Ron Steenblik’s Posts

• Top of the crops

  USDA scientist: Some crop residues may be too valuable for biofuels 12

  Posted 1 year, 3 months ago

  Converting crop residues into cellulosic ethanol sounds to many people like a good idea -- certainly better than using food crops themselves. Yet according to respected USDA soil scientist Ann Kennedy, the stems and leaves left over after crops are harvested may have more value if they are left on the ground, especially in areas receiving less than 25 inches of precipitation annually.

  That includes most of the United States (click on link to see map) west of the 100th meridian, which runs roughly from Bismark, S.D. through Laredo, Texas.

• Corn polls

  New surveys suggest changing views on biofuels 20

  Posted 1 year, 4 months ago

  Biofuel policy has made it to the polls. Yesterday, the National Center for Public Policy Research, a nonprofit, non-partisan educational foundation based in Washington, D.C., released the results of a survey (PDF) conducted at the beginning of this month which claims to have found that most Americans -- "including those in the Farm Belt" -- want Congress to reduce or eliminate the mandated use of corn ethanol.

  In response to the key question, "What do you think Congress should do now?" with respect to the Renewable Fuels Standard (which last December raised the minimum volume of biofuels used in… Read More

• Taking the Pledge

  Five nations agree to think about ending oil subsidies 16

  Posted 1 year, 5 months ago

  The day after markets registered the highest single-day rise in crude oil prices ever, the United States and Asia's four largest economies (Japan, China, India and South Korea), meeting in Aomori, Japan in advance of the G8 Energy Ministers summit, have formed a sort of Petro-holics non-Anonymous club, calling for an end to oil subsidies in their countries.

  Consumer subsidies (subsidized fuel prices), that is, not producer subsidies.

  OK, what they actually agreed upon was "the need" to remove fuel-price subsidies. Eventually.

  According to a report by Agence France-Presse, the five nations announced in a joint statement:

  "We recognize… Read More

• To those who are blasé about expanding the RFS

  Once in place, the RFS will be nigh impossible to eliminate 35

  Posted 1 year, 11 months ago

  Several posts during the past week, and countless ones elsewhere, have asked people to support the Energy Bill making its way through Congress. Some people have no problem with one of its major provisions, which calls for substantially expanding the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) -- the regulation that requires minimum amounts of ethanol, biodiesel, or other biofuels to be incorporated into the volume of transport fuels used each year. Indeed, some would even welcome the prospect.

  Many others do not like the idea, but seem to feel that it is a price worth paying in order to preserve solar investment… Read More

• 'Decision-makers' rank GHG abatement technologies

  Guess which type of energy comes in last in a recent poll 10

  Posted 1 year, 11 months ago

  GlobeScan, a self-styled "global public opinion and stakeholder research" organization based in Toronto, has just published the results of a survey of 1,000 climate "decision-makers and influencers" from across 105 countries, conducted in the two weeks leading up to the Bali Climate Conference (Nov. 22-Dec. 5, 2007).

  According to the firm's website:

  Unlike public opinion polls, this survey focuses on the views of professionals in position to make or influence large decisions in their organizations and society. This focus, together with the survey's large global sample and good balance of respondents across all geographies and sectors, makes this… Read More

All Posts

Ron Steenblik’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  My last post

  As I mentioned on another post, I am disengaging from Gristmill. Over the past week or so I have found myself under attack, even by what I thought were "friendly" commentators, for my positive comments in defense of international trade, the WTO and professionals working in the Research Division of the World Bank. I have been called a pig, compared to a Nazi, and on this string accused, essentially, for being a "faux" environmentalist and a lackey for large corporations.

  I have spent, literally, hours preparing point-by-point responses to broad, unsubstantiated points made by other commentators, including references to the actual text in WTO agreements. Instead of gratitude, I am accused of being evangelical -- a zealot salesman.

  I guess some of you would have preferred me to to polemics with polemics. Would it have made you feel better if I had ranted some slogan instead, would it have confirmed the view you seem to have of me?

  I guess the subtley of specific responses is lost on most readers. I can't recall anywhere in my comments defending exploitation of the environment, claiming that current trade is "free" (if it were, the world would not need a WTO), or championing large corporations.

  Laws are made by humans, and no body of laws is perfect. There are always unintended consequences. But one has to ask which situation would be better: a world of trade with rules, or one without? One in which Brazil and India have as much of a vote as the United States, or one in which only economic and military might counts?

  John Schneider refers to "Mass starvation, wars with corporate bottomline considerations behind them, eco-destruction on massive scale", I suppose implying a link with the WTO. Try living in a world without a forum for easing trade frictions, because that is exactly what existed in the lead-up to the Second World War.

