|
Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - August 25 2003
Pollution problems masked by a smokescreen
of jargon
Who's to blame for global warming? If you follow the news media
in New Zealand, you could be forgiven for thinking that farmers
were at fault.
After all, they're about to be levied with a flatulence tax to
fund research into the livestock methane emissions deemed responsible
for global warming.
In Toronto, going by the city's media coverage, you would be more
likely to blame barbecues and lawnmowers. In Bangladesh, the wet-rice
cultivators get the blame.
But it's like that classic carnival trick: the bait and switch.
While you're focusing on the individuals - on farmers and backyard
barbecuers as culprits for global warming - maybe you won't notice
how the most polluting country in the world avoids all responsibility.
While a good portion of the Western world is figuring out how
to reduce its emissions, President George W. Bush has a better idea.
He's changing the language. It seems the real problem is not the
state of the environment but the words used to describe it. White
House strategists have dubbed it "the environmental communications
battle".
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, told Administration officials
to use the term "climate change" instead of "global warming" because,
while global warming connotes something catastrophic, "climate change
sounds like a more controllable and less emotional challenge".
It seems hiding in plain sight is an American specialty. Take
President Bush's clear skies policy. The policy, which is being
called an air polluter's plan (as opposed to an air pollution plan),
trumpets the value of controlling smokestack emissions in the US
while, in reality, it actually lowers the allowable emissions bar
and reduces standards for big industry.
Or the healthy forests initiative. This new legislation, under
the guise of clearing fire hazards, is allowing large timber companies
to move into vast areas of unspoiled old-growth American forests.
Under the policy, more than 90 million ha of previously protected
land will be opened up to extractive industry.
Or the Everglades Forever Act. After pressure from the sugar industry,
the newly revised law delays for 10 years the clean-up of polluted
water flowing from cane fields into the dying Everglades.
But some did see hope in the failure (by just four votes) of the
President to open up 9.5 million ha of Alaskan land for oil drilling.
That was until they discovered he had a trump card up his sleeve,
another 3.6 million pristine, drillable ha that fell outside the
agreement.
The truth is that if there's money to be made, the environment
is expendable. Traditional producers of the very fossil fuels that
contribute most heavily to global warming - oil, gas and coal -
are on a roll, sustained not only by an avalanche of subsidies but
by some of the most lax environmental regulations in the Western
world.
Not that America is without regulatory bodies. The Environmental
Protection Agency is about to release a major, 600-page report on
the environment. Unfortunately, according to a New York Times investigation,
a large section linking global warming to smokestack and tailpipe
emissions was cut to a single paragraph deeming climate change an
innocuous scientific challenge.
Democrat Senator Joseph Lieberman was quoted as saying: "This
is an Administration that lets its politics and ideology overwhelm
and stifle scientific fact". He went on to report that the Environmental
Protection Agency had refused to analyse legislation that he and
Republican Senator John McCain sponsored to limit emissions of carbon
dioxide.
Dr Stephen Schneider, one of the world's most vocal experts on
global warming, calls the Bush Administration (and the Howard Government
in Australia, for that matter) climate monkeys. As in "see no climate,
hear no climate, speak no climate".
Sadly, it's not just the US that's at risk from this philosophy.
With the increasing decamping of big business to the developing
world, where the labour comes cheap and environmental standards
are even lower than those in America, it's envisioned that new industrial
revolutions could mean a quadrupling of carbon dioxide levels worldwide.
Add that to data produced by the World Meteorological Organisation,
which indicates temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere in the 20th
century are likely to have been the highest in any century during
the past 1000 years, and it's clear that no individual farmer paying
a tax for farting sheep, or a barbecuer cancelling a backyard grill,
will make one bit of difference.
Of course, this shift to blaming the individual is not across
the board. Some individuals are being carefully shielded from their
responsibilities. Namely four-wheel-drive owners. They're not piloting
the most polluting vehicles since the car was invented; they're
patriots, consuming gas for the good of the country.
The four-wheel-drive is so important to the US Administration
that it's changed the law so that small businesses can deduct the
entire price of their behemoths from their taxable liability. As
Schneider says, the Bush Administration never saw a tailpipe emission
it didn't love.
But the last word should go to the Hummer, the world's leading
domestic gas guzzler. Next to a picture of the vehicle traversing
wild, open country are the words "Big is the new Small". If you
don't think that's hiding in plain sight, you should have your eyes
tested.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
|
