http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1123-05.htm
Published on Sunday,
November 23, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
Ozone Layer 'Sacrificed' to Lift Bush's
Re-Election Prospects
by Geoffrey Lean
President George Bush has brought the international treaty aimed
at repairing the Earth's vital ozone layer close to breakdown,
risking millions of cancers, to benefit strawberry and tomato
growers in the electorally critical state of Florida,
The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
His administration
is insisting on a sharp increase in spraying
of the most dangerous ozone-destroying chemical still in use,
the pesticide methyl bromide, even though it is due to be
phased out under the Montreal Protocol in little more than
a year. And it has threatened that the United States could
withdraw from the treaty's provisions altogether if its demand
is not met.
Talks on the unprecedented
demand broke down without agreement
at the conference in Nairobi this month as US delegates refused
to consider any compromise. They even rejected a European Union
proposal that would have allowed farmers to use the same amount
of the pesticide as at present, even though this, itself,
would violate the spirit of the protocol.
The crisis has come
to a head at a particularly embarrassing
moment for Tony Blair, who this week played host to George Bush
on the first state visit by a US President. For three years,
the Prime Minister has been quietly attempting to persuade him
to stop trying to kill the Kyoto Protocol, designed to combat
global warming. But now Mr Bush is trying to emasculate what
the UN regards as the most successful international environmental
agreement ever made.
It also comes at a
critical time for the ozone layer. Scientists
had hoped that it would be beginning to heal by now, but this
autumn the ozone hole over Antarctica was at near-record levels.
Ironically the Montreal
Protocol, agreed in 1987, was only brought
about through the drive and commitment of the Reagan administration
- in which George Bush Sr served as Vice-President. It was rapidly
agreed after the shock of the discovery of the ozone hole - the
size of the US - and findings that the layer had thinned worldwide.
The layer is made up
of a type of oxygen so thinly scattered
though the upper atmosphere that, if gathered together, it would
girdle the globe with a ring no thicker than the sole of a shoe.
But it screens out harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun that
otherwise would wipe out life. As the layer weakens, increasing
amounts of rays get through, causing skin cancer and blindness
from cataracts.
The provisions of the
treaty, forecast to prevent two million
cancers in the West alone, have been progressively tightened
as the use of ozone-destroying chemicals has been phased out
in industrialized countries, developing countries follow after
a period of grace. Methyl bromide, which has also been linked
with prostate cancer, is one of the last to be controlled;
developed countries agreed in 1997 to stop using it by the
end of next year. So far they have succeeded in reducing it
to 30 per cent of its former level by introducing substitutes.
Several countries,
however, foresee difficulties in completing
the phase-out in time, and have asked for year-long "critical
exemptions" for some limited uses, as permitted under the
treaty.
But uniquely, the US, which already accounts for a quarter of
the world's use of the pesticide, is demanding that it should
indefinitely increase its use.
It is responding to
pressure from farmers, particularly
in Florida and California. While the election of Arnold
Schwarzenegger as Governor has bolstered the Republicans'
hopes in California, Florida is expected to be critical
in next year's presidential poll - as it was in 2000.
When EU and Third World
governments refused to agree
to the demand at the meeting, the US said legislation
had been introduced into Congress to exempt it from the
treaty's provisions on the pesticide altogether. Claudia
McMurray, the head of its delegation, said that this would
"either put us out of compliance or would lead us to violate
the protocol".
When all attempts at
compromise failed, the meeting agreed
to defer negotiations to a special "extraordinary" conference
in Montreal in March. But unless Mr Bush has a change of heart,
the world will then be faced with choosing between two
alternative means of undermining the treaty: allowing the
US to reverse the process of phase-out, with the risk other
nations will follow; or seeing it ignore the agreement
altogether.
© 2003 Independent
Digital (UK) Ltd
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