predictions were wrong? Some board disagrees with the UN? That is the best he can come up with? The world needs more pesticides? Oil is not a limited resource? I can site facts, but I won't? FDA on a pedestal? "environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s"???? Tell that to the people of Bhopal India. This piece is so full of holes, it is a joke!
This guy should stick to his crappy writing, and pull his head out of his ass. |
| whassamatter ferg? He's hitting too close to home for ya? | dave54
Dec 12, 2003 12:44 PM | | That many basic tenets of the environmental industry is based on ideology and philosophy are and contradictory to good science is well established. The wildlands project admit that on their web site, as well as the environmental grantmakers association.
Ecology is a limited science which makes use of scientific methods." "...it should, first of all, be borne in mind that the norms and tendencies of the Deep Ecology movement are not derived from ecology by logic or induction." --
Naess, Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, pgs 154-153
This is a political game. It has nothing to do with science. It has nothing to do with health and safety." -- Sherry Neddick, Greenpeace
"Trees and rocks have rights to their own freedom." Michael McCloskey, Chairman of the Sierra Club
"When it comes to protecting old growth, I've often thought that thank goodness the spotted owl evolved, for if it hadn't, we'd have to genetically engineer it. It's a perfect species to use as a surrogate." Andy Stahl, Formerly with Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
"I had no idea that after I left in 1986 they would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates.. Clearly, my former Greenpeace colleagues are either not reading the morning paper or simply don't care about the truth."
Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder, writing in Canada's National Post (October, 2001)
Let us now visit the voices of greens past, present, and future revealing their "people are pollution" philosophy:
"To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem." Lamont Cole (as quoted by Elizabeth Whelan in her book Toxic Terror)
"This is as good a way to get rid of them as any." Charles Wursta, Chief Scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, commenting on the likelihood of millions dying from a global ban on DDT (also quoted in Toxic Terror)
"We reject the idea of property rights." Peter Berle, President of the Audubon Society
"A loach minnow is more important than, say, Betty and Jim's ranch."
Kieran Suckling, Center for Biological Diversity
and finally, link worth reading. I do not agree with this author's extremist viewpoints, but he does raise some issues worthy of thought.
http://www.evergreenmagazine.com/news/GuestOpinions/A%20Lighting%20Bolt%20of%20Reality.doc |
| Do you believe that, or are you just being an a-hole? | Fergie
Dec 16, 2003 1:18 PM | | Do you really think Mikey C. is right about environmentalists, and the environmental movement? Is that the depth of your understanding of it? Is that the way you see it? Sad.
I'll be the first to admit that you can always win an argument against the environment by resorting to economic terms. If you can't build on it, cut it down, mine it, or make a profit from it, it has no value. You win! Congratulations! Enjoy your complementary strip mall!
As for the UN destroying the US, I think you actually almost discovered a real problem. "Free Trade" IS going to destroy many aspects of the country we take for granted, but in a different way. For example:
Canadian Firm Sues California Over MTBE
$970 million suit seeks to end gas-additive ban
San Francisco Chronicle
June 18, 1999
Robert Collier, Glen Martin, Chronicle Staff Writers
Challenging one of California's newest environmental protections, a Canadian corporation has filed suit to overturn the state's ban on the gasoline additive MTBE, calling it a violation of free-trade rules.
Less than three months after Governor Gray Davis moved to end the use of MTBE, the Vancouver- based Methanex Corp. announced Tuesday that it is using the North American Free Trade Agreement to seek $970 million in compensation for lost profits.
The challenge under NAFTA's little-known "investor rights" provisions packs a big legal punch. A similar lawsuit filed last year by a U.S. company forced Canada to overturn its ban on a gasoline additive that has been implicated in health problems.
Other NAFTA suits are under way in the United States and Canada, seeking to overturn a wide variety of government regulations. Consumer and environmentalist groups warn that big business may be able to use NAFTA to gut decades of progressive legislation.
"This is what `free trade' is all about -- corporations overruling the decisions made by citizens at the ballot box and the legislative process," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a Washington-based lobbying group that has fought NAFTA.
"Methanex is using NAFTA to override the governor, state Senate and people of California," she said.
In papers filed with the U.S. State Department, the company said California's ban on MTBE unfairly restricts the company's ability to sell methanol -- a key ingredient in MTBE -- and profit from its sale in the state. The company says this constitutes a violation of NAFTA.
MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, makes gasoline burn more efficiently and cleanly, and it has been used in most California cars since 1996 as part of the state's strategy to meet federal clean-air requirements.
However, the additive, a possible carcinogen, has been implicated in recent years as a major source of contamination of both reservoirs and groundwater. And air quality officials have concluded that the clean-air goals can be met without it.
Governor Davis' March 25 announcement that MTBE will be phased out by the end of 2002 will cause the company to lose $970 million in methanol sales over the next 20 years, said Pierre Choquette,CQ Methanex's president and chief executive officer.
Six percent of world methanol sales occur in California, and Methanex is the world's largest methanol producer.
Under NAFTA's vaguely written investor rights provisions, companies are entitled to compensation for "expropriation" -- which may be interpreted as any government action, including health and safety regulations, that has the effect of reducing a company's profits.
"Our claim is related to expropriation," Choquette said. "NAFTA requires that an expropriating party meet certain obligations, including fair and equitable treatment and the payment of compensation, which California did not meet."
Daniel Seligman, a Sierra Club trade policy specialist, said the suit has ominous implications for North American environmental regulations "because the language of the provisions are so sweeping. Under NAFTA, this is an open and shut case in favor of the company. NAFTA states that any regulation tantamount to expropriation justifies a compensation."
Under the NAFTA dispute process, lawyers for Methanex and the U.S. federal government will have two months to reach a settlement. If they fail to do so, the issue will go to binding arbitration by a three-person international panel agreed to by both sides.
Although the panel does not have the power to directly overthrow state or federal laws, it can levy heavy fines -- thus providing strong pressure for the revocation of the offending law.
Last year, a similar NAFTA lawsuit caused Canada to overturn its ban on MMT, a fuel additive that was blamed for neurological maladies. The ban was challenged by the Richmond, Va.-based Ethyl Corp. because it "expropriated" future profits and damaged Ethyl's "good reputation."
Rather than pay $251 million in damages, Canada overturned its ban and paid Ethyl $13 million.
Michael Bustamante, a spokesman for the governor, said he had not seen a letter that Methanex said it sent to Davis earlier this week.
"The governor's decision on MTBE was good for the people and environment of California," Bustamante said. "He weighed all the issues, considered all the comments and gave companies sufficient time to phase out the chemical in a nondisruptive fashion."
Jim Spagnole, a spokesman for the California Environmental Protection Agency, said the action means little to state regulators at this point.
"It all depends on the kind of relief they seek, whether it is injunctive relief or for damages," he said. "Right now, many manufacturers are voluntarily choosing not to include MTBE in their gasoline.
-Yeah, I'm really worried about the UN, and the environmentalists, they could be almost as bad as the corporations that support NAFTA!
See also MMT |
| Hey Fergie, do you know why MTBE was placed in gasoline? | Dances With Hornets
Dec 16, 2003 1:52 PM | | Due to environmental regulations MTBE was mandated to be placed in gasoline to cut down on pollutants so areas could comply with clean air rules.
Little did air pollution regulators know MTBE caused major contamination, even in minute amounts, to wells and water sources used for drinking water.
The U.N. is pushing their agenda on mandating what the United States should do as far as economic policy and environmental policy. Should the United States be mandated to comply with what the U.N. wishes be done in our country? The U.N has countries that are dictatorships and no human rights on committes that deal with human rights. How many countries that do not allow democracy, or are dictatorships, belong to the U.N.?
Factions will continue to oppose NAFTA and sue to prevent what they see as wrong as will factions continue to oppose what they see as wrong with the UN mandating our domestic and foreign policies. That is the beauty of a democracy.
And I'm glad that we have the right to do so in both cases. Because somewhere in the middle is the truth. |
| Close, but your wrong again | Fergie
Dec 16, 2003 4:25 PM | | No one requires that MTBE be in anything. EPA requires that some fuels (mostly in areas where smog is a major problem) be oxygenated.
Why use MTBE? According to the EPA, "Most refiners have chosen to use MTBE over other oxygenates primarily for its blending characteristics and for economic reasons."
Air pollution regulators probably did know about MTBE's ill effects. Once again, according to the EPA, "The majority of the human health-related research conducted to date on MTBE has focused on effects associated with the inhalation of the chemical. When research animals inhaled high concentrations of MTBE, some developed cancers or experienced other non-cancerous health effects" Good stuff! Remember that next time you catch a whiff of gas.
