The solution to global warming is to end coal burning

The solution to global warming is to end coal burning

Written by SETH BORENSTEIN
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
ImageWASHINGTON (AP) _ One of the world's top climate scientists called for an end to building new coal-fired power plants in the United States because of their huge role in spewing out greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

In the next decade of so, 159 coal-fired power plants are scheduled to be built, generating enough power for about 96 million homes, according to a study last month by the U.S. Department of Energy.

``There should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants,'' NASA scientist James Hansen told the National Press Club Monday. Hansen was one of the earliest top researchers to warn the world of global warming.

Hansen's call dovetails with an edict by the private equity group buying TXU, a massive Texas-based utility. The equity group, led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group, agreed to stop plans to build eight new coal-fired power plants, not to propose new coal-fired plants outside Texas and to support mandatory national caps on emissions linked to global warming.

This is the first time Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, has called for an end to coal burning. He said it's the No. 1 solution to global warming, and that so far, no coal-fired plants can capture carbon dioxide emissions so they are not released into the atmosphere.

While burning oil and natural gas also release carbon dioxide, they will run out and there's more coal to burn and pollute the Earth, so it's more of a threat, Hansen said.

``Coal is the big amount,'' Hansen said. ``Until we have that clean coal power plant, we should not be building them. It is as clear as a bell.''

Hansen, who said he was speaking as a private citizen, also told the press club that by mid-century all coal-fired power plants that do not capture and bury carbon dioxide ``must eventually be bulldozed.'' It's foolish to build new ones if the emissions can't be dealt with, he said.

He said the increased efficiency could make up for the cutbacks in coal.

Like the Bush administration, Hansen said he had high hopes for using cellulosic ethanol, or switchgrass, as an alternative fuel. But unlike the president's plan which is big on this source for cars, Hansen proposes burning switchgrass for electrical power and sequestering the carbon dioxide emissions underwater so it would reduce the atmosphere's carbon dioxide.

Although switchgrass could reduce our dependence on oil, burning switchgrass in cars would not reduce emissions much, he said.

Coal provides about half of the United States' electricity, according to the Department of Energy.

Hansen's call ``ought to be vetted by those who have an understanding of the energy demands placed on the U.S. economy,'' said National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich. ``When seen in light of those demands, then statements like that will appear unreasonable, to put it charitably.''

Wildlife Experts Fear for African Elephants

By Marc Kaufman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 26, 2007; 5:26 PM

An international effort to halt the illegal killing of elephants for their ivory tusks has all but collapsed in most of Africa, leaving officials and advocates alarmed about the survival of the species. A study being reported today estimates that as many as 23,000 animals were slaughtered last year alone.

A team of wildlife and law enforcement experts concluded that a widely hailed 1989 ban on international sales of ivory has been overwhelmed in the face of exploding demand for ivory in Japan and newly rich China and declining support for anti-poaching programs.

Right now, things are really much worse than before the ban," said Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington, lead author of the report funded jointly by the United States government and several nonprofit groups.

"Almost half of Africa's elephants had been slaughtered in the eight years before the ban, but now the situation is even more extreme because the number of animals is so much lower to begin with," he said. "And unlike in the late '80s, the public has forgotten about this issue."

Wasser said poaching poses a renewed threat to the survival of regional herds in many countries and to the entire subspecies of forest elephants, which he said is now being "annihilated" in central Africa.

Wasser said reports of a rebound in elephant numbers had produced a distorted view of the situation. Of the roughly 400,000 elephants in the African wild, he said, about 130,000 are in Botswana, where they are well protected to the point that they have overbred. Of the 270,000 elephants elsewhere in Africa, more than 23,000 -- nearly one in 10 -- were killed last year alone, the researchers estimated.

The estimate is based on the 5,600 pounds of ivory confiscated in a dozen international seizures in the year ended August 2006, and an assumption by law enforcement officials that they seize only 10 percent of all smuggled contraband. Ivory is in demand for jewelry and, most commonly, for prized "hankos" used to stamp personal seals and signatures in parts of East Asia.

"This is a very complex situation because people read these days about elephant overpopulation in places like Botswana, and how elephants are coming more and more into deadly contact with people," Wasser said. "But that's one small piece of the story. Overwhelmingly, what we have across Africa is a widespread slaughter of elephants that is getting worse by the day."

The report said the ban on international ivory sales was effective at first, in large part because wealthy nations provided funds to police game parks and go after poachers. Elephant populations rebounded substantially -- especially in southern Africa -- but as more exceptions to the ban were allowed and money to the fight poachers was cut back, illegal killings resumed.

Compounding the problem, ivory smuggling has become increasingly the province of organized crime, with narcotics and other contraband often being shipped with the tusks. Ivory prices have skyrocketed, Wasser said, and the incentives for killing elephants for their tusks have never been higher.

Wasser's report, published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also described a unique effort to determine the origins of 532 unusually large tusks confiscated in Singapore in 2002. Using DNA analysis, the group led by Wasser determined that the tusks came from African savannah elephants similar to those found in and around the nation of Zambia.

The seizure coincided with a request by the Zambian government for permission to sell tusks it had in storage. The United Nations treaty that banned international ivory sales in 1989, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), allows limited sales of tusks harvested from animals that die naturally if the home government can demonstrate it is doing a good job of controlling poaching.

In its request, Zambia said 135 elephants had been illegally killed in the country in the past decade, but the researchers estimated that between 3,000 and 6,500 Zambian elephants had been killed for their tusks in the short period before the Singapore shipment.

Much of the funding for the DNA analysis came from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's African Elephant Conservation program, established by Congress in 1988. The study was funded primarily by the agency and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Wasser and other authors, who include a member of Interpol and officials at African conservation programs, said an aggressive and well-funded anti-poaching program could be highly effective now because the DNA testing can pinpoint where the animals are being killed. The report also said an education program in East Asia is essential to curb the demand for ivory.

"I don't think people in China and Japan fully understand the crisis that their ivory purchases have caused," Wasser said. As a model, he proposed something similar to a current Chinese campaign against eating shark-fin soup. In it, he said, a popular basketball player asks "What's wrong with us that we kill the sharks for the fin?"

While the 1989 ban forbids all unapproved sales of ivory between nations, illegal material that slips through can become legal once it turns up in a new country. Before the 1989 ban, most smuggled ivory was shipped to Europe, the United States and Japan. Now, the report found, most of it is going to China and Japan, although authorities say some is turning up again in the United States.

U.N. calls U.S. data on Iran's nuclear aims unreliable

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usiran25feb25,0,4451045.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Tips about supposed secret weapons sites and documents with missile designs haven't panned out, diplomats say.

By Bob Drogin and Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writers

VIENNA — Although international concern is growing about Iran's nuclear program and its regional ambitions, diplomats here say most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran.

