Rachel's Precaution Reporter #111
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

From: PR Newswire ........................................[This story printer-friendly]
October 09, 2007

EUROPE AIMS FOR GLOBAL DOMINANCE VIA PRECAUTION, NEOCONS ASSERT

[Rachel's introduction: Neoconservatives are attacking the European Union for using the precautionary principle to try to dominate the world by promoting sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility. Heavens!]

PRINCETON, N.J. -- In the current issue of the Global Trade and Customs Journal, international trade and regulatory lawyer Lawrence Kogan details how the European Union and its member states previously enlisted private European environmental standards bodies to promote official government sustainable forest management policies that likely violated the World Trade Organization rights of developing countries and their industries.

In addition, the article describes how these same EU governments are behind the ongoing efforts of other European pressure groups to promote, via United Nations agencies and international standardization organizations, the adoption by global industry supply chains of overly strict corporate social responsibility standards.

According to Mr. Kogan, "It is no secret that the EU aspires to 'usurp America's role as a source of global standards,' and to become 'the world's regulatory capital' and 'standard-bearer.'" Therefore, it is natural that they would endeavor to employ whatever nontransparent means are available to push their regulatory control agenda forward." As EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson claimed in a prior speech, 'exporting our rules and standards around the world is one source [and expression] of European power.'"

Two recent articles appearing in the Financial Times and the Economist confirm this assessment. "The Commission, the EU's executive body, states openly that it wants other countries to follow EU rules and its officials are working hard to put that vision into practice... [T]he Union [has]... a body of law running to almost 95,000 pages -- a set of rules and regulations that covers virtually all aspects of economic life and that is constantly expanded and updated. Compared with other jurisdictions, the EU's rules tend to be stricter, especially where product safety, consumer protection and environmental and health [sustainable development] requirements are concerned."

The European regulatory model is worrisome, emphasizes Kogan, paraphrasing from one article, especially "because 'it rests on the [standard-of-proof-diminishing, burden-of-proof-reversing, guilty- until-proven-innocent, I-fear-therefore-I-shall-ban, hazard-(not risk)-based] Precautionary Principle', which is inconsistent with both WTO law and US constitutionally-guaranteed private property rights." As another article reaffirms, "In Europe corporate innocence is not assumed. Indeed, a vast slab of EU laws...reverses the burden of proof, asking industry to demonstrate that substances are harmless...[T]he philosophical gap reflects the American constitutional tradition that everything is allowed until it is forbidden, against the Napoleonic tradition codifying what the state allows and banning everything else."

"Notwithstanding its knowledge of Europe's extraterritorial activities," warns Kogan, "the 110th US Congress may soon ratify the UN Law of the Sea Convention without all of its committees possessing oversight jurisdiction having first adequately reviewed in public hearings its 45-plus environmental regulatory articles -- which also incorporate Europe's Precautionary Principle! This would essentially open up the floodgates to a tsunami of costly non-science and non- economics-based environmental laws, regulations and standards that would abridge Americans' Fifth Amendment rights, impair U.S. industry's global economic competitiveness and fundamentally reshape the American legal and free enterprise systems.

The Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development (ITSSD) is a non-partisan non-profit international legal research and educational organization that examines international law relating to trade, industry and positive sustainable development around the world.

CONTACT: Lawrence Kogan 609-951-2222

Copyright 1996-2007 PR Newswire Association LLC.

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From: Wall Street Journal (pg. A19) ......................[This story printer-friendly]
October 09, 2007

OP-ED: REAGAN AND THE LAW OF THE SEA

[Rachel's introduction: Neoconservatives rail against the Law of the Sea Treaty, which embodies a "Luddite better safe than sorry approach" to protecting the oceans and is therefore, as they see it, a "dramatic step toward world government."]

By William P. Clark and Edwin Meese

It is an impressive testament to the abiding affection and political influence of former President Ronald Reagan that the fate of a controversial treaty now before the U.S. Senate may ultimately turn on a single question: What would Reagan do?

As we had the privilege of working closely with President Reagan in connection with the foreign policy, national security and domestic implications of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty or LOST), there is no question about how our 40th president felt about this accord. He so strongly opposed it that he formally refused to sign the treaty. He even sent Donald Rumsfeld as a personal emissary to our key allies around the world to explain his opposition and encourage them to follow suit. All of them did so at the time.

Proponents of LOST, however, have lately taken -- on these pages and elsewhere -- to portray President Reagan's concerns as relatively circumscribed. They contend that those objections were subsequently and satisfactorily addressed in a multilateral accord known as the Agreement of 1994. To the extent that such assertions may induce senators who would otherwise oppose the Law of the Sea Treaty to vote for it, perhaps within a matter of weeks and after only the most cursory of reviews, we feel compelled to set the record straight.

