THE
ASSOCIATION OF STATE GREEN PARTIESMEDIA ADVISORY:
Greens Blast President Bush's Reversal on Steps to Stop Global Warming, Calling it a Patent Sell-Out to Oil and Coal Lobbies.
Friday, March 16, 2001
Contacts:
Nancy Allen, Media Coordinator
207-326-4576, nallen@acadia.net
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator
202-518-5624, scottmclarty@yahoo.com
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Bush's new policy is a second major setback, after the Clinton-Gore sabotage of the international climate change meeting in the Hague, in November 2000
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Greens call for reduced fossil fuel consumption, conversion to alternative energy, sustainable development, and preservation of forests -- and the pro-democracy reforms necessary to enact these measures
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party organizers strongly criticized President Bush's reversal of White House policy on reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, calling it reckless in its disregard of the evidence of worldwide climate change, a blow against international efforts to impede global warming, a sell-out to oil and coal industry lobbies, and a facile betrayal of a campaign pledge.
Carol Miller, a New Mexico Green Party activist and public health expert, said, "Watching the President so quickly break a significant campaign promise is of great concern to the ASGP. Not only does it demonstrate a willingness to protect corporate profits instead of the environment and public health, it is destructive to democracy itself."
"At a time when citizens are cynical about government and turning away from voting, this action validates the commonly held belief that politicians will say anything to get elected."
Campaigning in Michigan on September 29, 2000, Bush had said, "With the help of Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time."
Corporate lobbies vs. the health of the earth
President Bush's new policy is the second recent setback in international efforts to reverse global warming. The first occurred when the U.S. delegation frustrated international negotiations during the Sixth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change, which took place the Hague in November, 2000, blocking implementation of the already compromised Kyoto Protocols to reverse global warming.
The Clinton-Gore White House's betrayal last November, at the behest of oil, coal, nuclear, and logging industries, gave President Bush a license to cave in to the same lobbies.
Despite unanimous agreement on the threat of global warming among the 2,000 scientists appointed by the UN to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, both Democratic and Republican Parties remain under the spell of fossil fuel corporations and their paid scientists.
Greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. have risen 13 % over the past decade. A study published in USA Today on March 15 reported that spectral evidence from the earth's outer atmosphere, detected by satellites, confirms the rise in greenhouse gases. Recent UN studies predict a possible increase of nine degrees in average temperatures around the world during the next century, with increases in flooding, storms, and other severe weather.
People in low altitude coastal regions, people too poor to move or adapt their homes to the climate changes, and farmers will be among those hardest hit. Health experts anticipate high rates of skin cancer and other diseases, as temperate climates become tropical.
Green Solutions
Greens have stressed that the only effective steps against global warming are drastic reductions in the consumption of fossil fuels (of which the U.S. remains the largest consumer), conversion to alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power, sustainable development and economic policies, and the preservation of forests and other natural areas which help process atmospheric carbon dioxide.
But we can expect no implementation of such strategies as long as corporate lobbies, more powerful now under globalization and anti-democratic trade agreements, continue to dictate U.S. policy.
"The Association of State Green Parties is building a party based on values and a solid platform of solutions to social and environmental problems," said Ms. Miller.
"We are the alternative to cash-register politics and the old parties which are afraid to provide the leadership needed to implement solutions - especially when those solutions might impact their campaign contributors."
MORE INFORMATION:
The Association of State Green Parties: http://www.greenparties.org
The Association of State Green Parties
PO Box 18452, Washington, DC 20036
(202) 232-0335
END
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