  Starvation? That's really rich. The World Bank issues a report drawing a link between production-related subsidies (i.e., measures antithetical to trade economists) for bofuels and sharply escallating food costs for people in developing countries and instead of discussing how to reform the policies you guys shoot the messanger.

  If you have some specific recommendations on how to make the world's trading system better, I'm all ears. But all I've seen from Moyesii and some others (I appreciate, by contrast, Wiscidea's openness) is broad assertions that, in my opinion, comingle the effects of trade itself, the effects of trade rules, and the march (not always beneficial, I would be the first to admit) of technology. All I was trying to do was correct some misconceptions about the WTO's trade rules.

  Those trade rules, I will observe, have proved to be flexible enough to allow for a pathbreaking draft agreement on disciplining subsidies to fishing -- subsidies that have been an important causal factor in the over-expolitation of the world's fisheries. I gather it would surprise a lot of people here that one of the most influencial voices in that debate has been an environmental NGO, the World Wildlife Fund, working with a collection of nations (including the United States) that style themselves the "Friends of Fish". But the WTO and -- its members and its Secretariat -- are only out to rape the earth, so I doubt many commentators here will believe me.

  That is one of the draft agreements, by the way, that is now in limbo, thanks to the failure of the Doha Round.

  But clearly I am wasting my breath and my time. So, good luck, and thanks for all the fish.

  These are only my personal opinions.

  On Outline for a move to a sustainable agriculture system posted 1 year, 3 months ago 108 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Word

  What I meant to write was "But all any of us who dare say anything positive about international trade GET is shit."

  These are only my personal opinions.

  On Globalization failed, cheap oil is gone, local production is the only way forward posted 1 year, 3 months ago 58 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  OK, bye bye

  I have tried to be fair and objective in my comments, and provide evidence to back up my views. But all any of us who dare say anything positive about international trade is shit.

  You are in the minority opinion here and in the general population of the world. Corporatist ruled monopoly trade is far from free or positive for people or the environment. It is only positive for multinational corporate power.

  So, my opinion (as only an "expert", not an expert on international trade) is minority on Gristmill. I guess that means it is of no value. Majority opinion is all that counts, eh?

  I will conclude with two observations, then I'm outa here.

  First, in almost all the countries practicing autarky, or that have protected particular sectors from external competition, monopolization of (internal) trade is the norm, whether it be in steel production, airline services, cement manufacturing, or automobiles. (Which country's car manufacturers developed hybrid automobiles? Would the USA be better off if it had relied on Detroit to develop that technology?) Even in agriculture, it is rare to find atomistic competition coincident with high trade barriers. In almost all cases either a state-run marketing board or small number of corporate interests control the market.

  In short, to the extent that international trade is dominated by corporatist ruled monopolies (and not all trade is: often the opening of trade increases competition), is it trade or the trade regime that is at fault, or lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws?

  That's all. I think I'm going to get a life and give Gristmill a rest for awhile.

  These are only my personal opinions.

  On Globalization failed, cheap oil is gone, local production is the only way forward posted 1 year, 3 months ago 58 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  John (Amazing Dr. X)

  You make many good comments on Gristmill, but this one is insulting and inane.

  We have a serious problem, corporatists who pretend to be environmentalists.
  They are mutually exclusive states of being. It seems certain individuals, craving the career status that comes from promoting and justifying "free" trade, will never see that.

  The underlying assumption of their world view is that corporate power rules and governments are basically just figureheads for the expression of that power. They labor under the self delusion and mass delusion that this is a self fulfilling prophesy.

  Some of us here are trying to be helpful -- to explain how international institutions work -- and all you do is snipe from the sidelines and attribute nefarious motives.

  Thanks a lot.

  These are only my personal opinions.

  On Outline for a move to a sustainable agriculture system posted 1 year, 3 months ago 108 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Again, Moyesii

  I'll try one more time. But I will observe that you are not providing any evidence to back up your links between trends that you do not like and actions by the WTO. If you want to prove cause and effect, and even more so, motive, you have to provide evidence.

  Responding to your points:

  Regarding the MRLs: every nation has a right to determine its own domestic policies, regardless of their impact on trade. The welfare of a nation's citizens, their health, and the environment should take precedence over expansion of trade, ...

  I agree, and so do the economies that are Members of the WTO. Rules relating to the application of MRLs come under the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. The SPS Agreement does not in any way prevent countries from adopting MRLs or other measures to protect food safety, but it insists that they be science-based, and encourages countries to relate them, where possible, to internationally agreed standards (such as those developed by the Codex Alimentarius Commission).

