Rachel's #837: Nuclear Power had a Bad year

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rachel

Rachel's #837: Nuclear Power had a Bad year

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:52:11 -0500

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News #837

" Environment, health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide? "

Thursday, January 12, 2006

www.rachel.org -- To make a secure donation,

 

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Featured stories in this issue...

 

Nuclear Power Had a Bad Year in 2005

During 2005, there was considerable talk about the nuclear power

industry reviving itself -- with the help of huge new federal

subsidies -- but the industry seems to be in such deep trouble on many

fronts that it will remain moribund, though still highly dangerous to

world peace.

A Democracy Revolution Breaks Out in Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, citizens are developing fundamentally new tactics,

aiming to take back control of their communities from corporations.

To learn more about this exciting new development in American

political thinking, you could attend democracy school.

Errors, Errors... Monsanto and Percy Schmeiser

First we numbered last weeks' issue #837 when it was really #836.

Then we confused our readers by saying Percy Schmeiser owed Monsanto

damages for having Monsanto's patented genes in his field. This is

not quite correct.

Precaution Academy: Practical Training for Precautionary Action

Could your community begin to take precautionary action to improve

its prospects for the future? To help your community make the shift to

this new way of thinking, you could attend The Precaution Academy that

we have just started. The first session will be held in New

Brunswick, N.J. Mar. 31-Apr. 2. Three other sessions of the Academy

are set for other locations in the U.S. later this year, too.

 

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News #837, Jan. 12, 2006

 

NUCLEAR POWER HAD A BAD YEAR IN 2005

 

By Peter Montague

 

[in this series we are discussing the most important issues of 2005.

--DHN Editors]

 

Nuclear power did not have a good year in 2005, despite President

Bush's and Congress's best efforts to revive the moribund industry

with massive new federal subsidies.

 

Consider these facts:

 

** The U.S. currently has 103 nuclear power plants in service. They

employ a controlled atomic chain reaction to make heat to make steam

to turn a turbine to generate electricity. The plants are very

complicated and therefore prone to breakdown and operator error.

Because of the partial fuel meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant

in Pennsylvania in 1979, followed by the serious fire at Chernobyl

in 1986, no new nuclear power plants have been ordered in the U.S. for

the past 29 years.

 

Everyone -- even President Bush -- agrees that the current generation

of nuclear plants is too problem-prone to inspire confidence. On June

22, 2005, the President gave a speech at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear

plant in Maryland saying, " Some Americans remember the problems that

the nuclear plants had back in the 1970s. That frightened a lot of

folks. People have got to understand that advances in science and

engineering and plant design have made nuclear plants far safer. "

 

However, none of the President's new " far safer " plants have actually

been built. Indeed, their designs have not even been approved by the

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Furthermore, as the Los Angeles

Times reported June 11, the new nuclear designs are not very

different from the old designs. This is an industry that lost most of

its talent during the " dry period " of the last 30 years, and bright

young engineers are not flocking to design new nuclear power plants.

 

Still, three companies would love to build a new generation of nukes

-- if they can convince taxpayers to put up the billions of dollars

needed because there are few eager customers for new plants.

 

President Bush said he would put up $2 billion to help get four new

power plants running. And the Idaho Engineering Laboratory has a

$1.25 billion project going to develop a next-generation

atomic/hydrogen plant. But the industry says it needs much more in

the way of taxpayer subsidies before it will thrive.

 

Private utility companies are reluctant to invest in nuclear power

because they got badly burned once before. As the Los Angeles Times

said June 22, " But the sober reality of nuclear power is that the

U.S. will move slowly and cautiously, at best, because Wall Street

financiers and the nation's utility industry still have vivid memories

of the legal, financial and regulatory debacles that resulted from the

building binge of the 1970s. "

 

One of the things utility executives remember best is the nuclear

accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. Peter Bradford, a former member

of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, explained to the New York

Times May 2, " The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall

Street was that a group of N.R.C.-licensed reactor operators, as good

as any others, could turn a $2 billion asset into a $1 billion cleanup

job in about 90 minutes, " Mr. Bradford said.

 

For reasons that are not entirely clear, President Bush and Vice-

President Cheney are exceedingly eager to revive the civilian nuclear

power industry. President Bush says it is because nuclear plants

represent the best way for the U.S. to wean itself from foreign

sources of oil. In his Calvert Cliffs speech June 22, the President

said nuclear power, " could play a big role in easing the nation's

dependence on foreign fuels, " according to the Philadelphia

Inquirer. But even nuclear industry executives acknowledge that this

argument doesn't hold water.

 

Nuclear power generates electricity; oil is used to generate only 2.8%

of all the electricity in the U.S., so a few dozen new nuclear power

plants can't make much of a dent in our reliance on foreign oil. At

some time in the hazy distant future -- say 50 or 100 years from now

-- after a raft of untried technologies have been financed, developed,

tested, and deployed, then nuclear power plants might substitute for

oil by producing hydrogen, but at present new nuclear power plants

will do almost nothing to diminish U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

 

Meanwhile, there are many other serious problems besetting the nuclear

power industry:

 

** Shoddy workmanship continues to plague the nuclear industry. A

leak of radioactivity at the Hope Creek Plant in New Jersey in March,

2005, was not caused by excessive vibration in the reactor's B

recirculation pump, as the plant's operators first thought. It was

caused by a faulty weld.

 

** Sloppy management continues to embarrass the industry as well. In

March, 2005, operators of the Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida

discovered that three illegal aliens had falsified social security

numbers and thus gained employment inside the plant.

 

** It did not help when officials at the Los Alamos National

Laboratory revealed in January, 2005, that they had lost 600 pounds

of plutonium -- enough to make dozens of atomic bombs. Laboratory

officials tried to reassure the public by saying the missing plutonium

may have been buried in landfills in the town of Los Alamos, or

perhaps it was shipped to a salt mine for burial, without any records

of the shipment having been kept, or perhaps it was stolen. If a gold-

plated national atomic laboratory can lose 600 pounds of one of the

deadliest substances on earth, what chance does the nuclear industry

have of operating reliably or safely -- given that it cannot weld

metal reliably, or keep illegal aliens from entering the plant?

 

** Mysteries continue to crop up at nuclear power plants. In

December, 2005, federal regulators confirmed that radioactive water

was showing up in storm sewer lines and in recently-dug wells near

the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant on the Hudson River upstream from New

York City. The plant's routine radioactive releases into the Hudson

River are deemed " acceptable " by regulators, but the source of the

underground radioactive water remained a mystery.