To save a buck, they are willing to make some sacrifices. Just so happens the environment and your health are on the loosing end. At least gas is still cheep.
Is it worth it?
Not to me. |
| Close, but your wrong again | Dances With Hornets
Dec 16, 2003 6:48 PM | | Your statement:
"Why use MTBE? According to the EPA, 'Most refiners have chosen to use MTBE over other oxygenates primarily for its blending characteristics and for economic reasons.'
Air pollution regulators probably did know about MTBE's ill effects. Once again, according to the EPA, "The majority of the human health-related research conducted to date on MTBE has focused on effects associated with the inhalation of the chemical. When research animals inhaled high concentrations of MTBE, some developed cancers or experienced other non-cancerous health effects" Good stuff! Remember that next time you catch a whiff of gas."
Yes, economic reasons should play a part, are you saying we shouldn't consider economic issues at all? The purpose of an additive was to blend with gas efficiently so it would be effective. Unfortunately this ability to blend, and in small amounts, is why it causes so much damage to water sources
You state:
"Air pollution regulators probably did know about MTBE's ill effects."
Do you have proof of this? Are you saying that air pollution regulators (EPA) decided that the other ill effects of MTBE were not as important as having clean air or bad enough to consider using other additives? Are you saying regulators (EPA) knew that MTBE would contaminate water sources yet approved it anyway?
Your other statement:
"When research animals inhaled high concentrations of MTBE, some developed cancers or experienced other non-cancerous health effects 'Good stuff! Remember that next time you catch a whiff of gas."
Are you saying without these additives gas is safe to sniff and not without the same effects or worse than MTBE?
Have you been sniffing gas, with or without MTBE? |
| I should not have wasted my time. | Fergie
Dec 17, 2003 8:47 AM | | First off, sorry to everyone on this board for getting sucked into a non-mtb discussion, I should have known better.
As for Dances, vivid imagination:
"are you saying we shouldn't consider economic issues at all?"
"Are you saying without these additives gas is safe to sniff and not without the same effects or worse than MTBE?"
You see, crap like this is why I can't have a decent discussion with you. I have to waste my time refuting all the statements you make up, and attribute to me, it is quite frankly a little insane. I see why you don't like environmentalists, but I think the positions you oppose are mostly in your own mind.
Here is the site: http://www.epa.gov/mtbe/ make of it what you will.
Merry Christmas, Hanukah, etc.,etc.
Fergie |
| Fergie, I don't "hate" environmentalists | Dances With Hornets
Dec 17, 2003 1:32 PM | | Fergie,
I don't hate environmentalists, I disagree with some of their policies and the direction they have taken.
I High School I was awarded the first award in 1977 for excellence in environmental science. I was a teachers assistant in environmental science, biology, oceanography, and economics.
I want solutions that understand the ultimate ramification of taking them. Not just "Let's stop this" without understanding what "stopping this" will have in areas we did not consider.
Putting MTBE in gasoline was an example of this. Done for the right reason without understanding the consequences.
I have never harbored any ill will towards you, I only wish you the best that life has to offer.
We need not agree on all issues, but that does not mean we have to hate each other. And I don't beleive you hate me.
Merry Christmas fergie
Chris |
| not environmentalists, but... | dave54
Dec 18, 2003 8:52 AM | | eco-frauds.
Organizations that are NOT environmental in nature (sierra club, wilderness society, nrdc, ed, ad nauseum) but are really political organizations that shroud and obscure their agendas behind a green smoke screen. They only survive on deceit and fraud. Millions of naive and gullible citizens are misled to open wallets for them, not unlike the well-meaning citizens here in the U.S. that donated money to Islamic charities, not realizing they were funding international terrorism.
The eco-frauds are like cockroaches, turn on the light and they scurry for cover. |
| Your " " on hate prove my point perfectly! Thanks! (nm) | Fergie
Dec 19, 2003 4:00 PM | | |
| Your last post proved my point perfectly! Thanks Fergie! | Dances With Hornets
Dec 20, 2003 12:31 PM | | Fergie,
Like I previously stated:
"I find some of the people on this board attempt to discredit a point by using rhetoric - not facts, logic or reason.
They usually respond by either discrediting what you say by calling you, right wing, destroyers, writers of manifestos, etc."