The officials said the CIA and other Western spy services had provided sensitive information to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency at least since 2002, when Iran's long-secret nuclear program was exposed. But none of the tips about supposed secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic Republic was developing illicit weapons.

"Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that's come to us has proved to be wrong," a senior diplomat at the IAEA said. Another official here described the agency's intelligence stream as "very cold now" because "so little panned out."

The reliability of U.S. information and assessments on Iran is increasingly at issue as the Bush administration confronts the emerging regional power on several fronts: its expanding nuclear effort, its alleged support for insurgents in Iraq and its backing of Middle East militant groups.

The CIA still faces harsh criticism for its prewar intelligence errors on Iraq. No one here argues that U.S. intelligence officials have fallen this time for crudely forged documents or pushed shoddy analysis. IAEA officials, who openly challenged U.S. assessments that Saddam Hussein was developing a nuclear bomb, say the Americans are much more cautious in assessing Iran.

American officials privately acknowledge that much of their evidence on Iran's nuclear plans and programs remains ambiguous, fragmented and difficult to prove.

The IAEA has its own concerns about Iran's nuclear program, although agency officials say they have found no proof that nuclear material has been diverted to a weapons program.

Iran's Islamist government began enriching uranium in small amounts in August in a program it says will provide fuel only for civilian power stations, not nuclear weapons.




Information withheld

On Thursday, the IAEA released a report declaring that Iran had expanded uranium enrichment and defied a Security Council deadline to suspend nuclear activities. In the meantime, the agency is locked in a dispute with Tehran over additional information and access to determine whether the program is peaceful.

In November 2005, U.N. inspectors leafing through papers in Tehran discovered a 15-page document that showed how to form highly enriched uranium into the configuration needed for the core of a nuclear bomb. Iran said the paper came from Pakistan, but has rebuffed IAEA requests to let inspectors take or copy it for further analysis.

Diplomats here were less convinced by documents recovered by U.S. intelligence from a laptop computer apparently stolen from Iran. American analysts first briefed senior IAEA officials on the contents of the hard drive at the U.S. mission here in mid-2005.

The documents included detailed designs to upgrade ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads, drawings for subterranean testing of high explosives, and two pages describing research on uranium tetrafluoride, known as "green salt," which is used during uranium enrichment. IAEA officials remain suspicious of the information in part because most of the papers are in English rather than Persian, the Iranian language.

"We don't know. Are they genuine, are they real?" asked a senior U.N. official here. Another official who was briefed on the documents said he was "very unconvinced."

Iran's representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, dismissed the laptop documents as "fabricated information." Iran, he said, has produced 170 tons of "green salt" at a uranium conversion facility in Esfahan that is monitored by the IAEA.

"We are not hiding it," he said in an interview. "We make tons of it. These documents are all nonsense."



Testy relations

The U.S. government is not required to share intelligence with the IAEA, and relations between Washington and the U.N. agency are at times testy. In March 2003, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei embarrassed the White House when he told the U.N. Security Council that documents indicating Hussein's government in Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Niger were forged. The Bush administration subsequently opposed ElBaradei's reappointment to his post.

While it confronts Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration also has tried to implicate Iran as a supplier of munitions and training for insurgent groups in neighboring Iraq.

But the quality of its information has limited this effort too.

U.S. officials recently compiled evidence purporting to show that the Iranian Quds Force, an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard, had supplied Iranian-made weapons to Shiite militias that have attacked U.S. forces in Iraq.

After U.S. officials unveiled the evidence to reporters in Baghdad two weeks ago, however, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and other Pentagon officials scrambled to retreat from the incendiary claim that the "highest levels" of the Tehran government were directly involved.

"I don't know if it goes to the highest levels of the government," Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the officer in charge of daily operations in Iraq, told Pentagon reporters Thursday. "What we do know is that the Quds Force has had involvement with some extremist groups in Iraq."

Washington has sought to pressure Tehran into halting the supply of "explosively formed projectiles" that are able to penetrate heavily armored vehicles. The projectiles represent only a small percentage of roadside bomb attacks in Iraq, but they are far more lethal than ordinary explosives.

Administration officials also cite a growing effort by the militant group Hezbollah, an Iranian protege and ally based in Lebanon, to aid anti-American Shiite forces in Iraq.

U.S. military officials contend that Hezbollah has provided training in Lebanon to hundreds of members of the Al Mahdi militia, which is controlled by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr. A smaller number of Hezbollah forces reportedly have entered Iraq through Syria to provide such training.

The administration has ordered a second aircraft carrier group into the Persian Gulf, a reminder that President Bush could order an airstrike on Iran's nuclear sites even while U.S. forces are tied down in Iraq. But White House officials have denied that an attack is imminent.

Given the lack of clear evidence, Iran's strategic goals in Iraq are a matter of debate, and concern has spread about its growing influence there. Although Iran is mostly Persian and Iraq is mostly Arab, both have majority Shiite populations that have kept close religious, economic and cultural ties for centuries. Iran's rulers view the U.S. as meddling in their backyard, or at least in their sphere of influence.

Some outside experts think the Islamic Republic seeks to keep the United States tied down indefinitely in Iraq and will actively resist a settlement there for fear that Washington will next turn its guns on Iran.

Ali Ansari, an expert on Iran at St. Andrews University in Scotland and author of "Confronting Iran," counters that Iran and America share some interests.

Iran is "looking for a stable Iraq," he said. "They want an Iraq that is not fragmented. But the difference would be that they don't want an Iraq that is militarily strong. They want an Iraqi government that is elected democratically, which means a Shia Iraq."

But Sunni-dominated governments in Egypt, Jordan and especially Saudi Arabia have pushed the U.S. to expand Sunni representation in Iraq's leadership as a way of countering Tehran. Some experts fear that a nuclear-armed Iran would spark a regional arms race.

John D. Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, told a House committee last month that Iran had extended its "shadow in the region" since the U.S. ousted hostile regimes on its borders: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's government in Baghdad.

Iran also has increased regional political leverage, he said, because of increased oil revenues, electoral victories by Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah's "perceived recent success in fighting Israel" in Lebanon.

Iran and Syria since have resupplied arms to Hezbollah, including stocks of long-range missiles that could reach deep into Israel, U.S. officials contend.

Washington lists both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

The administration has also become alarmed by Iran's increasing efforts to support Hamas after the group's victory in Palestinian elections in January 2006. That worry lies behind an $86-million U.S. plan to build up Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Presidential Guard and national security forces, rivals to Hamas.



Confrontation exploited

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has successfully exploited the growing confrontation with Washington to gain much needed political support at home. Nationalist sentiments run deep in Iran and the claim that Tehran has the same right to nuclear power as other nations has become a rallying cry that undermines the government's domestic critics.

"None of us can accept the suspension of these activities because people consider this our legal right," said Akbar Alami, an independent lawmaker. "All the political parties agree with this. We cannot stop."

