Fracking capitalism is the way to go

The campaign against fracking the UK is building on all fronts, including the legal one. Greenpeace is encouraging actions for trespass against the companies like Cuadrilla. But will they be enough to bring a halt to shale gas exploration?

Unlike in France, where the constitutional court this week upheld a government ban on fracking introduced in 2011, the UK state is heavily committed to the dash for gas.

Planning laws and new technical guidance introduced in the summer are heavily weighted in favour of applications to frack.

For example, the guidelines state: “Mineral extraction is essential to local and national economies. As stated in paragraph 144 of the National Planning Policy Framework, minerals planning authorities should give great weight to the benefits of minerals extraction, including to the economy, when determining planning applications.” [emphasis added] The guideline say:

• Planning applications for exploration of shale gas should not take account of “hypothetical future activities” – actual extraction.
• Planning authorities should not consider demand for, or alternatives to, oil and gas when determining applications.
• Councils should understand that government policy is clear that energy supplies should come from a variety of sources.
• Planning authorities should give great weight to the “benefits of minerals extraction, including to the economy

Jon Gateley, principal planner at property firm Savills, told Planning magazine that the guidance was akin to a presumption in favour of shale gas. "Rather than just introducing controls over how decisions would be made, the guidance implies that government wants to see them go through," he said.

As the hot summer rolled on into September, the government stepped in again with plans to change the current notification requirements on underground gas and oil applications to make it easier for the corporations, naturally.

At present, companies have to serve a notice on any other person who owns or is a tenant of land to which the application relates. They also have to publish a notice in at least one local newspaper and display a notice in every parish affected ahead of submission.

But under the draft proposals,  the requirement to serve notice on individual owners and tenants of land would be dropped where solely underground operations would be involved.

Enter Greenpeace. They are assembling home owners to mount a legal challenge to prevent fracking companies drilling underneath the homes of people who don’t want it. The campaign group says that such drilling would amount to trespass and be illegal.

“This is about people asserting their legal and democratic right,” said Anna Jones, senior campaigner with Greenpeace. They’ve launched a website wrongmove.org where homeowners can find out, using their postcode, whether they are living near a potential fracking operation.

While under English law, mineral rights beneath the surface belong to the state, Greenpeace argues that companies will still need permission from landowners. Lancashire dairy farmer Andrew Pemberton has joined the legal action. “My biggest worry is pollutants,” he said. Water supplied that feed his animals come from aquifers beneath the Lancashire Fylde.

But as Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, pointed out yesterday, the state is heavily committed to fracking. She was actually speaking outside court, where she pleaded not guilty to alleged offences following her arrest outside the Cuadrilla site in Balcombe in the summer.

She said: "The government is not only refusing to listen to the evidence, it is choosing to become a flag-waver-in-chief for the fracking industry, offering them generous tax breaks as well as allowing them senior roles within the government itself.”

Among those she was referring to is Lord Browne, a former BP boss, who is now holding a cross-departmental role in government, reporting to the minister for the Cabinet Office, at the same as he holds significant shares in Cuadrilla. Coincidentally, the minister concerned, Francis Maude includes Balcombe in his constituency.

You have to conclude that it will take more than local legal challenges to halt fracking. And it will also take more than a change of government, as rebranded One Nation Labour is totally silent on the issue, leading campaigners to suspect Ed Miliband’s party has fallen for discredited “cheap energy” claims. We will have to put fracking capitalism on the agenda.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Rio earth summit 'epic failure' warning

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here" should have been written over the entrance to the  Rio+20 summit. For the draft text reneges on or waters down every principle of the original agreement and adds in a range of market initiatives that will weaken ecosystems and block sustainable development.

A casual and shocking abandonment of the goals set out two decades ago has made the summit worthless. There will no new money to support poorer countries to advance in a sustainable way. The principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) – whereby better off countries have to make a greater reduction in their impact on the planet — is being sidelined and if the US has its way will disappear altogether.

Technology transfer, another key principle 20 years ago, is under attack. The US, EU, Canada and Australia want the whole phrase eliminated from the draft in favour of a focus on the kinds of research and innovation that might be saleable. But, according to the same unholy alliance, research into “planetary boundaries” should definitely not be on the agenda. A coalition of the Holy See and the US wants to delete a sentence giving women a right to reproductive health services i.e. contraception.