And this post:
"Your " " on hate prove my point perfectly! Thanks! (nm)"
is another example of this.
I suggest you resort to your previous retreat and ask about access situations in states outside of New York.
You'll have much more luck with these posts. |
| What are you talking about? | Fergie
Dec 22, 2003 7:59 AM | | Please explain how my pointing out that you used quotes is an attempt to discredit you? I'd like to know. |
| What are you talking about? | Dances With Hornets
Dec 22, 2003 12:58 PM | | Fergie,
What does using quotes prove, or was it meant to prove anything?
Please explain what relevance "my pointing out that you used quotes" has to either support or discredit the points being discussed.
Is there some deep meaning significance to it, like playing a record backward to hear secret messages? |
| I'm not sure I get what you are saying... | Fergie
Dec 22, 2003 1:24 PM | | Perhaps I misunderstood your use of quotes. Perhaps I was too quick to judge. Since no one accused you of "Hate"ing anything, I did not know why you used quote marks on hate. I still don't. Rather then me speculating further, please help me understand it. |
| Holy miss-communication batman | Dances With Hornets
Dec 22, 2003 5:59 PM | | Fergie,
The reason I put "hate" in quotes was to make a point that my oppositon to the environmental movement is not aimed personally to anyone who is involved with or supports them.
I want people to be clear on that. I'm not accusing you or anyone else of making that accusation, but I don't want anyone to assume that either.
I agree that we need to address environmental impacts, I just disagree on some of the solutions.
We're beginning to sound like an old married couple Fergie.
( - ;
Merry Christmas. |
| An example of the misguided efforts of environmentalists | Dances With Hornets
Dec 16, 2003 6:57 PM | | Fergie,
I have an example of what Michael Crichton was trying to get across in his speech on the environmental movement. Please give me this opportunity to explain how this relates to harvesting trees in California.
One of environmental movement's main weaknesses are they are not economists and they ignore economic issues, markets and the net effect of their policies.
California imports 75 percent of its wood from outside the state. What effect does this have on these forests outside our state where we import this lumber from? What part has the policies of the environmental movement had in this?
The statistic of importing 75 percent of our lumber needs comes from a new state report. This 1,400-page draft report by the state Department of Forestry is titled: "Changing California, Forest and Range 2003 Assessment."
"The more we don't produce here, the more it will come from other areas. We're just shuffling our environmental impacts somewhere else," William Stewart, chief of the state's Fire and Resource Assessment Program, told the Sacramento Bee.
The report also echoes a speech by U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth at the World Forestry Congress in Quebec City, in which he worried about "undermining the health of the world's forest ecosystems through consumption patterns that are out of balance with production."
Among the report's findings:
California consumes nearly 15 percent of all of the wood and paper used in the United States, the most of any state.
California's lumber production is at its lowest level in 20 years, while its timber harvests have fallen 60 percent since 1988. Nationally, logging on federal lands has fallen to its lowest level in half a century.
The state imports about 75 percent of its wood and paper products from Oregon, the U.S. Southeast, Canada and Europe.
The downturn means fewer jobs in counties such as Siskiyou and Del Norte, where a quarter of residents' income is from public assistance.
In a L.A. Times article titled "Dead Trees Fail to Bring Life to Forest - Disappointing bids from loggers hamper efforts to replant and clear deadwood for fire safety" the following was given as reasons why it is expensive and why there is not much profit in salvaging trees from areas affected by our recent forest fires:
"The basic problem is that the industry in California, especially production in the Sierra Nevada, has just gone away in the last decade," observed Rich Thompson, a resource economics and management professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo."
"THE NUMBER OF MILL CLOSURES IS PHENOMENAL. They're gone. The few [companies left] know they practically have the wood basket to themselves and don't have to be competitive."
"In 1992, there were 56 timber mills in California. TODAY THERE ARE 29."
These closures and the drop in production coincided with the environmental movement's 25 year campaign to stop logging in California. What effect has this policy had on forests outside of California? We import 75 percent of our timber needs, and only harvest 25 percent of our needs - and they are trying to stop us from even harvesting this amount.
While a part of our imported lumber could be reduced by not building single family houses over 1,500 square feet in size, I doubt over half of the houses being built are over this square foot limit. This is due to land costs in California. There has been an increase in condo construction in many areas due to this factor.
