April 13, 1999
Subject: FWD The Earth Day Clean Energy Agenda Earth Day 2000 Worldwide + Healing
Our World website recommended + Worldwatch Registers Rising Death Rates
Hello!
I just received this most excellent Clean Energy Agenda from the Earth Day Network
head office in Seattle, USA. Although the policies proposed are for the USA, they
could certainly be used as a fine example as to what all other countries on Earth
could do to establish their own Clean Energy Agenda.
Please circulate this and the accompanying Earth Day 2000 Worldwide Campaign material
as you see fit and thus contribute to more Earth Day awareness and participation
in your own area by the means at your disposal.
I also include after this an eye-opening and soul-wrenching post from the Worldwatch
institute regarding the demographic nightmare one third of the planet is faced with.
Galoping HIV contagion in Africa and India, pumping of aquifer water exceeding natural replenishment rates and the shrinking of available arable land per human all add
up to create a humanitarian blackhole that makes the Albanian Kososar pogrom pale
in comparison. Leadership is desperately needed to help stabilizing world population
as soon as possible and yet the US Congress, mired in the quicksand of anti-abortion politics,
has deprived developing countries of the assistance that they need by withdrawing
in late 1998 all funding for the U.N. Population Fund, the principal source of international family planning assistance.
Unless there is a major shift of direction at the helm of world affairs and policy
decision-making, we are headed for a hellish 21st century.
Maybe it is time the people starts leading if we want the "leaders" to follow...
Jean Hudon Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
Please visit http://www.earthday.net to get the latest on this year's worldwide observance
of Earth Day and the plans for a massive global Earth Day celebration in 2000. To
get the coming Earth Day updates and latest news, simply request to be added onto
their emailing list.
Earth Day is now just a few days away, on April 22nd!
NOTE: I still have a number of other posts in preparation - or on the back burner
because of the Kosovo crisis - that I hope to send you all soon. Parts of this one
were put aside recently. But this latest Clean Energy Agenda from Earth Day Network
and the imminence of this important awareness-raising global observance deserves your attention
right now I feel...
From: Peter Drekmeier <pdrekmeier@earthday.net>
Subject: Clean Energy Agenda
Friends,
The Earth Day Clean Energy Agenda has been finalized. This document will serve as
the focal point of the Earth Day 2000 New Energy for a New Era campaign. Many thanks
to the Sustainable Energy Coalition and Climate Action Network for their leadership
roles in pulling this together.
You will find below an overview of the Agenda. For those of you who would like more
specifics, please visit the Earth Day Network website at http://www.earthday.net/energy/agenda3.html
Next week (Earth Week 1999), organizers across the United States will launch the Earth
Day 2000 campaign calling for a swift transition from outdated, polluting energy
to the efficient use of clean, renewable energy sources. You can help support the
campaign by encouraging organizations, local governments, businesses and other groups to
endorse the Earth Day Clean Energy Agenda.
More details coming soon.
- Peter
EARTH DAY CLEAN ENERGY AGENDA
As we approach the 21st century, Earth Day Network is launching a global campaign
to bring about a swift transition to clean, renewable energy sources and a giant
leap forward in energy efficiency.
Environmental realities compel us to evaluate our outdated energy path. Cutting edge
technologies offer us a better choice. Public policies that promote these clean technologies
and reward responsible energy choices are the bridge to our clean, renewable energy future.
Our use of highly polluting fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, causes air pollution,
acid rain, cancer, and other damage to human health and the environment. Burning
fossil fuels also threatens us with global warming, potentially the most serious
environmental crisis our planet has ever faced.
We can reduce the threat of global warming, create jobs and protect our air and water
by moving rapidly toward a clean, renewable energy economy. By cutting energy waste
and investing in solar, wind, and other clean energy sources, we can meet our energy
needs and achieve long-term energy security without risking our own health and the
health of the Earth.
We support responsible public policies that:
1) Accelerate the transition to clean, renewable energy sources.
2) Encourage and reward more efficient use of energy by utilities, vehicles, appliances,
homes, buildings and businesses.