Ahmadinejad's fiery rhetoric and defiance of the West also have burnished his credentials as a populist leader in other Islamic nations. That has raised alarms in Sunni governments around the region that Iran's brand of militant political Islam, potentially backed by the prestige of being a nuclear power, is on the march.

"The Americans are worried about enriched uranium, and the Arabs are worried about enriched Shiism," said Mamoun Fandy, senior fellow for Persian Gulf security at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iran's growing power, he said, "threatens every existing political order in the region."

---

bob.drogin@latimes.com

Iran Proposal to U.S. Offered Peace with Israel

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33348

POLITICS: Iran Proposal to U.S. Offered Peace with Israel Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, May 24 (IPS) - Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and to cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.

The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.

The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.

Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.

The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.

Before the 2003 proposal, Iran had attacked Arab governments which had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The negotiating document, however, offered "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration", which it also referred to as the "Saudi initiative, two-states approach."

The March 2002 Beirut declaration represented the Arab League's first official acceptance of the land-for-peace principle as well as a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal to the territory it had controlled before the 1967 war.. Iran's proposed concession on the issue would have aligned its policy with that of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others with whom the United States enjoyed intimate relations.

Another concession in the document was a "stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory" along with "pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967".

Even more surprising, given the extremely close relationship between Iran and the Lebanon-based Hizbollah Shiite organisation, the proposal offered to take "action on Hizbollah to become a mere political organization within Lebanon".

The Iranian proposal also offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology". It offered "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols)".

That was a reference to protocols which would require Iran to provide IAEA monitors with access to any facility they might request, whether it had been declared by Iran or not. That would have made it much more difficult for Iran to carry out any secret nuclear activities without being detected.

In return for these concessions, which contradicted Iran's public rhetoric about Israel and anti-Israeli forces, the secret Iranian proposal sought U.S. agreement to a list of Iranian aims. The list included a "Halt in U.S. hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.", as well as the "abolishment of all sanctions".

Also included among Iran's aims was "recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity". According to a number of Iran specialists, the aim of security and an official acknowledgment of Iran's status as a regional power were central to the Iranian interest in a broad agreement with the United States.

Negotiation of a deal with the United States that would advance Iran's security and fundamental geopolitical political interests in the Persian Gulf region in return for accepting the existence of Israel and other Iranian concessions has long been discussed among senior Iranian national security officials, according to Parsi and other analysts of Iranian national security policy.

An Iranian threat to destroy Israel has been a major propaganda theme of the Bush administration for months. On Mar. 10, Bush said, "The Iranian president has stated his desire to destroy our ally, Israel. So when you start listening to what he has said to their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, then you begin to see an issue of grave national security concern."

But in 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel. Flynt Leverett, then the senior specialist on the Middle East on the National Security Council staff, recalled in an interview with IPS that it was "literally a few days" between the receipt of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of a message to the Swiss ambassador expressing displeasure that he had forwarded it to Washington.

Interest in such a deal is still very much alive in Tehran, despite the U.S. refusal to respond to the 2003 proposal. Turkish international relations professor Mustafa Kibaroglu of Bilkent University writes in the latest issue of Middle East Journal that "senior analysts" from Iran told him in July 2005 that "the formal recognition of Israel by Iran may also be possible if essentially a 'grand bargain' can be achieved between the U.S. and Iran".

The proposal's offer to dismantle the main thrust of Iran's Islamic and anti-Israel policy would be strongly opposed by some of the extreme conservatives among the mullahs who engineered the repression of the reformist movement in 2004 and who backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last year's election.

However, many conservative opponents of the reform movement in Iran have also supported a negotiated deal with the United States that would benefit Iran, according to Paul Pillar, the former national intelligence officer on Iran. "Even some of the hardliners accepted the idea that if you could strike a deal with the devil, you would do it," he said in an interview with IPS last month.

The conservatives were unhappy not with the idea of a deal with the United States but with the fact that it was a supporter of the reform movement of Pres. Mohammad Khatami, who would get the credit for the breakthrough, Pillar said.

Parsi says that the ultimate authority on Iran's foreign policy, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was "directly involved" in the Iranian proposal, according to the senior Iranian national security officials he interviewed in 2004. Kamenei has aligned himself with the conservatives in opposing the pro-democratic movement.

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.

**Text of Iran proposal http://ipsnews.net/iranletterfacsimile.pdf (END/2006)

"Leave It in the Ground!":Indigeneous Peoples Call for Global Ban on Uranium Mining

"Leave It in the Ground!"

Indigeneous Peoples Call for Global Ban on Uranium Mining

By BRENDA NORRELL

Indigenous peoples from around the world, victims of uranium mining, nuclear testing, and nuclear dumping, issued a global ban on uranium mining on native lands.

The declaration, signed during the Indigenous World Uranium Summit, held Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 2006 on the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona, brought together Australian aboriginals and villagers from India and Africa. Pacific islanders joined with indigenous peoples from the Americas to take action and halt the cancer, birth defects, and death from uranium and nuclear industries on native lands.

Villagers from India testified to the alarming number of babies who die before they are born or are born with serious birth defects, and of the high rates of cancer that are claiming the lives of those who live near the uranium mines.

Australia Aboriginal Rebecca Bear-Wingfield, stolen as an infant and now an activist, told of the death threats for those who oppose the expansion of uranium mining in South Australia. Corporations have attempted to buy Aboriginals' approval for new uranium mining projects on native lands.

From northern China came the voice of Sun Xiaodi, a whistleblower who has exposed massive unregulated uranium contamination. Xiaodi is now under house arrest in Gansu Province after he was "disappeared" and imprisoned in 2004-2005.

Xiaodi, along with five other anti-nuclear activists, was awarded the Nuclear-Free Future Award in 2006. The awards highlighted not only the personal and collective achievements of the recipients but also the international collaboration that has grown within the movement. Those honored came from several continents.

Organizing International Resistance to Uranium Mining: From Salzburg to Window Rock

The Navajo Nation provides a fitting backdrop for discussions of the dangers of uranium mining. The history of uranium mining on these native lands goes back decades to when Navajo workers were sent to their deaths in Cold War uranium mines, unknowingly aiding the production of the world's first weapons of mass destruction.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. remarked, "As a result, radiation exposure has cost the Navajo Nation the accumulated wisdom, knowledge, stories, songs, and ceremonies--to say nothing of the lives--of hundreds of our people. Now, aged Navajo uranium miners and their families continue to fight the Cold War in their doctors' offices as they try to understand how the invisible killer of radiation exposure left them with many forms of cancer and other illnesses decades after leaving the uranium mines."

The tragedy spurred a growing resistance to the mines, and the Navajo Nation today is at the head of an international movement. In one of the movement's greatest achievements, in 2005 the tribe passed the Dineh Natural Resources Protection Act banning uranium mining on Navajo lands. Norman Brown, a Navajo and member of the organization Dineh Bidzill Coalition that co-organized the Summit, said, "The heart of this movement is here--we are at the center of this movement today."

