Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

New Port to Open as Ice Melts

By

While planet earth has warmed only 0.6C on average over the last 150 or so years, warming in the artic has been more significant.

Clifford Kauss et al have written in the New York Times about new opportunities in the Artic as the ice melts:

It seems harsh to say that bad news for polar bears is good for Pat Broe. Mr. Broe, a Denver entrepreneur, is no more to blame than anyone else for a meltdown at the top of the world that threatens Arctic mammals and ancient traditions and lends credibility to dark-visions of global warming.

Still, the newest study of the Arctic ice cap – finding that it faded this summer to its smallest size ever recorded – is beginning to make Mr. Broe look like a visionary for buying this derelict Hudson Bay port from the Canadian government in 1997. Especially at the price he paid: about $7.

By Mr. Broe’s calculations, Churchill could bring in as much as $100 million a year as a port on Arctic shipping lanes shorter by thousands of miles than routes to the south, and traffic would only increase as the retreat of ice in the region clears the way for a longer shipping season.

Keep reading here …

Farmers Reject ‘Testing’ Funded by Greenpeace

By

The following press release from the Pastoral and Graziers’ Association (PGA) of Western Australia raises some interesting issues.

FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE TRUTH, YET AGAIN

Greenpeace and the Network of Concerned Farmers (NCF) have, once again, resorted to media grandstanding in their obdurate opposition to GM crops.

The Greenpeace press release titled “First Australian farmer falls prey to GE contamination”, released on 10.10.05, does nothing to advance the public debate. It merely reinforces the fact that
the misuse of scientific data is the principle technique employed by these organisations.

The press release claims that GM contamination was found in a non-GM crop at a rate of 0.5%. It is important to note that testing was on a crop owned by Geoffrey Carracher, a NCF member and known anti-GM campaigner, and the analysis was paid for by Greenpeace.

Would Greenpeace accept a scientific analysis as to the benefits of a GM crop, where the data came from one farmer – one pro-GM farmer – and the analysis was paid for by a biotechnology company? Would the media?

Such an analysis is meaningless – certainly without significant corroborating evidence, and particularly as the supposed quantity found (0.5%) is actually well within the threshold set by the EU (0.9%) – one of the most restrictive markets in the world. Just as with the false ‘contamination’ scare in WA three weeks ago, the opponents of biotechnology will take any opportunity to run a fear campaign on this issue.

The PGA position on GMOs remains the same

How Many People?

By

I am in Darwin for a conference with the grand title ‘Creating a Vision for a Greater Australia – big ideas for a big country’. Chief Minister Clare Martin and The Hon Dr Barry Jones AO will both be speaking this morning.

It is interesting to ponder that in about 200 AD when the world population was about 200 million Quitus Septimus Florence Terillianus a Roman citizen was worrying about population. He wrote:

“farms obliterate emply places, plough fields vanquish forests, herds drive out wild beasts, sandy places are planted with crops, stones are fixed, swamps drained, and there are such great cities where formley hardly a hut .. everywhere there is a dwelling, everywhere a multitude … We are burdensome to the earth. The resources are scarcely adequate for us … already nature does not sustain us. Truly, pestilence and hunger and war and flood must be considered as a remedy for nations, like a pruning back of the human race becoming excessive in numbers.”

In 2005 there are more than 6 billion of us, with a projected population of 9.5 billion by 2050, at which point human population growth should plateau.

Scientific America has a feature on population in its September (2005) issue. Prof Joel Cohen writes that

“… the dramatic fall since 1970 of the global population growth rate to 1.1 or 1.2 percent a year today resulted primarily from choices by billions of couples around the world to limit the number of people born. Global human populations growth rates have probably risen and fallen numerous times in the past. The great plagues and wars of the 14th century, for example, reduced not only the growth rate but also the absolute size of global population both largely involuntary changes. Never before the 20th century has a fall in the global population growth rates been voluntary.”

Good Move for Koalas

By

ABC Online reports that more than 200 koalas will be relocated from French Island to Yarra State Park near Gladysdale today.

Iam Temby from the [Victorian] Department of Environment says the move is part of an annual project to protect koala feeding habitats.

“Part of the reason is that French Island doesn’t have [the] disease chlamydia and chlamydia inhibits breeding in populations, so it slows the rate of population increase,” he said.

“The koalas breed prolifically on French Island and they need to be removed regularly each year otherwise they’re going to eat all the trees that sustain them.”

Imperialism, Greenpeace Style

By

The politics of biotechnology (e.g. GM food crops) in Africa is as thorny as the savannah acacias according to Roger Kalla who has contributed the following:

Kenyan officials have put off approving the field testing of a genetically modified virus resistant cassava.