The new treaty's true focus is the weasel concept of "Green Economy" — market initiatives that may or may not make any actual contribution to sustainable development, but will be profitable.

The phrase “ecosystem services” has been introduced, reinforcing the idea that nature is nothing more than a source of raw materials for exploitation — but in a kind of green way, you understand. Putting monetary value on forests or clean water systems simply continues the failed idea that established the market in carbon credits.

The section on the health of the oceans has been undermined by the US and Venezuela, because of their involvement in offshore oil. Two actual commitments on deforestation have been deleted, replaced with empty platitudes.

“Rio+20 has turned into an epic failure,” says Greenpeace head Kami Naidoo. “We were promised the ‘future we want’ but are now being presented with a ‘common vision’ of a polluter’s charter that will cook the planet, empty the oceans and wreck the rain forests.”  Jim Leape, head of World Wildlife Fund added: “If they embrace this document, then this will have been a waste of time.”

Well, of course Rio+20 is a waste of time – who actually thought it would be anything else? Not WWF and Greenpeace, who know full well that these summits deliver nothing, but continue to tie those who want action into hoping that this time, finally, they will deliver. That is because they do not see any actual alternative.

But that does not mean that there are no positive documents on the table that could be discuss and adopted in a world where truly democratic decisions were made in the interests of humanity.

The alternative treaty drafted by the plurinational state of Bolivia states that "the capitalist system is the principal cause of the imbalance because it puts the rules of the market and the accumulation of profit above the laws of nature. Nature is not simply a sum of elements, it’s not a source of resources that can be exploited, modified, altered, privatised, commercialised and transformed without any consequences.”

And it adds: “The postulates promoted under the Green Economy are wrong. The current environmental and climate crisis is not a simple market failure. The solution is not to put a price on nature. Nature is not a form of capital. It is wrong to say that we only value that which has a price, an owner, and brings profits. The market mechanisms that permit exchange among human beings and nations have proven incapable of contributing to an equitable distribution of wealth."

The challenge, therefore, is how to set about replacing these profit-creating mechanisms with shared progress towards the eradication of poverty, creating rights for human beings and for nature as a whole to halt climate change and restore the planet's ecology to a degree of health.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Coalition takes greenwash to a new level

ConDem coalition energy policy is being made on the run, in secret and in cahoots with the energy corporations. The self-styled “greenest-ever government” is engaged in a behind-the-scenes dash for fossil fuel and nuclear.

Here’s the evidence for the prosecution:

1. Having closed down one loss-making fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield, the government has announced plans to build another at a cost of £3bn of taxpayers’ money. So much for claims that new nuclear plants will have to be financed privately, including dealing with waste. The plant will try to transform Britain’s stockpile of nuclear waste into mox (mixed-oxide) fuel for a new generation of thermal light water reactors. As Douglas Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: "This proposal will lead to a subsidised plant creating subsidised fuel so that subsidised operators can produce subsidised electricity and then receive subsidised waste disposal. The only winners in this are the nuclear operators, already rich with their 18% domestic fuel price rises this year."

2. The government has been passing on details of Greenpeace’s legal challenge to new nuclear plants, to the Nuclear Industry Association and even directly to French nuclear giant EDF, the most likely candidate to build any new plants. Greenpeace has complained to the High Court and says it is an abuse of power that “prevents democratic scrutiny”.

3. Green MP Caroline Lucas has exposed oil and nuclear industry penetration and influence in Whitehall. She has found that 50 employees from companies like EDF, Npower and Centrica have been seconded to work on energy issues in government departments, free of charge, over the past four years. "Companies such as the big six energy firms do not lend their staff to government for nothing – they expect a certain degree of influence, insider knowledge and preferential treatment in return," said Lucas, who also found that the government had met with the “big six” producers and the power trade associations almost 200 times since the May 2010 election.

4. The government has been covertly passing information to Canadian diplomats lobbying to stop the European Union classifying oil extracted from tar sands as having a heavy carbon footprint - which of course it does. This would make the oil less attractive to European fuel suppliers, trying to meet requirements under the Fuel Quality Directive.

5. In his autumn statement, Chancellor Osborne took £1bn out of the budget that had been set aside to develop carbon capture and storage to spend on other new infrastructure. He promised £250m of public money to help industries with high emissions of greenhouse gas subvert EU carbon caps, and also pledged a review of “green regulations” to “clear the way for development and economic growth”. In other words, dump them all.