Major challenges

For years uranium mining was shrouded in secrecy as part of the Cold War and its victims were isolated.

Compensation has been hard to win in the courts and although recognized in the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for Navajo Uranium Miners, only a small percentage of mining families have received their due.

A general lack of political power in indigenous communities makes them easy marks for dangerous uranium mining and dumping projects.

The rising price of uranium has caused renewed pressure on indigenous lands.

Like Navajos, Pueblos were also victims of the Cold War. As the truth emerged, Navajo and Pueblos in nearby New Mexico at first believed they were the lone victims of this death march. Uranium mining was enveloped in secrecy and carried out surreptitiously under the guise of national security, shielding it from public scrutiny and isolating its victims.

But as they became more vocal in their demands, the peoples of the U.S. Southwest soon met indigenous peoples from other parts of the world who shared similar histories as victims of uranium mining, nuclear testing, and nuclear waste dumps. Indignation grew as they realized that American Indian uranium miners in both the United States and Canada had been sent to their deaths to work in the uranium mines long after scientists warned of the health hazards of radon gas and radiation.

The first international meeting to exchange experiences and begin to develop demands took place at the World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg, Austria, in 1992, where activists began their struggle to halt uranium mining on indigenous land. In the words of the organizers, the Navajo meeting was held to follow up on that experience, develop coordinated actions and issue an international and energetic call for a halt to uranium mining on native lands throughout the world.

More than 300 participants from 14 countries participated in the event, with speeches covering all aspects of uranium mining, international activists efforts to halt the mining, and the devastating health effects.

Their message to the world: "Leave the uranium in the ground."

Global Threats to Local Life: Defending Communities

At the Navajo summit, Manuel Pino, Acoma Pueblo from New Mexico and college professor, recalled that in Salzburg, Dene from Canada described the cancer that resulted from working in uranium mines without protective clothing. Mining in Canada and the United States was often carried out by the same corporations.

"As we went to Salzburg, we realized that many of our people were sick and dying," Pino said. He pointed out that Laguna Pueblo's Paguate village is only 2,000 feet from the largest open-pit uranium mine in North America , the Jackpile Mine. Pino said radioactive particles have been found in the animals, water, air, and in the bodies of people of the Pueblos.

Residents of the Laguna Pueblo waged a pitched battle for reclamation of the Jackpile Mine. Originally owned by Anaconda, and now owned by Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) the lease owners simply walked away when mining stopped, leaving radioactive waste strewn and the earth torn apart. Ultimately, reclamation efforts began, but it was too late for the many Pueblos dying or already dead from cancer.

Pino noted that Acoma Pueblo members live downwind and downstream from the Grants, New Mexico, mineral belt--a 60-mile stretch where uranium was produced from 1948 through the 1990s. He claimed that most of the uranium mined on Indian lands by the United States Department of Defense was used in the production of weapons of mass destruction.

According to Pino, recent efforts endorsed by the United States and other nations to stall passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations stem from material interests. He stated that indigenous peoples have vast mineral resources beneath the surface of their lands, along with timber, water and other natural resources, and these nations view the exercise of indigenous rights as a threat to corporate access to and exploitation of this natural wealth.

"Our permanent sovereignty over our resources is a threat to the nation states of the world," Pino told the uranium summit.

He added that here on the Navajo Nation in the past the tribe has entered into leases that favor the corporations, often without being duly informed of the risks. In the Pueblos, he said, the people were never told of the harm that would result from the radioactive dust settling on their traditional drying fruit and drying meat.

Nation states, he said, do not realize that Indigenous Peoples take their responsibility as caretakers of Mother Earth seriously and will not back down. Recalling the words of Sitting Bull, Pino urged the people to "come together to form a fist to protect Mother Earth."

Carletta Tilousi, Havasupai from the Grand Canyon in Arizona, attended both uranium summits, in Salzburg and Window Rock. Tilousi praised Havasupai tribal leaders for passing a ban on uranium mining in Havasupai territory in the Grand Canyon and placing the ban in the Havasupai Tribal Constitution.

Still, with the rising price of uranium and new threats to Indian lands, Tilousi said tribes must be vigilant to support one another in the protection of Mother Earth.

Ground Gained and Battles Pending

Tilousi said the Havasupai like many other indigenous peoples felt very alone in their struggle until they went to Salzburg in 1992. There they met indigenous people from all over the world that are fighting mining corporations. On the Navajo Nation, Africans told of fighting gold mining corporations and indigenous peoples from the Pacific testified about nuclear testing that left behind radioactive fish.

"Those are the things that affect me very deeply," said Tilousi, who remembered her Havasupai elders and her Hopi relatives who have spent their lives struggling for indigenous rights and protection of Mother Earth.

Tilousi, who serves as a Havasupai tribal council delegate, said she admired the strength of the Navajos and others gathered at the conference. Recalling words that have long been repeated to her, she said, "Always keep Mother Earth in mind, always keep your spirit strong."

Esther Yazzie-Lewis, Navajo, recalled her first trip to New York, when she was a young woman, decades ago, to speak out against uranium mining. She testified to how the uranium mined in Monument Valley, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, was used to make the atomic bomb that killed Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. She remembered how the Japanese respected her for what she said that day and how good it felt to speak out.

Yazzie-Lewis recalled protesting in the cold on Navajo land, following the nation's largest uranium mill spill, in Church Rock, N.M. in 1979. At that time, not only were surrounding communities contaminated but in the years that followed Navajos living downstream at New Lands also became victims of radiation from the Church Rock spill. Ironically, they were living there after being relocated there from Black Mesa due to Peabody Coal's mining operations.

According to Yazzie-Lewis, the movement to oppose uranium mining employed many strategies and tactics. In addition to the direct action of protests at the mine, the opposition began to lobby local government. She cited in particular the late Harris Arthur, Navajo, and his work with the Navajo tribal government. Arthur's early efforts ultimately led to the Navajo Nation Council's passage of the Dineh Natural Resources Protection Act, the support of Navajo President Joe Shirley, Jr. and the Navajo Nation's ban on uranium mining

Yazzie-Lewis said her goal for the 2006 uranium summit was to create a global solidarity network. She encouraged indigenous peoples not to be fooled by the gifts of energy corporations, and to think of future generations.

"Let's protect what we have for our youths, so they will have the identity to be Navajos."

Mitchell Capitan, cofounder of Eastern Navajo Dineh against Uranium Mining, described the first efforts in eastern Navajo land in 1994. Capitan said his wife Rita was the main founder of the organization and promoted efforts to fight uranium mining at Crownpoint and Church Rock, N.M.