 

** The larger question of radiation safety came into focus in June

with the publication of the BEIR VII report by the National Research

Council. BEIR stands for Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation and

this seventh report in the series said there is no amount of

radiation that can be considered safe. In other words, all radiation

carries with it some risk of causing cancer, said BEIR VII.

 

This report put the kibosh on a favorite theory of some in the nuclear

industry, called hormesis. According to the hormesis theory, a little

radiation is actually good for you. According to the conclusions

reached by BEIR VII, this theory can now be permanently put to rest.

All radiation must now be considered harmful, and to be avoided

whenever possible. (Naturally, this includes medical radiation, so

make sure you actually need that next x-ray or CAT scan your dentist

or doctor offers you.)

 

** Nuclear waste disposal has still not been solved even though

nuclear power plants have been producing super-hot, extremely

dangerous radioactive waste since 1956 when the first plant went on-

line (and the federal weapons program has been producing radioactive

wastes since about 1940).

 

The federal government has committed to solving the waste problem on

behalf of the private nuclear power industry, but so far without

success. The feds have put all their eggs in a basket called Yucca

Mountain in Nevada, but the project is mired in scientific, technical

and management disputes and may never accept any waste. The

Philadelphia Inquirer probably spoke for tens of millions of

Americans when it editorialized April 17, " Before the U.S. can grow

more reliant on [nuclear] reactors, it must solve the problem of

disposing of nuclear waste. "

 

It was revealed mid-year that some of the technical data supporting

the Yucca site may have been falsified by project scientists; the FBI

is still investigating.

 

The U.S. so far produced 59,000 tons (54,000 metric tonnes) of high-

level radioactive waste, most of it sitting in pools of water close to

the reactors that produced it. Earlier this year the National Academy

of Sciences confirmed what nuclear critics have maintained for years

-- that these " spent fuel pools " are sitting ducks for terrorist

attack and, if the water were simply drained out of such a pool, a

ferocious fire could ensue, spreading large quantities of highly

dangerous radioactivity into the air.

 

Independent analysts also revealed this year that even if the Yucca

Mountain waste repository were opened by 2012 -- the most optimistic

projection for getting it open -- it will by that time be too small to

accommodate the waste it was meant to sequester. Dr. Frank von Hippel

of Princeton University calculated that the nuclear industry could

move about 3000 tons of waste to Yucca Mountain per year, but the

industry creates 2000 new tons each year, so the inventory of waste

held at power plant sites would only be reduced by about 1000 tons per

year. At this rate it would take over 50 years to get rid of the

" spent fuel " hazard at existing power plants. These calculations do

not take into account any wastes created by the dozens of new nuclear

plants that President Bush hopes will be built to, as he insists,

reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

 

Actually the problems with high-level wastes go deeper still. In

April the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a stinging

report accusing the nation's nuclear power companies -- and their

watchdog, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- of failing to safeguard

wastes now held at nuclear power plants -- or even to keep track of

them accurately. " NRC inspectors often could not confirm that

containers that were designated as containing loose fuel rods in fact

contained the fuel rods, " the report said. Inadequate oversight and

gaps in safety procedures have left several plants unsure about the

whereabouts of all their spent fuel, the GAO said.

 

Because Yucca Mountain is in deep trouble and may never open, eight

utilities formed their own private waste disposal company and struck

a deal with the Skull Valley band of Goshute Indians, who live 50

miles from Salt Lake City, Utah. The Goshute tribe agreed to provide

" temporary " storage of spent fuel from reactors, and in September the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the plan its official OK. No one

is saying how long " temporary " might be if Yucca Mountain fails to

open.

 

Even though this is an excellent example of the free market working

its magic, the state of Utah has promised to sue in federal court, to

try to stop the Bureau of Indian Affairs from approving the contract,

and to try to prevent the federal Bureau of Land Management from

allowing construction of a needed rail spur to transport waste to the

site. So it's not yet a done deal. When it comes time to transport

wastes, several states may try to prevent shipment on their highways,

and it is not clear that utilities want to spend the money to ship

wastes first to Utah, then, later, to Yucca Mountain in Utah.

 

Yucca Mountain and the Skull Valley Goshute project are intended to

handle " high-level " waste -- the super-hot, super-radioactive spent

fuel from reactors.

 

But even the problem of " low level " radioactive wastes has mired the

industry and government in controversy. For several years the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been trying to " solve " the low-level

radwaste problem by allowing them to be buried in municipal landfills.

As part of its proposal, the NRC had proposed that certain radioactive

metals could simply be sold to scrap dealers and recycled. The scrap

dealers of the nation wanted no part of it, fearing that all metallic

scrap would get a bad name because it might be (legally) radioactive

after the government plan went into effect. No one wanted their

child's braces made out of radioactive metal; no one wanted their

forks and spoons to be slightly radioactive; no one wanted a

radioactive hammer or saw. And no town wanted radioactivity in the

local dump.

 

In June the NRC abandoned its proposal.

 

The fight against this proposal was led by the Nuclear Information

Resource Service in Washington, D.C., and by the Committee to Bridge

the Gap in Los Angeles. Dozens of small anti-nuclear groups around

the country told the NRC what a dumb idea this was, and in June the

NRC abandoned its plan, saying the idea wasn't dead and might be

revisited at a later date. In any case, it was a great victory for

citizen activism -- and yet another sign that the nuclear industry is

desperate to solve its growing waste problem but clueless as to how to

go about it.

 

In sum, the radioactive waste problem remains unsolved -- indeed it

seems further from solution at the end of 2005 than it did at the end

of 2004 -- and it continues to provoke extremely heated debate. So it

is with all things nuclear.

 

** The nuclear industry's biggest problem remains the inseparable

connection between nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs.

 

Nuclear power can always provide a determined nation with the know-

how, the technology, and the means to make atomic bombs. This is what

Iran is allegedly up to as we speak. This is how North Korea developed

the bomb. India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club by first

acquiring nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs

are inextricably linked. If for some perverse reason you wanted to put

nuclear weapons into the hands of people who presently don't have

them, the best first step to take would be to help them acquire a

nuclear power plant.