3) Level the playing field for renewable technologies by ending public policies that
keep the price of outdated energy sources artificially low.
4) Demonstrate leadership in international efforts to reduce the pollution that causes
global warming.
HIGHLIGHTS
1) Accelerate the transition to clean, renewable energy sources.
* Over the next decade, triple the amount of energy harnessed from clean, renewable
sources such as the wind and sun. * Increase government research and development
funding for clean fuels, hydrogen fuel cells, and renewable electric generation technologies, and establish market incentives to boost their use. * Enact public policies that
enable utilities to invest in renewable energy without putting themselves at a competitive
disadvantage. * Set a responsible standard for a minimum renewable energy content for automotive fuels. * Shift World Bank and other international funding toward renewable
energy and energy efficiency projects in developing nations.
2) Encourage and reward more efficient use of energy by utilities, vehicles, homes,
appliances, buildings and businesses.
* Provide incentives to commercialize and deploy highly efficient energy technologies
that minimize waste. * Set higher fuel-efficiency standards so cars will go further
on a gallon of gas. * Close the auto fuel efficiency loophole that allows sports
utility vehicles (SUVs) to produce far more global warming pollution than cars.
3) Level the playing field for renewable technologies by ending public policies that
keep the price of outdated energy sources artificially low.
* Close the Clean Air Act loophole that allows older coal-fired power plants to pollute
far more than newer plants, and set progressively tighter limits on power plants'
total carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and mercury pollution. * Shift international energy
funding in the developing world from outdated energy production methods (coal, large
hydro, and oil) to clean, renewable energy technologies. * End taxpayer subsidies
that artificially lower the price of coal, oil, and nuclear power. * Increase the
accountability of the nuclear industry by removing the limits on liability for nuclear accidents.
* Protect environmentally sensitive public lands from oil drilling and coal and uranium
mining. * Provide adequate resources and job training for workers and communities now dependent on dated energy resources, to ensure that they achieve a just transition
to a sustainable energy economy.
4) Demonstrate leadership in international efforts to reduce the pollution that causes
global warming.
* Provide scientific and technical leadership in efforts to meet global energy needs
with sources that do not contribute to global warming. * Ratify, implement, and work
to strengthen the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to reduce global warming pollution. * Develop and implement federal, state and local action plans to decrease
global warming pollution. * Lead by example, by implementing this Clean Energy Agenda.
Earth Day Network, 91 Marion St., Seattle, WA 98104, Tel: 206-264-0114, Fax: 206-682-1184.
For more information about the Clean Energy Agenda and the ED 2000 energy campaign,
see http://www.earthday.net.
Peter Drekmeier Earth Day Network/Earth Day 2000 91 Marion Street Seattle, WA 98104
Tel (206) 264-0114 ext. 201 pdrekmeier@earthday.net
AND IN CASE YOU WERE NOT AWARE OF HOW HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED OIL REALLY IS...
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999
From: Mark Graffis <ab758@virgin.usvi.net>
Subject: Gas Really Costs $15.14 a Gallon
Sustainable Business Insider 02/13/99
The oil industry is heavily subsidized at US$114.6 billion a year. If we included
the costs of securing and protecting oil supplies, extracting and processing it,
gas would cost $15.14 per gallon. The International Centre for Technology Assessment released a report which examined over 40 cost factors associated with gasoline
production - adding up to $1.69 trillion per year. The U.S. government
spends $1.6 billion yearly on regulatory oversight, pollution cleanup and liability
costs connected to the oil industry. The U.S. Defense Department allocates $55-95 billion
a year to safeguard the world's petroleum resources. Most state income taxes
are based on oil firms' lower federal tax bills, which result in companies paying
US $123-323 million less in state taxes. The renewable energy and energy conservation
industry sectors are concerned that the subsidies distort the free market and
make renewables less economically competitive. They call for leveling the economic playing field, either by giving them the same subsidies, or by withdrawing
the subsidies from the oil industry. FROM [1]Gallon Environment Letter
References
1. 2.
