-Caveat Lector- [HardGreenHerald] # 5 "Unless someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." --Dr. Seuss, 'The Lorax' --A RadTimes production-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --------------- --Focus shifts in battle for forests --Court drops contempt charge against self-proclaimed "green anarchist" --Animals Set Afire as France Fears Outbreak --Summary Of Pacific Northwest Treesits In 2000 --Foot-and-Mouth: Meat Starts Moving Despite New Cases --E-commerce: friend or foe of the environment? --Deer hunt meets goal, ends =================================================================== Focus shifts in battle for forests <http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/enviro02.shtml> Once it was spotted owl; now global warming threatens Saturday, March 3, 2001 By JEFF BARNARD THE ASSOCIATED PRESS EUGENE, Ore. - Ten years ago when Andy Kerr was getting together with other environmentalists to stop logging in the Northwest's ancient forests, efforts focused on protecting habitat for the northern spotted owl. With the owl battle largely won, his focus has shifted to global warming, but it's still about saving forests. At a panel discussion at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference yesterday, Kerr described the benefits of leaving trees standing as a way to draw excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, where most scientists say it contributes to the greenhouse effect. "Sometimes the way to solve problems is by going bigger, not smaller," Kerr said while relaxing between panel discussions in a student lounge at the Knight Law Center at the University of Oregon. "The problems of global warming, unsustainable farming and forest destruction can become solvable if you put them all together." The principle has been discussed for years. Trees breath carbon dioxide from the air the way animals breath oxygen. As the trees grow, they store more and more carbon drawn from the air, helping to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas. Not everyone on the global warming panel agreed with Kerr's argument that using forests to store carbon, a concept known as sequestration, should become part of the mix of tactics to reduce greenhouse gases. Last November, talks in The Netherlands on implementing the 1997 Kyoto Accords on reducing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions broke down over whether countries should be able to count the carbon dioxide absorbed by forests and farmlands towards their emissions reduction targets. Panama Bartholomy, a student at Humboldt State University who attended the negotiations, argued that using forests to store carbon will just allow industrial countries to continue burning the fossil fuels that are creating the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Kerr said to achieve the 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions some scientists say is needed over the next 20 years to stabilize global warming, promoting forests as carbon sinks will ultimately become part of the mix. "The problem is that it does a lot of good for the biosphere and little for the atmosphere if you keep pumping more carbon out of the ground," he said. Kerr said global warming creates much wider incentives to protect forests than the spotted owl ever did. Using forests to store carbon makes it attractive to protect the tropical rainforests of the Amazon as well as the temperate rainforests of the Northwest. "The last time I checked, money still talks," Kerr said in an interview. "Why are forests cut down? People want the money." "When we get serious about global warming, and there is a real market for carbon sequestration, I think it will be able to outcompete the market for timber." =================================================================== Court drops contempt charge against self-proclaimed "green anarchist" <http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?o0089_BC_OR--EnvironmentalActi&&news&newsflash-oregon> The Associated Press 3/5/01 PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A criminal contempt charge against self-proclaimed "green anarchist" Josh Harper has been dismissed by a federal judge, a federal prosecutor said Monday. Harper was charged last year with criminal contempt for refusing to appear before a grand jury that was examining eco-terrorist attacks by the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. U.S. District Judge Owen Panner has dismissed the charge against Harper, said Stephen Peifer, an assistant U.S. attorney. The trial was to start on Tuesday. Peifer said he could not elaborate because by law he can't talk about grand jury matters. "The rule that prohibits me from talking about this case is very broad. It stops a government attorney from discussing grand jury matters in any way, shape or form," he said. Harper appeared before the grand jury last month. At that time, Harper's attorney, Stewart Sugarman, said Peifer might drop the criminal contempt charge because Harper appeared voluntarily before the Portland grand jury. Harper said Tuesday his grand jury experience won't deter him from remaining an activist. "I think if anything, this has made me a little more angry, more defiant. I have another video in the works right now," said Harper. Harper, a longtime animal rights activist from Eugene, had publicized animal rights sabotage in a videotaped series entitled "Breaking Free." He has said he is not a member of ELF or ALF and does not know any members. "I can say that Josh is a great person who is very peaceful," said Sugarman. "He is