 

On November 14, 2005, the former 9/11 Commission members issued a

report card on the Bush Administration's efforts to keep nuclear

weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The Commission noted that

President Bush himself has said nuclear weapons in the hands of

terrorists are " the gravest threat our nation faces... at the

crossroads of radicalism and technology. "

 

The Commission went on to say, " We know that al Qaeda has sought

weapons of mass destruction for at least ten years. Bin Ladin [sic]

clearly -- and he has said this -- would not hesitate to use them. We

have no greater fear than a terrorist who is inside the United States

with nuclear weapons. The consequences of such an attack would be

catastrophic -- for our people, for our economy, for our liberties,

and probably for our way of life. "

 

Then the Commission went on to evaluate the Bush Administration's

response to this problem, pointing out that...

 

** about half the nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union " still

have no security upgrades whatsoever. "

 

** Some forty countries have the essential materials for nuclear

weapons.

 

** Well over 100 research reactors around the world have enough

highly-enriched uranium present to fashion a nuclear device.

 

** Too many of these facilities lack any kind of adequate protection.

The terrorists are smart. They will go where the security is weakest.

 

The Commissioners said they were alarmed that so little had been done

by the Bush administration to reduce the dangers of a terrorist

nuclear bomb going off in a U.S. city -- like New York or Chicago or

San Francisco.

 

They summarized the Bush administration's nearly-total failure this

way: " The most striking thing to us is that the size of the problem

still totally dwarfs the policy response, " said Thomas H. Kean, the

Republican former chair of the Sept. 11 commission.

 

So, to summarize:

 

President Bush says nuclear terrorism is the nation's biggest threat

and everyone else seems to agree. But the Bush administration is not

doing nearly enough to prevent this catastrophe from happening.

 

Meanwhile everyone acknowledges that the best way for rogue states to

" join the nuclear club " is to acquire a nuclear power plant first,

then make a few weapons. The U.S. is aggressively promoting a new

generation of nuclear power plants and Vice-President Cheney is

personally trying to convince the Chinese (and others?) to purchase

new nuclear power plants from Westinghouse. Thus it seems clear that

this administration is committed to getting more nuclear power

technology into the hands of more people around the world.

 

In addition, in discussing the proliferation of nuclear weapons around

the world, the bi-partisan 9-11 Commission members noted that

" widespread reports of abuse and even torture of Muslim suspects by

American captors had served as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. " " The

flames of extremism undoubtedly burn more brightly when we are the

ones who deliver the gasoline, " said Richard Ben-Viste, a Democratic

member of the Sept. 11 Commission.

 

In sum, the U.S. is working hard to revive the moribund nuclear power

industry and export the technology abroad, where everyone knows it

forms the basis for weapons programs in the hands of any nation

determined to join the nuclear club. Meanwhile the Bush administration

is dragging its feet, not taking the necessary steps to secure

weapons-grade nuclear materials that are poorly-secured in 100

countries. And, finally, the administration has thumbed its nose at

international treaties against abuse and torture of prisoners -- thus

creating an inferno of white-hot hatred against the U.S. among Al

Qaeda and its suicide-bomber followers. Does anyone besides me think

this is a sure recipe for trouble ahead?

 

No, it has not been a good year for the nuclear industry. One of

these days, after a small A-bomb goes off in New York or Chicago,

the nuclear era will draw to a close definitively. But so, too, most

likely, will the world's 200-year-long era of experimenting with

democratic self-governance.

 

It must be apparent to almost everyone involved -- though few will

venture to say so -- that nuclear technologies are simply too complex

and unforgiving to be controlled by mere mortals. We humans are simply

not up to the task of managing this hydra-headed monster.

 

If we earthlings are anywhere near as smart as we seem to think we

are, we would learn from the nuclear fiasco and declare a world-wide

policy of No Nukes. Then we would declare a moratorium on further

deployment of the products of synthetic biology, nanotechnology

and biotechnology -- all of which are far more powerful and far

less-easily controlled than nuclear power and nuclear bombs.

 

Return to Table of Contents

 

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Orion Magazine, Mar. 10, 2003

 

CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED

 

The reign of corporations and the fight for democracy

 

The autonomy of state and local governments continues to wane as

corporations grow larger and gain more extensive rights under the U.S.

Constitution.

 

An increasing number of Americans have begun to consider a whole range

of single-issue cases as examples of " corporate rule, " with government

merely enforcing rules defined by corporations for profit.

 

But in communities across the country a revolt is underfoot that has

corporations reeling.

 

By Jeffrey Kaplan

 

Describing the United States of the 1830s in his now-famous work,

Democracy in America, the young French aristocrat Alexis de

Tocqueville depicted a country passionate about self-governance. In

the fifty years since sovereignty had passed from the crown to the

people, citizens of the new republic had seized upon every opportunity

" to take a hand in the government of society and to talk about

it.... If an American should be reduced to occupying himself with his

own affairs, " wrote de Tocqueville, " half his existence would be

snatched from him; he would feel it as a vast void in his life. "

 

At the center of this vibrant society was the town or county

government. " Without local institutions, " de Tocqueville believed, " a

nation has not got the spirit of liberty, " and might easily fall

victim to " despotic tendencies. "

 

In the era's burgeoning textile and nascent railroad industries, and

in its rising commercial class, de Tocqueville had already detected a

threat to the " equality of conditions " he so admired in America. " The

friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed, " he

warned, on an " industrial aristocracy.... For if ever again permanent

inequality of conditions and aristocracy make their way into the world

it will have been by that door that they entered. " Under those

conditions, he thought, life might very well be worse than it had been

under the old regimes of Europe. The old land-based aristocracy of

Europe at least felt obliged " to come to the help of its servants and

relieve their distress. But the industrial aristocracy... when it has

impoverished and brutalized the men it uses, abandons them in a time

of crisis. "

 

As de Tocqueville predicted, the industrial aristocrats have prevailed

in America. They have garnered enormous power over the past 150 years

through the inexorable development of the modern corporation. Having

achieved extensive control over so many facets of our lives -- from

food and clothing production to information, transportation, and other

necessities -- corporate institutions have become more powerful than

the sovereign people who originally granted them existence.

 

As late as 1840, state legislators closely supervised the operation of

corporations, allowing them to be created only for very specific

public benefits, such as the building of a highway or a canal.

Corporations were subject to a variety of limitations: a finite period

of existence, limits to the amount of property they could own, and

prohibitions against one corporation owning another. After a period of

time deemed sufficient for investors to recoup a fair profit, the

assets of a business would often revert to public ownership. In some

states, it was even a felony for a corporation to donate to a

political campaign.

