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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - April 5 2004
Profit comes before preserving the planet
One morning recently I woke up and read through my usual array
of international media. In the middle of the lead story from the
Washington Post about mercury levels in seafood, I began to feel
a deep wash of shame.
The article warned women of childbearing age to limit their intake
of fish from species such as white tuna. Issued by the Food and
Drug Administration, the advisory was immediately criticised for
understating the risks of eating fish.
The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit group of environmental
investigators, said the FDA was misusing scientific data and withholding
information regarding the true level of mercury in seafood.
Senior vice-president Richard Wiles said the coal and seafood industries'
interests beat out the health interests of America's children.
And here's where New Zealand comes in, with Conservation Minister
Chris Carter giving the go-ahead to develop the Pike River coalfield.
Against vigorous opposition, the minister decided that an access
road through pristine forested areas, the potential for seepage,
scarring and vastly reduced river flows was not enough to protect
this unique area of spectacular conservation and landscape values.
But while this destruction should have been enough on its own,
the issue is much broader. About 1.1 million tonnes of Pike River
coal will be exported to Asia, Europe and possibly the United States
each year for 15 to 18 years. The coal will be used to power steel
mills, the single largest source of mercury pollution in the world.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that once in the air, falls down
with rain and washes into the nearest body of water, where it is
absorbed by fish, becoming increasingly toxic as it works its way
up the aquatic food chain, until it ends up in concentrated levels
in widely eaten deep-sea fish such as tuna and swordfish.
The poisons then accumulate in the women who eat the fish, transferring
to their offspring and causing serious neurological and developmental
problems.
But it's not just mercury. Burning fossil fuels turns rain acidic,
leading eventually to everything from asthma to Alzheimer's and
brain damage.
Acid rain destroys lakes and forests and is blamed for the death
of hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests across North America
and Europe and the unprecedented death of fish and bird species
that eat the toxic fish and insects.
No doubt New Zealand Oil and Gas, the majority owners of the Pike
River mine, will argue that, as a good corporate citizen, it adheres
to all government standards in the countries they export to. And
maybe it does.
But does that absolve it from responsibility when it knows that
in the US the Bush Administration's approach to pollution is tailored
to the continued use of coal with incentives to keep filthy plants
operating - without having to install more pollution controls -
and that coal-burning power stations have just been excused from
complying with the Clean Air Act?
And that a United Nations Environment Programme report says coal-fired
power stations now account for 70 per cent of new, quantified man-made
mercury emissions to the atmosphere, with the lion's share coming
from Asia.
Here's the odd thing. As individuals we're encouraged to think
global, act local. But for corporations, where all enterprise is
equal and weighed only in terms of economic outcomes, the maxim
becomes act global, think local.
In other words, when outcomes such as environmental destruction
emerge, globalisation switches seamlessly to localisation, the problem
left neatly behind in some filthy Asian or American backyard.
But perhaps I'm being a little harsh. After all New Zealand Oil
and Gas is simply going about the legitimate business of increasing
shareholder value. In our society that's considered a noble enterprise
and it would be naive to expect the company to be less environmentally
blind than any other in the extractive industry.
That's where the Minister of Conservation comes in. As an elected
official it is his role to offer up a social counterweight to the
rapacious demand of a dinosaur industry denuded of responsibility
for the common good. It is his responsibility to look past the local
situation to the international picture of New Zealand's role in
preserving the planet.
This minister has made a mockery of the Department of Conservation
and his trusted role in it. If the minister, the elected representative
of the people of this country, won't come down on the side of common
good, who will?
Certainly not us ordinary folks. After all, when did any of us
last attend a protest meeting, send a submission to Parliament or
call a local MP to voice concern over an environmental issue? And
I wonder how many of us are preparing to buy shares in Pike River
when it lists on the stock market.
Shame on you, Chris Carter, for your decision. You may hide behind
your Government mandate, but by playing your hand this way you are
feeding climate change, with all its concomitant effects - from
mass species extinction and ecosystem breakdown to worldwide human
suffering.
And shame on us for allowing you to do it.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2004
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
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