Declaraciones de Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera , científico ambiental, en representación de la organización Iniciativa para un Desarrollo Sustentable:

Las declaraciones hechas ayer por dirigentes de algunas entidades empresariales en Puerto Rico, y en las cuales hacían alusión a varios proyectos residenciales-turísticos propuestos en varios lugares de la zona costanera de Puerto Rico, según fueron reseñadas en diferentes medios de prensa, faltan a la verdad.

Según las expresiones hechas por la Asociación de Constructores de Hogares, la Asociación de Hoteles y Turismo, la Asociación de Industriales, la Asociación de Contratistas Generales y la Cámara de Comercio de Puerto Rico, entre otras entidades, los proyectos propuestos San Miguel Four Seasons Resort en Luquillo, Dos Mares J.W. Marriott Resort en Fajardo, Costa Serena en Piñones, la expansión del Courtyard Marriott en el Balneario de Isla Verde, y WindMar en Guayanilla, cumplen con las leyes aplicables y han logrado sus permisos. Añaden, que a pesar de esto, han sido obstaculizados, detenidos o revocados por protestas sin fundamento científico o legal hechas por grupos minoritarios, mediante presiones públicas indebidas.

Ninguno de estos proyectos ha obtenido permiso alguno para su construcción.

1. El proyecto WindMar se encuentra todavía bajo evaluación de las agencias gubernamentales. 2. Tanto las declaraciones de impacto ambiental de Costa Serena y del Dos Mares Resort fueron rechazadas por los tribunales en Puerto Rico, porque no cumplían con los requisitos legales mínimos establecidos para evaluar su impacto ambiental, por lo que ninguna agencia ha podido otorgar permiso alguno en el pasado, según ordena la Ley de Política Pública Ambiental de Puerto Rico. A su vez, ignoran el hecho que estos proyectos han sido rechazados inclusive por agencias federales especializadas como el US Forest Service, el US Fish and Wildlife Service, entre otras organizaciones profesionales.
3. La Declaración de Impacto Ambiental del San Miguel Resort ha sido rechazada en tres ocasiones consecutivas, durante diferentes administraciones gubernamentales, por la Junta de Calidad Ambiental, por esta contener deficiencias crasas. Una de estas deficiencias hacía mención a que el Océano Pacífico se encuentra al norte de Puerto Rico. Este proyecto también ha sido objetado por agencias federales, entidades profesionales y organizaciones conservacionistas internacionales.
4. Con el Courtyard Marriott, el Tribunal de Primera Instancia dictaminó que el contrato de arrendamiento de los terrenos donde se proponía este proyecto era ilegal, puesto que ello equivaldría a la privatización y enajenación de bienes de dominio público como son nuestras playas.
5. En el caso de la CEMEX , el Tribunal de Apelaciones revocó el permiso otorgado por la Junta de Calidad Ambiental para la quema de neumáticos dado a que no se llevaron a cabo los procedimientos de evaluación requeridos legalmente sobre su impacto al ambiente, y con ello, a la salud pública. Cabe destacar que la EPA declaró las facilidades de esta compañía en Ponce como 'Violadora de Alta Prioridad' tan recientemente como hace dos semanas. Esta categoría constituye el señalamiento o nivel más serio sobre violaciones ambientales entre las industrias reguladas por EPA en los Estados Unidos bajo la Ley federal de Aire Limpio.

Es conocimiento básico que toda determinación judicial en nuestro sistema legal debe estar amparada estrictamente en criterios legales. Indicar, por lo tanto, que la decisión tomada en los casos antes señalados se debió a presiones de grupos, sin fundamentos legales o científicos, constituye una falta de respeto a nuestro sistema judicial y a todos los funcionarios públicos que forman parte del mismo. Estas declaraciones persiguen ignorar la realidad: estos proyectos no han podido ser construidos por que nunca han cumplido con las leyes que rigen el desarrollo sostenible de los suelos, la conservación y aprovechamiento de nuestros recursos naturales y la protección del medio ambiente. Como consecuencia, resultan contrarios al interés público y por ende, al beneficio general de la comunidad.

Exhortamos a las entidades empresariales responsables por estas declaraciones a que reflexionen profundamente sobre las mismas. De lo contrario, se entendería que apoyan y endosan la ilegalidad, conducta que debe ser entonces repudiada por todos los sectores de nuestra sociedad.