 

But in the headlong rush into the Industrial Age, legislators and the

courts stripped away almost all of those limitations. By the 1860s,

most states had granted owners limited liability, waiving virtually

all personal accountability for an institution's cumulative actions.

In 1886, without comment, the United States Supreme Court ruled for

corporate owners in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,

allowing corporations to be considered " persons, " thereby opening the

door to free speech and other civil rights under the Bill of Rights;

and by the early 1890s, states had largely eliminated restrictions on

corporations owning each other. By 1904, 318 corporations owned forty

percent of all manufacturing assets. Corporate owners were replacing

de Tocqueville's " equality of conditions " with what one writer of the

time, W. J. Ghent, called " the new feudalism... characterized by a

class dependence rather than by a personal dependence. "

 

Throughout the twentieth century, federal courts have granted U.S.

corporations additional rights that once applied only to human beings

-- including those of " due process " and " equal protection. "

Corporations, in turn, have used those rights to thwart democratic

efforts to check their growth and influence.

 

Corporate power, largely unimpeded by democratic processes, today

affects municipalities across the country. But in the conservative

farming communities of western Pennsylvania, where agribusiness

corporations have obstructed local efforts to ban noxious corporate

farming practices, the commercial feudalism de Tocqueville warned

against has evoked a response that echoes the defiant spirit of the

Declaration of Independence.

 

In late 2002 and early 2003, two of the county's townships did

something that no municipal government had ever dared: They decreed

that a corporation's rights do not apply within their jurisdictions.

 

The author of the ordinances, Thomas Linzey, an Alabama-born lawyer

who attended law school in nearby Harrisburg, did not start out trying

to convince the citizens of the heavily Republican county to attack

the legal framework of corporate power. But over the past five years,

Linzey has seen township supervisors begin to take a stand against

expanding corporate influence -- and not just in Clarion County.

Throughout rural Pennsylvania, supervisors have held at bay some of

the most well-connected agribusiness executives in the state, along

with their lawyers, lobbyists, and representatives in the Pennsylvania

legislature.

 

Linzey anticipated none of this when he cofounded the Community

Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a grassroots legal support

group, in 1995. Initially, CELDF worked with activists according to a

conventional formula. " We were launched to provide free legal services

to community groups, specifically grassroots community environmental

organizations, " Linzey says. " That involved us in permit appeals and

other typical regulatory stuff. " But all that soon changed.

 

In 1997, the state of Pennsylvania began enforcing a weak waste-

disposal law, passed at the urging of agribusiness lobbyists several

years earlier, which explicitly barred townships from passing any more

stringent law. It had the effect of repealing the waste-disposal

regulations of more than one hundred townships, regulations that had

prevented corporations from establishing factory farms in their

communities. The supervisors, who had seen massive hog farms despoil

the ecosystems and destroy the social and economic fabric of

communities in nearby states, were desperate to find a way to protect

their townships. Within a year, CELDF " started getting calls from

municipal governments in Pennsylvania, as many as sixty to seventy a

week, " Linzey says. " Of 1,400 rural governments in the state we were

interacting with perhaps ten percent of them. We still are. "

 

But factory hog farms weren't the only threat introduced by the

state's industry-backed regulation. The law also served to preempt

local control over the spreading of municipal sewage sludge on rural

farmland. In Pittsburgh and other large cities, powerful municipal

treatment agencies, seeking to avoid costly payments to landfills,

began contracting with corporate sewage haulers. Haulers, in turn,

relied on rural farmers willing to use the sludge as fertilizer -- a

practice deemed " safe " by corporate-friendly government environmental

agencies.

 

Pennsylvania required the sewage sludge leaving treatment plants,

which contains numerous dangerous microorganisms, to be tested only at

three-month intervals, and only for E. coli and heavy metals. Most

individual batches arriving at farms were not tested at all. It was

clear, from the local vantage, that the state Department of

Environmental Protection had failed to protect the townships, turning

many rural communities into toxic dumping grounds -- with fatal

results. In 1995, two local youths, Tony Behun and Danny Pennock, died

after being exposed to the material -- Behun while riding an all-

terrain vehicle, Pennock while hunting.

 

" People are up in arms all over the place, " said Russell Pennock,

Danny's father, a millwright from Centre County. " They're considering

this a normal agricultural operation. I'll tell you something right

now: If anyone would have seen the way my son suffered and died, they

would not even get near this stuff. " After a U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency scientist linked the two deaths to a pathogen in the

sludge, county supervisors tried to pass ordinances to stop the

practice, but found that the state had preempted such local control

with its less restrictive law.

 

The state's apparent complicity with the corporations outraged local

elected officials. People began to understand, Linzey recalls, " that

the state was being used by corporations to strip away democratic

authority from local governments. "

 

Many small farmers in rural Pennsylvania were already feeling the

devastating effects of increasing corporate control over the market.

They often had no choice but to sign contracts with large agribusiness

corporations -- resulting in a modern form of peonage. By the

corporate formula, a farmer must agree to raise hogs exclusively for

the corporation, and to borrow $250,000 or more to build specialized

factory-farm barns. Yet the corporation could cancel the contract at

any time. The farmer doesn't even own the animals -- except the dead

ones, which pile up in mortality bins as infectious diseases ravage

the crowded pens. The agribusiness company takes the lion's share of

the profits while externalizing the costs and liabilities; the farmer

left financially and legally responsible for all environmental harms,

including groundwater contamination from manure lagoons.

 

Even if farmers could find a way to market their hogs on their own,

loan officers often deny applications from farmers unless they are

locked into a corporate livestock contract. " The once-proud occupation

of 'independent family farmer' has become a black mark on loan

papers, " Linzey writes on the CELDF website.

 

A bespectacled thirty-four-year-old, Linzey speaks with a tinge of

southern drawl. Under the tutelage of historian Richard Grossman of

the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, he has become an

eloquent speaker on organizing tactics, constitutional theory, and the

history of corporations in this country. But he is also an excellent

listener. He heard the indignation as incredulous supervisors came to

understand their lack of authority in the regulatory arena. The rights

and privileges that corporations were able to assert seemed

incomprehensible to them. " There's disbelief, " he says. " Then the

clients attack you, and then you have to explain it to them, giving

prior examples of how this works. "

 

Township supervisors were quick to see that the problem was not simply

factory farms or sludge, " but the corporations that were pushing

them, " Linzey says. Enormously wealthy corporations were able to

secure rulings that channeled citizen energies into futile battles.