http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/news_top10.cfm
NOTE: MANY HAVE FORWARDED TO ME RECENTLY A SUGGESTION TO PROMOTE A MASSIVE GAS-OUT
ON APRIL 30 - MEANING *EVERYONE* WOULD NOT BUY GASOLINE ON THAT DATE TO FORCE THE
OIL INDUSTRY TO LOWER THE PRICE PER GALLON TO U.S. CONSUMERS, A PRICE WHICH IS ALREADY
ONE OF THE LOWEST IN THE WORLD AND, AS SUCH, A HUGE INCENTIVE TO WASTING A NON-RENEWABLE
AND HIGHLY POLLUTING RESOURCE. THIS PROPOSAL IS IMHO UTTERLY SILLY - THE COST OF
GASOLINE SHOULD IN FACT BE MULTIPLIED BY 10 TO REFLECT THE REAL COST AS INDICATED
ABOVE - NOT TO MENTION THE TERRIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS WHICH COUNTLESS GENERATIONS WILL HAVE
TO BEAR..
REACHING OUT TO THE WORLD
Earth Day Network's Worldwide Campaign is sending letters inviting 21,000 groups in
160 countries to organize for Earth Day 2000. The invitations and accompanying Call
to Action are going out in thirteen languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French,
German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
You can help EDN's Worldwide Campaign by:
1) Inviting your international friends to participate in Earth Day (please forward
the following letter). 2) Collaborating with your partners abroad to use Earth Day
as an organizing tool. 3) Letting us know about key international groups we should
contact. 4) Volunteering to help with outreach efforts.
For more information about international plans for Earth Day 2000, please contact
Mark Dubois at 206.264.0114 x203 or mdubois@earthday.net.
Dear Friends,
We invite you to participate in an international movement to place environmental concerns
and action at the top of the world's agenda for the 21st century.
Despite many important victories, we continue to face an unprecedented array of perils:
unhealthful air and water, vanishing species and wild places, explosions in population
and consumption, global warming, toxic wastes, collapsing fisheries and the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
No community can solve these problems alone. To address them, we must mobilize public
and institutional will to a degree far beyond what we have ever seen.
In 1970, over 20 million people participated in the first Earth Day. In 1990, 200
million people in 141 countries made Earth Day the largest organized demonstration
in history. Now the new millennium offers us the opportunity to reconsider humans'
relationship to the Earth and to each other. On Earth Day 2000, citizens around the world
will join together in common cause to demand far-reaching and enduring action to
reverse our deepening environmental crisis.
Earth Day, April 22nd, can be celebrated in any way that honors the environmental
passions and challenges of your community. Each country, city, neighborhood, and
school will highlight its own issues as part of a larger campaign expressing the
public will to create a sustainable society. We invite groups to use Earth Day as a platform
for connecting with each other to launch campaigns on the critical issues of our
time.
In the United States and many other countries, Earth Day 2000 will highlight the need
to replace polluting fossil fuels with clean, renewable sources of energy. We welcome
all groups to join us in this energy campaign. We will also facilitate networking
to launch campaigns on other millennial issues.
If you would like to organize or participate in Earth Day 2000, please send us the
enclosed card immediately. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Mark Dubois
International Coordinator
----------
A CALL TO ACTION
We are at the threshold of a new millennium -- faced with a rare opportunity.
We invite you to join us in making Earth Day 2000 the beginning of a new chapter in
the environmental history of the Earth.
Human history is full of important accomplishments. Our ancestors have left awesome
achievements, material and spiritual, for us to enjoy.
Yet we have also inherited enormous challenges. For the first time in history, humans
have the power to alter the entire planet. We are changing the climate, triggering
an epidemic of extinctions, drilling holes through the ozone layer, reproducing and
consuming beyond the world's carrying capacity, and maintaining an arsenal of weapons
capable of causing more destruction than an asteroid collision.
Now it is our turn to choose our legacy. Working together, we can end the world war
we are winning against the planet and ourselves. A vibrant, healthy planet with
flourishing human communities can be our gift to future generations.
We invite you to begin organizing for the largest demonstration on the planet.
