Related Links:

The localization of agriculture

EPA punts on raising ethanol “blend wall”

Do diesel-based farmers dream of electric tractors?

Related Links:

You don’t have to be big to go green

The localization of agriculture

Jonathan Safran Foer on his book “Eating Animals”

Related Links:

The localization of agriculture

EPA punts on raising ethanol “blend wall”

Do diesel-based farmers dream of electric tractors?

Related Links:

Annie Leonard misses the mark in her new video, “The Story of Cap-and-Trade”

Learning how to count to 350

It’s Getting Ha! in Here: Maria Bamford

Related Links:

The localization of agriculture

EPA punts on raising ethanol “blend wall”

Do diesel-based farmers dream of electric tractors?

Related Links:

The localization of agriculture

EPA punts on raising ethanol “blend wall”

Do diesel-based farmers dream of electric tractors?

The United States and European Union have proposed that the 151 members of the World Trade Organization agree to slash tariffs on at least 43 "green" goods -- solar panels, wind turbines, and the like -- to boost their global use. A recent World Bank study suggested that removing such barriers to trade of clean-energy technologies could increase trade by up to 14 percent annually.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Fair, ambitious & binding: Essentials for a successful climate deal

City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

WTO says E.U. illegally blocked genetically modified crops

After years of striving to pry Europe open to biotech crops, Washington scored a crucial victory yesterday: A World Trade Organization panel found that the European Union had illegally blocked imports of genetically modified crops, and that several E.U. nations had no legal right to impose their own bans. Although the E.U. has licensed limited GM crop imports recently, the Bush administration says the issue now is clearing a decade's backlog of trade applications -- and dispelling the chilling effect E.U. resistance has had on sales worldwide. European consumer and eco-advocacy groups say the ruling is an attack on the rights of E.U. nations to decide what kinds of foods they will approve. A coalition of 170 European regions and 4,500 smaller areas has vowed to be gene-mod free, and the foods remain extremely unpopular with European consumers. The E.U. may appeal -- or could opt to accept penalties instead of complying with the ruling.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

International Battle Over GM Food Continues

In other genetic modification news, skirmishes over the safety and labeling of GM foods are erupting this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as delegates from around the world convene to discuss the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The U.N. accord, which went into force last September, governs cross-border trade in GM foods, with strict requirements on shipment labeling and legal liability. The U.S., by far the world's largest producer of GM crops, has refused to sign the protocol and has appealed to the World Trade Organization to take action against European countries with extremely restrictive import controls on GM food. U.S. intransigence on labeling was among the targets of a report from Friends of the Earth, which claimed that after 10 years, GM food has not proven safer or cheaper than ordinary crops and has not solved hunger problems even in countries where it is common. Meanwhile, GM opponents were dismayed at the announcement on Monday that China will allow imports of GM crops.

Related Links:

Prelude to COP15: Climate justice actions sweep the U.S. before Copenhagen talks

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

All but eclipsed by the somber anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety will become international law today with little fanfare. Nonetheless, its entry into force could mark the beginning of a new era in international trade -- with potentially sweeping consequences for the environment.

Fields of grain -- GMO barley,
to be precise.

Photo: USDA.

The protocol is the first international convention to regulate trade in living modified organisms (LMOs), a subset of the more widely known (and in some circles widely reviled) category of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It spans 30 pages of definitions, provisions, procedures, agreements, and arrangements, but the most important piece of it is less than a sentence long: an easily overlooked reference, in the preamble, to "Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development" -- a.k.a. the Precautionary Principle.

The Rio Declaration was crafted in the eponymous Brazilian city during the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit. In Principle 15, the international community addresses the perennial problem of how to regulate to protect the environment in the face of massive scientific uncertainty about the causes and consequences of ecological problems. "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation," the document proclaims. In other words, better safe than sorry.

Whether or not GMOs pose "threats of serious or irreversible damage" is a question that has polarized the global community. Nations that are net importers of GMOs are increasingly trying to regulate the flood of imports destined for their farmers' fields and their supermarkets' shelves; net exporters of GMOs are crying foul. The debate has reached the chambers of the World Trade Organization, where the U.S. -- which is not a signatory to the Cartagena Protocol -- has brought a suit against the European Union for imposing labeling requirements on genetically altered foods and a moratorium on new genetically modified crops, calling the E.U.'s regulations protectionism in disguise.

Bigwigs met in Montreal in 2000 to
finalize the Cartagena Protocol.

Photo: IISD.