At the time, Capitan worked for Mobile Oil at an in-situ leach uranium mining demonstration project, six miles west of Crownpoint.

"It made me think that so much water was used, so much water was wasted and so much water was contaminated." After uranium prices plunged the project was shut down.

Mitchell, a lab technician for the project, said for three years Mobil attempted but could not restore the water to its original quality at the leach mining project site.

When there was renewed interest in mining in 1994, Navajos in Crownpoint took action. They discovered that secret negotiations were underway by corporations with landowners of non-tribal trust lands in this checkerboard land area. These were being carried out, without any public hearings. Navajos who were fighting to protect the water and air began to meet, with the first gathering attracting 40 community members.

"Ever since then, we began to roll," Capitan said, adding that Southwest Research and Information Center, based in Albuquerque, gave technical expertise.

Now, despite the Navajo Nation ban on uranium mining, corporations are planning new uranium mining in an area that would contaminate Navajos' drinking water in the Crownpoint and Church Rock areas, since the land is considered "checkerboard," with allotted lands and other non-trust lands intermixed with tribal trust lands.

But Capitan said Navajos now have evidence to refute corporate claims that in-situ uranium mining is safe and the water will not be harmed. They are fighting to protect the pristine aquifer water, which feeds two municipal deep wells providing water for 15,000 people.

"This is what we're trying to protect, our water. I hope we are not the guinea pigs of this in-situ leach mining. If they ever start mining in Crownpoint, the contamination of our water will take about seven years."

Capitan pointed out the strategy of corporations. In Crownpoint, the average income is $12,000 a year and the population is 97% Native American.

"The company is really using us. Sure, they say there will be plenty of jobs, but it doesn't take much manpower." He said in reality, the jobs would go to highly paid scientists, not local laborers. The people will be left with contaminated water.

"This kind of mining takes a lot of water, it would take our water," he said. Crownpoint people are working in a united effort to prevent uranium mining in nearby Church Rock because if the companies restart mining there the rest of the region will be threatened. "It will be a domino effect."

Capitan said that 12 years ago, when they began, he and his wife felt alone in the struggle and had little idea of where to look for help. Little by little, they became connected to an international movement that gave then greater leverage in the local battle.

"Word went out to the world; finally our Navajo Nation government listened."

Jamie Kneen of Minewatch Canada described the uranium mining and its effects on First Nations people in Canada. In Northern Ontario, mining and resulting contamination went on from the 1950s through 1990s. The Serpent River watershed water is now highly contaminated, which affects the Anishinaabe people. In Northern Saskatchewan the history is similar.

"In the 40s and 50s, the tailings were just dumped into lakes and rivers," Kneen recounted. Later, after tailing dams were in place, contaminated runoff became a hazard.

Kneen reported that Canadian indigenous peoples have centered efforts on the processes for permits, consultation, and consent. In the regions of Canada where populations are primarily non-aboriginal and there is greater political influence with the government, communities have been able to halt the operations with bans on uranium mining. Public education and capacity-building in indigenous communities could increase their ability to do the same.

Another problem is getting industry to respond to the concerns of indigenous peoples. So far, Kneen stated, although Dene people have tried to slow the expansion of uranium mining in Canada, it has done little good. Public hearings have mostly failed to halt uranium mining.

"The industry simply goes ahead and does what it wants," Kneen said.

In Canada, he explained, the hard rock is full of cracks that contain water. Since water travels, the question is how water washed out of from mining areas will seep into the system and affect the fish, wildlife and people.

Carrie Dann a Western Shoshone from Crescent Valley, Nev., told how Shoshone territory has been blighted by nuclear testing and is now targeted as a nuclear dump site at Yucca Mountain, which is under construction. Striving to protect their aboriginal lands granted by the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, Western Shoshone are protesting nuclear testing. Now, gold mining corporations are hollowing out the mountains in Western Shoshone sacred land near Elko, Nev., in the area of Western Shoshone's sacred Mount Tenabo. The gold mining corporations began operations after the Dann's family horses were seized. Currently, there is a resistance effort to halt the gold mining to protect the land and water.

Awards Honor Leaders

The Nuclear Free Future Awards were presented in cooperation with the Seventh Generation Fund and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, based in Germany. The Franz Moll Foundation for the Coming Generations presented the awards.

Claus Biegert of Germany, among the organizers of the event, said it was the tragedy of Chernobyl that triggered the uranium summits. After the catastrophe of Chernobyl, Biegert asked himself "What about the Navajo uranium miners who were dying and never made the news?" The world-famous disaster in Russia ended up revealing the silent deaths in Navajo land and other places. The common thread between the victims was a single mineral--uranium.

Biegert discovered that around the world, the largest number of victims of uranium mining, nuclear testing and nuclear waste dumping were indigenous peoples. This fact was first brought to his attention by a high school graduate readying for Harvard that he met in a cafeteria of the United Nations in Geneva in 1977. Her name was Winona LaDuke.

With a felt-tip pen, LaDuke had pointed out the uranium mining in the Southwest United States. She told Biegert if he was going to be involved, he should go to the Southwest, where she too would soon visit.

From those first efforts, the Nuclear Free Future Awards were born to recognize those fighting for justice around the world.

"We have to let the world know that uranium should stay in the ground," Biegert said to summit participants.

The Nuclear Free Future Awards for 2006 were presented at the Navajo Summit. In addition to the award to Xiaodi other recipients included Gordon Edwards of Canada for educational activism, Wolfgang Scheffler and Heike Hoedt of Germany for global solutions with innovative green energy reflectors, and Ed Grothus of Los Alamos, N.M., for lifetime achievement for creative exposure of the nuclear industry.

There were two special recognition awards presented. Phil Harrison, Navajo, was honored for his struggle for justice and compensation by way of the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for Navajo uranium miners. The Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque was honored for the staff's relentless struggle for environmental justice.

Bringing Xiadoi's message to the summit was Chinese activist Feng Congde of Human Rights China in New York, who fled China after the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Xiaodi formerly worked in Project 792, referring to Uranium Mine No. 792--one of the highest yielding uranium mines in China. Opened in 1967, Project 792 was run by the military and annually milled 140-180 tons of uranium-bearing rock until it was officially shut down in 2002 as bankrupt owing to "ore exhaustion and obsolete equipment."

However, a private mine secretly rose from its radioactive ashes, operated by Longjiang Nuclear, Ltd. Its shareholders include a tight brotherhood of politicians and members of the nuclear ministry.

"Just a couple of days ago, under the cover of night while the local Tibetans were all asleep, the mine as usual dumped untreated irradiated water straight into the Bailong River, a tributary of the Yangtze," said Xiaodi's written statement. "At present, in our region there are an unusually high number of miscarriages and birth defects, with many children born blind or malformed."

He continued, "Today, large sweeps of Ansu Province--dotted with sacred sites--appear to have succumbed to an overdose of chemotherapy. The Chinese have taken no preventive measures to protect local human and animal life from uranium contamination," according to the award statement.

