US takes the lead in trashing planet

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US takes the lead in trashing planet

 

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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/13/us_t\

akes_the_lead_in_trashing_planet/

 

By Derrick Z. Jackson | April 13, 2005

 

FOR MORE than four years, President Bush has told us

he needs to see the ''sound science " on global warming

before joining the rest of the world in combating it.

In June 2001, he brushed off criticism of his pullout

from the Kyoto Protocol, saying: ''It was not based

upon science. The stated mandates in the Kyoto treaty

would affect our economy in a negative way. "

 

 

 

A year later, Bush's own Environmental Protection

Agency put out a report that the burning of fossil

fuels in the human activities of industry and

automobiles are huge contributors to the greenhouse

effect. He publicly trashed the report, embarrassing

then-EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, saying,

''I read the report put out by the bureaucracy. "

 

Now comes a new study, by a bureaucracy representing

just about the whole planet. It is the Millennium

Ecosystem Assessment, commissioned by the United

Nations in 2000 at a cost of $24 million and compiled

by 1,360 experts from 95 countries. It is the latest

in dire reports as to how we are doing the planet in

and, implicitly, how the United States puts its

interests and pollution over the welfare of the rest

of the planet.

 

The report said human beings, whose numbers have

doubled to 6 billion, have changed the world's

ecosystems more in the last 50 years than in any other

period in our pursuit of food, fuel, water, and wood

products. More land was converted to agriculture since

World War II than in the 18th and 19th centuries

combined.

 

Those conversions, aggravated by the use of synthetic

nitrogen fertilizers, have led to 10 to 30 percent of

mammal, bird, and amphibian species facing the threat

of extinction. Highlights of what we have already lost

in the last 50 years include: 20 percent of the

world's coral reefs, with another 20 percent seriously

degraded, and 35 percent of the world's mangroves.

 

The dilemma is that many of the changes in

agricultural, fishing, and industrial technology have

had incredible benefits for human beings, including

the reduction of hunger and poverty. But in the

process, 60 percent of the services the world's

ecosystems provide, from basic food to disease

management to aesthetic enjoyment, have been degraded.

One example that is particularly painful in New

England and Atlantic Canada is the collapse of fishing

stocks.

 

''Any progress achieved in addressing the goals of

poverty and hunger eradication, improved health, and

environmental protection is unlikely to be sustained

if most of the ecosystem services on which humanity

relies continue to be degraded, " the study said.

 

The study offered several scenarios of how humans can

halt the degrading of the planet. The most obvious

strategies involve a global economy where the sharing

of education, skills, technology, and resources leads

to a reduction in poverty and pressures on local

environments. The worst possible scenario is one

called ''Order from Strength, " which results in ''a

regionalized and fragmented world, concerned with

security and protection, emphasizing primarily

regional markets, paying little attention to public

goods, and taking a reactive approach to ecosystem

problems. "

 

That precisely describes the United States. We consume

a quarter of the world's energy, are the world's

leading contributor to the greenhouse gases of global

warming, and take advantage of agriculture in all

parts of the world so we can have fresh peaches,

peppers, and berries 365 days a year if we wish. Not

surprisingly, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has

been out for two weeks and there has not been a peep

out of the administration on it -- the same

administration that needed no sound science on weapons

of mass destruction in Iraq.

 

The assessment was cochaired by the World Bank's chief

scientist, Robert Watson. Watson was formerly NASA's

chief environmental scientist and environmental

adviser in the Clinton administration. Watson said two

weeks ago that the study reinforces his belief that

climate change ''may become the most dominant threat

to ecological systems over the next hundred years. "

 

The World Bank has been in the news for other reasons,

being so important to Bush that he had the right-wing

defense hawk Paul Wolfowitz installed as president. It

will be interesting, once Wolfowitz -- hardly known

for his caring about birds, insects, and Iraqi

civilians -- is fully in power, how much more Watson

and the World Bank will speak out about how we are

doing ourselves in. Watson speaks for 1,360 experts

from 95 countries. It's only a matter of time before

we hear Wolfowitz saying, ''I read the report put out

by the bureaucracy. "

 

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is

jackson.

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