The Cartagena Protocol bolsters the E.U.'s position, because its invocation of the Precautionary Principle affirms the right of nations to regulate biotech imports -- such as GMOs -- whose environmental and human health risks remain unknown. "This [protocol] is a fundamental step towards better global governance in the GMO field, which is badly needed to maximize the benefits deriving from biotechnology and minimize the risks for the environment and human health," says Nicola Notaro, an official in the Development and Global Biodiversity Unit of the European Commission.

But at the WTO, the rules are different. Under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Regulations that govern trade in food, imports are considered innocent until proven guilty. "Members shall ensure that any sanitary or phytosanitary measure is applied only to the extent necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health, is based on scientific principles and is not maintained without sufficient scientific evidence," the SPS rules state.

In other words, under the WTO rules, "the burden of proof [is] on the country that wants to have higher standards," says Kristin Dawkins, vice president for international programs at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minnesota. "Under the Cartagena Protocol, the Precautionary Principle basically reverses those things."

It remains to be seen whether the newly inaugurated Cartagena Protocol will come into open conflict with the WTO's existing regulations. But one thing seems certain: Proponents of genetically modified food, led by the U.S. and Canada, will not give up the golden age of unregulated biotech trade without a fight.

How intense of a fight? Well, consider the negotiations that led up to the adoption of the Cartagena Protocol in 2000, which were themselves long and contentious. Since the U.S. did not ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity (the treaty that underlies the Cartagena Protocol), it was not an official party to the development of the protocol. As a trading partner of many countries that did sign on to the protocol, however, the U.S. maintained a keen interest in the proceedings.

Trade to order.

Photo: NOAA.

"If you were to encapsulate this from a U.S. government point of view, we hope that the debate and discussion are based on scientific evidence, rather than hearsay and emotion," says a senior official with the Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Science in the U.S. State Department. "Our interests have focused around trying to ensure that when the protocol goes into force, it will not unnecessarily disrupt trade."

Beth Burrows, founder and director of the Edmonds Institute, a small environment and technology think tank that works to promote more scientific study of the health risks of GMOs, has a different view. "I don't know that the U.S. has a cogent policy, except to export its own products," she says. "The U.S. brought quite a large delegation and played quite the bully ... throughout the negotiations. It's like the old joke -- what does a 900-pound gorilla eat? Anything it wants."

At the Cartagena negotiations, the U.S. and the other major GMO exporters (Canada, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and Uruguay) were known as the "Miami Group," after the location of their first meeting to develop a unified position. Led by the U.S., the group attempted to exclude as many GMOs as possible from regulation, says Dawkins of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. "There was a while when people referred to this as the 'Animal Vaccine Protocol,' because every other type of GMO or LMO was up for exclusion in the U.S. proposal," she says.

Bananarama: Charles Arntzen
with his vaccine-bearing fruit.

Photo: Cornell University.

In a coup for processed-food exporters, the scope of the treaty was eventually narrowed from all GMOs to only LMOs -- bioengineered organisms with viable DNA. The shift in wording excludes most processed foods from the treaty, treating a shipment of corn as an LMO subject to regulation, but exempting cereal made from the same kernels. In another notable exclusion, the protocol does not apply to pharmaceuticals, on the theory that drugs for human consumption are already regulated by other international treaties. However, in the few years since the protocol was finalized, another seemingly science fiction-esque development has edged nearer to becoming fact: crops bioengineered to produce drugs, such as the bananas developed by Cornell scientist Charles Arntzen that contain an edible vaccine for Hepatitis B.

Whether such biopharmaceuticals will be regulated under the protocol remains to be seen, says Dawkins: "That was still far enough into the future that it wasn't addressed directly. It's another one of those gray areas that the lawyers can have fun with."

Although Cartagena becomes international law as of today, many questions remain about its enactment and enforcement.

"On Sept. 11, there are two clocks that start ticking, very important ones," says Dawkins. "In two years, they're supposed to come up with detailed regulations on labeling of shipments, which is going to be very hot. And in four years, they're going to start dealing with the liability issue on an international level."

The "liability issue" -- who pays when biotech experiments go awry -- is perhaps the thorniest legal problem in the emerging debate over the regulation of GMOs. Over the next four years, the protocol's signers will work to decide how to hold GMO manufacturers accountable if their products cause negative environmental, socioeconomic, or human health impacts. This may prove no small feat, particularly as most GMO manufacturers are based in countries that have not signed the protocol. (Cartagena applies to trade between signers and non-signers, but enforcement will likely prove difficult.)