Ronald Reagan actually opposed LOST even before he came to office. He was troubled by a treaty that had, in the course of its protracted negotiations, mutated beyond recognition from an effort to codify certain navigation rights strongly supported by our Navy into a dramatic step toward world government. This supranational agenda was most closely identified with, but not limited to, the Treaty's Part XI, which created a variety of executive, legislative and judicial mechanisms to control the resources of the world's oceans.

In a radio address titled "Ocean Mining" on Oct. 10, 1978, Mr. Reagan applauded the idea that "no nat[ional] interest of ours could justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the earth's surface over to the Third World." He added, "No one has ruled out the idea of a [Law of the Sea] treaty -- one which makes sense -- but after long years of fruitless negotiating, it became apparent that the underdeveloped nations who now control the General Assembly were looking for a free ride at our expense -- again."

The so-called seabed mining provisions were simply one manifestation of the problems Ronald Reagan had with LOST. That was made clear by an entry in his diary dated June 29, 1982, after months of efforts to negotiate extensive changes in the draft treaty text came to naught. On that evening, President Reagan wrote: "Decided in [National Security Council] meeting -- will not sign 'Law of the Sea' treaty even without seabed mining provisions."

The man selected by President Reagan to undertake those renegotiations was the remarkable James Malone. In 1984, Ambassador Malone explained why the Law of the Sea Treaty was unacceptable: "The Treaty's provisions were intentionally designed to promote a new world order -- a form of global collectivism known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO) -- that seeks ultimately the redistribution of the world's wealth through a complex system of manipulative central economic planning and bureaucratic coercion. The Treaty's provisions are predicated on a distorted interpretation of the noble concept of the Earth's vast oceans as the 'common heritage of mankind.'"

Interestingly, Ambassador Malone declared in 1995, "This remains the case today." That statement is particularly relevant insofar as LOST's supporters, including some of our colleagues from the Reagan administration, insist that the 1994 Agreement "fixed" the previously unacceptable Part XI provisions. As James Malone explained to a conference on the Law of the Sea Treaty before his untimely death more than a decade ago:

"All the provisions from the past that make such a [new world order] outcome possible, indeed likely, still stand. It is not true, as argued by some, and frequently mentioned, that the U.S. rejected the Convention in 1982 solely because of technical difficulties with Part XI. The collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the treaty were at the core of the U.S. refusal to sign."

He added, "The regime's structural arrangements place central planning ahead of free market interests in determining influence over world resources; and yet, the collapse of socialist central planning throughout the world makes this a step in the wrong direction."

In a comment that is, if anything, even more true at present, Ambassador Malone observed that: "Today, not only are the seabed mining provisions inadequately corrected, and the collectivist ideologies of a now repudiated system of global central planning still imbedded in the treaty, new and potentially serious concerns have arisen."

Currently, these include: the increasingly brazen hostility of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions to the United States and its interests; the organization's ambition to impose international taxes, which would allow it to become still less transparent and accountable to member nations; the determination of European and other environmentalists to impose the "precautionary principle" (a Luddite, "better safe than sorry" approach that requires proof no harm can come from any initiative before it can be undertaken); the increasing practice of U.S. courts to allow "universal jurisprudence" to trump American constitutional rights and laws; and the use of "lawfare" (multilateral treaties, tribunal rulings and convention declarations) by adversaries of the U.S. military as asymmetric weapons to curtail or impede American power and operations.

Such developments only serve to reinforce the concerns President Reagan rightly had about the central, and abiding, defect of the Law of the Sea Treaty: its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states -- and most especially the United States. One of the prime movers behind LOST, the late Elisabeth Mann Borgese of the World Federalist Association (which now calls itself Citizens for Global Solutions), captured what is at stake when she cited an ancient aphorism: "He who rules the sea, rules the land." A U.N. publication lauding her work noted that Borgese saw LOST as a "possible test-bed for ideas she had developed concerning a common global constitution."

While we would not presume to speak for President Reagan, his own words and those of the man who worked most closely with him and us on Law of the Sea matters, Jim Malone, make one thing clear: Even if the 1994 Agreement actually amended LOST (and there are multiple reasons why it did not actually alter so much as a single word of the treaty), Ronald Reagan's belief in the U.S. as an exceptional "shining city on a hill" and his enmity towards threats to our sovereignty in general, and global governance schemes in particular, were such that he would likely encourage the Senate to do today what he did in 1982: Reject LOST.

============

Judge Clark and Mr. Meese served in several capacities in President Reagan's administration including, respectively, as national security adviser and attorney general.

Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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From: CNSNews.com .........................................[This story printer-friendly]
October 04, 2007

LAW OF SEA TREATY HURTS US SECURITY, SOVEREIGNTY ACTIVISTS SAY

[Rachel's introduction: Europe is using the Law of Sea Treaty to impose a "better safe than sorry" regulatory model for the environment that jeopardizes America's free enterprise system, according to a vocal group of neoconservatives.]

By Kevin Mooney, CNSNews.com Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) -- Europe is using international means, such as the Law of Sea Treaty, to impose a "better safe than sorry" regulatory model for the environment that jeopardizes America's free enterprise system, according to international business attorney and pro-U.S. sovereignty activist Lawrence Cogan [sic].

An evolving legal standard known as the "precautionary principle" is taking hold in Europe where a rising number of environmental controls have been put in place, said Kogan, CEO and co-director for the Institute for Trade Standards and Sustainable Development (ITSSD), at a Sept. 26 press conference sponsored by the Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty.

For example, there are at least 45 different articles on environmental regulation in the Law of the Sea Treaty that embrace the precautionary principle, Kogan said. The environmental regulations in the treaty are tied in with "Europe's penchant for gaining the economic upper hand" against America, he added.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding hearings Thursday (and hearings were also held last week) on U.S. participation in the Law of the Sea Treaty. In general, the treaty sets myriad rules governing military and commercial use of the oceans.

To date, more than 150 countries have signed on to the treaty. President Reagan vetoed the treaty in the early 1980s, citing U.S. national interests, but it has strong support now in the Bush administration, at the Pentagon and among many members of Congress.

Kogan encouraged his fellow activists to help "shed light" on the regulatory directives enshrined in the treaty as the Senate reviews the pros and cons of ratification.

The Senate hearings, however, are stacked in favor of the treaty, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival, told Cybercast News Service. Top State Department and Defense Department officials who submitted testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week argued in favor in [sic] ratification.

However, the committee will hear from dissenting voices Thursday, as Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), offer testimony.

At last week's press conference, Gaffney said that America's constitutionally governing bodies will become subordinate to unaccountable, un-elected supranational bodies, replete with international bureaucrats hostile to U.S. interests, if the Law of Sea Treaty is ratified.

But just as Americans grew concerned when alerted to the dangers of the illegal immigration "amnesty" bill, Gaffney thinks the coalition's advertising campaign will help focus attention on the dangers the treaty poses to U.S. security.

Two separate 30-second television spots airing in the Washington, D.C., market on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC have already been launched through the coalition, Gaffney noted.

Although supporters of the treaty in the Senate deny there is any direct connection between the United Nations and the treaty, written agreements between the U.N. and the International Sea Bed Authority (ISA) and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLS) suggest otherwise, said Kincaid.

Moreover, the ISA is, in many respects, "even worse" than the U.N. because it lacks oversight, said Kincaid. In the wake of the Oil-for- Food scandal, the U.N. set up an ethics office and rules for top officials to submit financial disclosure forms.

The ratification process needs to "slow down" so the American people can develop a deeper appreciation for what they are buying, Doug Bandow, a free market scholar with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), said at the conference.

Bandow, who also served as a special advisor to President Reagan, claimed the ISA is poised to become a "second U.N." based in Jamaica. A new monopoly company called "The Enterprise" would be subsidized by U.S. companies as a result of treaty stipulations, he claimed.

The views of high-ranking Defense Department and State Department officials who testified last week diverge sharply from the coalition.

For instance, in his written statement submitted to the committee, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte outlined several "myths" pertaining to the treaty's effect on U.S. sovereignty and national security.

Negroponte denied any taxes would be imposed on individuals or corporations because of the treaty. He also said international tribunals would not have authority over the U.S. Navy.

But Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), in the question-and-answer segment of the hearing voiced concern over the potential regulation of domestic activity he sees incorporated into the treaty. He asked Negroponte and Negroponte's attorney, John Bellinger, to explain the regulatory provisions that appear to touch on "land-based pollution sources."

"Why do we want to open that Pandora's box?" Vitter asked.

For his part, Bellinger insisted the U.S. could not be subjected to international disputes concerning its domestic activities.

"If it [disputes over U.S. domestic policy] is not covered by the treaty, why is there a section entitled Pollution from Land-based Sources?" Vitter persisted.

Bellinger responded that the dispute mechanisms spelled out in the treaty are very limited in scope.

Copyright 1998-2007 Cybercast News Service.