On April 22, 2000, the millennial Earth Day, hundreds of millions of people will join
in actions to create a sustainable global environment. Earth Day 2000 will call
for tangible results and far-reaching policies to protect the environment. It will
enlist a new generation of environmental activists, building alliances that transcend the
boundaries of countries, continents, and cultures. It will galvanize the sort of
broad, deep support that makes tough choices politically possible. We cannot afford
to waste time complaining, avoiding, denying, or fighting each other.
Together, we can create a positive future.
Earth Day's Precedent
Earth Day began in the belief that people, working together, can accomplish extraordinary
things. Earth Day is unique in that it links citizen activists around the world with
each other while inspiring action on personal, community, national, and international levels.
On the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million citizens in the United States came together
to create a national environmental agenda. Within two years, the country's main environmental
agency had been created. Important laws to clean the air and water and to protect rare species had been adopted.
On Earth Day 1990, over 200 million people in 141 countries on every continent participated
in celebrations in their communities. The mobilization of citizen groups that started
with Earth Day 1990 empowered citizens, linked non-governmental organizations (NGOs) globally, and pressured heads of state to participate personally in the UN
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Since 1990, Earth Day has been embraced by citizen groups the world over as an international
citizens' day. In Canada, Japan, France, and many other countries, national offices
coordinate Earth Day activities. In Eastern Europe, the Regional Environment Center reports that most of its 2300 affiliates organize yearly for Earth Day. We
look forward to connecting with those groups who have already been using Earth Day
as an organizing tool, and with those who are ready to begin doing so.
Earth Day Celebrations and Actions
Earth Day is celebrated in diverse ways. In 1990, Earth Day ignited environmental
imaginations in France, where participants formed a 500-mile human chain along the
Loire River, stretching across the country, to honor one of Europe's last clean rivers.
In Asia, an international team of mountain climbers from China, the Soviet Union and
the U.S. picked up the more than two tons of trash left on Mount Everest by earlier
expeditions. Five thousand Italians staged a roadway lie-down to protest car fumes.
In Haiti, Earth Day was officially declared a National Holiday. In Jordan, 10,000 students
joined a national cleanup. In Tokyo Bay, 35,000 Japanese environmentalists gathered
on Dream Island, an island made of garbage, to set up a temporary recycling center. To learn more about Earth Day in 1990 and years since, see http://www.sdearthtimes.com/edn/calendar.
Join Earth Day 2000
Earth Day 2000, the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, will use grassroots organizing
and cutting-edge technology to educate, empower, and inspire actions that protect
the public interest.
Earth Day will create global networks that connect activists together. It will prod
organizations to think more ambitiously about the immensity and urgency of their
work.
Connect your efforts with those of other activists to create a global force for change.
Join Earth Day 2000.
From: "Boudewijn Wegerif" <monetarystudies@hotmail.com>
Subject: Worldwatch Registers Rising Death Rates
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999
More worrying news. Now from Worldwatch about rising death rates in our divided world.
Because of the HIV virus, life expectancy in Zimbabwe will have fallen from 61 years
in 1993 to 49 years in 2000, and maybe 40 years in 2010 -- you will read in this
press release from the prestigious Worldwatch Institute in Washington. It is as bad
in Botswana, and one presumes the rest of southern Africa. I shall never forget
the orphan villages I walked through in Malawi, in 1997. The after-impression is
of having seen only the very young and the very old.
God help us!
Boudewijn Wegerif.
Worldwatch Press Release
OUR DEMOGRAPHICALLY DIVIDED WORLD: RISING MORTALITY JOINS FALLING FERTILITY TO SLOW
POPULATION GROWTH
For the first time since China's great famine claimed 30 million lives in 1959-61,
rising death rates are slowing world population growth. When the United Nations
released its biennial population update in late 1998, it reduced the projected world
population for 2050 from 9.4 billion to 8.9 billion. Of the 500 million drop, roughly
two thirds is because of falling birth rates, but one third is the result of rising
death rates.
"Tragically, the world is dividing into two parts: one where population growth is
slowing as fertility falls, and one where population growth is slowing as mortality
rises," said Lester R. Brown, co-author with Gary Gardner and Brian Halweil of Beyond
Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge.