A la luz de los hechos, y como representantes de importantes sectores económicos en la Isla , entendemos que están en la obligación de rectificar y hacer las aclaraciones correspondientes. De no hacerse así, es forzado concluir que dichas declaraciones forman parte de una campaña de desinformación y engaño a la ciudadanía.

El desarrollo de nuestra Isla no puede ni debe basarse en el incumplimiento de las leyes, como una manifestación más de la corrupción moral, ya que ello es la base de los grandes problemas sociales y económicos, incluyendo la desigualdad, que estamos sufriendo al presente todos los puertorriqueños y demás residentes de la Isla.

What's for dinner? Corn ethanol, feedlots and what you eat

by Annie Shattuck
April 10, 2008

The debate over renewable energy is raging. The U.S. Congress recently passed a renewable fuels mandate which will effectively create an artificial market for at least 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol per year. Numerous studies have criticized ethanol's environmental footprint. From negligible greenhouse gas savings to increased ground level ozone, and dependency on high-input agriculture–corn ethanol's critics have painted a picture of a costly band-aid for our energy crisis.

None of this analysis examines the full cost of the corn ethanol boom, which actually creates more by-product than it does fuel. Ethanol from corn produces seven pounds of by-product for every gallon of ethanol. This by-product is already in our food. If you eat beef, chances are you have eaten cattle fattened on this ethanol waste.

Dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) are the leftovers after corn has been milled and fermented into ethanol. Cattle nutritionists recommend including ethanol by-products in cattle diets at 20%-40% maximum. The quantity of distillers grain available is dictated by government incentives for fuel refining, leaving the ethanol industry to engineer demand for its waste. Without the sale of these ethanol by-products, corn ethanol is vastly less profitable. Industry claims that co-production of distillers grain with ethanol is a win-win proposition. Cattle producers get economical, high-protein feed, and America gets renewable fuel. However, the market for distillers grain is limited, and their disposal, like any other industrial by product, comes with costs to the environment, the economy and public health.

The Problem with Ethanol By-Products

Concentrated phosphorus and nitrogen in cow dung

Feeding distillers grain to cattle increases the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in their feces. Unfortunately, the ratio of phosphorous to nitrogen is so high in this cow dung that it is of little use as a fertilizer. Cows fed a diet that includes 40% distillers grain, have fecal material with 41% more phosphorous and 33% more nitrogen than cows fed conventional feedlot diets. More than 40 percent more land will be needed to treat the waste of cows consuming this by-product if it is disposed of by spreading it over fields. Even if the proper amount of land can be dedicated to treating wastes, water quality around feedlots will likely worsen. Eutrophication—the process by which streams with high-nutrient runoff clog with vegetation, reducing oxygen in the water, and killing fish and other aquatic organisms—is a proven result of large-scale cattle and dairy operations. More nitrogen and phosphorous cycling through these operations will intensify the deterioration of streams and rivers.

Increasing nitrogen cycling through feedlots also increases greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 296 times more potent than carbon dioxide, is a major toxic emission from large-scale agricultural operations. Nitrous oxide forms when bacteria naturally present in soils convert biologically available nitrogen to a gas bound with oxygen. In areas where nitrogen runoff is high, nitrous oxide emission is also high. Cows fed a diet of 40% distillers grain increase the amount of available nitrogen in their excrement by 33% percent. The amount of available nitrogen that forms greenhouse gases varies according to treatment methods applied to the waste. With over 200 billion pounds of by-product slated to be produced annually under Congressional ethanol targets, feedlots all over the nation will increase their nitrogen and phosphorus emissions dramatically.

Food safety: Sulfur, polio and E. coli

The market for ethanol by-products is limited due to sulfur residues. Sulfuric acid and other sulfur compounds used in the distilling process combine with naturally-occurring sulfur in corn to produce unhealthy and potentially lethal levels of sulfur in distillers grain. The sulfur levels in ethanol by-products vary between plants and even between batches at the same plant, making it difficult to label or control. Sulfur, in excess of 0.4% in cattle diets will cause polioencephalomalacia, a deadly form of polio that produces brain lesions. The fine nutritional testing necessary to feed a diet heavy in ethanol waste favors large feedlot operations that can afford to test their water supply and distillers grain for sulfur. Smaller ranchers are unlikely to be able to use ethanol waste to the same degree as feedlots, putting family cattle operations in direct competition with ethanol plants for feed corn.