not afraid to stand up for things we should all stand up for." Two others, Craig Rosebraugh and Elaine Close, had been served with subpoenas to testify in Harper's trial. Rosebraugh, who lives in Portland, acts as an informal mediator between ELF and the media but says he is not a member of the group. Close is Rosebraugh's live-in partner. FBI agents in Seattle arrested Harper last September after he failed to appear before the Portland grand jury on May 24. =================================================================== March 6, 2001 Animals Set Afire as France Fears Outbreak By SUZANNE DALEY PARIS, March 5 Alarm that Britain's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease may have crossed the English Channel mounted today, as French officials announced that traces of the virus had been found in sheep on nine farms in five regions. The government quickly halted meat exports and hurried to complete the slaughter of more than 50,000 animals that had either come from Britain or come in contact with those that did. Officials called for calm, but the notion of an impending crisis dominated the news and television stations showed piles of carcasses being set alight. Government officials said tests on sheep from the nine farms showed that the animals had produced antibodies after contact with the virus, but that does not mean that they were active carriers of the disease. The affected animals were destroyed today, and further tests, to be completed on Tuesday, will determine whether they were carrying a live virus. "We do not know whether they were carriers of the illness," Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said today. So far, no active case of foot-and- mouth has been found in France, or elsewhere in continental Europe. But the authorities have moved aggressively to clamp down on any possible outbreak. In France officials set up roadblocks around the farms in the districts of Cher, Mayenne, Oise, Vienne and Seine-St. Denis, in the center and north of the country. Travel was restricted, vehicles were stopped so they could be disinfected and people were being asked to step in a disinfectant solution. Officials said they could not wait for the test results on Tuesday before acting to prevent an outbreak from spreading. The disease does not usually affect humans but can have dire financial consequences for farmers. At a noon news conference, Mr. Glavany announced a halt to the export of meat and a 15-day ban on the movement of cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and horses within France, unless they were being taken for slaughter. Later in the afternoon, health officials announced that horse racing would be suspended. "The situation is very worrisome," said Mr. Glavany, the minister of agriculture. "It is very worrisome in Britain, and it is very worrisome here. We are watching it hour by hour." The day brought mixed news for Europeans who have been watching the spread of the disease in Britain with growing horror and, this weekend, saw some of their own farms cordoned off behind quarantine signs. Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, which had all announced suspected cases of the disease on Saturday or Sunday, based on physical symptoms like blisters, were able to report that their tests proved negative. But hardly had those results been announced when officials in the German state of Brandenburg said they had sealed off a pig farm after noting possible symptoms in one of the animals. And in Britain, the disease continued to take its toll. Officials said foot- and-mouth had broken out on another two farms, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 71. More than 400 farms remain under restrictions. Among the affected farms is one in the heart of the Dartmoor wilderness, owned by the Prince of Wales. Dartmoor, a 365-square-mile national park, is home to about 46,000 head of livestock as well as thousands of wild deer, ponies and boars, and the confirmation of foot-and-mouth disease there raises fears that the disease will be spread by the wild animals. Britain has slaughtered more than 14,000 animals so far to halt the spread of the disease and is expected to slaughter 60,000 more. Large sections of the countryside remain closed to outsiders, with footpaths, forests and national parks off limits. For days, Britain's European partners have been anxiously waiting to see if the virus which can be transmitted by people, cars, clothes, manure, water, hay and even the wind would jump the channel, which at its narrowest is 21 miles wide, dealing an blow to a farming industry already reeling from the effects of the mad cow crisis. The two diseases are unrelated. Mad cow, a degenerative brain disease, is fatal to humans. Foot and mouth is a contagious virus akin to a bad cold in humans, but it can kill young animals. Milk cows that get the virus produce less milk and other animals lose weight. "For a lot of farmers this would be a very hard thing right now," said Costa Golfidis, the director of livestock at Copa, the European farm lobbying group. Already, the crisis has hit the export markets. Bulgaria banned all of its imports of cloven-footed animals, related products and fodder from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland as a precaution. Japan imposed a temporary ban on imports of cloven-footed animals and related products from Belgium, France and Denmark. South Korea added possibly suspect meat from France, Germany and Denmark to its quarantine list. France did get some good news. Officials said tests of two suspected sick cows in the