6. The draft rules for the government’s much-vaunted Green Investment Bank would not allow it carry through a plan to make millions of homes more energy efficient. Instead the bank will have to invest on commercial terms and show a profit. As a result, it is unlikely to invest in areas that are good for the environment, but deemed too risky by other lenders, though that was supposed to be the point. The bank’s funding is no longer put at £3bn but “up to £3bn” and it will not start operating until 2016 at the earliest.

We hereby find this government guilty of greenwash, building extensively on the example of their New Labour predecessors, and we award environment secretary Chris Huhne the “hypocrite of the year award 2011”. How do they sleep at night? No problem because they are fulfilling their role as they see it - promoting growth at all costs during what is rapidly turning into a global slump of the capitalist system.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Poisoned legacy of nuclear option

Wildfires raging across Russia are spreading towards the highly contaminated forests of the Bryansk region, threatening to release low-dose nuclear radiation resulting from the Chernobyl disaster of almost 25 years ago.

The Russian government claims that only two fires have broken out in Bryansk and that they have been put out. However Greenpeace has published a map that suggests there are, or have been, more than 20 fires in the area.

The impact on health of low-dose nuclear radiation combined with smog generated by the fires, plus the horrific heat, which continues in Russia’s hottest summer since records began, is not easy to predict.

It’s a reminder of the long-term damage caused by the world’s worst nuclear accident, when in 1986 one of four nuclear reactors exploded at Chernobyl, spreading nuclear material right across Europe. Whole areas of Russia and Belarus are still no-go zones and high levels of birth defects and thyroid cancer have been identified.

The original concrete sarcophagus enclosing the exploded reactor is crumbling to dust, and a massive new steel structure is being constructed on site at an estimated cost of $1.4bn. It is hoped it will contain the radiation for 100 years.

At the same time, the ConDem government has published its annual energy strategy review, and whilst nuclear power warrants only a short paragraph, reading between the lines one can see that it is a key part of the coalition’s plans.

Indeed energy secretary Chris Huhne was quick to respond to an accusation in the Financial Times that the government was not pursuing the nuclear option and that “green dogma threatens to saddle it with the wrong energy policies”.

Former nuclear opponent Huhne promised the FT: “I have said clearly – most recently in the annual energy statement – that nuclear power will play a important part in our future energy mix, and that the government will continue with all the facilitating measures such as streamlined planning and the national policy statements.

“Moreover, nuclear power will benefit from the framework put in place to encourage low carbon electricity generation, such as the European Union’s emissions trading scheme and our own plans for a carbon price floor to provide greater investor certainty.” Huhne said that the industry would not receive public subsidies but that he was “confident that there will be new nuclear power as planned by 2018.”

What this actually means is that the government is not going to directly subsidise nuclear power, but is pushing to raise the floor for the European Union carbon price, so that new nuclear power stations are potentially profitable, not only in the UK but across Europe.

And with the planned closure of a number of coal-fired power stations, and a predicted shortfall in electricity generation in the UK in coming years, the nuclear option looks even better for shareholders.

This is the same Huhne who wrote in 2007: "Nuclear is a tried, tested and failed technology. New nuclear would be economically foolhardy, environmentally irresponsible and pose long-term security questions that are impossible to address.

"If we opt for a new generation of nuclear reactors, future generations may rue the day. We will be encumbering them with high costs and enormous and unknowable liabilities. We will miss a key opportunity to pioneer a green future." Quite!

Having entered the coalition, and accepted the logic of the continuation of the profit and growth-driven, privatised, energy industry, all Huhne’s former opposition to nuclear inevitably disappears. In the context of capitalist short-termism, nuclear can successfully masquerade as a low-carbon, “green”, option. Nuclear has certainly fooled a lot of people!

The issue of disposing of toxic nuclear waste will be fudged, and left as a problem for future generations to tackle, just as generations of Byelorussians and Russians continue to live with the poisoned inheritance of Chernobyl.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Greenpeace and the Chagos Islands

You may recently have received a petition from a well-meaning friend with a request to sign it and circulate, or it might have come to your notice in the form of an appeal from Greenpeace – “it” being the planned creation of one of the world’s largest marine reserves around the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

In November last year, the UK Marine Bill was passed into law for the purpose of protecting the seas around Britain through the creation of Marine Preservation Areas (MPAs) which we can all agree I am sure, are very good things to have. The protection of the seas, as opposed to fisheries, has long been neglected and the world’s oceans have for long enough been our common dumping grounds. So any initiative along the lines of MPAs can only be another Very Good Thing surely, particularly if championed by Greenpeace? Well not entirely.