A hard grain is gonna fall.

Photo: USDA.

In the early days of genetically modified crops, biotech companies assured the public that buffer zones around crop fields would prevent GMO crops from escaping into the environment. But for the major GMO crops -- corn, soybeans, canola, and cotton -- it is proving increasingly difficult to segregate bioengineered varieties from ordinary crops. Genetically engineered genes have shown up in cornfields in remote mountain regions of Mexico, where GM corn has been banned since 1998. In 2000, bioengineered Starlink corn, banned for human consumption because it contained a suspected allergen, found its way into the food stream and prompted a massive recall of supermarket tortilla shells. Canada has already given up on all efforts to grow GMO-free canola because of widespread contamination. Faced with evidence that GMO crops are essentially uncontainable, biotech producers now claim that the escape of bioengineered genes is nothing to worry about.

Tell that to Percy Schmeiser, the Saskatchewan canola farmer who has become something of an international celebrity for standing up to biotech giant Monsanto. Schmeiser's troubles began when a few bioengineered Monsanto plants showed up in his canola field -- according to Schmeiser, the result of GMO pollen drifting from a nearby field. In 1998, acting on a tip from a toll-free, anonymous "snitch line," Monsanto discovered the plants and sued Schmeiser for patent infringement. Schmeiser promptly slapped Monsanto with a $7.3 million countersuit, claiming that the company had genetically polluted his crops.

Monsanto won the first round. In 2002, a Canadian federal judge ordered Schmeiser to pay $125,000, ruling that he had violated Monsanto's patent even if the company's plants had spread into his fields accidentally. Schmeiser has appealed the case all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court, where it will be heard early next year.

Cases like Schmeiser's reveal the limitations of conventional law when it comes to dealing with patented life forms. On both national and international scales, the question of who pays the price for unwanted gene flow remains unresolved. But in the absence of legislation placing the burden of liability on the shoulders of GMO manufacturers, the costs are likely to be borne by farmers and consumers. And given the difficulty of keeping genes in their proper places, by the time the Cartagena Protocol and all of its liability and labeling laws take full effect, the proverbial genie may be long since out of the bottle.

But regardless of how much environmental impact it will have, says Dawkins, Cartagena is a politically important treaty. "My hope is that it will give more strength of conviction to countries and nations to insist on their sovereign right to regulate these products," she says.

"The whole point of this thing is ... to have some assurances that these GM products are safe," says Peter Jenkins, an attorney and policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C. "I don't know why anyone would want to argue with that."

Related Links:

Sen. Inhofe and U.S. Farm Bureau chief casually chat about destroying the climate bill

Michael Specter’s new book ‘Denialism’ misses its targets

Save us, [insert techno-fix here], you’re our only hope!

Negotiations between the U.S. and the European Union over genetically modified foods broke down yesterday in Geneva, furthering heightening trans-Atlantic tension and prompting the Bush administration to call on the World Trade Organization to begin hearing the dispute. At issue is a European ban on GM crops -- a ban that the U.S. agricultural industry says is costing it hundreds of billions of dollars per year. The White House contends that genetically altered crops are safe and that therefore the E.U. ban is illegal and "denies choices to European consumers," according to Richard Mills, a spokesperson for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. The E.U. maintains that the long-term safety of GM crops remains unknown, a position that got tacit support last week with the approval of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, a global treaty intended to restrict transgenic foods.

Related Links:

Prelude to COP15: Climate justice actions sweep the U.S. before Copenhagen talks

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

U.N. deputy says Copenhagen deal may take two stage approach

Starting up what's likely to be an ugly trade tussle, the Bush administration yesterday filed suit at the World Trade Organization against the European Union, challenging E.U. policies that severely restrict the import of genetically modified (GM) crops. U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick contends that the E.U. has in effect instituted a ban on GM products, which has cost the U.S. agriculture industry hundreds of million of dollars in lost export opportunities. Surprised E.U. officials say there is no GM ban, noting that they have approved some GM crop varieties. The E.U. has taken a go-slow approach to genetic engineering, emphasizing the need to protect public health and the environment, while the U.S. has pushed ahead with widespread planting and consumption of GM crops despite a lack of information about how they affect people and ecosystems. Enviros and activists concerned about the WTO's pervasive influence lamented the U.S. move. "The people eating the food or living in the environment that could be affected must decide domestic policy, not some secretive WTO tribunal of three trade experts," said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