Feedlots that use ethanol waste also threaten the food supply with E. coli outbreaks. A recent Kansas State University study shows that distillers grain promotes the growth of E. coli. The study's authors warn of “serious ramifications,” predicting strong resistance to feeding ethanol waste. Cattle fed brewers grains, a similar product, are six times more likely to have E. coli in their feces than cattle fed real corn. E. coli outbreaks in factory farms are common. The use of ethanol by-products will doubly increase this phenomenon, both increasing the presence of E. coli and expanding the industrial model that makes our food system vulnerable to contamination in the first place.

The feedlot-refinery connection

Ethanol refineries and factory-style feedlots go hand in hand. For example, at an ethanol plant owned by E3 BioFuels corporation in Mead, Nebraska, manure from a 28,000-cow feedlot helps to power a 25 million gallon per year ethanol plant. In this system, the corn waste from the refinery makes up 40% of the cattle's diet. E3 plans to build larger ethanol plants with feedlots of 60,000-120,000 cattle. Such plants bring in a few jobs, but all of the added value of the ethanol stays with the refiner, while the community is left with despoiled water supplies, bad air quality, and all the other environmental problems associated with feedlots and refineries of that size. The pairing of feedlots and refineries makes sense from an industrial standpoint. Up to one third of the energy produced from ethanol is lost in the drying and shipping of its by-products. Pairing ethanol plants and feedlots eliminates drying and transportation costs. As more ethanol refineries are built around the country we can expect feedlots to follow, spoiling waterways and threatening food safety as they go.

Corporate consolidation and consumer choice

Corporate consolidation is occurring rapidly in the ethanol industry. Of the 119 ethanol plants operating in 2007, 49 of them were owned and operated by farmer cooperatives. But once ethanol refineries currently in construction come on line, farmers will only control 20% of the nation's ethanol (and distillers' grain) production capacity. Just as the refining business favors large corporations, the by-products industry will favor large corporate farms and feed lot operations. As ethanol drives corn prices up and the excess corn by-product becomes cheaper, factory feedlots and dairies are likely to edge out smaller operations that can't or don't want to use distillers grains. Consumers who prefer to avoid factory beef will have to buy from the small number of ranchers who sell to specialty markets.

READ THE REST: http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2079

Not your Typical Grandma -- An Interview with Goldman Environmental Prize Winner Rosa Hilda Ramos

by Bonnie Hulkower on 06.23.08

Business & Politics

Rosa Hilda Ramos accepting Goldman Prize

Rosa Hilda Ramos is a 63-year-old grandmother, environmental activist, and one of the recipients of the 2008 Goldman Prize, recognizing grassroots environmental heroes. Ramos mobilized her community to legally take on the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. Now she is using part of the $7 million she won in a judgment against the Power Authority to permanently protect Cucharillas Natural Reserve, one of the largest wetlands in her area. On Earth Day, she arrived in the Puerto Rican legislature with one hundred children dressed as butterflies. The kids came with songs, dances, and origami butterflies. Rosa’s goal is cleaner air for her community and their children -- in other words more butterflies as neighbors, and fewer trucks!

Treehugger (TH): What inspired you to start Communities United against Contamination (CUCCo)?

Rosa Hilda Ramos (Ramos): My husband and I bought what we hoped was our dream home in Cataño, across the bay from San Juan, Puerto Rico. We soon discovered we actually bought a nightmare, as the town had the most polluted air on the island. At night, the air became a toxic soup. Cataño had the highest cancer incidence of type O cancer in young people, and also the highest morbidity rate in asthma patients. Cataño was surrounded by polluting industry; none of the industries were in compliance with the Clean Air Act standards.

Smokestacks in Cataño

TH: How did you form your coalition?

Ramos: I visited all the town neighborhoods, door-to-door, house-by-house, explaining the direness of the situation. I work with community leaders, public school teachers, universities, churches, government agencies, and volunteers.

TH: What made you decide to sue the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA)/power plant and what did you learn from that experience?

Ramos: After trying to move the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board to enforce the law and make the industries comply with emission limitations without any success, I went to court without lawyers. No lawyer wanted to represent us because of our monetary limitations. All of the lawyers I consulted thought there was no way we could win against such powerful adversaries, but we succeeded. We were able to force the public utility to both reduce its level of pollutants and pay a $7 million fine.

