Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 2006

Reality TV or Manufactured News?

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Earlier this year, Japanese whalers in the Antarctic were accused of ramming a Greenpeace boat. The evidence suggested it was the other way around, that Greenpeace had rammed the Japanese.

Nevermind, when Greenpeace returned to Australia they were given a pat on the back by the Environment Minister Ian Campbell. He said in Parliament:

“Over summer, we as a nation have witnessed the Greenpeace ship not only visiting the Southern Ocean and running a policy of harassment against the whalers but also, very constructively, sending photographic images of the whale slaughter by the Japanese in the Southern Ocean all around the world. I had the great pleasure of meeting Shane Rattenbury and the Greenpeace team in my office [at Parliament House in Canberra] just before question time. I think other members and senators will have the chance to meet them. I must say that the work they did over the summer was in distinct contrast to the actions of Paul Watson on the Sea Shepherd, who I think set back the cause of whaling by unnecessarily taking potentially illegal action, causing collisions and potentially putting life at risk at sea.”

While the Minister may have preferred the footage from Greenpeace, the Sea Sheperds were also their with cameras rolling.

According to a recent Media Watch program, the Sea Shepherd was paid $70,000 “a decent chunk of money” to send video footage back to Channel Seven. In fact a deal was done before they had even got to the Antarctic.

Media Watch concluded that:

“Whatever you think about cheque book journalism or whaling – it’s not Seven’s job to help Sea Shepherd stage the news events that Seven is buying exclusive access to!”

Perhaps both Greenpeace and the Sea Sheperd were providing us with a form of reality television dressed-up as news?

Impact of Agriculture 10,000 Years Old

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Clark Spencer Larsen form the Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, has recenty published a paper in
Quaternary International outlining how agriculture was impacting on the environment, including climate, 10,000 years ago.

Titled, ‘The agricultural revolution as environmental catastrophe: Implications for health and lifestyle in the Holocene’ its conclusions include:

“Most of us are well aware of the dramatic changes in the Earth’s landscapes as forests give way to agricultural land, and the resulting environmental degradation, loss of species, and other disasters. A common misperception is that prior to modern times, humans were much more concerned about managing their environment so as to avoid the problems that have surfaced in such a dramatic fashion in the 20th century. However, study of ancient landscapes in Mesoamerica, North America, and the Middle East
shows evidence that earlier agriculturalists had profound impacts, highly negative in some areas, on the lands they exploited.

In the Mediterranean basin, for example, nearly all landscapes were degraded or otherwise transformed in dramatic ways.

The analysis of the past reveals that the current threats to the landscape have their origins in the period of human history when plant domestication began 10,000 years (or so) ago.

Finally, once the effects on Earth’s climate by industrial-era human activities-the so-called greenhouse effect-were recognized, a number of workers assumed that it related to just the last couple of hundred years. However, new evidence of anamolous trends in CO2 and CH4 possibly owing to agricultural-related deforestation after about 8000 years ago, indicates that the negative impact involving greenhouse gases began soon after the start of agriculture.”

So organic farming is not necessarily the answer?

Giving Thanks to Whales in Nagato, Japan

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There has been much discussion about whaling at his blog and some discussion about why the Japanese continue to hunt whales in the name of research.

It is a very foreign and offensive concept to many of us in countries like Australia even though, we had our own whaling fleets not so many years ago.

Yesterday I was sent a link to a recent story in the Japan Times explaining that despite efforts from surfers and local residents about 50 melon-headed whales were recent stranded and died in Chiba Prefecture.

The newspaper article goes on to explain that some of the dead mammals were examined by experts to try to learn the cause of death, while the remaining were to be buried in the town.

I have heard about whale cemeteries in Japan. And one reader of this blog has told me how he attended a buddhist ceremonies in Nagato where thanks was given to whales that had been killed through whaling, as well as those foetuses that have been found in pregnant females.

The ceremony also included the naming of these foetuses in a book.

Whales and whaling evidently has a deep cultural resonance in at least some parts of modern Japan.