Here's one unintended consequence of the impending U.S. war against Iraq: The Bush administration has delayed a formal challenge to the European Union's ban on genetically modified food. Recently, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick blamed the ban for widespread starvation in the developing world and said the administration was considering taking a case against Europe to the World Trade Organization. Now, though, the U.S. has backed off, apparently in an attempt not to alienate the E.U. at a moment of critical international importance. As a senior White House official who asked not to be identified put it, "There is no point in testing Europeans on food while they are being tested on Iraq." Both sides agree that the ban on GM food will be lifted, but disagree on how fast that should happen and what kinds of controls -- such as product-labeling -- should be in place before the prohibition ends.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

Robert Zoellick, the Bush administration's chief trade official, is calling on the U.S. to challenge the European Union's ban on genetically modified food. Zoellick claims the ban is both scientifically backward and "immoral," arguing that it deprives starving people in the developing world of food. The U.S. and the E.U. have adopted polar positions when it comes to GM foods. The former says such food is not only safe but also an important tool in the fight against world hunger, while the latter is broadly suspicious of GM crops and fears that agribusiness is promoting them without adequate concern for potentially negative environmental and human health impacts. Zoellick says he lost patience with the European stance last year, when Zambia refused to accept genetically modified food from the U.S. to help fend off famine. The White House plans to decide by the end of the month whether to bring a case against the ban to the World Trade Organization.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Will Africa’s farmland become a ‘resource curse’?

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is coming under fire from environmentalists after the London Guardian published information from apparently secret E.C. documents describing efforts to liberalize trade by privatizing state-run services in poor nations. The market for such services is estimated at more than $1 trillion per year. Under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, the E.U. is currently engaged in talks about the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Green groups say the E.U. is paving the way for exploitation of developing nations by huge multi-national corporations eager to control critical resources such as water, as well as services such as sewage. One such group, Friends of the Earth, said liberalization of public services would lead to lax environmental regulation.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

‘Subprime carbon’: Risk or hype?

The European Union is demanding that environmental issues be included in the latest round of World Trade Organization talks, which opened on Friday in Doha, Qatar. The E.U. wants environmental standards to be negotiated as a part of trade rules -- and says the issue could be a "deal breaker" at the talks -- but many developing nations fear that industrialized countries will use environmental concerns as a pretext to implement protectionist trade barriers. Meanwhile, anti-globalization protesters at the talks are struggling to adapt their tactics to post-Sept. 11 political realities, and our correspondent Ben Lilliston from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy tells it like it is in Qatar, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Europe places outcome of Copenhagen squarely on Obama

Why developing countries cannot afford failure in Copenhagen

Calling for more use of renewable energy sources, hundreds of protestors concerned about global warming demonstrated yesterday at the start of the five-day World Petroleum Congress meeting in Calgary, Canada. The congress, which includes more than 2,500 delegates from 87 countries, is the latest target of anti-globalization groups that have protested against the World Trade Organization and World Bank in the last year. Demonstrators, some dressed as dinosaurs to draw attention to the continued use of outdated fossil fuels, were fenced out of the six-block area surrounding the convention site, and police in riot gear were on hand with pepper spray and stun guns to make sure they stayed out. If Canada seems an unlikely place to host a petroleum conference, consider this: The country is now the No. 1 energy supplier to the U.S., thanks to soaring oil and gas exports. Massive gas development projects in the Canadian Arctic could be launched by 2010 despite environmental opposition.

Related Links:

The tar sands blow

Children and riot police face off in Canadian “Moms” video

The violent twilight of oil and a strategy to expose it

U.S. corporations say they are raising environmental and labor standards in China, an attempt to head off criticism from unions, enviros, and human rights groups that want to keep China out of the World Trade Organization. A report by the Business Roundtable, a group of 200 corporate executives, highlights Eastman Chemical for having model safety and environment programs at its Chinese plants and BP Amoco for helping Chinese schools teach students about the environment (uh oh). But critics say China's human rights record has deteriorated as economic ties between the U.S. and China have strengthened. U.S. companies "reinforce China's power to suppress the right of workers to organize a union or an environmental organization," said Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Wash. Times: “China vows to dramatically slow emissions growth.”

All week I've been cringing at the news. Tear gas. Broken windows. Bloody faces. The National Guard called in to defend Seattle against anti-WTO demonstrators. From far away, totally in sympathy with the demonstrators, I've been yelling at them, "No, please, get hold of yourselves! Don't tar our cause with violence!"

Cops taking over the streets.

Photo by Sherry Bosse.