Tibetan workers report that an assortment of radioactivity-related cancers and immune system diseases account for nearly half of the deaths in the region. This remains among the "state secrets" and the patients' medical histories are manipulated to protect state secrecy.

Xiaodi asked that his $10,000 award be held for him, in hopes that he can someday be free to receive the award. His statement read, "Since my release from detention, I have been in an extremely insecure situation in which I am threatened, intimidated, and harassed. I felt tremendously honored and touched when I learned that I had been selected as this year's Nuclear Free Future Award recipient, because I have seen the great power of world peace and development.

"At the same time, I feel a deep sorrow, because I have also helplessly witnessed the environmental problems caused by the failure to effectively contain and reduce nuclear contamination.

"Breaking through fear to fight for a nuclear-free environment requires a person to take a path full of hardship, bloodshed, and tears, which could end up in either life or death. However, I firmly believe that if all people who are peace-loving and concerned with human destiny and upholding justice can come together and take action as soon as possible, a nuclear-free tomorrow can become a reality."

On April 28, 2005 Xiaodi met with foreign journalists and told them about the frequent discharges of radioactive waste into Gansu waterways. He also told them about the Tibetan hitchhikers who climb up on trucks transporting uranium ore, happy for a ride. He also exposed that contaminated machinery was merely "hosed down" and sold to naïve buyers in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Zhejiang, Human, and Hubei.

"These officials have blood on their hands," Xiaodi said.

The next day, plains clothes officers "disappeared" him. He was not heard from for months. Finally, mounting international pressure forced his release from Lanzhou Prison on Dec. 27, 2005.

Xiaodi continued to speak out against Project 792.

"They simply changed a military enterprise into a civilian enterprise and continued with large-scale mining." On April 4, Xiaodi visited fellow petitioner Yue Yongjim in prison. Xiaodi found Yongjim emaciated from forced labor on a food allowance of only three steamed flour buns a day. Xiaodi joined a protest demanding Yongjim's release. Xiaodi was again "disappeared," and is now under house arrest.

Grassroots organizers passed a declaration from the summit calling for a global ban on uranium mining on native lands. Further, indigenous vowed to take any action necessary, including direct action and court action, to halt uranium mining, nuclear testing and nuclear dumping on indigenous lands.

Indigenous peoples also set goals to contact stockholders of corporations violating the rights of indigenous peoples; increase media campaigns; educate fellow indigenous peoples on the issues; and to document abuses to the land and people.

The summit concluded on a lighter note, with some of the most popular American Indian musicians performing in concert, including Gary Farmer and Keith Secola. Farmer began with a tribute to his fellow Six Nations people for taking a stand in Caledonia, Canada, to protect their land rights. Secola honored the heroes of this movement with a round dance and tribute.

* * *

Declaration of the Indigenous World Uranium Summit

Window Rock, Navajo Nation, USA
December 2, 2006

We, the Peoples gathered at the Indigenous World Uranium Summit, at this critical time of intensifying nuclear threats to Mother Earth and all life, demand a worldwide ban on uranium mining, processing, enrichment, fuel use, and weapons testing and deployment, and nuclear waste dumping on native lands.

Past, present and future generations of indigenous peoples have been disproportionately affected by the international nuclear weapons and power industry. The nuclear fuel chain poisons our people, land, air, and waters and threatens our very existence and our future generations. Nuclear power is not a solution to global warming. Uranium mining, nuclear energy development, and international agreements (e.g., the recent U.S.-India nuclear cooperation treaty) that foster the nuclear fuel chain violate our basic human rights and fundamental natural laws of Mother Earth, endangering our traditional cultures and spiritual well-being.

We reaffirm the Declaration of the World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg, Austria, in 1992, that "uranium and other radioactive minerals must remain in their natural location." Further, we stand in solidarity with the Navajo Nation for enacting the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, which bans uranium mining and processing and is based on the Fundamental Laws of the Diné. And we dedicate ourselves to a nuclear-free future.

Indigenous peoples are connected spiritually and culturally to our Mother, the Earth. Accordingly, we endorse and encourage development of renewable energy sources that sustain--not destroy--indigenous lands and the Earth's ecosystems.

In tribute to our ancestors, we continue centuries of resistance against colonialism. We recognize the work, courage, dedication, and sacrifice of those individuals from Indigenous Nations and from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, the United States, and Vanuatu, who participated in the Summit. We further recognize the invaluable work of those who were honored at the Nuclear-Free Future Awards ceremony on December 1, 2006. And we will continue to support activists worldwide in their nonviolent efforts to stop uranium development.

We are determined to share the knowledge we have gained at this Summit with the world. In the weeks and months ahead, we will summarize and disseminate the testimonies, traditional indigenous knowledge, and medical and scientific evidence that justify a worldwide ban on uranium development. We will enunciate specific plans of action at the tribal, local, national, and international levels to support Native resistance to the nuclear fuel chain. And we will pursue legal and political redress for all past, current, and future impacts of the nuclear fuel chain on indigenous peoples and their resources.

Brenda Norrell is a freelance writer based in Tucson, Arizona, focusing on indigenous rights in the Americas. She has covered Indian country news for 23 years, serving as a staff reporter for the Navajo Times and Indian Country Today and a stringer for the Associated Press. She is a contributor to the IRC Americas Program.

http://www.counterpunch.org/fitz02142007.html

February 14, 2007

Hyrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols

What's Being Left Out of Solutions to Fossil Fuel?

By DON FITZ

Everyone from the Republicans to Democrats to major environmental groups are singing hosannas to biofuels and hybrid cars as the salvation from peak oil and global warming. Will trusting corporations to manufacture environmentally friendly cars make a dent in the world's ecological crises? Or could the "solutions" actually be making the problem worse?

The planned obsolescence and massive production of consumer objects in the overdeveloped countries is responsible for catastrophic climate change and species extinction. The question which we obviously need to address is how to improve the quality of life while decreasing the quantity of useless junk and not throwing anyone out of work. But unflinching loyalty to a growth economy prevents corporate environmentalists from searching for serious transportation options.

Cars are a huge problem, both for global warming and the exhaustion of oil reserves. With less than 5% of the world's population, the US produces 25% of carbon emissions. Transportation causes a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

The wastefulness of the automobile is staggering. Roughly 10% of the chemical energy of gasoline makes wheels turn around. Amory Lovins computes that, with a 10% efficient car with a driver, passenger and luggage weighing 300 pounds (which is about 10% of the car weight), only 1% of the fuel's energy actually moves what needs to be moved.

There is an unending stream of stories in the corporate media that biofuels and hybrid cars are the answer. Biofuels promise to reduce oil use and decrease pollution by making fuel from corn and soy instead of petroleum. By generating their own electricity, hybrid cars use less gasoline and therefore emit fewer greenhouse gases.