We Will Never Run Out of Oil: Philip Burgess

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I attended the IPA’s annual H.V. McKay Lecture on Technology in Melbourne last night. Philip Burgess from Telstra was the guest speaker on the topic of ‘Future Proofing’.

He gave an interesting and wide ranging talk that included two reasons why we will never run out of oil:

1. As the price of oil increases, we will find more of it.

2. As the price of oil or any other commodity goes up, inventive people will start looking for substitutes.

He suggested there were all kinds of examples of ‘substitutes’ including: plastic for copper tubing, grain for fuel and aluminium studs for wooden studs in home building.

He also said that we should perhaps strive to use more, not less energy, because it is through the use of energy that we create wealth.

India Short of Uranium: PM Singh

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Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard has been visiting India and was on All India Radio with Prime Minister Singh. The interview was short and focused on Australian uranium.

JOURNALIST:
Sir, I am from All India Radio. I have a question for both the Prime Ministers. What are both of your expectations from this visit?

PRIME MINSTER SINGH:
India and Australia are members of the Commonwealth. We are two English-speaking countries. We have a large Indian community in Australia. We have nearly 30,000 students studying there. Our trade is expanding very rapidly. This is a unique opportunity for me and the Prime Minister to review the progress we have made in working together and explore new options so that our two countries can cooperate more intensively and diversely.

PRIME MINISTER HOWARD:
This is a wonderful moment in the history of the relationship between the two countries to consolidate what we have achieved in the past and have in common but also to explore a lot of new fields. India’s economic growth, her influence, is very significant. India is now the fourth-largest economy in the world and in a short distance of time may in fact become the third. Its growth rate is very significant. We have a lot in common. We have the shared history and the shared love of certain sports that you’re very familiar with. All of those things bind us together and both the Prime Minister and I believe very strongly that now is the right time to achieve what you might call a quantum leap in the relationship.

JOURNALIST:
Dr Singh, are you hoping to buy Australian uranium?

PRIME MINISTER SINGH:
We would like to trade with Australia in all areas and we are short of uranium. We would very much like Australia to sell uranium to India.

JOURNALIST:
Would you like a deal on uranium done while Prime Minister Howard is here?

PRIME MINISTER SINGH:
Well I will discuss all relevant issues.

JOURNALIST:
Are you hopeful of Mr Howard acceding to your request for Australian uranium?

PRIME MINISTER SINGH:
We will discuss all these issues.

PRIME MINISTER HOWARD:
I think we will talk about them and we’ll talk about them against the background of the policies and the needs of the two countries. Thank you.

In a speech to a business luncheon in New Delhi, the Australian Prime Minister said:

“Energy of course plays a critical role in our economic relationship and I know in your minds will be the agreement signed between the United States and India only three days ago regarding the nuclear industry. This will be an issue to be discussed between myself and the Indian Prime Minister later today and I will be interested to hear more about that arrangement and I will be interested to hear the views that the Prime Minister may wish to put to me in relation to it.

Australia supplies 25 per cent of India’s gold market, and Australian coal is used in more than 50 per cent of the steel that is produced in India. And with the large global increase in demand for energy, the international market for some resources – such as LNG – is extremely tight and I am encouraged that people from both India and Australia are working on these issues and I note that the leader of the Australian delegation Mr Charles Goode of Woodside is with us today and his knowledge of those matters is very, very impressive indeed.

The establishment of the Australia-India Joint Working Group on Energy and Minerals will be an important vehicle to address these issues. I am very pleased that this afternoon I will witness, with the Prime Minister, the signing of an Australia-India Trade and Economic Framework Agreement and this will provide an important basis for the facilitation and the future development of the trade and economic relationship and it will encourage closer strategic cooperation in many of the key economic sectors.”

While India would like to buy Australian uranium, Australia currently won’t sell to countries that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that includes India and Israel.

But I get the impression something is going to change?

Interestingly the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty recognises ‘the right’ of the US, Britain, France, China and Russia – all permanent members of the UN Security Council – to have nuclear weapons but stops other countries from having nuclear weapons.

