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True Green Report

Mosquitoes with radar

November 18, 2002

Health officials in the city of Toronto must be under the impression that American mosquitoes are equipped with the kind of radar that would help them recognize the Canadian border.

How else to explain that the Toronto Medical Officer of Health has proposed a 90 percent reduction of residential pesticide use in the city over the next three years and a complete ban of their use at schools and daycares?

Strident anti-pesticide activists south of the border activists want to relieve the market of the few remaining weapons against mosquito-borne diseases.

Mosquitoes move out of the swamps and do not recognize signs announcing city limits. When West Nile virus first took hold in the Big Apple in 1999, seven people died and 62 became seriously ill as a result of encephalitis, meningitis and other central nervous system disease caused by West Nile infections.

When pesticides were put to use by authorities, a group called No Spray Coalition sued New York City claiming that thousands of fish, lobster, birds and beneficial insects like butterflies and bees were killed by the spraying.

In a report that was to be presented to the Toronto Board of Health on Nov. 18, Dr. Sheela Basrur not only calls for the reduction of pesticide use in homes and schools, but also a 60 percent reduction at commercial and industrial properties.

To accomplish this goal, Dr. Basrur proposes the formation of a Pesticide Reduction Partnership, which would include pesticide retailers, lawn and garden care companies, community groups and government agencies. The partnership would prepare a detailed implementation plan by April 2003.

Representatives of the horticultural industry said they are willing to work with the city to reduce pesticide use, but they believe the city’s goals are unrealistic.

"We’re not prepared to say 90 percent. We’re prepared to say 50 percent right off the bat, and then we will work hard to achieve as much reduction as possible–barring unforeseen infestations," said Tony DiGiovanni, the executive director of Landscape Ontario.

He said a 50 percent reduction is possible by the implementation of an "integrated pest-management" program in the city. It would use biological, mechanical and behavioural methods (such as resistant plant varieties and physical barriers) to supplant the use of many pesticides.

The U.S. does not have a monopoly on environmental chemophobes.

While Canadian industry members call for less ambitious reduction goals, the Alliance for Pesticide Bylaws called for an immediate ban on pesticide use.


IPSOS Reid Poll on Kyoto

Canadians, however, given the choice, appear to lean toward a made in Canada plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (49%) than to ratified and implement the Kyoto Protocol (43%). The choice of a made in Canada plan is up 4 points, while ratifying and implementing the Kyoto Protocol is down 1 point since polling conducted for the Government of Alberta by Ipsos-Reid between October 29th and 31st, and released on November 1st when the made in Canada option was chosen by 45% and 44% said Canada should ratify the Kyoto Protocol.


Sir Paul and the food chain

Ben Chapman and Lisa Mathiasen, graduate researchers with the Food Safety Network at the University of Guelph have some advice for celebs shilling the labelling of genetic foods: "In the words of Sir Paul (McCartney) himself, "Get back to where you once belonged’. That place is the recording studio; Ringo is still around, crank out some tunes and stay out of the labelling issue, there are enough problems there already."

"Labelling is not about choice; Greenpeace and other activist groups state plainly in their literature that the products of genetic engineering may cause some unknown, theoretical health or environmental harm and should therefore be banned. However, in the absence of a ban, everything should be labelled to provide consumer choice--and that will produce a de facto ban," wrote the researchers in an op-ed piece published in the National Post.


The sparrow and the goat

"Once outlandish ideas (about animal welfare) are finding their way into mainstream opinion," writes Michael Pollan in New York Times Magazine. "A recent Zogby poll found that 51 percent of Americans believe that primates are entitled to the same rights as human children."

"The animal rights movement’s exclusive concern with individual animals makes perfect sense given its roots in a culture of liberal individualism, but does it make any sense in nature?" Pollan asks.

He cites as an example the goats of Wrightson Island.

"In 1611 Juan da Goma (aka Juan the Disoriented) made an accidental landfall on Wrightson Island, a six-square-mile rock in the Indian Ocean. The island’s sole distinction is it is the only known home of the Arcania tree and the bird that nests in it, the Wrightson giant sea sparrow. Da Goma and his crew stayed a week, much of that time spent in a failed bid to recapture the ship’s escaped goat--who happened to be pregnant.