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From: Environment News Service ...........................[This story printer-friendly]
October 4, 2007

CORAL REEF HEALTH DEPENDS ON ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT AND PRECAUTION

[Rachel's introduction: "From Pacific islands to the Western world, we know what is threatening our [coral] reefs and how to remedy those problems, but policy and political will are lagging behind available science," said Noah Idechong. "Policymakers often choose inactivity rather than subscribing to the precautionary principle," he said. "This approach undermines our ability to leave a sound environmental legacy for future generations."]

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- Coral reefs suffer when the lands above them are disturbed, finds new research by scientists from Hawaii to Australia. Clearcut logging, farming and development lead to erosion and runoff that kills corals, making it just as important to manage the land above reefs as it is to protect them from overfishing, the scientists confirmed.

Over six years, the researchers studied the connection between watersheds and adjacent coral reefs on three Micronesian islands - Palau, Guam and Pohnpei. The "Watersheds and Coral Reefs" study published in the current issue of "BioScience" magazine describes how multiple threats to reefs combine with lethal results.

"It is clear that sustaining our coral reefs depends on how well we manage human impacts from the mountains to the sea," said Willy Kostka, a co-author of the study and director of the Micronesia Conservation Trust.

"The centuries-old way of managing reefs in Pacific islands recognizes that it is not the coral reefs and watersheds that can be managed, but rather the human activities affecting these ecosystems," said Kostka. "If we provide care and respect to our reefs, they will provide for us."

Sedimentation and runoff from activities on land are among the biggest threats to nearby reefs and are interfering with other marine conservation efforts, such as no fishing zones.

River runoff sends mud into the ocean, where it is compacted around reefs. Algae can outgrow corals to form a mat that traps the mud and prevents coral recruitment. When overfishing occurs, removal of plant- eating fish means algae growth can no longer be controlled, and the reefs are suffocated.

Actions taken by the three Pacific island communities to restore reef health focused on managing entire ecosystems from hilltop to sea floor.

Communities relocated crops from upland rainforests to lowland areas, restored vegetation in watershed areas to control erosion, halted the clearing of mangroves, and established a continuous protected area from the top of the watershed to the reef.

One community is also considering a temporary ban on catches of plant- eating fish.

Fouha Bay, the study site in Guam, is surrounded by steep hills that deer and pig hunters often burn to clear vegetation, which accelerates erosion rates. The bay has high levels of sedimentation that are suffocating the reefs.

Data taken along the southern side of the bay in 1978 and again in 2003 showed a clear loss of coral species and coral cover over time that appears to be due to watershed discharges.

The study's conclusion that coral reefs and other coastal marine ecosystems extend into adjacent watersheds leads the authors to the recommendation that they should be managed as an integrated unit.

"Marine protected areas often will miss their targets of resource protection unless terrestrial protected areas are established and enforced," they write.

Traditional ways of managing human interactions with the reef are still effective in modern times, says the study, citing Palau's Marine Protection Act of 1994 as an example of new legislation for no-take areas based on traditional knowledge of spawning sites.

On the Enipein watershed on the Micronesian island of Pohnpei, the watershed was located above a marine protected area that was struggling to recover coral and fish populations after clearing of an upland rainforest for cash crops resulted in extensive erosion and sediment deposition on the reef.

Findings from the Enipein watershed research were shared with local chiefs, who decided to create a continuous protected area that begins in the upland rainforest and extends through the mangroves and out to the reef.

Efforts to switch from upland farming to lowland cultivation have been successful, as have been measures to reduce erosion and to protect coastal mangroves.

"Pohnpei, Palau and Guam boast some of the best examples of what can happen when local communities understand their vested interest in nearshore ocean resources and take action to preserve them," said lead author Dr. Robert Richmond of the University of Hawaii's Kewalo Marine Laboratory in Honolulu.

"Reefs are in decline worldwide," he said, "and the Pacific islands of Micronesia are showing us how modern science and traditional knowledge can be combined to reverse that trend.

Co-author Noah Idechong, vice speaker of the House of Delegates for the 7th Palau National Congress, says people know what is occurring but too often lack the political will to make the needed changes that will protect reefs.

"From Pacific islands to the Western world, we know what is threatening our reefs and how to remedy those problems, but policy and political will are lagging behind available science," Idechong said.

"Policymakers often choose inactivity rather than subscribing to the precautionary principle," he said. "This approach undermines our ability to leave a sound environmental legacy for future generations."

Hawaii fisherman Isaac Harp, who did not participate in the study, said, "When foreign land and natural resource management strategies replaced Hawaii's indigenous strategies, rapid degradation of Hawaii's inland and coastal environments began. As indigenous island peoples across 'Pasifika' and beyond understand, when you mismanage your inland environments, negative effects will trickle down and degrade your coastal environments."