TH: How did you decide to spend the money to protect Las Cucharillas marsh?

Bird in Las Cucharillas Marsh

Ramos: Part of the money will be used to defend myself from a SLAPP [Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation lawsuit], part to support the Cucharillas projects, and part to go on a trip with my family. I was never able to travel with my children before. Although they are now all grown up, they will enjoy it.

TH: Do you think kids make good lobbyists/?

Ramos: If small children are treated with respect and the issues are explained to them in a simple but powerful manner, they are great lobbyists. Who is better prepared to convey a strong message defending the future of our natural resources than our children?

TH: This has been a long and continued fight for you, how do you sustain your energy? And what gives you the strength to keep fighting?

Ramos: My family support and that of the community is very strengthening. I try to enjoy life through simple activities. And I pray a lot.

TH: Many people don't think of grandmothers as activists, do you think being a grandmother helped your fight or did people at times take you less seriously?

Ramos: You must be kind but strong. Age doesn’t have anything to do with it, but having children and a grandchild is the main reason I fight for a cleaner environment. I want them to be healthy. I try to help people understand the environmental and public health issues and make their own decisions. Pollution isn’t something you can hide under the rug. If you do, the rug will eventually be pulled out from under you.

TH: I love coqui frogs! I have a poster of Puerto Rico with coqui in my office. Can you tell me more about your plans for these frogs?

Ramos: Coqui are lovable. The concerts these 17 species perform every night on the island are amazing. Sadly, the coqui are hidden under the leaves and not easily seen. We don’t have a place for people to see them. We are working to build an enclosed glass habitat for them, in order for the world to admire their looks as well as their songs!

This is part of a series of profiles on winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Founded in 1990, the prize is given annually to six grassroots environmentalists working for change around the globe. This year's prize winners were announced on April 14.

Turning Your Lawn into a Victory Garden Won't Save You -- Fighting the Corporations Will

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted June 23, 2008.

The corporate agriculture industry would like nothing better than to see us spend all of our free time in our gardens and not in political dissent.

Excerpt:

To repair the broken system that supplies the bulk of the nation's diet will require Americans to step out of the garden and into the public arena. Beyond working to get a better Farm Bill passed five years from now, we have to work together to break the political choke-hold that agribusiness has on federal and state governments.

With land and wealth being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands (and with more prisoners than farmers in today's America) we have actually reached a point at which land reform is as necessary here as it is in any nation of Latin America or Asia. Only when we get more people back on the land, working to feed people and not Monsanto, will the system have a chance to work. Most home gardeners know that the root of the problem is political, but the agricultural establishment would like nothing better than to see us spend all of our free time in our gardens and not in political dissent.

READ THE REST: http://www.alternet.org/environment/86943/

Alimentos, artículos de lujo

Frei Betto

¿Quién se imaginó que tendría que entrar en una butique para comprar arroz, frijoles, verduras y carne? Pues quizás no estemos lejos de ello. El precio medio de los alimentos se triplicó en los últimos doce meses.

El año pasado los dueños del mundo invirtieron en la industria de la muerte -la fabricación de armamentos- US$ 134 mil millones, un 45 % más que hace diez años, según el Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones para la Paz. En gastos militares los gobiernos invirtieron el 2.5 % del PIB mundial. Por cada habitante del planeta se destinaron US$ 202 a alimentar las bestias del Apocalipsis con misiles, bombas, minas y artefactos nucleares. En resumen: según la FAO, comparado con los gastos en alimentos, el valor consumido por los armamentos lo superó ¡191 veces!

Los Estados Unidos facturaron en el 2007 un 45 % de la venta de armas en el mundo. Este mercado hoy día es dominado por 41 empresas estadounidenses y 34 de Europa occidental. En los últimos diez años los gastos militares de los EE.UU. aumentaron un 65 %, sobrepasando todo lo que se invirtió durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Es el precio de las intervenciones en Iraq y en Afganistán.

Además de esa desproporción brutal entre lo que se invierte en la muerte (armas) y lo que se aplica a la vida (alimentos), la crisis del petróleo, con el barril por encima de los US$ 130, eleva terriblemente el precio de los alimentos. En los últimos 50 años se industrializó la agricultura, lo que aumentó un 250 % la cosecha mundial de cereales. Pero eso no significó que se pusieran más baratos y llegaran a las bocas de los hambrientos.