Techno-fantasies fixate on one portion of transportation: the use of fuel to make a machine go. In reality, transportation is a system for getting around. That system requires energy for manufacture and disposal of machines, land use for moving and storing the things that move, related impacts of moving machines, and an ideology that weaves transportation into a society.

The horror of the car

Let's look at seven dimensions of the destructiveness of gasoline-powered cars.

1. Manufacture. According to Richard Heinberg, "more than half of the energy consumption attributable to each vehicle on the road occurs in the manufacturing process." Thus, unless an alternative approach to transportation significantly reduces manufacturing, it is not even addressing half the problem.

2. Operation. Driving cars results in huge releases of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that causes global warming. Myopic views of transportation can't see beyond the driving phase.

3. Disposal. Car batteries have one of the widest arrays of toxic chemicals short of a nuclear dump. Their poisoning of countless generations is virtually ignored by automobile apologists.

4. Land use for roads. Roads break up neighborhoods, farms and animal habitat and contribute directly to global warming. Paved surfaces convert sunlight to heat and do not convert sunlight to photosynthesis as do the plants they eliminate.

5. Land use for storage. What could be uglier and ruin more urban areas than parking lots? Vast expanses of parking lots contribute to "urban warming," which makes cities warmer than the surrounding countryside.

The problem is not just parking lots at shopping centers, work, school, church, hospitals and sporting events - we have our own little parking lots at home. Most likely, driveways for home garages average even higher ratios of access-to-destination paving than do business parking lots. The millions of little driveways to home parking garages comprise an extremely inefficient use of land and probably contribute to urban warming.

6. Other effects. Negative effects from cars which are even less likely to make it into official equations include horrible pollution from burning off ("flaring") unwanted gas from pipelines in Nigeria and elsewhere and over a million animals a year killed on US highways annually. Health effects from toxic automobile emissions could fill many volumes (and probably have).

7. Ideology of idolatry. I remember going to church as a kid and hearing the preacher say that "idolatry" is not limited to worshipping a little carved figure but is any groveling after material possessions. US society has no idol as perverse, as pervasive and as evil as the automobile. The car is the apex and the focus of the ideology that the accumulation of objects is the source of all happiness. This accumulation of objects is killing Life on Earth. Any proposed energy plan that leaves the car unchallenged is a plan to increase the destruction of life and is not a plan to preserve it.

Biofuels, hybrids and motorcycles.

Biofuels such as ethnol from corn and biodiesel from soy are often touted as the world's great salvation from the scarcity of oil and its polluting consequences. Biofuels do neither and introduce problems even worse than oil. Brian Tokar's summary documents that "every domestic biofuel sourceproduces less energy than is consumed in growing and processing the crops." The small reductions in greenhouse gases from burning biofuels are outweighed by their environmental damage of increased deforestation, pesticide usage, nitrate runoff, and water depletion.

Biofuels do nothing to lessen the energy used for manufacturing or disposing of cars or lessen land usage for driving and parking cars. But biofuels require massive land use for growing crops, which means less food for people as there is more food for cars. Widespread use of biofuels would massively increase world hunger and transform wars for oil to wars for land to grow biofuel crops.

Hybrid cars, on the other hand, offer real advantages by combining the use of electricity with gasoline. According to Consumer Reports, "All hybrids save fuel by using an integrated starter motor. It automatically shuts off the gasoline engine when the vehicle comes to a stop, such as at a stop sign or traffic light. The engine automatically starts again when needed." This results in fewer carbon dioxide emissions from the use of less gasoline.

The advantage of hybrids is not as much as their enthusiasts might have us believe. The Consumer Reports rating for overall fuel economy of Toyota's Prius is 44 mpg (not 50 to 60 mpg). This is better than 34 mph for the Volkswagon Jetta TDI, but hardly a night and day difference.

Since hybrids average $3000 more than comparable cars, it is reasonable to ask if they require more energy to manufacture. Maybe not, because the $3000 could include initial costs for research and development. But a much higher cost to manufacture could be hidden by government subsidies to help hybrids gain a share of the market. There is a real possibility that hybrids transfer energy from the driving portion of their use-cycle to the manufacturing phase.

There is no reason to believe that hybrids offer any advantage over conventional cars in terms of energy used for disposal, land used for roads or parking lots or road kill. The amount of fuel needed for driving is a real issue and no one doubts hybrids excel in this area. The hybrid with the best fuel economy is the Honda Insight, which Consumer Reports rates at 51 mpg. To get this fuel savings, the Insight is a two-seater.

This leads to the question: If the greatest fuel saving in a hybrid comes from reducing the number of passengers, why not reduce it again from 2 to 1 and ride a motorcycle? Are there advantages of hybrids that have not been available for decades via motorcycles?

There is good reason for suspecting that motorcycles might have less total negative effect than hybrids. Being smaller, they certainly require less energy for manufacture and disposal than any car. Though they require road space, a "motorcycle lane" would be more enforceable and more narrow than a "carpool lane." Parking 1000 motorcycles would certainly require less space than parking 1000 cars.

Despite their popularity among some environmentalists, both biofuels and hybrids leave the consumerist mentality untouched. They both create an obscenely false sense of security, much like advising someone to put a band-aid on an arterial wound.

If hybrids were promoted as part of a larger plan to reduce automobile production by 95% and require that those few cars that are manufactured be hybrids (or get equivalent gas mileage), we could be far more enthusiastic about them. I don't think that's what Toyota and Honda have in mind. At least Philip-Morris pretends to believe that smoking is bad. The current fad for hybrids has more in common with a campaign to improve health by smoking low tar and nicotine cigarettes than it does with confronting the need to quit the addiction.

Sharing transportation

Shared rides and mass transit involve collective solutions rather than individual life style changes. There is so much hype that people should make the moral decision to car pool that it is easy to overlook the fact that ride sharing is a collective rather than an individual approach.

Car pooling, even with designated lanes, will have minimal environmental effects if the same number of people own cars and simply rotate whose turn it is to drive. Though it does reduce the number of cars on the road, it has no effect on the energy to manufacture cars and little, if any, effect on car ideology.

Hitchhiking is car pooling with a new friend. Since those who hitchhike are less likely to own cars, the practice helps combat the ideology of consumerism. Perhaps the greatest barrier to hitchhiking is that it can land you in jail. For politicians who whine that environmentally friendly transportation is too expensive, a zero-cost option would be repealing laws against hitchhiking. If corporate media had a genuine concern with global warming, they would suspend car ads and replace them with messages encouraging drivers to pick up hitchhikers.

Motor pooling goes beyond car pooling because it involves an intentional reduction in the number of cars. Many state agencies and businesses have cars that employees can reserve for job-related travel.