"Sometimes we need to move forward by going backward, in this case by recognizing the value of and adopting indigenous management strategies," said Harp. "A thousand years of knowledge is better than a hundred years of assumptions."

Western governments should follow the lead of traditional societies and consider granting near-shore and off-shore leases for community conservation, just as they do for fish cages and oil drilling, the authors propose.

If coral reef resources are not better protected from land-based impacts, the authors warn, they will continue to decline.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007.

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From: Muncie (Indiana) Free Press ........................[This story printer-friendly]
October 8, 2007

OP-ED: MERCURY POLLUTION: MORE IS LESS?

[Rachel's introduction: Indiana has discovered one more way to allow coal-fired power plants to continue polluting: create a market for buying and selling the right to emit toxic mercury into the environment. The argument that carried the day in a recent public hearing was simple: protecting public health would be too costly for the polluters. No, Virginia, in Indiana the polluter does not pay.]

By Thomas P. Healy

INDIANAPOLIS, IN -- Once again the Daniels administration has opted to protect the financial interests of polluters at the expense of public health. The most recent evidence was the Indiana Air Pollution Control Board's (APCB) 11-1 vote at its Oct. 3 meeting to adopt the minimum federal Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR).

Under terms of the rule, Indiana-based coal-fired power plants might cut mercury emissions by 66 percent by 2018. The key word is "might" because a provision known as "cap-and-trade" allows plant operators to bank and/or sell emission credits, which would stretch out actual compliance to 2025 or even beyond.

That wasn't good enough for the board's lone holdout, Philip S. Stevens. "It's not that I'm against controlling mercury emissions," Stevens said by phone from his Bloomington office, where he serves on the faculty of Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "I didn't want the public record to show unanimous support of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) rule because I felt it was not strong enough to protect human health.

"Given the known toxicity of mercury and the known health effects -- especially on children and pregnant women -- and increasing scientific evidence that mercury gets into the environment and spreads in ecosystems quickly, I felt the stronger rule was appropriate," he said.

Stevens' vote might have been a symbolic gesture but his efforts during the board's deliberations over the past two and a half years have been substantial, including participation in an Indiana Department of Environmental Management Office of Air Quality work group of various stakeholders who looked deeply into the issue. He also made presentations to educate his fellow board members about mercury's health hazards.

At the Oct. 3 meeting Stevens tried to broker a two-point compromise proposed by the nonprofit organization Improving Kids' Environment at the board's May meeting. The proposal would have accelerated the date for compliance and required a 76 percent reduction from the utilities and established a fund for energy efficiency projects to receive allowances from the cap-and-trade program.

Board members rejected both proposals.

Medical representative James Minor (APCB chair) and environmental representative Tom Anderson of Save the Dunes joined Stevens in voting in favor of the IKE compromise.

Stevens said that while he favored a proposal put forth in 2004 by the Hoosier Environmental Council that would have mandated a 90 percent reduction by the end of the decade and put regional limits on the cap- and-trade provision to ensure compliance, he would have been happy with the IKE compromise.

He doesn't care for the cap-and-trade provision, which allows plants that operate below a predetermined emissions limit (the "cap") to bank or sell credits (the "trade") to plants that exceed their cap. "I don't think you should be trading something like mercury that deposits close to the source and is a potent neurotoxin."

In an Orwellian bit of irony, Stevens could be accused of not supporting regulation of mercury because of his vote against the EPA rule. Meanwhile, board members who supported CAMR, which permits greater amounts of mercury to be emitted for a longer period of time than what HEC proposed, could claim they are strengthening regulations. That's only because mercury emissions from power plants are currently unregulated.

Cost-effective public health

No one who attended the meeting disputed that mercury poses a health threat. There was no denial of Indiana's rank as one of the country's top emitters of mercury (attributable in no small part to coal-fired power plants.). When EPA finally published its mercury rule in May 2005, there was general agreement nationwide that something had to be done.

Agreeing on the specifics of the amount of mercury emissions reductions, establishing timetables for compliance and estimating the associated costs was an exhausting process. Early on, IDEM Commissioner Thomas Easterly made it clear that he favored CAMR, and the members of the APCB took note -- especially representatives of state agencies who essentially rubber-stamp approval of administration policies (always the case regardless of which party occupies the governor's office).

Presentations to the board came from two basic constituencies: the "Suits" and the "Green Team." (See Mercury regs still up in the air, BA 10/10/04.)

Gov. Daniels exemplifies the corporate culture that is the natural habitat of the "Suits" and has established a style of governance that enshrines corporate management objectives and processes at the expense of democratic ideals. That gives the regulated community and its constituents an unfair advantage over advocates for citizen shareholders in the public interest.