You see another initiative announced by the Foreign Office in November 2009 was the setting up of two consultations – one to look at ways of providing better environmental protection for Antarctica, and the other to consider whether the Chagos Archipelago, which is a British Indian Ocean territory, should become an MPA. Many of you will be becoming aware I am sure by now, that an issue is beginning to emerge here.

Greenpeace is at present galvanising their membership to write to David Miliband the Foreign Secretary, calling on him to make sure that this reserve is in fact created and to help the consultation committee with their comments.

The consultation period closes on the 12th February so the time for action is limited as they point out. My suggestion however is that people should indeed write to Miliband urging him not to agree the creation of such a reserve on the basis of the dismal history of Diego Garcia, the main island of the Chagos Archipelago, which the British Government had such a treacherous hand in.

The background history of Diego Garcia and the fate of the Chagossians, or the Ilois people to give their correct ethnic name, is a story of treachery and betrayal which began in 1965 the year when Chagos, along with Mauritius, was to have received its independence. The Labour government of Harold Wilson at the insistence of the United States, leased the islands to Washington for 50 years making 2015 the year that the lease should run out. However, the US was also given the option of a 20 year extension which they appear, without consultation with the Ilois, to have taken up.

But then nobody has ever consulted them, not in 1965 when every man, woman and child was evicted from their island home with no compensation and no right of return. It was wholescale ethnic cleansing leaving the islands clear for the Americans to build a military base there. The base was used in the first Gulf War during the bombing raids on Iraq and again during the second war against Iraq and will probably be used in whatever other adventures the US regime embarks upon in the region.

The Ilois themselves have disappeared from view more or less. Many settled in Mauritius, inhabiting squalid slums, some came to Britain and have argued their case in the courts. They actually won the right to resettle. New Labour, however, has blocked all their attempts to return and continues to ignore the rights of these quiet people.

It is an outrage which has gathered little notice or controversy. The deliberate secrecy of the original deal with Washington and the continuing deception and betrayal are ugly and cruel. Therefore the issue of the plight and brave fight of the exiled people of Diego Garcia should be supported and publicised, with demands made for a right of return for all those who wish to and full consultation on the creation of an MPA. Marine reserves do not depend on the total clearance of humans, after all more such reserves are being considered for Britain. Why should Chagos be any different?

Fiona Harrington

Warning: 'geological disposal' spells danger

At the Local Government Conference in Harrogate this week, amongst the stalls promoting management consultants, security companies and quangos, was a stand run by Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS).

They were there hoping to find cash-strapped local authorities so desperate that they will open talks about hosting a “geological disposal facility”, and there were various factsheets to encourage them.

Factsheet 1 explains that a “geological disposal facility” extends over an area of several square kilometres, but admits no country has successfully built one, though some are making “good progress”. It claims that Royal Society, Britain’s academy of science, supports the idea.

But what the Royal Society actually told the government in a report published as far back as 2002, is that “the problem of disposing of existing waste is serious and urgent” and they warned the government not to wait to tackle it until after a decision has been made about whether to build new nuclear plants.

The report accuses successive governments and industry of failing to recognise the need for public consent about “policies relating to toxic and long-lived wastes” and for public confidence in the institutions that manage them. Not exactly a ringing vote of confidence!

There is also the major issue, usually ignored, about the economics of nuclear power. A Greenpeace report highlights the massive cost overruns that are likely to arise as the new generation of nuclear power stations is built, and that these costs are likely to be passed on to the taxpayer.

Factsheet 3 is the sugar-coating. “Construction and operation of a geological storage facility will be a multi-billion pound project that will provide skilled employment for hundreds of people for over a century ….spin-off industry benefits, benefits to local education or academic resources, positive impacts on local service industries… better local healthcare to meet the increased needs of the community,” it declares.

Factsheet 4 sets out an “approach based on voluntarism and partnership”. An “Expression of Interest” has to come from the local authority – though the initial suggestion can come from a landowner, company or even a parish council. There will be extensive “community engagement” and “the community” can pull out right up until the point when construction is due to begin.