Of course only a tiny fraction of the protesters in Seattle were violent. The folks I know who went there are middle-aged, serious, professional. They conducted workshops and prepared well-reasoned press briefings. Their grievances are real and important to every person on earth.

One friend there emailed Thursday morning: "There were teachers, steel workers, longshoremen, carpenters, pilots, farmworkers. Speakers were clear that it was about working people AND the environment. There was a colorful, well-mannered march through the city. The sun came out. We sang and chanted and waved our signs. The only bad parts were scrambling over dumpsters and seeing smashed windows. When we left the streets, back came the vandals, to be burned into the public mind as what the protest was about. But what it was really about was a beautiful assembly of caring, concerned people with serious points to make."

My first reaction to this travesty was to blame the demonstrators. Couldn't they rein in the extremists? Didn't they give everyone training in nonviolent engagement? Warriors for human rights and nature should have learned long ago, from Gandhi and Martin Luther King and nuclear power protests, how to avoid the "irresponsible terrorist" label.

Actually many did learn that lesson. Another email message argued: "If we want to help those at the other end of the political spectrum see what we see, we should talk about things that are meaningful to THEM. Like national sovereignty. People who object to U.S. troops being commanded by NATO officers should also be opposed to submitting the U.S. economy to control by foreigners. I'd like to see a phalanx of conservatively dressed grown-ups parading with signs that say, 'Hands off the U.S. economy!'"

But this outburst of WTO opposition was not centrally planned. People poured in from all over the world. The excitement may have attracted local rowdies who neither know nor care about the WTO. My conspiracy-minded friends suspect they were corporate plants. And every protest movement has its radical edge. Not even Gandhi was able to control the extremists in his cause.

Protestors on parade.

Photo by Sherry Bosse.

When the cameramen can choose between activists talking earnestly about corporate abuse of intellectual property rights or delinquents breaking windows on the street, what will appear on the nightly news? Part of the problem here was the sensationalizing media, falling into another well-worn, trivializing reporting groove. Cover an election like a sports event; talk about game strategy, not the issues before the nation. Cover a natural disaster like some sort of statistical soap opera; keep a body count and interview sobbing survivors. Cover a protest as in the '60s; emphasize the bizarre behavior and ignore the serious participants.

The trade issue is an especially tough one for the major media to cover fairly, since they are themselves large corporations that have helped shape the WTO. They broadcast over and over the central myths of free trade. Free trade will make everyone better off. As people get rich, they can afford to clean up the environment. The larger a corporation gets, the more efficient it gets. What's good for General Motors (Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Boeing) is good for the country.

None of these statements is clearly demonstrable, but all of them serve the interests of the privileged and powerful. People went to Seattle to protest abuses of the privileged and powerful. We can hardly expect the privileged and powerful to give us an even-handed report.

The reporters, however, are only the handmaidens of the real powers, the trade ministers and the corporations who flock around the WTO helping to write its rules. Maybe they are the real causes of the violence in Seattle.

Reclaiming the streets of Seattle -- peacefully.

Photo by Sherry Bosse.

They are indeed, when it comes to authorship of the WTO mindset that made the protesters so angry: Trade Uber Alles, trade above environment, above fair working conditions, above full consumer information, above national sovereignty, above protection of health. The powers may have inadvertently created the outburst they are now confronting, not just by creating the injustices that propelled outraged people to Seattle, but also by expecting and warning of violence.

The head of the WTO had been worrying out loud about "terrorists." The police were warned to prepare for the worst. The cops were nervous; this sort of thing doesn't happen every day in Seattle. A few jeers, a shot of tear gas, a scuffle, and there are the sensational shots for the evening news. From the Winter Palace to Kent State, from the Bastille to the march on Selma, this is an old drama. It doesn't take much to push the proletariat over the edge; then you can dismiss their cause as lawless and illegitimate.

The problem is, neither causing violence nor reacting righteously against it will get us, the whole world of us, where we need to go. A new layer of social structure is being invented here, a global government, appropriate for and needed by a world of rapid communication and transportation. So far this government has been created entirely by the powerful, for their own benefit. It can't last that way. People won't tolerate it. And it doesn't have to be that way. We can conduct orderly and profitable trade in ways that do not oppress workers, communities, or the environment. We urgently need to do that.

We can find out how, if we stop focusing on the self-protective elites and the destructive hoodlums and start listening to the less colorful but far more numerous and constructive folks on both sides of the real, crucial argument.

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

U.N. chief will pressure senators on climate bill

Friday music blogging: Here We Go Magic