Throughout public hearings and in public comment periods during the lengthy rule-making process, the "Suits" had distinct leverage. After all, Indiana is known for its reluctance to pass regulations that exceed federal minimums (much less to enforce them). APCB members tilt heavily in favor of industry and the current administration, so the burden of proving the need for a stronger rule was practically insurmountable.

Nevertheless, the "Green Team" made an impressive effort to present the case for a strong rule, stressing not only the health effects but the economic benefits as well. One long-time observer of the regulatory process termed the outpouring of public comments in support of HEC's initiative "unprecedented." Public health officials, other environmental organizations, and hundreds of individual citizens commented in favor of greater protection of public health. The following IDEM response typifies the agency's approach: "Due to uncertainties over the achievability of 90% control, reductions in actual mercury exposure levels, cardiovascular health effects, and the low benefit/cost ratio, IDEM is proceeding with a rulemaking based on CAMR."

You read correctly: the benefits of safeguarding public health aren't worth the costs.

Throughout the process, industry has claimed that the cost of achieving a greater reduction was either technologically unfeasible or too costly or both. Yet IDEM's mandatory fiscal impact study estimated that achieving a 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions at a coal- fired power plant would increase electricity rates only 2.8 to 5 percent. Given Indiana's low utility rates (an estimated 21 percent below the national average), even a 5 percent increase would keep rates below the national average while providing significant reductions of mercury.

At the Oct. 3 OPCB meeting, Chad Whiteman, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Clean Air Companies, said the members of his trade association have responded to the demand for mercury control technologies from Europe as well as the more than 20 states that have passed more stringent regulations than EPA's CAMR. Citing one U.S. example, he noted, "The expected cost for one unit was $30,000 to $60,000 per pound to control mercury, and some of the demonstration projects had achieved results in the $2,000 to $4,000 per pound range." Whiteman opined that the costs of pollution control would continue to decline as demand for such technologies increases.

Naturally, power industry reps dispute the many successes of public/private partnerships and the competitive commercial marketplace in lowering costs. Instead, they prefer projections by their trade association, the Indiana Energy Association, that would allow them to maintain the status quo and enable them to continue poisoning the public for profit.

Clout Cancels Compliance

Utilities wield tremendous political clout. When the Clean Air Act was established in 1970, they were able to get power plants "grandfathered" in and exempted from those regulations. The thinking at the time was that cleaner plants would gradually replace the aging plants.

But it didn't happen. The old plants kept on belching pollutants and utilities resisted costly upgrades. Passage of amendments in1990 to the Clean Air Act called for the utility industry to install "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) in the nation's non-nuclear power plants by 2008. When EPA dawdled in enforcing compliance, the Natural Resources Defense Council sued in 1992 to force the agency to regulate hazardous power plant emissions. By 2000, the EPA acknowledged that mercury's toxic properties required it to be regulated as a hazardous substance.

When the Bush administration took office, EPA head Christine Todd Whitman established a task force of diverse stakeholders who met for 21 months and agreed that power plants should be subject to the MACT standard. As reported in the Washington Post, the task force suddenly was dissolved and a different policy was implemented: one that rejected MACT and replaced it with a more industry-friendly cap-and- trade plan.

The administration crafted its mercury rule in January 2004 and the Washington Post reported that it was taken nearly verbatim from drafts submitted by energy industry lobbyists. When EPA issued CAMR in May 2005, the cap-and-trade provision was enshrined as public policy.

Opposition to the cap-and-trade system is widespread. Sixteen state agencies have joined environmental groups to file suit against the cap-and-trade provision of CAMR, arguing for a return to the MACT standard.

Concerns over the cap-and-trade plan center around the ability of utilities to continue operating outdated, dirtier facilities. Environmentalists, public health officials and social justice advocates fear that such a program will create "hot spots" -- high concentrations of mercury around older plants -- and delay much needed cleanup, remediation and/or decommissioning.

Dan Weiss, of Duke Energy Indiana, told the APCB that the firm operates facilities in the state where it would be uneconomic to add pollution controls. "The generic answer is, the smaller and older the power plant, the less options it has," Weiss said. He cited the firm's Knox County facility in Edwardsport (built between 1944 and 1951) as an example and noted that the company is looking to replace it with a proposed integrated coal gasification combined cycle power plant (a plant Gov. Daniels asserts will be built despite growing concerns in the industry over cost and technical feasibility). Weiss added that the company is seeking a 16 percent rate increase to be phased in over five years.

Duke Energy Indiana's operating revenues for the six months ending June 30, 2007, totaled $1.043 billion, an $85 million increase in net revenue as compared to 2006.