"Nearly four centuries later, Wrightson Island is home to 380 goats that have consumed virtually every scrap of vegetation in their reach. The youngest Arcania tree on the island is more than 300 years old, and only 52 sea sparrows remain. In the animal rights view, any one of these goats have at least as much right to life as the last Wrightson sparrow on earth, and the trees, because they are not sentient, warrant no moral consideration whatsoever. (In the mid-80s, a British environmental group set out to shoot the goats, but was forced to cancel the expedition after the Mammal Liberation Front bombed its offices.)"


Frankenfood scare goes Orient

Another take on the golden rice adventure comes from Hangzhou, China, where Huang Danian, an expert at the National Rice Research Institute, has created a rice so resilient and tasty, he says, that "every farmer in China will certainly want it."

"So far, however, it grows only on a few acres in Mr. Huang’s walled garden near Hantzhou, about 100 miles southwest of Shanghai," reports Joseph Kahn of the New York Times. "Though he has passed government safety tests and has a national patent for his creation, China has banned his rice from grocery shelves because it depends on altering rice genes to create a breed immune to the toxic effects of herbicides.

"Reversing its formerly enthusiastic embrace of genetic experiments, China has imposed restrictions on domestic varieties of genetically modified crops like rice, soybeans, vegetables and tobacco, and required lengthy safety tests and cumbersome labelling rules for imports of such food.

"The go-slow approach reflects rising concerns about food safety, but mainly, many critics say, the restrictions are a convenient tool for trade protection.

"Officials in Beijing fear that small-scale, and therefore relatively inefficient, Chinese farmers cannot compete with food imports from the United States, many of them genetically modified. Officials also think that the country’s own food exports may suffer in the world market, where fears of so-called Frankenstein food are rampant, if China becomes a pioneer in genetically altered foods.

"Although China has had new seed varieties available for years, it has allowed the widespread planting of only one crop, a strain of cotton modified to resist the bollworm.

"This spring, Beijing banned biotechnology companies like Monsanto and Syngenta from investing in the development of genetically modified strains of corn, soybeans and rice seeds.

"More recently, it cancelled plans to allow the broad use of corn plants modified to fight bugs in the main grain-producing provinces in the northeast. Field tests showed that in China’s tightly concentrated farm plots, pests evolved quickly to overcome the resistance of genetically modified plants.

"’The general sense is that the risks are too high and the market is too small for most genetically modified plants,’ said Wu Kongmin, who heads a panel of experts conducting safety tests for the agriculture ministry.

"At his laboratory near Hangzhou, Mr. Huang is waiting for approval to develop rice seeds based on his herbicide-resistant breed. But he puts most of his energy into developing a new grade of rice that has an extra long grain, which he plans to market under the brand name Tianmei. He achieved that result, significantly, through conventional crossbreeding, not by rearranging genes.

"’At least," he said, ‘we can make some progress the old way.’"


Food for thought

"There’s a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig--an animal easily as intelligent as a dog--that becomes the Christmas ham."

-Michael Pollan


Wildfire below

Kyoto advocates should be sent back to science class.

Research has proven that 1997-1998 fires in Indonesia released a total of 0.81 to 2.57 billion tons of carbon into the air. That’s 13 to 40 percent of the average annual amount produced globally from combustion of fossil fuels.

The finding highlights the neglected role of wildfires as a source of carbon dioxide emissions, says Joel S. Levine, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Centre in Hampton, Va. Levine notes that the new estimates of the effects of peat burning on Borneo are consistent with his published calculations based on a different approach.

A separate study reports annual fluctuations in global atmospheric carbon from 1992 to 2000. Tropical fires in 1997 and 1998 account for the largest one-year rise in carbon emissions, suggest Ray L. Langenfelds of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Aspendale, Australia, and his colleagues in the Fall Global Biogeochemical Cycles.



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