ECO NEWS ITEMS
Our regional FOE meeting was taken up with preparations for The Big
Month. Jess and Sally are members of this group as is Anthony Rae, Paul de
Zylva from National and all the regional reps. We in Hull would like to
publicly thank Jess and Sally for coming to visit us for our September
meeting on Lobbying and Climate Change.
It seems that HCC is not going to be collecting garden waste any time
soon, according to an item in the Sept. 19 HDM. Reason: a shortage of
cash.
Although we all have been encouraged to respond to the Government's
"consultation" on GM food, the Ecologist refers to this as a Sham
consultation and calls it "a thinly disguised attempt to allow GM crops in
through the back door." I know many FOE members including myself have
responded to the consultation with our views and it's certainly probable
that, as with so many other consultations, the government first decides
and then consults. Consultation changes nothing. Our own FOE GM
campaigner says, "This consultation is a complete sham. It highlights the
lengths the government will go to back the biotech industry and pave the way
for GM crops to be grown in England. The only way the biotech companies
will be able to grow their crops on a large scale is to allow
widespread contamination of conventional and organic crops. And this is exactly
what the UK Government is preparing to do." The "consultation"
(quotation marks deliberate!) finishes on October 20, but I asked DEFRA to send
me the results. I'll pass these on in the next issue of ECO.
The Government is also trying to force nuclear power on us. This is
when we have not even cleared up the nuclear waste we have already
created. It's a tough job as 80% of the radioactive waste held at Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority sites is in untreated form - unstablized and
potentially mobile - ie lethal. FOE Director Tony Juniper (a man I admire)
has called nuclear power an "insanity." There's a petition called "One
million Europeans Against Nuclear Power" which some of us have signed
but the due date is October 1 so 1 won't be able to pass it around at
meetings. But do look at
www.million-against-nuclear.net
You should be
able to register your disapproval of nuclear in some way.
The Ecologist had an interesting article on incineration (of course,
against). Written by their Health Editor, it pointed out all the health
hazards and remarked of this technology that "garbage in means garbage
out."
Green Futures had a supplement on China titled "Greening the Dragon:
China's Search for a Sustainable Future." This was produced with DEFRA
which is advising the Chinese Government. The latter would be well
advised to look for advice elsewhere as our own record on a sustainable
future is dismal. The Chinese are actually far ahead of us in supporting
renewables. A small but interesting bit of information from the magazine
was about the WWF and BP ("Beyond Petroleum," remember!) working to
ensure that education for sustainable development is a part of the Chinese
school system in each class from beginning to end of the educational
process. It's a pity we don't have the same here.
And finally, from me, does anyone remember the involvement of ING in
the St Stephen development? The New Internationalist reports that they
are financing white phosphorus production. White phosphorus kills
indiscriminately. As a soldier who has seen the results puts it, "When it
makes contact with the skin, then it's irreversible damage, burning flesh
to the bone." ING is a global financial group and as a Belgian NGO says:
"The whole business of arms production is financial - it depends on
business and loans."
From Haris (Hull FOE Chair and Regional Representative)