It's no surprise that a Duke Energy representative was on the list of energy industry leaders who met in secret with Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force in 2001. In its August 2003 report to Congress on the Energy Task Force, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that the national energy policy was the product of a centralized, top-down process. "Officials and staff met with, solicited input from, or received information and advice from nonfederal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists," the report stated.

Because the GAO was unable to obtain many of the documents it requested from the office of the Vice President, citizens may never know the full extent of the energy industry's influence on CAMR.

What you don't know can still hurt you

One thing clearly known is that environmental justice is not an active policy in George Bush's EPA. A report by the Office of Inspector General found that "in 2001, the Agency restated its commitment to environmental justice in a manner that does not emphasize minority and low-income populations."

Since these communities were found to be more likely to live around older, dirtier power plants, in 1994 President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, "Federal Action to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations," designed, the report stated, "to ensure such populations are not subjected to a disproportionately high level of environmental risk."

In a 2004 Center for Progressive Regulation white paper, "Mercury, Risk and Justice," author Catherine A. O'Neill writes that the adoption of CAMR's cap-and-trade provisions will likely exacerbate mercury levels in some areas of the country, especially the Great Lakes region. She writes that exposure will be borne "disproportionately by Native Americans, Asian-Americans, other communities of color and low-income communities in this and other regions of the country who eat large amounts of mercury-contaminated fish.... Because humans are exposed to methyl mercury primarily through fish consumption, groups that eat the most fish are disproportionately at risk."

Indiana's Department of Health has issued a fish consumption advisory for nearly all the waters in the State but the Department of Natural Resources has not been required to post signs and relies instead on Web notices, which are unlikely to reach those who need the information the most.

Mercury exposure poses a risk of developmental problems and learning disabilities in children. Nevertheless, despite pleas from groups like the March of Dimes, the Indiana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and Improving Kids' Environment to safeguard the health of children, the APCB rep from the Department of Health consistently voted against stronger protections.

Local deposit, local return

Rather than tackle public health issues head-on, the industry and its lobbyists have developed considerable skill at framing regulatory considerations in terms of how they affect the industry.

They point to their own projections of the high cost of compliance or they question the technological feasibility of achieving stricter regulations. They threaten rate hikes to nudge regulators into backing off of stricter regulations. They dispute that more than 5 to 10 percent of mercury emitted from their power plants is deposited in Indiana.

So where does the mercury in Indiana come from?

Gail Charnley, of the Center for Energy and Economic Development in Washington, D.C., flew to Indianapolis to testify at the Oct. 3 APCB meeting. "A lot of mercury deposition [in Indiana] comes from other places like China and India," she told the board. "Only a small amount of the methyl mercury in Indiana fish is likely to be attributable to Indiana power plants in the first place, so regulating Indiana power plants can have only a small impact on potential mercury reduction in Indiana," she said.

It's heartening to think that Charnley and the domestic energy industry recognize the pollution coming from the increasing number of coal-fired power plants in China and elsewhere. But an argument that "everybody else is doing it and you're not making them stop, so why pick on us?" lacks wisdom.

Mounting evidence shows that mercury deposition is not only extremely local but also rapidly spreads in ecosystems, where it accumulates in earth, air, water and wildlife.

Yet another Inspector General's report, "Monitoring Needed to Assess Impact of EPA's CAMR on Potential Hotspots," declares, "Results from the Steubenville Study, a multiyear study in the Ohio River Valley, found that approximately 70 percent of mercury wet deposition at Steubenville, Ohio, in 2003 and 2004 was attributable to local/regional coal combustion sources, predominantly from utility boilers."

Further, a three-year joint Canadian/US study found that reducing atmospheric pollution results in rapid reductions in mercury levels in fish.

When the world's top mercury scientists gathered August 6-11, 2006, in Madison, Wisconsin, they issued a Declaration on Mercury Pollution that is a fascinating, albeit disturbing, statement. Part of the nontechnical summary reads: "The true total costs of mercury pollution are probably much greater than currently estimated due to the many uncertainties in these estimates, and because they don't take into account mercury's impacts on ecosystems and wildlife."

While steering clear of direct policy recommendations, the group of scientists stated their hope that policymakers would use the best available science in their decision making on environmental mercury pollution.

If only their Declaration had been issued to the APCB along with a copy of the Precautionary Principle, which asserts that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty about the potential for harm should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent harm.

Or as Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network puts it, "Do we have to continue to use the toxic chemicals that we've created out of our human cleverness that are now poisoning the entire planet? Or can we find ways to do business that foster the conditions that are conducive to life?"