La agricultura pasó a consumir petróleo en forma de fertilizantes (éstos representan 1/3 del consumo de energía en la producción y aumentaron un 130 % en el último año), pesticidas, máquinas agrícolas, sistemas de irrigación y de transporte (desde los camiones que hacen llegar el alimento al mercado hasta el motorista repartidor de pizzas).

La agricultura industrializada consume 50 veces más energía que la agricultura tradicional, pues el 95 % de todos nuestros productos alimenticios exigen la utilización de petróleo. Sólo para criar una vaca y ponerla en el mercado se consumen seis barriles de petróleo, de 158.9 litros cada uno.

La subida del precio del petróleo abre un nuevo y vasto mercado para los productos agrícolas. Antes ellos eran destinados al consumo humano. Ahora son empleados también para alimentar máquinas y vehículos. El precio del petróleo aumenta el de los alimentos sencillamente porque si el valor del combustible de una mercancía excede su valor como alimento, se convertirá en agrocombustible.

¿Quién va a invertir en la producción de azúcar si con la misma caña se obtiene más ganancia generando etanol? Es obvio, el azúcar no desaparecerá de los estantes del supermercado. Pero será ofrecido como artículo de lujo a fin de compensar las inversiones de quien dejó de producir agrocombustible.

No se trata de ponerse contra el etanol, sino de ponerse a favor de la producción de alimentos, de modo que sean accesibles a la renta media mensual del brasileño corriente, que gana unos US$ 300. Además, nadie desconoce el trabajo esclavo o semiesclavo que predomina en los cañales del Brasil, según una reciente denuncia de Amnistía Internacional. Es urgente que el Congreso Nacional apruebe la PEC 438/2001 contra el trabajo esclavo. Desgraciadamente, Planalto acaba de editar la Medida Provisional que no obliga al cumplimiento de inscripción del trabajador hasta después de los tres meses de contratado. ¿Cuántos trabajadores eventuales no van a quedar condenados al régimen perpetuo -y legal- de trimensualidad laboral y sin derechos laborales?

Algunas empresas de producción de etanol obligan a sus trabajadores a recoger hasta 15 toneladas de caña al día y les pagan no por las horas trabajadas sino por la cantidad recogida. Según especialistas, tal esfuerzo causa serios problemas de columna, calambres, tendinitis y enfermedades en las vías respiratorias debido al hollín de la caña, deformaciones en los pies por el uso de gruesos zapatos y daños en las cuerdas bucales por tener el cuello torcido durante el trabajo.

En la cosecha los trabajadores están empapados de sudor debido a las altas temperaturas y del excesivo esfuerzo. Para cortar una tonelada de caña hay que dar mil machetazos. Los salarios pagados por producción son insuficientes para garantizarles alimentación adecuada, pues, además de los gastos de alquiler y transporte desde sus lugares de origen hasta el interior de São Paulo y de Minas, envían parte de lo que ganan a sus familias.
El actual régimen de trabajo reduce el tiempo de vida útil de los cortadores a unos 12 años. En 1850, en que el tráfico de esclavos era libre y la oferta de mano de obra abundante, la vida útil de esos trabajadores era de entre 10 y 12 años. A partir de la prohibición de importar negros, el trato mejor dispensado a los esclavos amplió su vida útil a entre 15 y 20 años.

Si el gobierno federal desea promover el crecimiento económico con desarrollo sustentable, sin antagonizar esas dos metas de nuestro proceso civilizatorio, es preciso evitar los males apuntados, además de hacer la reforma agraria, de modo que se multipliquen las áreas destinadas a la producción de alimentos, balanceándolas con las que hoy día están ocupadas por el agrocombustible. (Traducción de J.L.Burguet)

- Frei Betto es escritor, autor de “Calendario del poder”, entre otros libros.

Fuente: Alai - amlatina

Published on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Corn Can’t Save Us

by David Pimentel

Dwindling foreign oil, rising prices at the gas pump and hype from politically well-connected U.S. agribusiness have combined to create a frenzied rush to convert food grains into ethanol fuel. The move is badly conceived and ill advised. Corporate spin and pork barrel legislation aside, here, by the numbers, are the scientific reasons why corn won’t provide our energy needs:

- First, using corn or any other biomass for ethanol requires huge regions of fertile land, plus massive amounts of water and sunlight to maximize crop production. All green plants in the United States - including all crops, forests and grasslands, combined - collect about 32 quads (32 x 1015 BTU) of sunlight energy per year. The American population today burns more than three times that amount of energy annually as fossil fuels. There isn’t even close to enough biomass in America to supply our biofuel needs.