One of the most practical ways to decrease cars would be for housing cooperatives or co-housing groups to have a certain number of cars for every 100 families. People could use mass transit, bicycles or walking for the vast majority of their travel. They would reserve a car only for trips where mass transit was unlikely or they had things to haul. Mass transit must exist for motor pooling to effectively reduce the number of cars.

Mass transit is often promoted as one of the best options for energy reduction. The recognition is well-deserved. Nevertheless, there is a downside to mass transit: a lightly loaded bus or train will use more energy per passenger than a car.

Auto companies have done their best to push car addiction and undermine mass transit. In the 1940s auto companies bought up several urban rail systems and ran them into the ground. Many US bus systems are so awful that it takes over two hours for what would be less than a 30 minute car ride. This includes long waits in weather that is often cold or wet.

Biofuels and hybrids actively undermine development of environmentally friendly mass transit in two ways. To be effective, mass transit must have a large number of users. Promotion of individual modes of transportation lowers the average occupancy on buses and trains. In addition, low costs for mass transit are based on people living in close proximity. Since biofuels and hybrids fail to reduce land use for parking lots, they help spread out space needed for living and working, thereby working against the high density that mass transit depends on.

However, shared rides and mass transit are not positive across the board. Though definitely less damaging than gasoline-powered cars, buses and trains require energy to manufacture and energy for disposal. Mass transit requires less land use for operation and vastly less land use for storage.

Human-powered transportation

Not much fossil fuel is needed for cycling and walking. This is far from their only advantage. Energy required to manufacture and dispose of bikes is tiny compared to autos and mass transit. Manufacturing to prepare for walking includes an extra winter coat and a hat for a sunny day.

Land use for biking and walking paths is minuscule in comparison to roads for cars. Bikes require a little storage space and walking, none.

For every machine mode of transportation, usage involves road kill and the release of toxins which make the "other effects" a negative. For cycling and walking, the "other effects" take on a positive value. They are the only forms of transportation where people actually receive health benefits from moving from place to place. With our country suffering epidemics of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, it is unpatriotic to oppose tearing up roads and replacing them with walking paths.

The way we move about is not an isolated issue unrelated to other areas of our lives. Types of transportation we utilize affect other modes of transportation and how our communities are structured. Bicycling and walking can only become major ways to get around if our homes are located near work, schools, churches and recreation. They lead us to ask, "Do we want mega-grocery stores, WalMarts, Home Depots and shopping malls, or do we want small businesses that we can get to without a traffic jam?"

The most valuable part of person-powered transportation is that it encourages a collective reassessment of how we want to organize society. We need to decide together how we want to construct urban space so that people can readily get to where they need to go without contaminating their community.

Deep green vs. shallow green

It cannot be stated too often that the value of biking and walking is not limited to saving the fuel from driving a machine. It includes savings from the fuel used to build and dismantle the machine, land usage and storage, bodily movement instead of breathing poisons while watching animals die, and the creation of communities which share resources instead of mindlessly consuming.

There is a sharp divide between a "deep green" look at the social nature of ecological problems and the "shallow green" approach of corporate environmentalism. Deep greens emphasize that America can improve its health and quality of life while manufacturing fewer objects and shortening the work week. Shallow greens are loathe to say anything about the need to produce less and flee from addressing moral and political dilemmas of a growth economy.

Shallow greens often accuse deeps of being uncompromising and refusing to accept small steps in the right direction. Mass transit shows the opposite to be true. While mass transit has negative aspects, it is a step in the right direction because it reduces the number of cars.

But mass transit needs population density and high use to be effective. Preserving cars via biofuels and hybrids requires using land space for driving and parking, thereby lowering population density. They encourage people to drive cars instead of ride trains. In both ways, the shallow green approach undermines mass transit. Chasing after techno-fixes to a social problem is not a small step in the right direction - it is a blind step in the wrong direction.

Spiritual afterthought

As Moses smashed the 10 Commandments on the golden calf and climbed the mountain for a back-up copy, little did he know that he would return to find those who worshipped a silver calf. For they imagined that substituting silver for gold would mean their behavior was no longer idolatrous. Those who worshipped the silver calf begat followers, who begat more followers, and so on, until they begat those who use biofuels and drive hybrid cars with silver calves as hood ornaments. And they imagine that adorning the hood of their Prius with a silver calf means that it is no longer an idol.

Don Fitz is editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought, which is sent to members of The Greens/Green Party USA. He can be reached at fitzdon@aol.com

Sources

Fitz, D., Half hour hurricanes: Where were the warnings about St. Louis's ultra storm? http://counterpunch.com/fitz07282006.html

Heinberg, R. The party's over. New Society Publishers, 2003, p. 161.

Heywood, J., Fueling our transportation future. Scientific American, September 2006, p. 60-61.

Stix, G., A climate repair manual. Scientific American, September 2006, p. 47.

Tokar, B., The real scoop on biofuels, Synthesis/Regeneration 42, Winter 2007, pp. 8-9

Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

http://www.guardian .co.uk/print/ 0,,329712014- 111322,00. html
Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

Despite denials, Pentagon plans for possible attack on nuclear sites are well advanced

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday February 10, 2007

Guardian

US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.

The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Deployment

Mr Cannistraro, who worked for the CIA and the National Security Council, stressed that no decision had been made.

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the vice-president's office, is the AEI, headquarters of the neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike on Iran?

Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI, is among its most vocal supporters of such a strike.

"I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington are opposed to an air strike but advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation.

Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes former officials from the White House, state department and intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to Israel."

Opposition support

Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq. "There is not enough political will for a strike. There seems to be various notions of what the policy should be."

In spite of the president's veto on negotiation with Tehran, the state department has been involved since 2003 in back-channel approaches and meetings involving Iranian officials and members of the Bush administration or individuals close to it. But when last year the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a letter as an overture, the state department dismissed it within hours of its arrival.

Support for negotiations comes from centrist and liberal thinktanks. Afshin Molavi, a fellow of the New America Foundation, said: "To argue diplomacy has not worked is false because it has not been tried. Post-90s and through to today, when Iran has been ready to dance, the US refused, and when the US has been ready to dance, Iran has refused. We are at a stage where Iran is ready to walk across the dance floor and the US is looking away."

He is worried about "a miscalculation that leads to an accidental war".

The catalyst could be Iraq. The Pentagon said yesterday that it had evidence - serial numbers of projectiles as well as explosives - of Iraqi militants' weapons that had come from Iran. In a further sign of the increased tension, Iran's main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, cancelled a visit to Munich for what would have been the first formal meeting with his western counterparts since last year.

If it does come to war, Mr Muravchik said Iran would retaliate, but that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock," he said.

War of words

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly"
George Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point"
Robert Gates

"I think it's been pretty well-known that Iran is fishing in troubled waters"
Dick Cheney

"It is absolutely parallel. They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux"
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter- terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq

"US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation"
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

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