But it is not at all clear what mechanism the community could use to enforce that. What is certain is that it will not be through a legal challenge using the planning laws, because the facilities will be subject to the Planning Act 2008 which rules traditional inquiries out for major infrastructure projects.

The stall was not exactly swarming with enthusiastic councillors. But as the recession bites, and landowners and corporations look for new ways to make money, who knows what might happen?

All of this underlines the urgency of taking energy generation out of the capitalist market, and creating instead, local energy companies. These democratic bodies can plan to meet their community’s energy needs, with an appropriate mix of power sources, more cheaply and more safely than profit-driven nuclear and fossil-fuel giants.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Embarassed but not deterred

The acquittal yesterday of the Kingsnorth 6, who climbed a 200-metre smokestack (from the inside) as part of the campaign to oppose the building of a new coal-fired station on the site in Kent, is one in the eye for the government’s refusal to tackle climate change in any serious way.

The jury evidently concluded that the damage done to the environment by a new plant burning coal — which would emit more greenhouse gases then the 30 least polluting countries in the world — was in a different league to the £30,000 cost of removing the paint daubed by intrepid Greenpeace activists. The jury found that the six had a “lawful excuse” for damaging the property because climate change was a clear and present danger.

Most observers concerned by the dismal record of this government over the last 10 years on the issues of global warming and climate change, not to mention those of civil liberties, will be delighted to raise a glass to the Kingsnorth 6. But the question is, will the jury’s decision change anything? When Greenpeace claim that the result of the court case could be the “tipping point for the climate change campaign”, and then (once again) call on Gordon Brown to step in and embrace a clean energy policy for Britain, they are (again) giving credence to something that is not possible.

The New Labour government will not turn about. Their direction is clear and it is not towards any action that might further de-stabilise the economy, endanger the status quo, or blow a raspberry at the global corporations. The simple fact that greenhouse gas emissions in Britain have actually increased over the last years, says it all.

The recent climate change camp, which took place at Kingsnorth, gave a more accurate picture of just what the state is preparing under this government. Around 1,400 police with batons from 26 forces were in attendance, as well as specialist units with dogs and horses. Kevin Smith, for the Climate Camp, said at the time: "Our legal team are going to be exhausting every possible channel for holding the police accountable for the draconian use of stop and search measures, for the things they confiscated, and for their violent incursions on to the camp. Every year police use the supposed existence of a hardcore minority as justification for their heavy-handedness and every year this hardcore minority fails to materialise."

In a recent article for the New Statesman, Stephen Armstrong, revealed the startling and sinister statistic that roughly 25% of all those attending these activist camps and protests, particularly those concerned with the environment, are corporate spooks. This estimate comes from the so-called “private espionage industry” itself. “From New York and London to Moscow and Beijing, any decent-sized corporation can now hire former agents from the CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6, and the KGB. The ex-spooks are selling their old skills and contacts to multinationals, hedge funds and oligarchs, digging up dirt on competitors, uncovering the secrets of boardroom rivals and exposing investment targets. They are also keeping tabs on journalists, protestors and even potential employees”, says Armstrong.

Embarrassed the government may be by the Kingsnorth 6, but not deterred, and certainly not contemplating any changes.

Peter Arkell

New Labour's nuclear charade

The High Court ruling that New Labour’s "consultation" on its energy policy was "misleading" and "seriously flawed" is further proof that the mid-19th century system of representative democracy is no longer fit for purpose. As if to confirm this view, Tony Blair’s immediate response was that the nuclear power station programme would go ahead, whatever the judgement said. More and more people are being forced to come to the conclusion that the existing democratic process is a sham and essentially excludes ordinary people from consideration. It was clear from the start what was going on. Blair had already declared that nuclear power was "back on the agenda with a vengeance". The consultation was a charade. There was no supporting evidence on the economics of nuclear power and what the judge called "inadequate" information on waste disposal. In the end, Mr Justice Sullivan ruled that groups were asked to respond to a document where the information was "wholly insufficient for them to make an intelligent choice". As one blogger responding to the judgement put it yesterday: "The truth is out. We, the public, don't matter. The arrogance of modern government knows no bounds. Any ‘consultation’ is a sham, and yesterday's judgement lays that bare. If politicians wonder why they are held in such contempt, that is why. They just mouth fancy soundbites. Debate or reasoned argument? Forget it. Anyone who tries to argue is ridiculed or marginalised." Nuclear power is only the latest in a series of major decisions taken behind closed doors, without reference to parliament, let alone the public. Just think tuition fees, ID cards and, of course, the invasion of Iraq which millions of people marched in opposition to.