The supervisors started to realize, according to Linzey, " that the

only thing environmental law regulates is environmentalists. "

 

By 1999, with CELDF's help, five townships in two counties had adopted

a straightforward ordinance that challenged state law by prohibiting

corporations from farming or owning farmland. Five more townships in

three more counties followed suit. Also in 1999, Rush Township of

Centre County became the first in the nation to pass an ordinance to

control sludge spreading. Haulers who wanted to apply sewage sludge to

farmland would have to test every load at their own expense -- and for

a wider array of toxic substances than required by the weaker state

law. Three dozen townships in seven counties have unanimously passed

similar sludge ordinances to date. Citing a township's mandate to

protect its citizens, Licking Township Supervisor Mik Robertson

declares, " If the state isn't going to do the job, we'll do it for

them. "

 

So far, the spate of unanimous votes at the municipal level has halted

both new hog farms and the spreading of additional sludge in these

townships.

 

Iin De Tocqueville's time, local communities like those in Clarion

County had enormous strength and autonomy. The large corporation was

nonexistent, and the federal government had little say over local

affairs. Americans by and large reserved patriotic feelings for their

state. People, at least those of European descent, played a more

active role in local governance than they do today. Their only direct

experience with the federal government was through the post office. As

de Tocqueville pointed out, " real political life " was not concentrated

in what was called " the Union, " itself a telling term; before the

Civil War the " United States " was a plural noun, as in, " The United

States are a large country. "

 

Since the consolidation of the Union and throughout the twentieth

century, the autonomy of state and local governments has continued to

wane as corporations have grown larger and gained more extensive

rights under the U.S. Constitution. In two decisions in the mid-1970s,

the Supreme Court affirmed a corporation's right to make contributions

to political campaigns, considering money to be a form of " free

speech. " And over the past few decades, corporations have won

increasingly generous interpretations of the Interstate Commerce

Clause of the Constitution. Originally intended to prevent individual

states from obstructing the flow of goods and people across their

borders, the clause has been used by corporations to challenge almost

any state law that might affect activity across state lines. In 2002,

for example, the federal courts ruled that a Virginia law prohibiting

the dumping of trash from other states violated a waste hauler's

rights. In early 2003, Smithfield Foods, one of the nation's largest

factory-farm conglomerates, sued on similar grounds to overturn Iowa's

citizen initiative banning meatpacking companies from owning

livestock, a practice the citizens believed undercut family farms.

 

Elsewhere, corporate rights have posed increasingly absurd threats to

sovereignty. In 1994, for example, Vermont passed a law requiring the

labeling of milk from cows that had received a bioengineered bovine

growth hormone; in 1996 the federal courts overthrew that law, saying

that the mandated disclosure violated a corporation's First Amendment

right " not to speak. " Four years later, a Pennsylvania township tried

to use zoning laws to control the placement of a cell-phone tower; the

telecommunications company sued the township and won, citing a

nineteenth-century civil rights law designed to protect newly freed

slaves.

 

Until recently, these incidents might have been seen simply as

aberrations or " corporate abuse. " But an increasing number of

Americans have begun to consider a whole range of single-issue cases

as examples of " corporate rule. " The role that government has played,

in their view, is merely that of a referee who enforces the rules

defined by corporations for their own benefit rather than the

public's.

 

It was this perception that motivated the townships to take their

revolutionary stand. But their successes in halting factory farming

and sludge applications within their borders didn't prohibit

corporations from attempting to press their case in the courtroom.

 

In 2000, the transnational hauler Synagro-WWT, Inc. sued Rush

Township, claiming its antisludge ordinance illegally preempted the

weaker state law and violated the company's constitutional right of

due process. It also sued each supervisor personally for one million

dollars. In response, Linzey recalls, one township supervisor asked,

" What the hell are the constitutional rights of corporations? " A year

later, PennAg Industries Association, a statewide agribusiness trade

group, funded its own suit against the factory farm ordinance in

Fulton County's Belfast Township on similar constitutional grounds.

Rulings on both suits are expected as early as mid-2004.

 

It was only after those suits had been filed that the two Clarion

County townships, Licking and Porter, took the historic step of

passing ordinances to decree that within their townships,

" Corporations shall not be considered to be 'persons' protected by the

Constitution of the United States, " a measure that effectively

declared their independence from corporate rule. For Mik Robertson,

the issue is simple: " Those rights are meant for individuals. " He and

his two fellow supervisors later revised their ordinance to also deny

corporations the right to invoke the Constitution's Interstate

Commerce Clause; Porter Township is considering a similar amendment.

Several other townships are preparing their own versions of the

corporate rights ordinance, according to Linzey.

 

Now, when a corporation claims that an antisludge ordinance violates

its rights, the townships can simply say those rights don't apply

here. The corporation would then be forced to defend corporate

personhood in a legal battle. That hasn't happened yet, but Linzey and

his allies have energized a statewide coalition that has vowed to

fight the issue all the way to the Supreme Court, raising awareness

along the way about a basic question of sovereignty: By what authority

can a conglomeration of capital and property, whose existence is

granted by the public, deny the right of a sovereign people to govern

itself democratically? Linzey predicts that such a suit could happen

within a decade. That battle, he says, could ignite populist sentiment

across the country -- even around the world.

 

Growing support for these issues was put to the test in 2002, when

agribusiness interests, displeased by the spread of ordinances

prohibiting factory farming, began prodding the Pennsylvania state

legislature to pass an even more severe bill than the 1997 directive.

This time there was no disguising it as waste-disposal regulation. The

2002 bill had one explicitly stated purpose: To strip away a

township's right to control agriculture -- including sludge

applications -- within its borders. When it stalled in a senate

committee, the Pennsylvania legislators renumbered the bill and rammed

it through before their constituents noticed. By the time CELDF found

out about the bill, it was up for a vote in the house.

 

" We ignited opposition almost overnight, " Linzey recalls. " We were

working with 100-plus townships already. All we had to do was notify

them. "

 

Within two weeks, the coalition included four hundred local townships,

five countywide associations of township officials, the Sierra Club,

two small-farmers groups, the citizens' rights group Common Cause --

even the United Mine Workers (whose members had been sickened by

sewage sludge applied on mine reclamation sites), which invited in the

formidable AFL-CIO.

 

" It was like Sam Adams in 1766, when the Townsend Acts were passed, "

says Linzey. " He had already built the mob, the rabble, and just had

to alert the people that this was happening as an act of oppression. "

 

Because the issue had been defined as protection of a community's

right to self-determination, the bill became unpopular and was tabled

indefinitely. On Thanksgiving Eve 2002, it met its end when a mandated

voting period elapsed. Astonishingly, the coalition had won.