"That rising death rates have already reduced the projected population for 2050 by
150 million represents a failure of our political institutions unmatched since the
outbreak of World War II." The world is now starting to reap the consequences of
its past neglect of the population issue, according to the new book released by the Worldwatch
Institute and funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
The two regions where death rates are already rising, or are likely to do so, are
sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, which together contain 1.9 billion
people, or one third of humanity. "Without clearly defined strategies by governments
in countries with rapid population growth to quickly lower birth rates and a commitment
by the international community to support them, one third of humanity could slide
into a demographic dark hole," said Brown. This rise in mortality does not come
as a surprise to those who track world population trends and who know that a 3 percent
annual growth rate will lead to a twenty-fold population increase in a century.
Although population growth has slowed in most developing countries, it has not slowed
enough in many to avoid serious problems.
After nearly half a century of continuous population growth, the demand in many countries
for food, water, and forest products is simply outrunning the capacity of local
life support systems. In addition, the ever growing number of young people who need health care and education is exceeding the availability of these services. If birthrates
do not come down soon enough, natural systems deteriorate and social services fall
short, forcing death rates up. But what would cause death rates to go up in individual countries? Would it be starvation? An outbreak of disease? War? Or social disintegration?
At some point as population pressures build, governments are simply overwhelmed
and are not able to respond to new threats. Beyond Malthus identifies three specific threats that either are already pushing death rates up or that have the potential
to do so-the HIV epidemic, aquifer depletion, and shrinking cropland area per person.
"Of these three threats, the HIV virus is the first to spiral out of control in developing
countries," said Brown. "The HIV epidemic should be seen for what it is: an international
emergency of epic proportions, one that could claim more lives in the early part of the next century than World War II did in this century." In sub-Saharan
Africa, HIV infection rates are soaring, already infecting one fifth to one fourth
of the adult population in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Swaziland.
Barring a medical miracle, many African countries will lose one fifth or more of
their adult population to AIDS within the next decade. To find a precedent for such
a potentially devastating loss of life from an infectious disease, we have to go
back to the decimation of New World Indian communities by the introduction of smallpox in
the sixteenth century or to the Bubonic plague that claimed roughly a third of
Europe's population during the fourteenth century.
Ominously, the virus has also established a foothold in the Indian subcontinent.
With 4 million of its adults now HIV positive, India is home to more infected individuals
than any other nation. And with the infection rate among India's adults at roughly 1 percent-a critical threshold for potentially rapid spread-the HIV epidemic threatens
to engulf the country if the government does not move quickly to check it.
Using life expectancy, the sentinel indicator of development, we can see that the
HIV virus is reversing the gains of the last several decades. For example, in Botswana,
life expectancy has fallen from 62 years in 1990 to 44 years in 1998. In Zimbabwe,
it has fallen from 61 years in 1993 to 49 years in 2000 and could drop to 40 years
in 2010. For infants born with the virus, life expectancy is less than two years.
A second consequence of continuing population growth addressed in Beyond Malthus
is potentially life-threatening water shortages. If rapid population growth continues
indefinitely, the demand for water eventually exceeds the sustainable yield of aquifers. The result is excessive water withdrawals and falling water tables. Since 40
percent of the world's food comes from irrigated land, water shortages can quickly
translate into food shortages.
Dozens of developing countries face acute water shortages early in the nextcentury,
but none illustrate the threat better than India, whose population, which is expanding
by 18 million per year, will reach 1 billion in a few months.
New estimates for India indicate that water withdrawals are now double the rate of
aquifer recharge. As a result, water tables are falling by 1 to 3 meters per year
over much of the country. Overpumping today means water supply cutbacks tomorrow,
a serious matter where half of the grain harvest comes from irrigated land.
The International Water Management Institute estimates that aquifer depletion and
the resulting cutbacks in irrigation water could drop India's grain harvest by one
fourth. "In a country where 53 percent of all children are already malnourished
and underweight, a shrinking harvest could increase hunger-related deaths, adding to the
6 million worldwide who die each year from hunger and malnutrition," said Brown.