Ultimately, Greenpeace’s victory in the courts is symbolic and that’s the question that really needs addressing. Increasingly large numbers of people feel disenfranchised because their opinions and votes count for little. The fact that over 1.3 million motorists have used the Internet to register their opposition to road pricing is as much an expression of frustration with the traditional political process as anything else. They also object to the idea of having a device inside the car which would monitor their movements. Which brings us to yet another example of secret decision-making aimed at strengthening the state’s powers at the expense of ordinary citizens. The Home Office has just agreed to a European Union scheme to set up a network of national crime records across 27 states. Police across the EU will get free access to Britain’s DNA, fingerprint and car registration databases. The exchanges could be up and running as early as next year and might eventually lead to the creation of a single EU-wide database. Britain has by far the largest DNA database in the world – 50 times the size of the French equivalent. When New Labour took office in 1997, it held only 700,000 samples – by 2008, it will hold the samples of some 4.2 million people and is growing by 500,000 a year. Critics point out that the DNA database has effectively become a permanent list of suspects. So the undermining of the democratic process goes hand in hand with the building of an authoritarian state. The case for a new constitutional democratic settlement, one which reflects the aspirations of the powerless majority rather than the privileged economic and political elites, grows stronger by the day. Achieving such a change has to become top priority.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

GM is now a global battlefield

The struggle between the biotechnology companies who try to ram genetically-modified (GM) crops and food down the throats of farmers and consumers is now being fought out on a global scale. And biotech corporations like Monsanto are not having it all their way own way. A summary of global reaction against GM in 2006, released by Greenpeace International, provides evidence of growing resistance in many countries. "There is irrefutable evidence that governments, farmers and consumers throughout the world recognise that genetic engineering is unreliable, unviable or downright dangerous," said Jeremy Tager of Greenpeace International. Some countries are banning GM altogether. Rumania, for instance, which had 85,000 hectares planted with GM soy in 2005, will drop to zero this year, in keeping with a new government policy banning its cultivation. Farmers in India, France and the Philippines have led the way with protests, uprooting crops and holding demonstrations. There is even a backlash in the United States, where most GM crops are concentrated, following the Bayer LL601 rice contamination scandal. Californian rice producers and a major rice mill in the state, Sunwest Foods, have called for a ban on any cultivation of GM rice, including field trials. Producers and traders lost out massively when the contamination was exposed. Meanwhile, in 2006, the number of regions in the EU declaring themselves GM-free zones went up to 172 and 4,500 local authorities say they want to avoid using GM products.

Herbicide-tolerant crops are engineered to survive the application of a powerful herbicide that would kill a non-engineered crop, making it easier for farmers to use more herbicide to control nearby weeds. Or so the claim goes. The reality is different. Studies by independent scientists demonstrate that GM crop yields are lower than, or at best equivalent to, yields from non-GM varieties. Reduced yields have in particular been found with Roundup Ready (RR) soy. An independent study of US government statistics shows that the three major GM crops have led to a 122 million pound increase in pesticide use since 1996. Until the widespread adoption of RR crops, there were just two confirmed cases of glyphosate-resistant weeds. But by 2005, many different weeds had become resistant in the United States. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA), an industry-funded body, ignores all this and paints a rosy picture of inevitable success. In its January 2006 report, ISAAA claimed that "the continuing rapid adoption of biotech crops reflects the substantial and consistent improvements in productivity, the environment, economics, and social benefits realised by both large and small farmers, consumers and society". This kind of nonsense is par for the course and is constantly exposed by organisations like GM Watch. This organisation reveals how the biotech industry funds spurious "scientific" research and underhand lobbying to promote GM as absolutely safe and the answer to world hunger (GM Watch also includes a revealing dossier on the dubious ex-Living Marxism group, whose members have with amazing ease penetrated top levels in the media to promote right-wing, libertarian views that often coincide with those of the biotech corporations). Curiously enough, The GM Watch site has been down recently and its staff think it might have been the victim of a malicious attack. Working out a list of suspects shouldn’t take too long. Send your suggestions to info@gmwatch.org.


Paul Feldman, communications editor