  The pesticide dispute that I described in earlier comments, by the way, never became a formal dispute at the WTO, and Germany was never asked by the WTO to change its MRL. I mentioned it only to show that countries sometimes set MRLs in ways that are not even-handed and appear to reflect commercial rather than health-related concerns (in that case being relatively more favourable to growers of bell peppers and tomatoes).

  By the way, I should also point out that membership of a country in the WTO is voluntary. It is like a club. By joining the WTO, it can influence the club's rules, but it also agrees to abide by those rules. If it finds that the rules are unfair, it can leave.

  ... which only benefits a few players by relaxing regulations in order to open up borders to unsafe, unsustainable products such as GMOs and irradiated foods, which have been zapped with scary doses of ionic radiation, because shipping live produce around the world contributes to the spread of invasive pests (which doesn't really help sustainable agriculture or the environment in general).

  You are railing here against trends in agriculture generally, not showing a cause and effect link to WTO rules. I imagine that you have the EC -- Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products case in mind, on which I am not competent to comment, other than to say that what was at issue -- as in many WTO disputes -- was not the European Community's right to regulate, but how it applied those regulations.

  What regulations is the WTO "relaxing", and how? And are you suggesting that without the WTO there would be no international trade, no shipping live produce around the world? You mean to sy that all those clipper ships that used to race between the Far East and the United States in the 19th century were just carrying passengers?

  Again, I stress: the WTO is a forum of trading nations established to create common rules for trade. Trade occurred before the WTO came into being and it will exist if the WTO were to be abolished. Yes, its members believe in the progressive lowering of trade barriers, but not at the expense of food safety or the spread of invasive species. They have also, I might add, applied the principle of "special and differential treatment", which effectively means that developing countries are given more time to reduce their tariffs and subsidies (and by lesser percentages) than industrialized economies like the United States and the EU.

  True enough, shipping live produce around the world contributes to the spread of invasive pests. But the spread of exotic species (European hares to Australia, Australian possums to New Zealand, water hyacinths to the United States, etc., etc.) began long before the creation of the GATT and the WTO, and not all of it by any means a result of trade. The SPS Agreement contains language that addresses members' concerns over keeping out foreign pests and diseases. But, again, it asks countries to be transparent in their rules, and fair to trading partners. So, for example, it asks that importers restrict trade only from risky parts of countries, rather than whole countries. See Article 6.

  By relaxing environmental regulations, the WTO has also contributed to the spread of factory farms in developing countries and has increased the risk of a global flu pandemic, which is now considered the greatest threat in the U.K., but has particularly impacted developing countries. Factory farms are a major incubator for bird flu and other superbugs, and the unregulated proliferation coincides with the spread of bird flu, which has decimated traditional backyard poultry farming in countries such as Nigeria, destroying thousands of livelihoods.

  You are asserting the claim that the WTO has "relaxed environmental regulations", particularly in a way that has directly encouraged "the spread of factory farms in developing countries". You seem to be railing against the spread of industrial agriculture and accusing the WTO as an accomplice, yet provide no evidence. Do you blame the spread of industrial agriculture in the United States and Canada on the WTO, too?

  By the way, importing countries acted swiftly to ban imports of poultry from countries in which bird flu was discovered. I don't recall the WTO forcing any of those countries to relax those measures.

  Regarding the WTO judgment on cotton subsidies, my point was that the end result (GMO proliferation) was the intended goal, not an unintended outcome.

  This is a ridiculous, unsubstantiated accusation. I know the people involved in helping the countries that were complainants in this dispute (of which the WTO was only the arbitrator), and their primary motivation was to help developing countries -- countries whose incomes from cotton exports was being reduced by subsidized production in the USA -- to level the playing field.

  Anyway, not all agricultural subsides are bad.

  Which is why the WTO Agreement on Agriculture created the "Green Box" -- a category for subsidies that do not distort trade. A large and growing percentage of subsidies provided by countries now fall into this category, and are not limited by any reduction commitments. These subsidies include government expenditure on R&D, to reward farmers for environmental stewardship, to augment farm incomes (as long as the levels of support are not tied to production), and so forth.

  For example, many sustainable ag advocates are in favor of limited subsidies, such as for specialty crops. So even on that level there is a fundamental, irreconcilable conflict between the WTO free trade agenda and agricultural sustainability.

  Again, you seem to be talking out of your hat. Please look at Annex 2, which enumerates all of the forms of domestic support (i.e., subsidies) that are not subject to reduction commitments under the Agreement on Agriculture before you assert such a claim. Even limited subsidies benefiting specific crops are exempt from reduction commitments if they fall under within the de minimis levels (5% of the Member's total value of production of a basic agricultural product during the relevant year, or 10% in the case of developing countries).

  These are only my personal opinions.

  On Outline for a move to a sustainable agriculture system posted 1 year, 3 months ago 108 Responses