Poison Earth

  Poison Earth

Courtesy an overzealous Green Revolution, Punjab has poison in its water and a cancer epidemic on its hands

CHANDER SUTA DOGRA The Curse Is Spreading

• The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh has conducted a study over two years in five villages along Punjab's major rivulets in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar districts
  
• 88 per cent ground water samples showed alarming levels of mercury, over 50 per cent samples of ground and tap water contaminated by arsenic
  
• Lady's fingers, carrots, gourds, cauliflower and chillies found to have toxic levels of lead, cadmium, mercury; cadmium, arsenic, mercury are known carcinogens; mercury also affects the nervous system
  
• Pesticides beyond permissible limit found in vegetables, fodder, human and bovine milk, as well as blood samples
  
• 65 per cent blood samples showed DNA mutation; there has been a sharp increase in cancer, neurological disorders, liver and kidney diseases, congenital defects, miscarriages
  
• This health crisis has been caused by the overuse of pesticides and the dumping of industrial effluents, which have made soil and water toxic

Though it constitutes 2.5% of the country's area, Punjab accounts for 18% of pesticide used in the country

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Baljeet Kaur of Giana village in Punjab's cotton belt has been battling cancer for the last 10 years. First it was her husband who died of colon cancer, now she has cancer of the oesophagus. Her neighbour Mukhtiar Kaur is being treated for breast cancer. The family had a hand pump at home which provided them water for their daily needs but abandoned it after health officials told them its water was toxic. Now they get raw canal water for drinking and cooking. "Who knows if it is the water which has brought this disease on me?" she says. "All I know is that scores of people in our village are dying of cancer." In neighbouring Jajjal, the word cancer only evokes deja vu. Karnail Singh and his wife Balbir Kaur both have cancer, live in adjoining houses, each with one of their sons. "This village is cursed," says their brother Jarnail Singh.
On death row: Jajjal's Karnail Singh and his wife both have cancer, live in adjoining houses, each with a son
In Ghaunzpur in Ludhiana district, a good 200 km away, Manjit and Gurjit Singh lost both their parents to hepatitis; an uncle is afflicted with the same. The water from the hand pump in the courtyard turns foamy when heated, so they have dug a submersible pump which pumps out water from 300 ft below. Other households in the village cannot afford to do so.

For Punjab's prosperous farming households and lush green fields, the famed Green Revolution is beginning to turn bilious from within. Its gushing tubewells, the cattle heavy with milk, the trolleys laden with vegetables destined for urban markets—all are likely to be contaminated with toxins. The state is sitting on an environmental crisis and few of have any idea of how to tackle it.

Some two years ago, when reports of increased cancer deaths first started coming in from the state's cotton belt, the Chandigarh-based Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) decided to investigate. A preliminary study it conducted found a much higher prevalence of cancer in the Talwandi Sabo block and the presence of heavy metals and pesticides in drinking water in the area. It recommended a comprehensive study of the status of environmental health in Punjab's other cotton-growing areas, the setting up of a cancer registry in the state, and regular monitoring of the drinking water. Of course, intense pressure from the pesticides lobby ensured none of this came to pass and the report was ignored.

This month, the PGIMER's department of community medicine has submitted a comprehensive epidemiological study (see box) in areas along the state's five major rivulets to the State Pollution Control Board. The results are so shocking that the board has put it under wraps and is having second thoughts about releasing it. Says Dr J.S. Thakur, an assistant professor at PGIMER, who conducted the study, "Our two studies show that all of Punjab is toxic and people do not have safe water to drink. Both agricultural and industrial malpractices are to be blamed for this."

The worst affected is the southeastern Malwa region, better known these days as the 'cancer belt'. To counter increasingly resistant pests, farmers here spray their fields with pesticide doses far above those recommended—often cocktailing two or more chemicals. As the former sarpanch of Jajjal, Najar Singh, told Outlook, "Although the recommended dose is about five sprays per season, we sometimes spray our fields 25 to 30 times. Almost every third day!" Punjab, which makes up for just 2.5 per cent of the country's area, accounts for 18 per cent of the pesticides used in the country.

The state's problem is their unregulated use, say experts, with most farmers unaware of how to use or dispose of the empty pesticide cans. So, in the last four decades pesticides have seeped into the underground water aquifers, as also in the state's water bodies. And in the last 10 years, more and more well-off households along the drains have begun setting up submersible pumps to get water from deep aquifers, as water from taps and handpumps is unfit for human use.

