Environment

PARISLONDONCARACASKHARTOUM - Plastic forks, disposable diapers, drafty houses — if it hurts the environment, make it cost more. That's the message France's government wants to send with a raft of proposed new taxes.

France's ecology minister said Sunday the government is considering a "picnic tax" on disposable dishes to encourage people to use reusable plates and cups instead.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said the plan wouldn't stop at picnicware. For example, she said, "We could make it so that in all public maternity wards, you would be taught to use washable diapers."

Whaling

A secret meeting of the International Whaling Commission called by George W. Bush appointee Bill Hogarth to discuss the possibility of lifting the global moratorium on commercial whaling.

No media, no public participation, no non-governmental organizational participation. All discussions to be behind closed doors in absolute secrecy.

These people are not up to anything good. Their objective is to legalize the slaughter of the whales.

To overturn the moratorium on whaling requires a two-thirds vote of the IWC membership and this voting takes place during the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission. They met in June 2008 in Santiago, Chile and they are scheduled to meet again next June 2009 on the Portuguese island of Madeira.

But as the Bush administration approaches the end of it’s turn, it appears that George W. Bush intends to toss the lives of thousands of whales on his alter of living sacrifices to the God of greed and ecological destruction.

This flies in the face of the majority will of the people of the United States who overwhelmingly oppose the slaughter of whales.

Hogarth wants to broker a compromise that will allow Japan, Norway and Iceland to legally continue what they have been illegally doing for twenty-two years. This will also make our efforts to enforce the international conservation laws illegal.

It’s like if a bank robber has been robbing banks for two decades without being arrested so the police decide to make it legal for him to rob banks since he’s been getting away with it for years and instead they decide to arrest the police if they attempt to intervene.

This week, representatives from only 26 countries of the 80 members of the IWC will gather in a secret, closed-door meeting at the Tradewinds Islands Grand Beach Resort in St. Petersburg, Florida, to hear longtime presidential appointee Dr. William Hogarth push the Bush plan to overturn the global whaling ban and bow to Japanese demands for new whaling quotas.

The International Whaling Commission is an 80 nation body charged with the conservation of our planet's great whales, not their decimation. In 1986, the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling, culminating in one of the 20th century's most important conservation successes. Since then the IWC has issued quotas only for Aboriginal subsistence whaling.

Yet more than 30,000 whales have been illegally killed for commercial purposes since the ban.

The government of Japan, with its bogus claims of scientific whaling has greatly increased its illegal whaling activities in international waters and has threatened to add the endangered humpback whale to its kill list. Japan's so-called annual scientific slaughter is conducted every December to March in the Southern Oceans whale sanctuary!

Japan has not produced a single credible peer-reviewed scientific paper in decades.

Whales are in trouble, not just from whaling but from pollution, diminishment of plankton and fish by human exploitation, global warming, increased acidity in the oceans and military activity. None of these factors are being considered in any scientific study. The only research that the Japanese are doing is marketing and product development research.

Japan is bullying its way towards getting what it wants. The Australian government has already caved into Japanese demands and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has reneged completely on his election promise to defend the whales.

Drilling for Oil Not the Answer

Jonathan G. Dorn

Background

• The United States consumes nearly 21 million barrels of petroleum per day (7.5 billion barrels per year), one fourth the world total.
• Of the crude oil consumed in the U.S., 66 percent is imported.
• The U.S. is on pace to spend over $500 billion on petroleum imports in 2008.
• U.S. oil production currently occurs onshore in the lower 48 states (2.9 million barrels per day (mbd)), offshore (1.4 mbd, primarily in the Gulf of Mexico), and in Alaska (0.7 mbd).

More Drilling Cannot Make the U.S. Energy Independent

• The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 10.4 billion barrels of oil are technically recoverable in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) —less than one and a half years of consumption.
• The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that of the 59 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the lower 48 states, only 18 billion are off limits under the federal moratorium.
• DOE projects that lifting the OCS moratorium would not increase production before 2017 and that by 2030 production would only amount to 0.2 million barrels per day —less than 1 percent of current consumption.
• Total U.S. proved oil reserves are estimated at 21 billion barrels —less than a 3 year supply at the current rate of consumption.
• Since peaking in 1970, U.S. crude oil production has declined 47 percent. World production could be peaking now.

More Drilling Will Not Reduce Oil or Gasoline Prices

• DOE projects that opening ANWR would lower gasoline prices at the pump by a mere 2 cents per gallon.
• Lifting the moratoria on drilling in ANWR and the OCS would reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline by at most 6 cents —and this would not be seen for at least another decade.
• Oil is traded as a global commodity and its price is set on the world market. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could simply reduce exports to negate even the nominal potential price reduction, a fact acknowledged by DOE.

We Can Move Beyond Oil

• The increase in U.S. automobile fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon of gasoline mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is projected to save more than 1.1 million barrels of oil per day in 2020 —roughly half of current U.S. imports from the Persian Gulf. Technology exists to raise standards higher faster.
• Electrifying the U.S. transportation system and restructuring urban transport could reduce petroleum consumption by over 50 percent, nearly eliminating the need for imports.
• Wind-generated electricity could power plug-in hybrid cars, such as GM ’s prototype Chevy Volt, at the equivalent of less than $1 per gallon of gasoline.

For information on Earth Policy Institute ’s plan to restructure transportation systems and move away from oil, see Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, available at www.earthpolicy.org for free downloading.

France: Disposables may be taxed

Whaling

Drilling for Oil Not the Answer