Let's say we pass a law building any house over 1,500 square feet illegal. We could replace lumber with metal, brick or plastic, but these come from mining or oil drilling. Trees are a renewable resource, unlike these other resources, they grow back.
Let's say that reduces our needs by 50 percent. How many other uses do we have for timber, such as newsprint and manufacturing other paper products? We can recycle, but recycling needs power and water to operate, we already are short of water and luckily our power situation has improved.
So let's say we reduce it anther 25 percent by recycling (which we are already doing) and by making businesses that manufacture products that require wood illegal to operate in California. We would still need to import finished wood products from outside California for our needs.
Can we reduce our lumber needs by 75 percent and only harvest 25 percent from California Forests?
We would still need to supply this 25 percent of our lumber from our forests for building and other needs, and if not harvest this 25 percent from California Forests, take this 25 percent from forests outside California.
As I mentioned, the current goal of the environmental movement is to stop us from harvesting, from our forests in California, the remaining 25 percent of lumber we don't import from other forests outside California.
If environmentalists really cared about the environment around the world why haven't they considered the effect their policy of stopping logging in California is having on forests outside the state?
Have you read any articles in the news lately or heard in the electronic media about how the environmentalists are advocating sustainably harvesting our forest's, recycling efficiently and finding other materials such as hemp for paper (a little rough for toilet tissue maybe.)?
Or are the articles on them trying to stop timber harvesting? Do they support us taking any timber from our forests, and if so, how much and from where?
Could you, or anyone else, point out on the major environmental organizations web sites, such as the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, Center for Biodiversity etc., where they state they support sustainable tree harvesting to address the 75 percent of lumber we import for our uses in California, or even the 25 percent we currently harvest?
If they don't support sustainable tree harvesting to prevent us from harvesting the 75 percent of our timber needs from forests outside California (impacting these forests) how do they proposed addressing this shortfall?
How would stopping the importation of this lumber affect California?
From all accounts they do not support us harvesting trees from the forests in California to supply even this 25 percent we are currently harvesting.
Could we ever survive without harvesting any lumber? And if we are unwilling to harvest what we need, we must get it from other forests outside of California.
Can we stop all population growth in California, keep our current needs from rising and reduce the 75 percent of lumber we are harvesting from other countries (affecting their forests) - and stop logging the 25 percent we are currently harvesting from our forests - thus reducing our need for timber to 0?
Should we be advocating conserving our forests and sustainably harvesting our forests for our needs? Should the environmental movement continue to stop our harvesting of timber in California or look for ways to sustainably harvest timber from our forest for our needs - thus not affecting the forests outside California?
Does the environmental movement bear any responsibility of the effect importing lumber has had on other forests outside of California?
Environmentalists continue to oppose meaningful forest management to thin dangerously overgrown stands, a practice that would help to provide for California's lumber needs and reduce the growing problem of the deforestation of forests outside of California.
Do we not have a moral obligation to those forests outside our state to try and provide for out own needs? In light of the high tree density in many of our forests in California, and the opportunity to salvage damaged trees, wouldn't it be sound environmental policy to thin out our forests and salvage the timber from the fires to avoid impacting other forests?
These areas, once the timber is salvaged or thinned out, could then be subjected to controlled burns, when the conditions permit, to remove any remaining debris. Seedlings could then be planted if need to rehabilitate areas where trees were salvaged. Would this make more sense than continuing to provide for our needs from forests outside our state?
But from the same Nov. 8th L.A. Times article, and recent lawsuits, the following statement holds much truth.
"When the Forest Service has to go through all those hoops and construct an environmental document that is so extremely bulletproof, the whole thing takes time," said Tomascheski, whose firm logged some of the Red Star land.
"It's barely economical when it's time to sell the timber. And then the environmentalists say, 'See it wasn't worth anything.'"
Because the environmental movement has decimated our ability to harvest timber by their anti-harvesting/logging policies, and filed lawsuits to prevent or delay salvage operations, much of this salvaged timber is left to rot or being buried in landfills or incinerated. Is this a wise use of this resource?
Is this not an elite and immoral attitude to have - preventing the harvesting our trees and not looking for sustainable methods to due so - at the expense of other forests outside of California?
Is this sound environmental policy?
I'd like to hear the environmental movement's answer to these questions.