Such insight was nowhere to be heard throughout the entire mercury rule-making process. Instead, during testimony the APCB was offered analogies such as the one presented by John Ross, manager of regulatory programs at NiSource, who spoke on behalf of the Indiana Energy Association. "Mercury is typically found in parts per billion," he said. To try and put that in perspective he used the following analogy. "Imagine the RCA Dome filled with ping-pong balls. We estimate that dome would hold on the order of 15 billion balls. Of those 15 billion only about 800 of those balls would be mercury. The challenge, then, if you were trying to achieve 90 percent removal, would be to try and find and remove 720 of the 800 balls. This is a difficult proposition."

Yet IDEM's Web site states, "Mercury is toxic in small quantities. It only takes 3 grams (approximately 1/25 of a teaspoon) of mercury to contaminate a 60-acre lake." At such minute levels only 10 ping-pong balls would be sufficient to pollute the entire dome. So wouldn't it make sense not to generate those 800 balls in the first place?

And shouldn't we monitor where mercury pollution is actually occurring? As part of a national program, the U.S. Geological Survey has four mercury monitoring stations throughout the state. With the exception of the Clifty Falls monitor in Jefferson County, near Madison's Clifty Creek coal-fired power plant, monitoring stations are located far away from the highest concentration of mercury emitting plants in the Ohio Valley of southwestern Indiana.

Unless other states prevail in the courts and force EPA back to its original MACT standard, Indiana is stuck with CAMR. However, if they succeed, the rulemaking cycle begins again, and the Green Team will have another opportunity to try to convince the Suits and the rubber- stampers that a degraded environment is no basis for sustainable economic development, human health, social justice or security.

Thomas P. Healy is a journalist in Indianapolis. He can be reached at thomasphealy@sbcglobal.net

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From: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) ......[This story printer-friendly]
October 9, 2007

GUNNS PREPARED TO MEET OPERATING CONDITIONS

[Rachel's introduction: The Australian government will allow a paper mill to be built before tests are completed to learn whether it can meet environmental standards: "It's totally illogical. It doesn't abide by the precautionary principle. It means we could end up with a mill that doesn't meet the conditions."]

Timber company Gunns hopes to start building a pulp mill in northern Tasmania by the end of the year, after the Federal Government doubled the number of environmental conditions it must meet.

Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull has given the $1.7 billion project the go ahead, after following recommendations by Commonwealth chief scientist Dr Jim Peacock -- imposing an extra 24 environmental conditions the mill must meet to be allowed to operate.

Gunns will now be required to meet 48 Commonwealth conditions covering effluent discharge, environmental monitoring and the protection of threatened species.

Dr Peacock says there will be extensive monitoring of the mill to ensure it operates according to the environmental restrictions.

"There's a very strong prospect that the mill will operate with an environmentally neutral footprint," he said.

Company executive chairman John Gay says the guidelines are tough, but he is prepared to meet them. He says the restrictions will not change the overall cost to build the mill.

Federal support

Both Federal Coalition and Federal Labor are backing the mill and the conditions imposed by Mr Turnbull and Dr Peacock.

Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett says Labor was always prepared to back the mill if it was world's best practice.

He says the new rules mean it meets that condition, but he is critical of the procedure.

Prime Minister John Howard says Labor is trying to have it both ways by being so critical of the process.

"Are they for it or against it? Do they want jobs for northern Tasmanians or don't they?" he said.

Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon says the Government will work to heal the divisions that have been created over the project.

Election issue

But the Greens and Democrats have vowed to make the pulp mill a federal election issue and Tasmanian Greens Leader Peg Putt says the battle is not over.

Ms Putt says construction on the mill should not start until all key testing has been completed.

"Minister Turnbull has said build the mill and do those studies as the mill is being built," she said.

"It's totally illogical. It doesn't abide by the precautionary principle. It means we could end up with a mill that doesn't meet the conditions."

Federal Greens leader Bob Brown says Mr Garrett was wrong to say the mill would be world's best practice.

"I will join thousands of other citizens in campaigning against this pulp mill and the two big parties supporting it," he said.

Businessman Geoffrey Cousins rejects Mr Turnbull's handling of the issue and will keep campaigning against him.

"Whether the people of Wentworth think he is a lost cause, we'll wait and see," he said.

Conservationists say they too will continue to campaign against the project.

Copyright 2007 ABC Privacy Policy

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Rachel's Precaution Reporter offers news, views and practical examples of the Precautionary Principle, or Foresight Principle, in action. The Precautionary Principle is a modern way of making decisions, to minimize harm. Rachel's Precaution Reporter tries to answer such questions as, Why do we need the precautionary principle? Who is using precaution? Who is opposing precaution?

We often include attacks on the precautionary principle because we believe it is essential for advocates of precaution to know what their adversaries are saying, just as abolitionists in 1830 needed to know the arguments used by slaveholders.

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