 

In so defining the issue, the deliberations in Clarion County resonate

far beyond its borders. In recent years, judges, mayors, and a host of

local and state legislators nationwide, whose authority as

democratically elected representatives is similarly threatened by the

increasing legal dominance of corporations, have begun to take action:

 

* In Minnesota, State Representative Bill Hilty has introduced a

state constitutional amendment eliminating corporate personhood.

 

* The Arizona Green Party is campaigning for the passage of a

similar amendment in their state.

 

* In the northern California town of Point Arena, legislators passed

nonbinding resolutions in opposition to corporate personhood.

 

* Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North

Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin have all passed laws outlawing

corporate ownership of farms.

 

But in the age of globalization, questions of sovereignty can no

longer be addressed strictly within U.S. borders. Clarion County's

townships may pass an ordinance saying that a sludge hauler's

constitutional rights don't apply. " But if there is foreign

participation, say if they are partially German-owned or Canadian, "

says Victor Menotti of the International Forum on Globalization, " you

run up against another set of corporate rights under [international]

trade agreements. "

 

It was this other set of rights, the understanding of global

" corporate rule, " that brought many of the forty thousand

demonstrators to the streets of Seattle in December 1999 to shut down

the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is also what

incited subsequent demonstrations at the meeting of the World Bank in

Prague in 2000, the meeting of the G-8 (the eight most economically

powerful countries) in Genoa in 2001, the Free Trade Area of the

Americas meeting in Quebec in 2001, and most recently, the WTO meeting

in Cancun. Through it all, protesters have held fast to one principle:

the right of a people to govern themselves, through their

representatives, without obstruction by corporations.

 

One of the increasing number of public officials in the U.S. who face

challenges to their sovereignty similar to those faced by their

counterparts in the Pennsylvania townships is Velma Veloria, chair of

the Washington State legislature's Joint Committee on Trade Policy.

For fifty-three-year-old Veloria, the 1999 Seattle demonstration

against the WTO was a defining event. Veloria realized that behind the

tumult in the streets, " there was a whole movement that was asking for

accountability and transparency. " She imagined what might happen if a

tanker that was not double-hulled spilled oil in Puget Sound. She and

her colleagues could pass a law requiring double hulls in Seattle

harbor, but under the emerging rules of the WTO, such a law could meet

the same fate as a Clarion County antisludge ordinance: It could be

attacked as interfering with the rights of corporations, as a barrier

to trade. " It opened a whole new field for me about the sovereignty of

the state, " Veloria says.

 

California State Senator Liz Figueroa, chair of the Senate Select

Committee on International Trade Policy and State Legislation, has

faced similar quandaries. In 2000, Figueroa authored a bill that made

it illegal for the state to do business with companies that employed

slave or forced labor. Figueroa explained to the city councils and

constituents in her district that foreign trade imports produced by

slave labor could undercut the local economy. But as pragmatic and

ethically incontestable as the bill sounds, it could potentially be

challenged under the WTO's rules.

 

" Our job is monumental, " she says, referring to her efforts to explain

how trade agreements can usurp democracy. " We have to make sure our

own legislative offices even know of the conflict... we have to

explain the reality of the situation. "

 

Figueroa and Veloria are not alone. International trade agreements

such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the WTO's

General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), and the pending Free

Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) threaten the jurisdiction of any

elected or appointed representative of a sovereign people at any level

of government. A National League of Cities resolution declared that

the trade agreements could " undermine the scope of local governmental

authority under the Constitution. " Last year, the Conference of Chief

Justices, consisting of the top judges from each state, wrote a letter

to the U.S. Senate stating that the proposed FTAA " does not protect

adequately the traditional values of constitutional federalism " and

" threatens the integrity of the courts of this country. " In

California, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, and New

Hampshire, state legislatures have expressed concern over trade

agreements, as has the National Council of State Legislators. Their

statements, however more discreet, nonetheless echo the chants from

the streets of Seattle: " This isn't about trade, this isn't about

business; this is about democracy. "

 

Despite their enormous ramifications, most international trade

agreements remain a mystery to the average American. At the core, they

are simple.

 

GATT and NAFTA cover the trade of physical goods between countries.

They can be used to override any country's protection of the

environment, for example, or of workers' rights, by defining relevant

laws and regulations as illegal " barriers to trade. " They provide for

a " dispute resolution " process, but the process routinely determines

such laws to be in violation of the agreements.

 

In the case of GATT, a WTO member country can sue another member

country on behalf of one of its corporations, on the grounds that a

country's law has violated GATT trade rules. The case is heard by a

secret tribunal appointed by the WTO. State and local officials are

denied legal representation. If the tribunal finds that a law or

regulation of a country -- or state or township -- is a " barrier to

trade, " the offending country must either rescind that law or pay the

accusing country whatever amount the WTO decides the company had to

forgo because of the barrier, a sum that can amount to billions of

dollars. In short, practitioners of democracy at any level can be

penalized for interfering with international profit-making.

 

Through this process, WTO tribunals have overturned such U.S. laws as

EPA standards for clean-burning gasoline and regulations banning fish

caught by methods that endanger dolphins and sea turtles. The WTO has

also effectively undermined the use of the precautionary principle, by

which practices can be banned until proven safe -- in one recent

instance superseding European laws forbidding the use of growth

hormones in beef cattle. A WTO tribunal dismissed laboratory evidence

that such hormones may cause cancer because it lacked " scientific

certainty. " On similar grounds, the U.S., on behalf of Monsanto and

other American agribusiness giants, recently initiated an action under

GATT challenging the European Union's ban on genetically modified

food.

 

Under NAFTA, which covers Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., a corporation

can sue a government directly. The case would also be heard by a

secret tribunal, such as when Vancouver-based Methanex sued the U.S.

over California's ban on a cancer-causing gas additive, MTBE. The

company, which manufactures the additive's key ingredient, claimed

that the ban failed to consider its financial interests. Since July

2001, three men -- one former U.S. official and two corporate lawyers

-- have held closed hearings on the thirteenth floor of World Bank

headquarters in Washington, D.C., to decide whether, in this instance,

a democratically elected governor's executive order to protect the

public should cost the U.S. $970 million in fines. The FTAA, recently

fast-tracked for negotiations to put it into effect by 2005, would

extend NAFTA's provisions to all of Latin America.