Punjab's finance minister Manpreet Badal is a legislator from Muktsar district's Gidderbaha, located in the cancer belt. "In the 50 villages in my constituency," he says, "there'd be a thousand-odd cancer cases. I've lost count of the funerals of cancer victims I've attended in my area since the beginning of this year. It is an epidemic here." A train leaving from Bhatinda to Bikaner has been dubbed 'cancer express' as most patients from here go to Bikaner's cancer hospital for treatment. Even a child in these parts knows what chemotherapy is about. "Our neighbour used to take hot injections before she died last year," says little Kiranjot at Chandbaja village in Faridkot district. "Many others in our village have taken them."


Giana's Baljeet Kaur has cancer of the oesophagus
Dr G.P.I. Singh, who heads the department of community medicine in Ludhiana's Dayanand Medical College, has recently begun studying, along with other private doctors across the state and NGO Kheti Virasat Mission (KVM), the impact of heavy metals and pesticides on reproductive health in Punjab. "One of the things worrying us," he says, "is that the skewed sex ratio in both Punjab and Haryana could also be due to chemical exposure, as the female foetus is more vulnerable. We notice an increase in spontaneous abortions, infertility, distorted menarche and foetuses with neural tube defects." There is also a high incidence of grey hair among children and young adults in this area. Ask for one, and most villages throw up several.

Not just pesticides, but unchecked effluent flow from industries into the rivers and drains too has contaminated underground water in Punjab. At Ghaunzpur, for instance, five paper mills dump their entire effluent unchecked into the Buddha Nullah. However, the state pollution board which is supposed to check industries such as these from polluting water bodies couldn't be bothered. This is evident from the response of the board's chairman, Yogesh Goel, when queried about the PGIMER report."I'm busy right now. You can ask the secretary of the board about it," he told Outlook. Quite predictably, the secretary too made himself unavailable. KVM director Umendra Dutt, who has been most active in raising the issue of cancer deaths in Punjab, feels that agricultural scientists in cahoots with pesticide manufacturing mncs have led to this health crisis. "All these years agricultural scientists have been advocating heavy doses of pesticides without informing farmers of the damage improper usage causes," he says.

Meanwhile, though officials are aware of the problem, the state is yet to evolve a concrete water policy to address the problem. Says J.R. Kundal, Punjab's secretary for water supply and sanitation, "Ideally, there should be an umbrella task force to deal with the problem in its entirety," he says. "Presently, different agencies are conducting overlapping studies which will take us nowhere. I am heading a task force to study arsenic in water, while the state planning board is looking into drinking water and allied issues. Although 90 per cent of the underground water is used for irrigation and just 10 per cent for drinking water, we realise that this 10 per cent is crucial for the health of our people."

With the government unsure of what to do, Manpreet Badal has installed four distribution points supplying Reverse Osmosis water in his constituency. "Till a statewide water supply scheme comes up," says he, "I've taken this interim measure." His people are lucky. Others in the state are condemned to drinking polluted water and suffer from deadly diseases, reaping the poisoned fruit of a Green Revolution gone unchecked.

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In Praise Of The Native Intellectual

Or how to rubbish all those who don't agree with you, get up your nose, yank your goat, or articulate critique and are likely, in any way, to challenge your undisputed supremacy as Pundit of the Postcolonial Nation. A response to Ramachandra Guha

PRIYAMVADA GOPAL

A 'native intellectual', suggested Frantz Fanon, the great freedom fighter from Martinique, is essential to the development of any great nation as it comes into its own after decades of colonization. Fanon, a complex thinker by nature, evolved a whole theory of how intellectuals could and should participate in the life of their country. They had to find ways to engage with ordinary people and their aspirations and to think about the many meanings of freedom, justice and democracy beyond simply replacing white rulers with black or brown ones. Native intellectuals would need, above all, to discard their smug complacency, learn to be self-critical and forge international alliances with like-minded others. (Though from Martinique, he himself worked alongside the Algerian anti-colonial movement).

But these old freedom fighter types, our own Gandhi and Tagore included, really were rather long-winded and needlessly sophisticated. Who can blame them? They missed the cyber age where we do things faster and with a lot less agonizing over details and nuance. Here, in India, we can now produce the New and Authentic National Intellectual (NANI) in double-quick time, futta-fut. Here's how you can become one in Ten Easy Steps:

1. First, position yourself at all times as the Real Indian, the one who stayed behind selflessly to serve nation and countrymen while others have departed for foreign shores. You have remained (or returned) to live the simple life in your old family pile in Alipore or Prithviraj Road or Benson Town.