Cher district were negative, as was a case involving sheep at a farm in Roche-la-Molière, a village southwest of Lyon in the Loire region. =================================================================== March 6, 2001 Animals Set Afire as France Fears Outbreak <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06FRAN.html> By SUZANNE DALEY PARIS, March 5 Alarm that Britain's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease may have crossed the English Channel mounted today, as French officials announced that traces of the virus had been found in sheep on nine farms in five regions. The government quickly halted meat exports and hurried to complete the slaughter of more than 50,000 animals that had either come from Britain or come in contact with those that did. Officials called for calm, but the notion of an impending crisis dominated the news and television stations showed piles of carcasses being set alight. Government officials said tests on sheep from the nine farms showed that the animals had produced antibodies after contact with the virus, but that does not mean that they were active carriers of the disease. The affected animals were destroyed today, and further tests, to be completed on Tuesday, will determine whether they were carrying a live virus. "We do not know whether they were carriers of the illness," Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said today. So far, no active case of foot-and- mouth has been found in France, or elsewhere in continental Europe. But the authorities have moved aggressively to clamp down on any possible outbreak. In France officials set up roadblocks around the farms in the districts of Cher, Mayenne, Oise, Vienne and Seine-St. Denis, in the center and north of the country. Travel was restricted, vehicles were stopped so they could be disinfected and people were being asked to step in a disinfectant solution. Officials said they could not wait for the test results on Tuesday before acting to prevent an outbreak from spreading. The disease does not usually affect humans but can have dire financial consequences for farmers. At a noon news conference, Mr. Glavany announced a halt to the export of meat and a 15-day ban on the movement of cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and horses within France, unless they were being taken for slaughter. Later in the afternoon, health officials announced that horse racing would be suspended. "The situation is very worrisome," said Mr. Glavany, the minister of agriculture. "It is very worrisome in Britain, and it is very worrisome here. We are watching it hour by hour." The day brought mixed news for Europeans who have been watching the spread of the disease in Britain with growing horror and, this weekend, saw some of their own farms cordoned off behind quarantine signs. Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, which had all announced suspected cases of the disease on Saturday or Sunday, based on physical symptoms like blisters, were able to report that their tests proved negative. But hardly had those results been announced when officials in the German state of Brandenburg said they had sealed off a pig farm after noting possible symptoms in one of the animals. And in Britain, the disease continued to take its toll. Officials said foot- and-mouth had broken out on another two farms, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 71. More than 400 farms remain under restrictions. Among the affected farms is one in the heart of the Dartmoor wilderness, owned by the Prince of Wales. Dartmoor, a 365-square-mile national park, is home to about 46,000 head of livestock as well as thousands of wild deer, ponies and boars, and the confirmation of foot-and-mouth disease there raises fears that the disease will be spread by the wild animals. Britain has slaughtered more than 14,000 animals so far to halt the spread of the disease and is expected to slaughter 60,000 more. Large sections of the countryside remain closed to outsiders, with footpaths, forests and national parks off limits. For days, Britain's European partners have been anxiously waiting to see if the virus which can be transmitted by people, cars, clothes, manure, water, hay and even the wind would jump the channel, which at its narrowest is 21 miles wide, dealing an blow to a farming industry already reeling from the effects of the mad cow crisis. The two diseases are unrelated. Mad cow, a degenerative brain disease, is fatal to humans. Foot and mouth is a contagious virus akin to a bad cold in humans, but it can kill young animals. Milk cows that get the virus produce less milk and other animals lose weight. "For a lot of farmers this would be a very hard thing right now," said Costa Golfidis, the director of livestock at Copa, the European farm lobbying group. Already, the crisis has hit the export markets. Bulgaria banned all of its imports of cloven-footed animals, related products and fodder from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland as a precaution. Japan imposed a temporary ban on imports of cloven-footed animals and related products from Belgium, France and Denmark. South Korea added possibly suspect meat from France, Germany and Denmark to its quarantine list. France did get some good news. Officials said tests of two suspected sick cows in the Cher district were negative, as was a case involving sheep at a farm in Roche-la-Molière, a village southwest of Lyon in the Loire region. =================================================================== Summary Of Pacific Northwest Treesits In 2000 In the