 

GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, a recent trade

agreement under the WTO, takes the usurpation of democracy one step

further. While GATT deals with the exchange of goods across

international borders, GATS establishes certain privileges for

transnational companies operating within a country. It covers

" services, " meaning almost anything from telecommunications to

construction to mining to supplying drinking water. It even includes

functions that traditionally have been carried out or closely

controlled by government, like postal services and social services

such as welfare -- even libraries. Activists point out that the

primary focus of the GATS is to limit government involvement, " whether

in the form of a law, regulation, rule, procedure, decision,

administrative action or any other form, " to quote the treaty itself.

Public Citizen's Lori Wallach has called GATS a " massive attack on the

most basic functions of local and state government. "

 

Under GATS, any activity the federal government agrees to declare a

" service " would be thrown open to privatization. The supply and

treatment of water is a timely example, since the European Union is

currently pressing the United States to make water among the first of

the services it places under GATS. If clean drinking water is so

declared, no government body in the U.S. could insist that it remain

publicly managed. If any government wanted to create a publicly owned

water district, foreign corporate " competitors " would have the right

to underbid the government for control of the service. Just as

important, a transnational company could challenge any rules --

including environmental and health regulations -- that would hamper

its ability to profit from a business that is related to a service

under GATS.

 

On March 28, 2003, twenty-nine California state legislators signed a

letter of concern to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick about

the provisions contained in GATS. The letter states that GATS could

usurp any government regulation, including nurse-to-patient staffing

levels, laws against racial discrimination, worker health and safety

laws, regulatory limits to oil drilling, and standards for everything

from waste incineration to trace toxins in drinking water. As a

result, the letter states, GATS would " jeopardize the public welfare

and pose grave consequences for democratic governance throughout the

world. "

 

Veloria and Figueroa both believe that if state legislators are to

challenge this " power grab, " in Veloria's words, they will have to

organize among themselves. " One state cannot do it alone. We need to

do it on a national scale. " Otherwise U.S. citizens may find

themselves under the thumb of NAFTA and WTO trade tribunals,

" unelected bodies that have no accountability to the people. " At that

point, Veloria asks, " Why have state legislators, why have elected

officials? "

 

In his work with the rural Pennsylvania supervisors, Thomas Linzey's

approach to domestic corporate rights may well illuminate how

individuals, states, and nations can deal with international trade

treaties.

 

" Clarion County is one of many emerging examples of local communities

reasserting their own authority to define how they want land managed

and what sort of protections they want for their community, " says

antiglobalization organizer Victor Menotti. " It's when things like

this come to light that people question what the hell we've gotten

ourselves into. These local communities stand up, and others say, 'if

they can do that, we can do that. " "

 

On many issues of local governance, Linzey believes, a state or local

legislature " could declare null and void the federal government's

signature on GATT. " To him it would be the " ultimate act of

insurrection: saying governments have no constitutional authority to

give away sovereign and democratic rights to international trade

tribunals that operate in secrecy. "

 

For now, Velma Veloria is still working through traditional channels.

In an attempt to remove the antidemocratic provisions of the trade

treaties, her committee will take up the issue with the state's

delegation to Congress. But she is well aware that her colleagues, and

the people of Washington State, may find that traditional route closed

to them, as the Pennsylvania townships did in 1997.

 

If that happens, the practice of democracy at the local level would

require legislators to defy the trade agreements. " At some point we

might get to where the people working with Linzey are, " she says. " We

may end up saying we don't recognize parts of the international trade

agreements that impact us. But that depends on the grassroots, on

people demanding it. "

 

There, too, the Pennsylvania coalition may offer some inspiration.

" When the agribusiness folks filed suit over our anti-corporate

farming laws, " Linzey recalls, " page one of the lawsuit said 'we the

corporations are people and this ordinance violates our personhood

rights. " When we photocopied that, people immediately understood how

they're ruled by these constitutional rights and privileges. It sparks

a conversation. "

 

The Pennsylvania township supervisors are backed by a determined

grassroots movement, with a constituency " ready to go to the mat for

their binding law to establish a sustainable vision that doesn't

include corporate rights and privileges, " says Linzey. " The product is

not the ordinance, " he adds. " The product is the people. "

 

The Pennsylvania ordinances express the will of a sovereign people who

are exercising their right to create institutions that support their

vision of how they wish to live. And, as one would expect in a

democratic society, the people of Pennsylvania wish to be the ones who

define the rules under which those institutions may operate, be they

governments or corporations.

 

History repeats itself. In the course of asserting their sovereign

rights, the citizens of rural Pennsylvania have undergone a profound

change in personal identity and political consciousness not unlike

that of their forebears. As historian Lawrence Henry Gipson noted,

" The period from 1760 to 1775 is really the history of the

transformation of the attitude of the great body of colonials from

acquiescence in the traditional order of things to a demand for a new

order. " People who for generations had considered themselves loyal

Englishmen suddenly declared themselves to be citizens of a new

nation, one based on the sovereignty of its citizens.

 

Veloria believes we are at a similar juncture today. " I have faith

that the American people will stand up for themselves and for

democracy. They can only be pushed so far. "

 

Jeffrey Kaplan's essays and articles have appeared in many regional

and national newspapers and periodicals. He lives and works in

Berkeley, California.

 

Copyright 2003 The Orion Society

 

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News #837, Jan. 12, 2006

 

ERRORS, ERRORS... MONSANTO AND PERCY SCHMEISER

 

By Peter Montague

 

Last week, I mistakenly numbered Rachel's News #836 (dated January 5,

2006) as #837, which confused even me.

 

That is why this week's Rachel's News (dated January 12, 2006) is

numbered (correctly) #837. In other words, last week's issue was

actually #836 (dated January 5, 2006).

 

You can find the correctly numbered issue #836 (dated January 5, 2006)

here.

 

Now for the more serious error. In Rachel's #836 (dated January 5,

2006), I said the Canadian Supreme Court required farmer Percy

Schmeiser to pay damages to Monsanto Corporation because its patented

genetically engineered genes canola plants were found in his fields.

Monsanto says he put them there himself. Schmeiser says the

genetically modified organisms were carried into his fields on the

wind.

 

It does not matter how the GMOs got into Schmeiser's fields because

the Canadian Supreme Court decided that Monsanto owns any plants that

contain their patented genes, no matter where they may be found or how

they got there.