2. Locate a handy counterfoil, a Ravan to your Ram. These are easy enough to find. Rummage through the heaving NRI hordes coming back to (your) home this December. A couple of likely prototypes immediately present themselves. In practice, they may be polar opposites and sworn enemies, but that should not deter you from handily clubbing them together. So, take a rabid Hindu chauvinist and a secular academic-activist and pop-psychoanalyse both as alienated losers who have lost their way by living away from the motherland. The fact that their politics and views may have been formed during their long years growing up or studying in India is neither here nor there. Where the academic is concerned, long years of published research into Indian history, culture or economics is also irrelevant.

3. This will also enable you to place yourself as the Eminently Reasonable man in the middle between two Extremes. The truth, of course, is geographically certified, to lie 'in-between.' Anyone who thinks that this position (like Tony Blair's Third Way) is somewhat facile and easily arrived at is an extremist to begin with anyway.

4. A NANI, while selfless, also needs to eat. Fear not, you do not actually need to lecture at an Indian college or work for the Indian civil services to earn your daily bread. That would needlessly fetter your creativity. Write popular books which will be widely sold in the free and individual West where they love their 'native' writers anyway. (If one of these books can praise NRFs or Non-Resident Firangs who devote their lives to India and her 'tribes,' so much the better). The royalties will keep you in Fab India silk kurtas for the rest of your life. Please note that this is different from and vastly morally superior to actually living in one of these grey northern lands and getting your grubby monthly paycheck (from which income tax is actually deducted) there.

5. If you need to do research for your books in well-resourced libraries, you can easily get lucrative visiting fellowships or short-term teaching contracts at Cambridge or Harvard or Yale. (After all, you cannot really be expected to produce your words of wisdom sitting at the decaying National Library or even swish Teen Murti alone).This way, you can retain the glow of rectitude that being a Resident Indian gives you. Jet-setting and networking with the Global Great and the Good is, in any case, a form of national service.

6. Relatedly, don't worry too much if you yourself have undertaken your undergraduate or graduate study at one of these prestigious foreign institutions or even if you have taught there for a while. But please, do take due care to underplay this where you can or it may seriously affect your ability to be perceived as a real NANI. You need to be able to roundly denounce the Indian academics who live and teach abroad without any hint of compromise on your end. You, after all, are sweating it out on the coalface at the IIC or Habitat Centre while they are swanning around in New Haven or Warwick. These suckers actually teach for a living.

7. Now, while you dutifully condemn religious chauvinists (as all refined people must, dear boy) you must not lose sight of your real bete noire. This is what you term the 'Non-Resident Political Radical' (NRPR) -- professionals and academics based abroad (there being, of course, no political radicals or 'desi leftists' in India itself). This type of academic don is the real threat to national well-being and security. In terms of the calendar year, they may spend just as much time in India as you do abroad, but they must be reminded at every possible turn that they, unlike you, are Inauthentic and Deluded. So write vitriolic denunciations of Indian academics abroad at every available opportunity, including in academic books published abroad. Remember, you cannot do this too often.

8. Remind everyone that you yourself have your fingers on the Pulse of the Masses. (If challenged, point out that you have servants which even the most well-paid of these NRI types don't, certainly not the dons). The Masses, you can assure us unequivocally (because, after all, you talk to your bai, driver and mali) are unanimously in favour of every unfettered aspect of globalization. Oh, yes, even when it means loss of land or livelihood, polluted water supplies or ill-treatment in a Gap supply-chain sweatshop. Small price to pay for India Shining after all. And remember, Non-Resident Capital is far superior to Non-Resident Indians unless the latter happen to be providing the former. These useless NR-academics don't have two pennies to invest into a Bangalore start-up anyway.

9. If Indian academics who happen to be based abroad raise questions about the possible downsides of unchecked globalization, you can toss them into the dustbin of history in one fell swoop. Again, conflating different historical and political contexts is a handy tool--Cuba, China, Burma, Kazakhstan, the Congo--all are socialist 'autarkic autocracies' which these deluded dons want to transform our beloved nation into. (You can take the opportunity to reveal the hitherto little-known fact that Burmese generals are apparently seeking to convert their country into a socialist utopia, along with the big oil companies who are, of course, well-known supporters of socialism). Like McCarthy did for the United States, simply imply that all dissent is part of a vast anti-Indian left-wing conspiracy. If the (non-existent) desi leftist writer or intellectual based in India happens to also dare to voice critique, write a vicious denunciatory screed and dispatch them into obscurity forthwith.