year 2000 we saw twelve different treesit campaigns in the Pacific Northwest. In Canada, the Elaho valley<http://www.kickinterfor.com and the Slocan valley <http://www.watertalk.org/svwa/ In California it was in Santa Cruz <http://www.cruzio.com/~cruzef the Sierra Nevada <http://southyubariver.com/apfp.htmlin Mendocino <www.gapsucks.org In Humboldt County <http://www.asis.com/~coho <http://www.upatree.net In Oregon <http://www.ecoecho.org <http://www.cascadiaforestalliance.org . =================================================================== Foot-and-Mouth: Meat Starts Moving Despite New Cases Experts are investigating a second suspected outbreak of foot and mouth on Dartmoor, after two new cases in Cumbria earlier today brought the total to 76. The suspected Dartmoor case is at Widecombe in the Moor, close to the farm where an outbreak was confirmed on Sunday. Meanwhile the government has said unaffected farms can begin transporting their animals to slaughterhouses under licenses and close supervision. Full story - Ananova http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_229685.html Related story: Slaughterhouses reopen as crisis continues - Guardian Unlimited http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/story/0,7369,447322,00.html Related story: Vet says crisis still under control - Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/story/0,7369,447198,00.html Related story: Meat prices forced up by profiteers - Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-94714,00.html Analysis: Causes and effects of a deadly virus - Guardian, 5.3.01 http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/story/0,7369,446486,00.html Factfile: Foot and mouth disease - MAFF http://www.maff.gov.uk/animalh/diseases/fmd/default.htm Background: Foot and mouth latest - National Farmers' Union http://www.nfu.org.uk/info/f&ml.asp Special report: Foot and mouth disease - Guardian Unlimited http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/ =================================================================== E-commerce: friend or foe of the environment? <http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/03/03062001/ecommerce_40648.asp> Tuesday, March 6, 2001 By Stephen Leahy On a single Saturday in July, 100 airplanes and 9,000 trucks delivered more than 250,000 copies of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" to Amazon.com customers all over the United States. These on-line shoppers got the year's hottest kid's book faster than local bookstores. On the surface, e-commerce appears to offer a big environmental bonus by eliminating hundreds of thousands of trips to the mall. A closer inspection, however, reveals a net environmental impact that's decidedly mixed, according to Scott Matthews, a research scientist involved in assessing environmental impacts of technology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. On-line shopping does reduce commuting in gas-guzzling SUVs and the need for yet more retail stores. But every book ordered on the Web is heavily packaged and travels on a transportation network that taps many resources. Instead of shipping, say, 10 copies of "Harry Potter" in one box to a bookstore, 10 boxes with one book are shipped to e-commerce customers. "This method is costly for everyone," Matthews and colleagues write in Spectrum Magazine, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. With e-commerce sales estimated to hit $200 billion by 2004, it's important to look at the environmental impact of the new trend, they say. "It's unlikely e-commerce will save the planet as some have claimed," says Bette Fishbein, a senior fellow at Inform, an environmental research organization in New York City. "There might be some reductions in energy use, but there's a huge increase in packaging and shipping by air results in much more air pollution. Office paper use has doubled since the wide-spread use of computers so much for the promise of the paperless office." What will e-commerce really mean in the long term? she wonders. "It's already bringing reductions in energy and greenhouse emissions," says Joseph Romm, executive director of the Centre for Energy and Climate Solutions and an expert in energy use. "The economy is growing rapidly, but energy demand is much lower since the advent of the Internet." Amazon.com, for example, uses 16 times less energy per square foot to sell a book than a regular store, he notes. Business-to-business e-commerce promises greater energy savings by reducing inventories, overproduction, unnecessary capital purchases and paper transactions. "The Internet can turn buildings into Web sites and replace warehouses with supply-chain software," says Romm. "Information substitutes for energy." At this point, e-commerce is only a fraction of the total economic picture, thus it isn't the reason behind reductions in energy demand, Matthews maintains. When e-commerce becomes a major part of the economy, what happens to the existing bricks, mortar and asphalt infrastructure of the retail industry? he wonders. "No one knows what the environmental costs of messing up the existing infrastructure will be," Matthews says. Huge new warehouses and distribution centers serving e-commerce operations are being built at an incredible pace, says Fishbein. And new retail space is still growing, despite predications that people won't visit malls as often. She worries that e-commerce is simply boosting consumption. "With global energy and material use projected to more than triple in the next 50 years, we have to find ways to reach sustainability," says Fishbein. =================================================================== Deer hunt meets goal, ends <http://www.nj.com/mercer/times/index.ssf?