Worldwide Protest Against Australian Forestry

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So there is not a lot of outrage in Australia, so the protest against the timber industry in Tasmania moves to San Fransciso and the rest of the world…

Yesterday Paul West from the Rainforest Action Network put out the following media release. Before or after you read this nasty work of propaganda, you may want to find out some facts and figures on the Tasmanian forestry industry, click here, here and here.

The media release is titled ‘Global outcry over falling forests and failing democracy on Australia’s island state of Tasmania’ and begins:

“Outraged world citizens today protested at Australian embassies and consulates in America, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom to decry the destruction of old-growth forests and the undermining of democracy in the country’s island state of Tasmania by Forestry Tasmania and Gunns, Ltd., a rogue billion-dollar logging giant whose practices rank among the world’s worst according to recent reports.

The IUCN compares Gunns’ operations to rampant illegal logging in the Third World.

Demonstrators delivered a letter signed by leading international sustainability groups to Prime Minister John Howard demanding that the government act in accordance with scientific recommendations to protect Tasmania’s virgin forests from a well-documented arsenal of logging tactics deployed by Gunns and industry-controlled Forestry Tasmania. In the wake of massive clearcuts by Gunns, the industry routinely scorches the Earth with Napalm firebombs to eradicate all remaining life.

Gunns has also killed hundreds of thousands of native mammals using carrots poisoned with Compound 1080, a lethal super-toxin listed as a biological weapon by both the Canadian and US governments. Gunns CEO John Gay has publicly stated that it is okay that his company kills endangered animals because “there’s too many of them.” Tasmania’s forests are currently being clear-cut at an unprecedented rate equivalent to approximately 44 football fields per day. The vast majority of Tasmania’s priceless ancient trees are being processed into woodchips by Gunns to make disposable paper products destined for landfills in America and Asia.

The worldwide call for action today echoed a dozen of Australia’s leading scientists who signed a 2004 statement of support for the protection of Tasmania’s forests calling for the “urgent need for Australian government intervention.” The effort to protect Tasmania’s forests is one of the largest environmental issues in Australian history, and according to a 2004 opinion poll by Newspoll, over 85 percent of Australian citizens favor full protection for Tasmania’s pristine forests.

Carrying signs reading “Stop Gunns” and “Save Tassie’s Trees,” forest defenders around the world protested with “GUNNS” taped over the mouths in solidarity with 20 silenced citizens in Australia who are currently being sued by Gunns for speaking out against the company’s attacks on environmental treasures and public health. Likened to McDonald’s “McLibel” lawsuit, websites like Gunns20.org and McGunns.com are evidence of a growing global grassroots movement to protect free speech, reassert democracy and save old-growth forests. The Gunns 20 lawsuit has also been condemned by leading human rights lawyers in the UK. For the Tasmania Forest Campaign, Rainforest Action Network and its allies today launched TreesNotGunns.org to organize future worldwide action.

At the Australian High Commission in London today, British MP and Deputy Environmental Minister Norman Baker met with the Deputy High Commissioner to deliver the NGO letter and spoke about the atrocities he witnessed on his visit to Tasmania last month. Over 100 members of the British Parliament recently signed a motion condemning Gunns’ actions and calling for an international boycott of woodchips and paper sourced from Tasmania’s old-growth forests.

… Spearheaded by San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, the worldwide day of protest expands one of the largest environmental protection campaigns in Australian history to global economic centers including Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. The letter to Prime Minister Howard was signed by coalition of US and European-based groups including Forest Ethics (ForestEthics.org), Friends of the Earth International (FOE.org), Global Exchange (GlobalExchange.org), Global Response (GlobalResponse.org), International Forum on Globalization (IFG.org), Native Forest Network (NativeForest.org), Pacific Environment (PacificEnvironment.org), Rainforest Action Network (RAN.org), Ruckus Society (Ruckus.org) and the Sierra Club (SierraClub.org).”

Now you may want to find out some facts and figures on the Tasmanian forestry industry, click here, here and here.