10. Finally, and this is important so that you too not become alienated like them, end your perorations on a constructive note. This can be done with a soothing paean to all 'humans' to which category the 'right sort' of NRI are deemed to belong.Humans are people who agree with you. They don't get up your nose, yank your goat, or articulate critique. Above all, they are unlikely, in any way, to challenge your undisputed supremacy as Pundit of the Postcolonial Nation.

Priyamvada 'Main Hoon Don' Gopal is a suspected NRPR who has just tumbled off the plane from Cambridge/London at Bangalore Airport

Left for dead by New Labour, liberal Britain must urgently fight back

Blair and his cult have wrecked the very beliefs millions thought they were voting for. The time for direct action is now

John Pilger
Tuesday December 18, 2007
The Guardian

The former Murdoch retainer Andrew Neil has described James Murdoch, the heir apparent, as a "social liberal". What strikes me is his casual use of "liberal" for the new ruler of an empire devoted to the promotion of war, conquest and human division. Neil's view is not unusual. In the murdochracy that Britain has largely become, once noble terms such as democracy, reform, even freedom itself, have long been emptied of their meaning. In the years leading to Tony Blair's election, liberal commentators vied in their Tonier-than-thou obeisance to such a paragon of "reborn liberalism". In these pages in 1995, Henry Porter celebrated an almost mystical politician who "presents himself as a harmoniser for all the opposing interests in British life, a conciliator of class differences and tribal antipathies, a synthesiser of opposing beliefs". Blair was, of course, the diametric opposite.

As events have demonstrated, Blair and the cult of New Labour have destroyed the very liberalism millions of Britons thought they were voting for. This truth is like a taboo and was missing almost entirely from last week's Guardian debate about civil liberties. Gone is the bourgeoisie that in good times would extend a few rungs of the ladder to those below. From Blair's pseudo-moralising assault on single parents a decade ago to Peter Hain's recent attacks on the disabled, the "project" has completed the work of Thatcher and all but abolished the premises of tolerance and decency, however amorphous, on which much of British public life was based. The trade-off has been mostly superficial "social liberalism" and the highest personal indebtedness on earth. In 2007, reported the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the United Kingdom faced the highest levels of inequality for 40 years, with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer and more and more segregated from society. The International Monetary Fund has designated Britain a tax haven, and corruption and fraud in British business are almost twice the global average, while Unicef reports that British children are the most neglected and unhappiest in the "rich" world.

Abroad, behind a facade of liberal concern for the world's "disadvantaged", such as waffle about millennium goals and anti-poverty stunts with the likes of Google and Vodafone, the Brown government, together with its EU partners, is demanding vicious and punitive free-trade agreements that will devastate the economies of scores of impoverished African, Caribbean and Pacific nations. In Iraq, the blood-letting of a "liberal intervention" may well have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, while the British occupiers have made no real attempt to help the victims of their lawlessness. And putting out more flags will not cover the shame. "The mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30% compared to the Saddam Hussein era," says Dr Haydar Salah, a paediatrician at Basra children's hospital. In January nearly 100 leading British doctors wrote to Hilary Benn, then international development secretary, describing how children were dying because Britain had not fulfilled its obligations under UN security resolution 1483. He refused to see them.

Even if a contortion of intellect and morality allows the interventionists to justify these actions, the same cannot be said for liberties eroded at home. These are too much part of the myth that individual freedom was handed down by eminent liberal gentlemen instead of being fought for at the bottom. Yet rights of habeas corpus, of free speech and assembly, and dissent and tolerance, are slipping away, undefended. Whole British communities now live in fear of the police. The British are distinguished as one of the most spied upon people in the world. A grey surveillance van with satellite tracking sits outside my local Sainsbury's. On the pop radio station Kiss 100, the security service MI5 advertises for ordinary people to spy on each other. These are normal now, along with the tracking of our intimate lives and a system of secretive justice that imposes 18-hour curfews on people who have not been charged with any crime and are denied the "evidence". Hundreds of terrified Iraqi refugees are sent back to the infinite dangers of the country "we" have destroyed. Meanwhile, the cause of any real civil threat to Britons has been identified and confirmed repeatedly by the intelligence services. It is "our" continuing military presence in other people's countries and collusion with a Washington cabal described by the late Norman Mailer as "pre-fascist". When famous liberal columnists wring their hands about the domestic consequences, let them look to their own early support for such epic faraway crimes.