/mercer/times/03-06-BARCFURC.html> 03/06/01 By ROBERT STERN Staff Writer PRINCETON TOWNSHIP - With 322 deer killed in two weeks, professional sharpshooters hired to thin the township's deer herd have ended their controversial mission, the first of its kind in the state. While the township's permit to use the sharpshooters is good until the end of March, township Mayor Phyllis Marchand said yesterday that the marksmen, who completed their work over the weekend, are done for the season. "They met their goal," Marchand said, "and we are delighted with the success of the program within the time frame." Officials had estimated that sharpshooters would kill between 250 and 300 this winter. Local officials say they are pleased with the initial results of the mission carried out by White Buffalo Inc., a Connecticut-based wildlife management firm. Despite its early end, foes of the killing, like Nancy Bowman, say they are dismayed that it took place at all and that officials are likely to tap sharpshooters again next winter to further trim the local deer population. Bowman is executive director of the township-based Mercer County Deer Alliance, an animal-rights group on the front lines in efforts to prevent the use of sharpshooters to kill deer. The alliance is a key plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state's deer-management law and program through which Princeton Township's use of sharpshooters was established last year. Hearings on that lawsuit have not yet been scheduled. "We will certainly seek another (sharpshooting) permit for next year and any adjustments that have to be made based on our program this year," township Attorney Edwin Schmierer said yesterday. The township's long-term plan is to reduce the local herd which had been estimated to have as many as 1,600 deer -- to no more than 400. Whether White Buffalo or a different group of sharpshooters would be asked to execute the next round of sharpshooting remains to be decided, Schmierer said. "We've had a real good experience with (White Buffalo) this year, from our perspective," he said. "Our police department thought that they were absolute . . . professionals." But he noted that the U.S. Department of Agriculture also offers sharpshooters to cull deer and that there may be other professional firms similar to White Buffalo that might be available. Deer here and in other New Jersey communities have been blamed for causing traffic accidents, damaging farmers' crops and wooded underbrush and promoting the spread of Lyme disease. Critics opposed to killing the animals say their role in those problems has been exaggerated to justify gunning them down. White Buffalo's snipers took aim at deer lured to bait sites on 26 private lots and several public lands, including the Mountain Lakes Preserve, Herrontown Woods and Smoyer Park. The sharpshooters fired at deer from elevated stands, primarily at night, using high-powered rifles and silencers. It was the first time such tactics were used to cull deer in a New Jersey community. Identical tactics have been approved for use in only one other municipality in the state, Delaware Township, Hunterdon County. There, agents with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration killed at least six deer from Feb. 26 to 28. A more recent tally was unavailable yesterday. Foes of sharpshooting say that nonlethal alternatives, such as birth control for the deer and special roadside reflectors that deter deer from darting into traffic, would be more humane than killing them and at least as effective at reducing human-deer conflicts. Princeton Township officials have said such measures either are not proven or could, at best, supplant lethal methods, at least in the first part of the township's five-year deer-management plan. Schmierer said local officials will look into placing some special reflectors, regardless of the future use of sharpshooters. "We are going to have some discussion, explore getting some funding for putting those reflectors up (possibly) along Kingston-Princeton Road (Route 27). That's a pretty densely populated area. That would be a good test area for the state-of-the-art deer reflectors," he said. But projecting exactly how the township's deer-management plan will evolve from this point on is something officials have to discuss, township Committeeman William Enslin said. "I really hesitate to speculate about what we'll do for next year," Enslin said. "We'll take a careful analysis about what's happened" and go from there. But he said sharpshooting is likely. "If you look at the deer-management plan, it calls for getting the size of the herd down, and then other methods will be brought to bear to maintain the herd," Enslin said. "Let's face it, we didn't get into this to throw in the towel after the first year. We undertook this knowing that (sharpshooting) was a multiple-year commitment," Enslin said. "Otherwise, we haven't solved the problem at all." =================================================================== "Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children." -Kenyan Proverb ====================================================== "We cannot solve the problems that we have created with the same thinking that created them." -Albert Einstein ====================================================== "The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." -Edward Abbey ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