Cassava is a staple crop for 600 million people in Africa and Latin America.

A hardy plant, cassava withstands droughts, while providing protein, minerals (iron and calcium) and vitamins (A and C). Cassava originated in tropical America and is now grown in some of the poorest parts of Africa and Asia.

Cassava is a staple food for 70 percent of the population of some poor sub-saharan countries, so deterioration of this crop has had a serious impact on food security in the region.

Famine has already been reported. The major constraint reported seems to be severe cassava mosaic disease. Yield loss of cassava due to virus is valued at $US 2 billion each year in Africa. Currently, various stains of the viruses have sprung up causing a severe form of the disease (Uganda, Western Kenya, Western Tanzania, D R. Congo).

Reduced cassava harvests have dramatically increased the market price of leaves and roots, so that many people can no longer afford what was their main calorie source. This has been further exacerbated by problems with inter-regional food movement because of civil unrest.

Genetically modified (GM) virus resistant cassava plants were being evaluated for yield improvement in Kenya, Nigeria and Malawi. But misgivings in these countries about the political and economical fallout in the European Union (EU) markets has stalled their evaluation.

One of the multi-national organizations that is coordinating global resistance against GM crops is Greenpeace.

Greenpeace is an organization that is usually seen as the caring and protective living embodiment of mother earth but on the issue of the use of biotechnology for increased food safety it is a black thorn in
the side of the African nations and their poverty.

The latest outrageous comment from Doreen Stabinsky, the Greenpeace part time geneticist and part time science advisor on GM crops, reveals Greenpeace’s preoccupation with delivering the message people want to hear.

When asked for a comment on the ethics of denying starving people more food produced with the aid of biotechnology, she reportedly responded “Hunger is not solved by producing more food. We’re the breadbasket of the world, and we have hungry people in the U.S.”

Hunger may not be solved by using modern technologies to produce more food in the US, nor in the European Union, nor Australia, but home grown solutions designed to benefit African subsistence farmers should be given a fair go.

About The Precautionary Principle

By

A new book has been published by the International Policy Network titled Arbitrary and Capricious
with the subtitle The Precautionary Principle in the European Union Courts by Gary Marchant and Kenneth Mossman. It looks like a detailed review of a difficult concept.

The 102 pages can be downloaded here.

I found this on about page 8:

Coincident with its geographical proliferation, the legal significance
of the precautionary principle has also been evolving. From the beginning, there have been confusion and disagreement about whether the precautionary principle should be viewed as a statement of general philosophy, a policy prescription, or a legal decision rule. Some proponents argue that the precautionary principle is not an “algorithm” dictating particular decisions but rather more akin
to the general “legal principle” in criminal law that a defendant is
innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Others claim that the precautionary principle reflects simply a “broad
approach” or a “mere policy guidance” rather than providing a specific decision rule. For example, one proponent wrote that “we
should remember that the precautionary principle is only a principle.
If viewed as a rule or a standard, it is hopelessly vague, doing
nothing to define the policies that should flow from it.”

Other proponents of the precautionary principle argue, however, that it will achieve its purpose only if it is applied as a legally binding rule.

Notwithstanding these conflicting views of the status of the precautionary principle, in every jurisdiction in which it has been
adopted to date, the precautionary principle has evolved from policy
guidance to a binding legal rule.

For example, in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, finalized in January 2000, the precautionary principle, for the first time, was inserted as an operational, binding requirement of an international environmental agreement rather than as a general objective in the preamble of a treaty. Shortly thereafter, in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, concluded in December 2000, the precautionary principle was incorporated into both the treaty preamble and its operational provisions, where it has legal effect on decision making under the treaty.

Some international legal theorists argue that the precautionary principle has “crystallized” into a binding norm of customary international law as a result of its frequent inclusion in international environmental agreements and national regulatory decisions.

Indeed, the European Commission asserts that the precautionary
principle is a “full-fledged and general principle of international
law.” Moreover, courts in several nations have begun applying the
precautionary principle as a legal rule that directs or at least influences the outcome of environmental disputes.

The precautionary principle has thus morphed from soft law into
hard law.

A few courts have expressed reservations about applying the vague precautionary principle as a rule of law. In the words of one Australian court, for example, “The precautionary principle,
while it may be framed appropriately for the purpose of a political
aspiration, its implementation as a legal standard could have the
potential to create interminable forensic argument. Taken literally in
practice it might prove to be unworkable.” Such cautionary reservations, however, have been trampled underfoot by the steady
pressure to exploit fully the precautionary principle once it is “on
the books,” leading to an apparently inevitable metamorphosis from
general policy to legal rule.