 

Percy Schmeiser does not owe Monsanto damages, but Monsanto now owns

Percy Schmeisers's crops, until he pulls up and discards each of the

plants that contain Monsanto's patented genes.

 

So the upshot is, as " gene flow " and pollen blowing on the wind

carry patented genes across the globe, Monsanto, Dow and Novartis will

be in a position to claim rights to any and all plants that contain

their patented genes. At least, that's the precedent set by the

Supreme Court of Canada.

 

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Rachel's Precaution Reporter #20, Jan. 11, 2006

 

PRECAUTION ACADEMY: PRACTICAL TRAINING FOR PRECAUTIONARY ACTION

 

First Precaution Academy Mar. 31-Apr. 2 in New Brunswick, New Jersey

 

Practical Training for Precautionary Action

 

The Science and Environmental Health Network (www.sehn.org) and

Environmental Research Foundation (www.rachel.org and

www.precaution.org) have created The Precaution Academy to offer an

intensive weekend of training to prepare participants to apply

precautionary thinking to a wide range of issues in their communities

and workplaces. The Academy is intended to serve the needs of citizen

activists, government officials, public health specialists, small

business owners, journalists, educators, and the engaged public.

 

Presenters and discussion leaders include Carolyn Raffensperger, Nancy

Myers, Ted Schettler, Katie Silberman and Peter Montague.*

 

The cost of the Precaution Academy in New Brunswick, N.J. is $350,

which includes hotel for 2 nights, plus six meals, and all

instructional materials.

 

Participation is limited to 15 people. You may want to send an Email

to Sherri Seidmon (sherri) to learn whether space is

available.

 

Send your payment to Science and Environmental Health Network, P.O.

Box 50733, Eugene, OR 97405

 

======================================================

 

Scholarships Available

 

We have three full scholarships available for the New Jersey session

Mar. 31-Apr. 2. To apply for a scholarship, please tell us what

organization you are affiliated with, what constituencies you

represent, what you hope to get out of the experience, and your

organization's total budget. Preference will be given to people who

represent groups with financial need. Please also estimate your travel

costs if you will be applying for a travel stipend as part of your

scholarship. Send your scholarship request to:

 

Science and Environmental Health Network

Sherri Seidmon (sherri)

P.O. Box 50733

Eugene, OR 97405

 

======================================================

 

At least two weeks prior to the date of the Academy, participants will

receive a copy of the new book, Precautionary Tools for Reshaping

Environmental Policy (MIT Press, 2006; ISBN 0-262-63323-X),

supplemented by a short workbook of articles. Academy participants are

urged to read selected portions of these materials before the session

begins on Friday evening.

 

All day Saturday and half a day Sunday, presenters will lead

discussions of the precautionary approach to problem-solving (and

problem prevention), with emphasis on real-world applications of

precautionary thinking.

 

The purpose of the Precaution Academy is

 

** to prepare participants to apply precautionary thinking and action

to problems in their home communities and workplaces;

 

** to familiarize participants with the history of the regulatory

system, quantitative risk assessment, and the development of

precautionary thinking. What is different about the world today that

makes a precautionary approach necessary and appropriate?

 

** to clarify the different kinds of uncertainty involved in

contemporary problems and the role of precaution in addressing

uncertainty;

 

** to prepare participants to respond to criticisms of the

precautionary approach;

 

** to help participants recast and rethink familiar problems and

issues within a precautionary framework, and to explore how a

prevention philosophy differs from a problem-management philosophy;

 

** to familiarize participants with some of the many ways that

precaution is being applied in the U.S., Canada and abroad so that you

can considering trying these approaches at home.

 

======================================================

 

Other Precaution Academy Sessions planned for 2006 (Prices for these

sessions will vary according to costs.)

 

May 19-21 in Chicago

June 23-25 location to be announced

Sept 8-10 location to be announced

 

======================================================

 

The Mechanics

 

Participants will arrive at the Academy site on Friday afternoon. New

Brunswick, N.J. is readily accessible by train and automobile from the

New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. A train connects New

Brunswick with Newark Airport. After an evening meal, we will meet for

two hours to begin discussing the need for precautionary thinking in

the contemporary world, and how the precautionary principle developed

during the past 30 years.

 

Saturday

 

We will meet from 9:00 to noon, take a 90-minute break for lunch, then

meet from 1:30 to 5:30. At 7:00 we will have dinner together. After

dinner, we will meet informally for a free-ranging discussion.

 

Goals for Saturday

 

** to prepare participants to put the precautionary principle to work

in their own areas of interest;

 

** to prepare participants to respond to criticisms of the

precautionary approach;

 

** to clarify the different kinds of uncertainty involved in

contemporary problems and the role of precaution in the face of

uncertainty;

 

** to familiarize participants with a variety of ways that precaution

is being applied in the U.S. and elsewhere;

 

During this session we will discuss in detail the five elements of a

precautionary approach.

 

Sunday

 

Goals for Sunday:

 

** to give participants experience recasting typical issues into a

precautionary framework;

 

** to make sure participants take home an understanding of the many

ways that precaution is being used in communities all across the U.S.,

Canada, and abroad.

 

We will meet from 9:00 to noon, gaining experience in reframing issues

from a precautionary perspective.

 

We will have lunch together, then go our separate ways so we can " try

this at home. "

 

======================================================

 

* Carolyn Raffensperger is executive director of the Science and

Environmental Health Network (SEHN) in Ames, Iowa. Nancy Myers is

communications director of SEHN; Ted Schettler is SEHN's science

director and Katie Silberman is SEHN's administrative director. Peter

Montague is director of Environmental Research Foundation in New

Brunswick, N.J., and an editor of Rachel's Precaution Reporter and of

Rachel's Democracy & Health News.

 

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's Environment &

Health News) highlights the connections between issues that are

often considered separately or not at all.

 

The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining

because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who

bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human

health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the

rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among

workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy,

intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and

therefore ruled by the few.

 

In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than, " Who

gets to decide? " And, " How do the few control the many, and what

might be done about it? "

 

As you come across stories that might help people connect the dots,

please Email them to us at dhn.

 

Rachel's Democracy & Health News is published as often as

necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the

subject.

 

Editors:

Peter Montague - peter

Tim Montague - tim

 

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To start your own free Email subscription to Rachel's Democracy

& Health News send a blank Email to: join-rachel.

 

In response, you will receive an Email asking you to confirm that

you want to .

 

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Environmental Research Foundation

P.O. Box 160, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903

dhn