- Second, biofuel enthusiasts - including agribusiness lobbyists and PR firms - suggest that ethanol produced from corn and cellulosic biomass such as grasses could replace much of the oil used in the United States.

But consider that 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop was converted into 5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, and that amount replaced only 1 percent of U.S. oil consumption. If the entire national corn crop were used to make ethanol, it would replace a mere 7 percent of U.S. oil consumption, far from making the United States independent of foreign oil.

- Third, ethanol production is energy intensive: Cornell University’s up-to-date analysis of the 14 energy inputs that go into corn production, plus the nine energy inputs invested in ethanol fermentation and distillation, confirms that more than 40 percent of the energy contained in one gallon of corn ethanol is expended to produce it. The energy expended to make ethanol comes mostly from oil and natural gas.

Some investigators conveniently omit several of these energy inputs required in corn production and processing, such as energy for farm labor, farm machinery, energy production of hybrid corn-seed, irrigation and processing equipment. Omitting energy inputs wrongly suggests that a corn-ethanol production system offers a more positive energy return. In reality, corn is an inefficient choice from an energy-cost and transport standpoint.

Cellulosic ethanol also is touted loudly as a replacement for corn ethanol. Unfortunately, cellulose biomass production requires major energy inputs to release minimal amounts of tightly bound starches and sugars needed to make fuel. About 70 percent more energy - coming, again, from precious oil and gas - is required to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass than the energy contained in the ethanol produced. That makes cellulosic ethanol an even poorer performer than corn ethanol.

Also, the production of corn ethanol is highly subsidized: State and federal governments pay out more than $6 billion per year in subsidies, according to a 2006 report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Geneva, Switzerland. Calculated on a per-gallon basis, these subsidies are more than 60 times those for gasoline.

Moreover, the environmental impacts of corn ethanol production are serious and diverse. These include severe soil erosion of valuable food cropland, plus the heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides that pollute rivers. Fermenting corn to make one gallon of ethanol produces 12 gallons of noxious sewage effluent. Making ethanol requires the use of fossil fuels, releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to global warming.

- Finally, using food crops such as corn to produce ethanol raises major nutritional and ethical concerns. Nearly 60 percent of the people on Earth are malnourished according to the World Health Organization. Growing crops for fuel squanders land, water and energy vital for human food production.

The use of corn for ethanol has increased the price of U.S. beef, chicken, pork, eggs, breads, cereals and milk - a boon to agribusiness but a bane to consumers. Jacques Diouf, the director general of the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization, reports that using 22 pounds of corn to produce one gallon of ethanol already is causing food shortages for the world’s poor.

One last set of statistics: The global population stands at 6.6 billion: A quarter-million mouths to feed are added daily. Energy experts report that the peak of oil production already has been reached. As cheap oil supplies decline, fuel prices will rise, causing food prices to climb, too, because maximum agricultural production requires the use of fossil fuels.

As global population soars to 8 billion or more toward mid-century and as we burn more grain as fuel, shortages and production costs could cause grain prices to skyrocket, taking food from the mouths of the world’s poorest people.

The science is clear: The use of corn and other biofuels to solve our energy problem is an ethically, economically and environmentally unworkable sham.

David Pimentel is a professor of entomology at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University.

Thomas Friedman is a well known apologist of US imperialism and corporate globalization, so it is tons of fun to see someone with his pedigree flogging president Bush.

Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Op-Ed Columnist

New York Times, June 22, 2008

Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.”

Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.”

It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better. The president actually had the gall to set a deadline for this drug deal:

“I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” Mr. Bush said. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If Congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.”

This from a president who for six years resisted any pressure on Detroit to seriously improve mileage standards on its gas guzzlers; this from a president who’s done nothing to encourage conservation; this from a president who has so neutered the Environmental Protection Agency that the head of the E.P.A. today seems to be in a witness-protection program. I bet there aren’t 12 readers of this newspaper who could tell you his name or identify him in a police lineup.

But, most of all, this deadline is from a president who hasn’t lifted a finger to broker passage of legislation that has been stuck in Congress for a year, which could actually impact America’s energy profile right now — unlike offshore oil that would take years to flow — and create good tech jobs to boot.