In contrast to AIDS, which takes a heavy toll of young adults, hunger claims mostly
infants and children.
The third threat that hangs over the future of countries where rapid population growth
continues is shrinking cropland per person. Once cropland per person shrinks to
a certain point, people can no longer feed themselves, becoming dependent on imported
food. The risk is that countries either will not be able to afford the imported food
or that food simply will not be available as world import needs exceed exportable
surpluses.
Among the larger countries where shrinking cropland per person threatens future food
security are Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Pakistan, all countries with weak family planning
programs. For example, as Nigeria's population goes from 111 million today to a
projected 244 million in 2050, its grainland per person will shrink from 0.15 hectares
to 0.07 hectares. Pakistan's projected growth from 146 million today to 345 million
by 2050 will shrink its grainland per person from 0.08 hectares at present to 0.03
hectares, an area scarcely the size of a tennis court. Countries where grainland per
person has shrunk to 0.03 hectares, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, each
import some 70 percent of their grain.
The threats from HIV, aquifer depletion, and shrinking cropland are not new or unexpected.
We have known for at least 15 years that the HIV virus could decimate human populations
if it was not controlled. In each of the last 18 years, the number of new HIV infections has risen. Of the 47 million infected thus far, 14 million have died.
In the absence of a low-cost cure, most of the remaining 33 million will be dead
by 2005.
"It is hard to believe, given the advanced medical knowledge of the late twentieth
century, that a controllable disease is decimating human populations in so many
countries," said Brown. "Similarly, it is hard to imagine that falling water tables,
which may prove an even greater threat to future economic progress and political stability,
could be so widely ignored. The arithmetic of emerging water shortages is not difficult."
A growing population with a water supply that is essentially fixed by nature means that the water supply per person will diminish over time, eventually dropping
below the amount needed to satisfy basic needs, such as food production. The same
is true for cropland per person. "The mystery is not in the arithmetic. That is
straightforward. The mystery is in our failure to respond to the threats associated with
continuing population growth," said Brown.
The authors note that one of the keys to helping countries quickly slow population
growth is expanded international assistance for reproductive health and family planning.
At the U.N.'s Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994, it
was estimated that the annual cost of providing quality reproductive health services
to all those in need in developing countries would cost $17 billion in the year
2000. By 2015, this would climb to $22 billion.
Industrial countries agreed to provide one third of the funds with the developing
countries providing the remaining two thirds. While developing countries have largely
honored their commitments, the industrial countries,importantly the United States,
have reneged on theirs. And almost unbelievably, in late 1998 the U.S. Congress withdrew
all funding for the U.N. Population Fund, the principal source of international
family planning assistance.
"The same family planning services-including reproductive health counseling andthe
distribution of condoms-that help to slow population growth also help to check the
spread of the HIV virus," said Brown. "But unfortunately, Congress, mired in the
quicksand of anti-abortion politics, is depriving developing countries of the assistance
that they need."
Beyond family planning, the forgiveness of international debts by governments in
the industrial world could enable poor countries to make the heavy investments in
education, especially of young females, that accelerates the shift to smaller families.
For example, in Kenya, 25 percent of government revenue is spent on debt servicing,
while 7 percent is spent on education and 3 percent on health care.
As U.N. delegates prepare in June to evaluate the progress made since the Cairo conference,
there is a desperate need for leadership in stabilizing world population as soon
as possible. But, the authors note, despite the obvioussocial consequences of one third of the world heading into a demographic nightmare, none of those to whom
the world looks for leadership - the Secretary General of the United Nations, the
president of the World Bank, or the president of the United States-has even so much
as devoted a single public address to the fast-deteriorating situation.
Worldwatch News is maintained by the Worldwatch Institute for subscribers interested
in keeping up-to-date on global environmental issues. Postings to this list will
include news releases and notification of new publications. The Worldwatch Institute
is a nonprofit research organization that analyzes global environmental and development
issues.
To contact Worldwatch directly, send email to <worldwatch@worldwatch.org>
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