In broadcasting, a prime source of liberalism and most of our information, the unthinkable has been normalised. The murderous chaos in Iraq is merely internecine. Indeed, Bush's "surge" is "working". The holocaust there has nothing to do with "us". There are honourable exceptions, of course, as there are in those great liberal storehouses of knowledge, Britain's universities; but they, too, are normalised and left to natter about "failed states" and "crisis management" - when the cause of the crisis is on their doorstep. As Terry Eagleton has pointed out, for the first time in two centuries almost no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist is prepared to question the foundations of western actions, let alone interrupt, as DJ Taylor once put it, all those "demure ironies and mannered perceptions, their focus on the gyrations of a bunch of emotional poseurs ... to the reader infinitely reassuring ... and infinitely useless". Harold Pinter and Ronan Bennett are exceptions.

Britain is now a centralised single-ideology state, as secure in the grip of a superpower as any former eastern bloc country. The Whitehall executive has prerogative powers as effective as politburo decrees. Unlike Venezuela, critical issues such as the EU constitution or treaty are denied a referendum, regardless of Blair's "solemn pledge". Thanks largely to a parliament in which a majority of the members cannot bring themselves to denounce the crime in Iraq or even vote for an inquiry, New Labour has added to the statutes a record 3,000 criminal offences: an apparatus of control that undermines the Human Rights Act. In 1977, at the height of the cold war, I interviewed the Charter 77 dissidents in Czechoslovakia. They warned that complacency and silence could destroy liberty and democracy as effectively as tanks. "We're actually better off than you in the west," said a writer, measuring his irony. "Unlike you, we have no illusions."

For those people who still celebrate the virtues and triumphs of liberalism - anti-slavery, women's suffrage, the defence of individual conscience and the right to express it and act upon it - the time for direct action is now. It is time to support those of courage who defy rotten laws to read out in Parliament Square the names of the current, mounting, war dead, and those who identify their government's complicity in "rendition" and its torture, and those who have followed the paper and blood trail of Britain's piratical arms companies. It is time to support the NHS workers who up and down the country are trying to alert us to the destruction of a Labour government's greatest achievement. The list of people stirring is reassuring. The awakening of the rest of us is urgent.

The art of going green lies in hiding the cost

Irwin Stelzer

“COLOUR THEM GREEN,” warbled Barbra Streisand. That was in 1963, and she was singing about her envious eyes. But flash forward to today and those words would equally apply to the myriad players in the let’s-make-environmental-and-energy-policy game.

We are all green now. Al Gore took time off the speech circuit to collect a Nobel Prize for persuading the world that global warming threatens our very existence. Arnold Schwarzenegger, not content with painting California green, has formed an alliance with Tony Blair to press Europe’s politicians to do the same, and they have responded by seeking ways of forcing car makers and airlines to cut their emissions. Ken Livingstone has persuaded leading companies to sign up to a “Green 500” group that will publish its progress in reducing carbon emissions.

There’s more, but you get the idea: the green wave is rolling, and has drowned those who doubt whether the Earth is really warming, and question the role of human activity in any warming.

The physical science question having been resolved to the satisfaction of the greens, the question now becomes just what to do. Here we find strange bedfellows: oil producers and environmentalists.

The Opec oil cartel, which recently met in Abu Dhabi, and the 15,000 – or is it 20,000 – ministers, advocacy groups, journalists and suntan-hunting politicians meeting in Bali might not know it, but they have a common goal: high oil prices. The oil producers want to keep prices high so that the huge shift in wealth from consuming countries to their sovereign wealth funds continues.

The greens favour high oil prices because consumers use less of the stuff when it costs more, and because high prices for oil make other forms of energy more competitive. Nuclear power, solar energy, wind power or any of the other substitutes for fossil fuels can become more economically viable only if oil prices stay about where they are – and politicians stump up some generous subsidies, sceptics would add.

Meanwhile, the hunt for the proverbial free lunch is on. The most efficient way to cut the use of fossil fuels is to make them more expensive by taxing them, or the emissions they create. But politicians are as unenthusiastic about transparency in the cost of cleaning up the environment as they are about increasing the transparency of the funding of political parties. So most proposals to cut carbon emissions are built around a single proposition: hide their cost from voters.

