29 June 2016, Institute for Policy Studies. Free Trade Agreements Have Exacerbated a Humanitarian Crisis in Central America. Proposals like the Alliance for Prosperity Plan and the Trans-Pacific Partnership will only accelerate a race to the bottom for families in the Northern triangle of Latin America, Manuel Perez-Rocha said at the AFL-CIO conference on U.S. trade policy. U.S. trade negotiators continue to claim that free trade agreements help to support security, but in reality, they exacerbate the root causes of instability in the Mesoamerican region, IPS’s Manuel Perez-Rocha said in a speech at the AFL-CIO conference on U.S. trade policy. “Real security encompasses economic, human, financial, and political security,” he said. Today the Northern triangle of Latin America is one of the most dangerous places in the world. In Mexico alone, there are more than 27,000 people reported missing on top of the 100,000 killed in the so-called war on drugs, Perez-Rocha said. He explained that the origins of this crisis are rooted in structural adjustment policies that the IMF and the World Bank imposed on Central America to pave the way for free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). “Instead of bringing prosperity, [NAFTA] took away domestic protections from Mexico’s food production, leading to greater food insecurity and the widespread loss of our agricultural livelihoods,” he said. Read More here
Tag Archives: consumption
28 June 2016, DESMOG, Obama Admin Approved Over 1,500 Offshore Fracking Permits in Gulf of Mexico and Mainstream Media Has Ignored It. On June 24, the independent news website TruthOut broke a doozy of a story: the Obama Administration has secretly approved over 1,500 instances of offshore hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the Gulf of Mexico, including during the Deepwater Horizon offshore spill disaster. Albeit released on a Friday, a day where many mainstream media reporters head out of the office early and venture to late-afternoon and early-evening Happy Hour specials at the bars, the TruthOut story has received deafening silence by the corporate-owned media apparatus. Google News, Factiva and LexisNexis searches reveal that not a single mainstream media outlet has covered the story. TruthOut got its hands on the story via documents provided by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). CBD explained inpress release that they “obtained the information following an agreement that settled a lawsuit challenging the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s failure to disclose documents regarding the scope of offshore fracking in the Gulf under the Freedom of Information Act.” CBD also has published a list of all of the instances of offshore fracking in the Gulf of Mexico provided to it by BOEM, both inlist-form and in visual map form. Read More here
26 June 2016, Climate News Network, China aims to halve meat eating.The Chinese government has issued guidelines to help wean its citizens onto a more vegetarian diet − offering huge potential health gains and cuts in greenhouse gases. In a bold challenge to individual appetites and societal norms, China says it wants to reduce its citizens’ consumption of meat by 50%. The country consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of its pork, although its per capita consumption is much less than in at least 14 other countries. The average American or Australian eats twice as much meat as the typical Chinese citizen. The Chinese health ministry has published new dietary guidelines recommending that people should eat from 40g to at most 75g of meat a day, which is close to the level recommended by British health authorities to limit the risk of developing bowel cancer. The guidelines’ main purpose is to improve public health, but if they achieve their aim they will also give a significant boost to efforts to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are stoking climate change and global warming. Livestock emissions Worldwide, 14.5% of greenhouse emissions come from the livestock industry, which is more than the contribution from the entire transport sector. Livestock emit the highly-potent greenhouse gas methane, although there have been proposals to tackle the problem by changing the animals’ diets. Land clearing, fertilisers and slurry also release large quantities of GHGs. The new guidelines could mean carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from China’s livestock industry would fall by 1bn tonnes by 2030, from a projected 1.8bn tonnes in that year. Read More here
22 June 2016, Reuters, Court strikes down Obama fracking rules for public lands. A federal judge has struck down the Obama administration’s rules for hydraulic fracturing on public lands, a victory for oil and gas producers and state regulators who opposed the rules as an egregious overreach. The ruling, which the White House vowed to appeal, halts the administration’s efforts to address what it sees as safety concerns in the industry and reverses what producers had seen as a first step toward full federal regulation of all fracking activity. The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lacked Congressional authority to set fracking regulations for federal and Indian lands, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl in Wyoming ruled late on Tuesday. BLM’s rules, issued in their final form in March 2015, would have required companies to provide data on chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and to take steps to prevent leakage from oil and gas wells on federally owned land. Fracking, currently regulated by states, involves injection of large amounts of water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure to extract oil or natural gas. Environmental groups and some neighbors of oil and gas wells have linked fracking to water pollution as well as increased earthquake activity in certain areas. Because most fracking in the United States takes place on private land, the case had little direct effect on existing operations. Roughly 22 percent of U.S. oil production comes from federal lands, with much of that from offshore Gulf of Mexico production, not shale fields. Still, oil producers had feared the new regulations would be a step toward federal oversight of all fracking. “This ruling sends a broad signal about who really does have the jurisdictional authority to regulate this area,” said Ryan Sitton of the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees the oil and gas industry in the top producing state. Read more here and here