Meeting The Environmental Crisis

AUCKLAND (PIRM/Pacific Media Watch): The latest edition of Pacific
Ecologist magazine highlights global and regional environmental issues
and strategies in coping with them. The winter edition has 76 pages and
is avalable for $10 from the Pacific Ecologist, PO Box 12125,
Wellington, New Zealand.

Contents include:

Editorial
Healthy, convivial communities: averting war & global catastrophe

Resource conflicts

Law, resources & war
Excessive consumption of dwindling finite resources, particularly by
wealthy, powerful countries, and the desire to protect trade and
resource interests, is impoverishing the majority of the world’s
people, threatening war and undermining the civilised values of
international law and justice, writes DENNIS SMALL. Citizens of the
world however can take action.

Crude designs - the plunder of Iraq’s oil wealth
While the Iraqi state is new and in political chaos, the fate of its
oil wealth is being decided behind closed doors by an Iraqi elite,
influenced by the U.S. and U.K. governments. Long-term contracts,
highly profitable to foreign companies and disastrous for Iraq are
favoured, writes GREGG MUTTITT, in this summary of a PLATFORM report.

Gas flaring in Nigeria - a human rights atrocity
In a colossal human rights atrocity, continuing over three decades,
over 2 billion cubic feet of valuable natural gas goes up in smoke
every day in Nigeria, as Shell and other multinational companies flare
the gas, despite devastating effects on human and environmental health,
and huge loss of energy and revenue for one of the world’s poorest
country’s. This is an abridgement of a report by Environmental Rights
Action/ Friends of the Earth, Nigeria and the Climate Justice Programme.

Pacific fisheries under piracy threat
Fishing stocks around the world are collapsing with over-fishing and
pirate fishing is now plaguing the South Pacific. If it’s not stopped
within two to three years, says JOSEPHINE PRASAD of Greenpeace, key
species will be critically over-fished. She outlines a plan of action.

China’s role in laundering PNG timber revealed
A new GREENPEACE report shows illegally logged timber is being shipped
from Papua New Guinea to China for domestic and global consumption.

War on terror is war against the people in the Philippines
In prosecuting the war on terror on behalf of U.S. President, George
Bush, the Philippines’ president is waging war on her country’s people,
ROD PROSSER reports. How is it that a once prosperous country, rich in
natural resources, is now a poor backward one, where peaceful villages
are bombed and invaded by the military to facilitate the opening up of
new mining and logging operations and state-sponsored killings and
corruption are rampant?

Nuclear terrorism

From nuclear deterrence to nuclear terrorism
Far from helping prevent major wars, the policy of nuclear deterrence,
favoured by the U.S. U.K. and others, has become an intention to commit
state-sponsored terrorism, ROBERT GREEN reports. There is an urgent
need to denuclearise the security strategies of the Western allies who
currently are inciting fear and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

U.S./India nuclear deal reckless
The nuclear cooperation deal between the U.S. and India is reckless,
undermining efforts to stop nuclear proliferation, says the WORLDWATCH
INSTITUTE. And nuclear power is very costly, with limited capacity to
provide much electricity for either the U.S. India or China. Renewable
energy resources are the practical option and growing at much greater
rates than nuclear.

Energy insecurity: reactor dreams
There’s danger in the US government basing its energy policy on nuclear
technologies that may never work and will be very costly, says VICTOR
GOLINSKY.

Revisiting French terrorism in the Pacific: Rainbow Warrior bombing
revelations
France’s sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior more than two decades ago
hogged newspaper headlines during the anniversary last year. But little
coverage was given to the actual cause of the bombing – nuclear testing
in the South Pacific and the impact on Pacific Islanders. The
Rongelapese and Tahitians still suffer from the legacy of decades of
American and French nuclear tests. DAVID ROBIE looks at the hypocrisy
behind this sordid act of state terrorism in a New Zealand port.

From nuclear warrior to opponent - how the murder of Hilda Murrell
changed my life
ROBERT GREEN recounts his path of transformation from British Navy
Commander with experience in operating nuclear weapons, to anti-nuclear
campaigner. The many threats to our security, he concludes, are
increasingly beyond the reach of military (let alone nuclear)
solutions. A new form of patriotism is urgently needed, embracing the
whole earth, to prevent narrow nationalism destroying humanity and the
natural world on which life depends.

Nuclear’s endless nightmare

CHERNOBYL - the continuing catastrophe
Quotes from several expert sources on the health, environmental, and
social impacts of the Chernobyl disaster.

Behind the cover-up - a conservative assessment of the full Chernobyl
death toll
Poor records and methodology, omissions, and the failure of various
committees to consider all health issues resulting from the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant disaster in 1986, have meant the real consequences
for the many millions of affected people have been hidden from public
scrutiny, DR. ROSALIE BERTELL reports. Using a report from a U.N.
science committee in 2000, Dr Bertell identifies the many omissions and
makes a very conservative, preliminary estimate of the eventual death
toll from the Chernobyl disaster to be 1 to 2 million.

******

BOOK REVIEWS
The Great Work: Our Way into the Future - by THOMAS BERRY
* Weather Makers: The Past & the Future Impact of Climate Change - by
TIM FLANNERY
* CHERNOBYL: 20 YEARS ON - Health effects of the Chernobyl accident -
Eds C.C. Busby & A.V. Yablokov
* PLANET EARTH: The Latest Weapon of War: A Critical Study into the
Military and the Environment - by Dr ROSALIE BERTELL
* EYES OF FIRE: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, By DAVID ROBIE
* The Long Emergency - Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the
Twenty-first Century -
by JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER
* Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and
Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties by IEER and Lawyers'
Committee on Nuclear Policy
* AFFLUENZA : When too much is never enough - by CLIVE HAMILTON &
RICHARD DENNISS
* REMOTELY CONTROLLED - How television is damaging our lives - & what
we can do about it
- by ARIC SIGMAN
* Happiness: lessons from a new science - by RICHARD LAYARD

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