Chris |
| Make that 28 mills in California. | dave54
Dec 17, 2003 9:11 AM | | Sierra Pacific Industries announced the closure of their Susanville mill, citing the lack of local logs and Canadian timber flooding the marketplace. This is the same mill that in a desperate attempt to keep it operating bought the fire killed salvage logs from Arizona's 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire and brought them to Susanville by railroad. SPI lost money on that venture, but it did keep the mill workers employed another year.
The Susanville mill is (was) the largest private sector employer in northeast California and Lassen County's only remaining sawmill. The mill also produces electricity that feeds back into the local grid, alleviating the demand for electricity elsewhere in the state.
The sierra club could not be reached for a comment. They were too busy popping champagne corks and giving each other congratulatory backslaps. |
| Both sides of this issue have their sins... | Dances With Hornets
Dec 12, 2003 3:44 PM | | Fergie,
By your reasoning, should we ban all chemical companies because of the sins of Dow in Bhopal, a very terrible tradegy? Do you beleive that the products these chemical companies have developed over the last century have done more, or less, to improve the human condition? Have more lives been saved by them, or killed by them?
Should we consider anyone that currently works for chemical companies only as evil, or do they provide a benifit to us?
But at times it is more productive to discuss solutions - than to discuss past mistakes that were made by all the parties involved. I acknowledge that for a time in our history there was only a passing regard to the importance of our environment for its spiritual and practical benifits.
In due time, it became obvious that we needed our focus redirected.
But I fear that in the process we have discounted the role economic realities play in successful forest management. We have replaced these realities with an ideology that - at many times - forgets the importance of them.
Policies must be implemented with a foot in the past and a foot in the future. We must understand that these public lands have value to us for both economic and spiritual reasons.
If we do not find solutions that take both into account - we will continue on this path of destruction.
I remember another science fiction writer named Jules Verne who many at the time (late 1800's) thought to be crazy. He wrote about machines that could travel under water, and my God, into space.
He proved in many ways to be a prophet, not based on religion, but on remarkable foresight.
And a belief in the abilities of mankind.
Merry Christmas Fergie and God Bless.
I truly mean that.
Dances With Hornets |
| re: Speech by Michael Crichton on the Environmental Movement | BobL
Dec 14, 2003 11:43 PM | | Amazing! This has SO much to do with mountain bike trails that I'm simply overwhelmed.... with the stupidity of the post.
This reminds me of the folks that proclaim the holocaust never took place, all the photos and testimony were fake, blah blah blah:
"So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly
children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.
I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it."
He makes such a point about verifiable facts, yet he neglects to verify his own incredulous statements. Just that little bit above totaly negates the rest of his argument... and I would agree with alot of it!
I saw the effect of second hand smoke on a good friend's child. Hell, felt it myself after working around it. I don't need the FDA to tell me it's harmfull.
I also know the poster of this article has been around a little too much smoke himself, and I'm not talkin' Marlboros.
Gee, it's a anon, surprise, surprise! |
| "little too much smoke himself, and I'm not talkin' Marlboros" | Dances With Hornets
Dec 15, 2003 7:14 PM | | Bob,
Speaking of:
"has been around a little too much smoke himself, and I'm not talkin' Marlboros:"
The RADS Christmas Party is very soon. Are you coming and bringing Tamara? I think she'll get a kick out of it. A lot of history there and very interesting characters.
If it wasn't for the Laguna RADS there would be no Warrior's Society. You can blame the RADS for the Warrior's Society's exisitance. You didn't forget the first years of the Vision Quest were RAD's events did you? That was many, many moons ago.
That's when I first got to know you "Bob" of SHARE, also known as "Knows all the Trails."
Bobnoxious is another nickname - and you know you're proud of that. Your talent is what endears you to me. You had me laughiing so hard two weeks ago after our San Juan Ride, it was a great ending to a ride.
( - ;
But anyway, I digress.
I hope you and Tamara can make it. Dave may have already told you about it. If you need the directions email me and I'll send them to you.
As always - it's in Laguna - a RADS tradition.
Dances With Hornets |
| Bob, I need that link to the company that supplies those loppers | Dances With Hornets
Dec 16, 2003 7:04 PM | | Bob,
I need the link to the company where you bought those collapsable loppers you showed me after our San Juan ride.
I think others on this board would be interested because they fit easily in a camelback, are well built, and most of all - cheap.
Dances With Hornets. |
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