That bill is H.R. 6049 — “The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008,” which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables.

These critical tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year and, if they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. “Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines — because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.

That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans — sorry to say, with the help of John McCain — have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.

Of course, we’re going to need oil for years to come. That being the case, I’d prefer — for geopolitical reasons — that we get as much as possible from domestic wells. But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn’t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today. He’d be telling the country a much larger truth:

“Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy — particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.”

That’s what a real president would do. He’d give us a big strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He certainly wouldn’t be using his last days in office to threaten Congressional Democrats that if they don’t approve offshore drilling by the Fourth of July recess, they will be blamed for $4-a-gallon gas. That is so lame. That is an energy policy so unworthy of our Independence Day.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Contact: Darcey Rakestraw

(+1) 202.452.1992 x517

drakestraw@worldwatch.org

1988 and 2008: Climate Change Turning Points

Statement on the 20th Anniversary of Dr. James E. Hansen’s Historic Testimony to the Senate Energy Committee on Climate Change

Washington, D.C. — Exactly 20 years have passed since Dr. James E. Hansen of NASA first testified to Congress on June 23, 1988 that global temperatures had risen beyond the range of natural variability. Waiting another 20 years before taking decisive action is not an option.

Since 1988, mainstream scientific thinking has caught up with Dr. Hansen’s declaration that our climate is being adversely affected by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels—and the forecasts of climate change in the coming decades are increasingly dire.

But political action has fallen well behind the pace of scientific progress, and despite growing public support to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. Senate failed early this month to approve landmark legislation that would have begun to do so.

Dr. Hansen’s latest research indicates that greenhouse gas concentrations have already reached damaging levels and the climate is nearing a dangerous tipping point that will unleash far-reaching changes in the atmosphere and oceans that could take millennia to reverse. In his latest paper, Dr. Hansen calls for deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, beginning almost immediately, with a focus on phasing out the uncontrolled combustion of coal by 2030.¹

As the world moves toward a new climate agreement in 2009, decision makers must understand the tremendous risks we face and the urgency of action in the year ahead.

Although many still argue that such a transition to a low-carbon energy system will be enormously expensive and difficult, our research has shown that it would open up vast economic opportunities, spur innovation and job creation, assist efforts to reduce poverty, and increase energy security.

The transition to a low-carbon economy should be based on sustainable use of renewable sources of energy, including wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass, together with major advances in energy efficiency. The world can achieve a tipping point at which renewables are less expensive than fossil energy—allowing economic momentum to accelerate the transition.

The United States and other industrial nations must work collaboratively with developing countries to increase their capacity to respond to the challenges presented by climate change and to pursue a more viable energy development path. Brazil, China, Europe, India, and the United States together account for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Following Dr. Hansen’s recommendations, policymakers should adopt a policy that puts a price on carbon dioxide emissions, halts the construction of uncontrolled coal-fired power plants, and promotes agriculture and forestry practices that will sequester large amounts of carbon.

Achieving the needed energy transformation will require profound changes in government policies, strengthened global governance in the form of a new international climate agreement, and the mobilization of the private sector to develop and deploy a host of new technologies.

“We applaud Jim Hansen for his leadership on this critical issue,” said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. “His warnings show how essential it is that 2008 become a turning point for climate policy as well as climate science—launching the post-fossil fuel economy the world so desperately needs.”

—END—

1. J. Hansen et al., “Target Atmospheric CO₂: Where Should Humanity Aim?” revised 18 June 2008. See http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126 and http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1135.

From Raj Patel's excellent blog:

Is Meat off the Menu?

I've a piece in this week's issue of The Observer on meat, and my intention to stop eating it.

It was a much longer article before the wise people at the Food and Drink desk cut some of my excesses. But I'm sad that they lost a couple of references to Mark Bittman, to whom I'm grateful not only because I get to guest-blog at Bitten but because I find his work on meat, first here and more recently here, tremendously important and I wanted to thank him publicly.

Incidentally, in the same issue of the Observer Food Magazine, Joanna Blythman disagrees with me about meat. Her arguments are unusually flimsy. She suggests that, because the nomadic Masai have developed a complex system of nutrition dependent on livestock, the British have too, and therefore should be let alone. There are a range of other logical leaps, most of which I address.