Motor vehicles always come in for special attention. Some would require car companies to increase the fuel efficiency of their fleets, but fail to mention that the cost will be reflected in the price of cars and the higher death toll associated with lighter vehicles. Others mandate greater use of ethanol, but do not mention that current mandates have already driven up the price of corn and wheat, and of meat and poultry by making animal feed more expensive. Consumers of electricity will also pay for cooling the world when utilities are required to obtain more of their electricity from expensive renewable sources and nuclear power. And new taxes on oil producers will certainly drive up the price of petrol and heating oil.

Even the emerging favourite in the United States and Europe, a cap on emissions followed by a trading of permits, is a hide-the-cost device: costs of compliance will be passed on as higher prices. So the blame will go to car makers, supermarkets, electricity utilities, and oil companies, the applause to politicians. All so politicians can avoid the transparent device of a tax on carbon or carbon emissions.

This brings us back to Bali, where the negotiators had two main tasks. The first was to formulate an agenda that keeps America in the emissions-reduction game, which means persuading a Senate that was prepared to reject Kyoto by unanimous vote that the greening of America will not stifle economic growth. The second was to attract the developing countries, most notably China and India, into the game. Whether the agreed “road map” will achieve those goals, or prove as useless as the one designed to bring peace to Israel, remains to be seen.

That’s because so-called clean sources of energy have their own problems. A source high up in Britain’s nuclear industry tells me that there will be no new nukes unless the regulators agree on a uniform licensing standard, curb litigation, and cut construction delays. This is no more likely than a politically acceptable solution to the nuclear waste disposal problem.

Nor will renewables provide a free lunch. Offshore wind power, the poster-boy du jour of British policymakers and Greenpeace, “is more expensive than gas-fired”, notes Alan Moore, managing director of National Wind Power. And we have yet to see what will happen when objectors raise questions about the impact of specific wind farms on birds, wildlife and views.

Meanwhile, lurking in the background is the environmentalists’ bête noire, coal. Britain has approved ten new opencast coal mines, and China is building new coal-fired power stations this year with a capacity exceeding that of the entire UK electricity grid. That will make China the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and more than offset any reductions the developing nations manage. And in America some 45 new coal-fired power plants are under construction or have obtained planning permission.

So it’s going to be a long road from Bali to a meaningful agreement to reduce emissions. Followers of the new road map will have to pass through Washington, Beijing and New Delhi, places that have not yet been coloured a deep shade of green.

Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser and director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute.

The environmental debate has to be rescued from the flagellants who would cut growth

Bruce Anderson:

Like all fanatical cults, they have their Devil, in the US, and their rituals, in recycling plastic bags, et al
Published: 17 December 2007

Last week, we saw some of the people who put "mental" into environmentalism. Important topics were discussed in Bali. That is not necessarily as absurd as it sounds. But it rapidly became so. Who popped up? A crying Dutchman in a flower-power shirt. The Flying Dutchman had better tunes.

Yet it could be dangerous to be distracted by laughing at the lunatics, who must not be allowed to obscure an important truth. At the core of environmentalism there is a common-sense proposition: man-made climate change. Climate change has occurred throughout the earth's history.

The causal link between carbon emissions and global warming is only a hypothesis. But as Karl Popper argued, we approach scientific truth through hypotheses, discarding them when they are proven wrong. Far from being proven wrong, carbon-burning climate change sounds plausible. You do not have to be a tree-hugging, tofu-eating America hater – or even a lachrymose Ivo de Boer – to recognise the risk that a huge increase in carbon emissions might destabilise the earth's atmosphere.

Sir Nicholas Stern's report does not read as if the typescript was tear-stained. It is a coolly argued document, proposing sensible measures. Nick Stern does not think that the human race ought to live in long houses eating roots and berries. He does not even believe that we need to renounce cars, supermarkets or air travel. He merely proposes sensible readjustments and this raises the question of the balance of proof.

Even if you do not accept that carbon has been proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, there are good grounds for siding with Sir Nicholas. Suppose he is wrong. In that case, there would have been unnecessarily early expenditure in order to find substitutes for carbon fuels. Yet, there would be gains. Fossil fuels not only tend to be located in geopolitically inconvenient regions; one day, they must run out.

So the Stern measures would not be that wasteful. But suppose he is right. If nothing is done over the next few years, the catch-up costs could be enormous – and insufficient to avert instability and perhaps war. Just because some of the silliest people on earth are proclaiming that there is a mortal threat to the planet, we cannot assume that they are mistaken.

