Fwd: Bush ready to Wreck Ozone Layer Treaty

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" luckypig "

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 18:53:28 -0400

Bush ready to Wreck Ozone Layer Treaty

 

BUSH READY TO WRECK OZONE LAYER TREATY

US SLIPS IN DEMAND TO DROP BAN ON HARMFUL PESTICIDE

By Geoffrey Lean

The Independent

July 20, 2003

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=425893

 

President George Bush is targeting the international treaty to save the

ozone layer which protects all life on earth from deadly radiation, The

Independent on Sunday can reveal.

 

New US demands - tabled at a little-noticed meeting in Montreal earlier this

month - threaten to unravel one of the greatest environmental success

stories of the past few decades, causing millions of deaths from cancer.

 

The news comes at a particularly embarrassing time for the Prime Minister,

Tony Blair, who pressed the President in their talks in Washington last week

to stop his attempts to sabotage the Kyoto Protocol which sets out to

control global warming: one of the few international issues on which they

differ.

 

Now, instead of heeding Mr Blair, Mr Bush is undermining the ozone treaty as

well, by seeking to perpetuate the use of the most ozone-destructive

chemical still employed in developed countries, otherwise soon to be phased

out. Ironically, it was sustained pressure from the Reagan administration,

in which Mr Bush's father served as vice-president, that ensured the treaty

was adopted in the first place. It has proved such a success that

environmentalists have long regarded it as inviolable.

 

The ozone layer - made of a type of oxygen so thinly scattered through the

upper atmosphere that, if gathered all together, it would form a ring around

the earth no thicker than the sole of a shoe - screens out the sun's harmful

ultraviolet rays which would, otherwise, wipe out terrestrial life. As it

weakens, more of the rays get through, causing skin cancer and blindness

from cataracts.

 

The world was shocked to discover in the 1980s that pollution from man-made

chemicals had opened a hole the size of the United States in the layer above

Antarctica, and had thinned it worldwide. Led by the US, nations moved with

unprecedented speed to agree the treaty, called the Montreal Protocol, in

1987 - which started the process of phasing out use of the chemicals.

 

The measures have been progressively tightened ever since. Scientists reckon

that they will eventually prevent 2 million cases of cancer a year in the US

and Europe alone. But President Bush's new demands threaten to throw the

process into reverse.

 

They centre on a pesticide, methyl bromide, now the greatest attacker of

ozone left in industrialised countries. The US is responsible for a quarter

of the world's consumption of the chemical, which has also been linked with

increased prostate cancers in farmers.

 

Under an extension to the Montreal Protocol, agreed in 1997, the pesticide

is being gradually phased out and replaced with substitutes; its use in the

West is due to end completely in 2005. Nations are legally allowed to extend

the use of small amounts in " critical " applications, but the US is demanding

exemptions far beyond those permitted, for uses ranging from growing

strawberries to tending golf courses.

 

It is also pressing to exploit a loophole in the treaty - allowing the use

of the chemical to treat wood packaging - so that, instead of being phased

out, its use would increase threefold.

 

The demands now go to an international conference in Nairobi this autumn.

Experts fear that, if agreed, the treaty will begin to fall apart, not least

because developing countries - which are following rich nations in phasing

out ozone-depleting chemicals - could cease their efforts.

 

" The US is reneging on the agreement, and working very, very hard to get

other countries to agree, " said David Doniger, a former senior US government

official dealing with ozone issues, who now works for the Natural Resources

Defense Council. " If it succeeds, it threatens to unravel the whole fabric

of the treaty. "

 

Dr Joe Farman, the Cambridge scientist who discovered the Antarctic ozone

hole, added: " This is madness. We do not need this chemical. We do need the

ozone layer. How stupid can people be? "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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