Nor need we share their pessimism about Bali. Progress was made. Even if there are no figures for reductions, there is a framework which includes the US, China and India. That offers a basis for hope – as long as the next phase of the emissions' debate is sufficiently radical.

There were always two problems with Kyoto. It was far too influenced by the Greenpeace-style excesses of mid-90s environmentalism and it did not include America. At that stage, the anti-nuclear power movement was at its most powerful in both the US and Europe. Since then it has lost ground, largely because governments have had to think through the consequences of reducing carbon emissions and the real-world alternatives to fossil fuels.

In those days, however, a major US nuclear power programme would have been impossible. As a result, there was the worst possible stalemate. The Green Movement, though incapable of persuading Americans to consume less energy, did succeed in cutting off new energy sources, whether nuclear plants or offshore oil drilling.

America should not be criticised for failing to sign Kyoto. Someone ought to remind Al Gore there was never any question of it doing so. Anyone who doubts this should remember that, while Bill Clinton was president and Al Gore vice-president, the US Senate rejected Kyoto by 95 votes to nil. This happened because American legislators who agreed on little else did come together on one point. The Kyoto limits were incompatible with economic growth.

That is where the post-Bali negotiators must do better. What is needed is a fundamental change of emphasis. Instead of focusing on carbon reductions, much more attention should be given to the increased use of clean energy. Over the next dozen years, the Indian and Chinese economies might well double in size. Nothing ever seems to stop the US economy from growing. Europe desperately needs higher growth rates. So does Japan; so, above all, does the poor world.

Growth depends on energy. It might be possible to use emotional blackmail to persuade some Western countries to cut their growth rates. That will not work in India and China. Whatever Mr Gore now says, it is unlikely to work in the US and it ought not to work in the poor world.

Higher energy consumption is vitally important and there are only two ways of achieving it: fossil fuels or nuclear power. Although carbon capture and other technologies to ensure a cleaner burn could make it possible to increase fossil fuel use without grave consequences, there is only one answer to the problem of clean energy. Everyone who cares about the environment should agitate in favour of a greatly increased global nuclear power programme.

We can be fairly sure that this is not going to happen and the blame lies with the enviro-"mentals". They are not pursuing disinterested science, in the spirit of the Stern report. Their environmentalism is a religion. Like all fanatical cults, it is hostile to science and to reason. It has its Devil: the US, abetted by the Western consumer. It has its rituals: recycling plastic bags, etc. It offers endless excuses for self-flagellation, such as possessing plastic bags in the first place. It even has its own temples.

It could be argued that the British wind-turbines are the most wasteful public works programme since the Pyramids. But there is a difference. The Pyramids are objects of wonder, grandeur and beauty. In future, the turbines will, no doubt, be objects of wonder. People will wonder why our generation was so daft to build them when they require large subsidies for an uncertain output while despoiling large tracts of the British landscape.

There is no harm in the occasional domestic wind turbine. But anyone who believes that such turbines could be the answer to Britain's energy needs has either failed to understand the need for energy or is indifferent to the consequences of energy shortage.

The environmental debate has to be rescued from flagellants. It is perfectly possible for the world to go on enjoying a rising standard of living while reducing carbon emissions. If the problem is approached in that spirit, there is no reason why the Americans, Chinese and Indians should refuse to co-operate.

So there are grounds for believing that the Bali discussions could prove fruitful. The next meeting might achieve more, as long as one precondition is met. There must be no blubbing Dutchmen wearing two floral shirts, one on his upper body, the other between his ears.

We've been suckered again by the US. So far the Bali deal is worse than Kyoto

America will keep on wrecking climate talks as long as those with vested interests in oil and gas fund its political system

George Monbiot
Monday December 17, 2007
The Guardian

'After 11 days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could even lead to emission increases. The highly compromised political deal is largely attributable to the position of the United States, which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all-night session."

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was published on December 11 - I mean to say, December 11 1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto protocol. George Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore.

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore's team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then the Americans did something worse: they destroyed the whole agreement.

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy "hot air" from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union countries would pass well below the bar. Gore's scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren't producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Entrepreneurs in India and China have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up.

The result of this sabotage is that the market for low-carbon technologies has remained moribund. Without an assured high value for carbon cuts, without any certainty that government policies will be sustained, companies have continued to invest in the safe commercial prospects offered by fossil fuels rather than gamble on a market without an obvious floor.

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore also guaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we don't. When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify the Kyoto protocol, the world cursed and stamped its foot. But his intransigence affected only the US. Gore's team ruined it for everyone.

The destructive power of the American delegation is not the only thing that hasn't changed. After the Kyoto protocol was agreed, the then British environment secretary, John Prescott, announced: "This is a truly historic deal which will help curb the problems of climate change. For the first time it commits developed countries to make legally binding cuts in their emissions." Ten years later, the current environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that "this is an historic breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever, all the world's nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous climate change." Do these people have a chip inserted?

In both cases, the US demanded terms that appeared impossible for the other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore's proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. American negotiators have pulled the same trick twice, and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Gore's trading scams, the clean development mechanism. Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

Although Gore does a better job of governing now he is out of office, he was no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful protocol, but American politics had made it impossible. In July 1997, the Senate had voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones. Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The Clinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding commitments for the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions trading. But even when he succeeded, he announced that "we will not submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate". Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the US act this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to two great corrupting forces. I have written before about the role of the corporate media - particularly in the US - in downplaying the threat of climate change and demonising anyone who tries to address it. I won't bore you with it again, except to remark that at 3pm eastern standard time on Saturday, there were 20 news items on the front page of the Fox News website. The climate deal came 20th, after "Bikini-wearing stewardesses sell calendar for charity" and "Florida store sells 'Santa Hates You' T-shirt".

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaign finance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because its members are bought and bound by the companies that stand to lose. When you study the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are struck by two things.

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector - mostly coal, oil, gas, logging and agribusiness - has given $418m to federal politicians in the US. Transport companies have given $355m. The other is the width: the undiscriminating nature of this munificence. The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on Bush, but they also gave Gore $142,000, while transport companies gave him $347,000. The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.

So don't believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president to sort it out. This is a much bigger problem than George Bush. Yes, he is viscerally opposed to tackling climate change. But viscera don't have much to do with it. Until the American people confront their political funding system, their politicians will keep speaking from the pocket, not the gut.

£1,000 bond planned for visits by overseas relatives

· Sponsor families could be subject to sanctions
· Tighter immigration rules would cut tourist visas
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Monday December 17, 2007
Guardian
Families who sponsor visits by overseas relatives to Britain will first have to pay a bond, expected to be £1,000, under new immigration proposals out this week.The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, is also to outline plans to cut the duration of tourist visas from six months to three months and make the visa regime for business travellers to Britain more flexible.
Previous attempts to introduce a bond for visitor visas have foundered in the face of fierce criticism that visa applications should be decided on their merits rather the size of people's wallets.
The Home Office consultation paper to be published tomorrow forms the final part of the government's plans to reform the framework of the immigration system, which has been in operation since 1971. The main part of the overhaul is the introduction of an Australian-style points based immigration system in April.
"Over the next 12 months we will see the biggest shake-up in its history," said Byrne. "The final front, I believe, is foreign visitor routes where change is needed."
The plans to streamline the system of allowing foreign visitors into Britain from outside the EU were first announced last March as part of a "borders and visas" strategy. Only four categories of visa were proposed: tourist, business, student and sponsored family visits. So far only the student visas category has come into force, which happened last September.
The March proposals said the sponsored family route will require UK residents to vouch for their family member at the start of the application process and to maintain and house their visitor and fund any of his or her non-emergency medical care. These proposals also suggested that if the visitor broke the terms of their visa, by overstaying or working illegally, the sponsor could be held responsible and be subject to sanctions.
Now Byrne has made clear he would like to go further and revive the idea of a bond, which would be refundable only if the visitor returned home on time. Ministers also want to ensure that only those who are a close family relative and have full settlement rights in Britain can sponsor overseas visitors.
A Home Office spokesman said yesterday the consultation paper will raise the idea of a bond but not mention an actual amount.
The idea was first raised in 2000 when the then home secretary, Jack Straw, proposed a £3,000 visitor bond. But it was quickly abandoned after the Commission for Racial Equality said the bond was "clearly discriminatory" and unfairly targeted the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities.
Tomorrow's document will propose changes to tourist and business visas. In March, the Home Office proposed that the duration of tourist visas be reduced from six months to three as this reflected the needs of the vast majority of those who visited Britain.
Business travellers are to be offered a more flexible system with simple short-term visas combined with expedited clearance processes, such as Business Express, for regular "trusted" travellers.
The development of more specialised or time-limited visas, which could include an Olympics visa to help support the promotion of 2012, will also be explored.

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