You can read my position below the fold, and Blythman's at the Observer Food Magazine website.

America is the most overweight country on earth. Only three out of 10 Americans have a normal body weight. I should have guessed that one of the side effects of moving to the US would be bloating.

Since leaving London for America a decade ago, I've put on a couple of stone. It's easy enough to blame the food environment here. This is, after all, the land where Reagan pronounced tomato ketchup a fruit and, more recently, where French fries and chocolate-covered cherries were legally dubbed 'fresh produce' under a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulation known as the batter-coating rule.

I can't just censure America for my condition, of course. Getting older and stopping smoking have accelerated my middle-age spread. I'm more active now than I used to be, but that hasn't kept the podge at bay. And I'm convinced that part of the problem is that I eat meat. I came to America a vegetarian and I've lapsed into occasional chicken and fish (though, because of a residual Hinduism, no beef).

I'm not the only person to be blaming flesh for bad outcomes. In America, meat has been getting some bad press recently. The Humane Society of the United States earlier this year posted a widely circulated video, filmed undercover at an abattoir in California. It shows workers ramming cows with fork-lift trucks in order to persuade them to walk. There was a financial incentive for them to do it - 'downer cows', cows that are too sick to walk, are prohibited from entering the food system. By the time the story broke and the USDA announced a recall, most of the beef had already been distributed and fed to children through the school-meal programme.

Even Oprah has announced that she's going vegan, if only for a three-week 'cleanse'. Oprah has had run-ins with the meat industry before. In 1998, on hearing that American cows were being fed to other American cows in very British BSE-generating practices, she 'stopped cold' her beef consumption. A group of Texas cattlemen were aggrieved. They used one of the handful of legal restrictions to free speech rights in the US: you're not allowed to disparage agricultural products here. They claimed that Oprah had done just that. They lost in court. Twice. Yet the implication, not too far from the surface in Oprah's vegan detox diet, is that there's something fairly toxic about meat.

Meat consumption has come under attack on grounds of ethics, environment and health and has even been blamed for the global food crisis. A couple of weeks back, George Bush said: 'Worldwide, there is increasing demand. There turns out to be prosperity in the developing world, which is good... So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class... Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.'

More people demanding more meat means that more land is dedicated not to growing food for people, but food for animals - up to 9kg of grain for every kilo of beef. Ratcheting up meat consumption will drive up the price of feed grains, other things being equal.

Except that other things aren't equal. Evidence suggests that it's hard to impeach either India or China's meat-eating habits. According to Daryll Ray at the University of Tennessee, the US government's own figures show that China has been a net exporter of meats since 2001, subsidised to some extent by the running down of local grain stores, and an increased import of soybeans. Moreover, it has produced more grain than it has consumed for every year since 2005, and continues to export heavily. When it comes to India, Ray says the story is much the same as China's. In fact India has been a net exporter of grains and meat over nearly all of the past two decades even though it has the world's largest number of hungry people. So the problem is a little deeper than more Indians demanding things, as George Bush claims.

Blaming the world's two most populous countries, India and China, is a bit of misdirection, particularly when the facts point the other way. Although India's chicken consumption has gone from 0.2 million tonnes to 2.3 million today, beef consumption is more or less the same as it was in 1990 and, because of the cultural tilt against it, not forecast to change.

China is certainly the world's largest consumer of meat in aggregate, and that is because it is the world's most populous country. Meat consumption has increased from 24kg per person in 1980 to 54kg last year, and the chief of China operations for Tyson Foods, the world's largest meat packer, predicts that this is the last year that China will be self-sufficient in protein. Against this, soaring prices for meat in China are certainly taking the edge off demand. But until China's meat demand extends its footprint beyond its borders, country number three in terms of global population, the United States, remains a little more obviously culpable. Meat consumption here is rather less sustainable than in China or India. Americans eat an awful lot of meat - around 90kg of meat and fish per person per year.

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Desigualdad y pobreza: la urgencia de cambiar el modelo

Raúl Zibechi

---

La guerra global por los alimentos pone en videncia que los planes sociales son insuficientes para paliar la pobreza y que sólo la superación del actual modelo permite disminuir la desigualdad que acecha la región.

En sólo seis meses hay 10 millones de nuevos pobres en América Latina. Aunque en esta región el precio de los alimentos subió menos que en el resto del mundo (15% frente al 68%), la cantidad de pobres creció de 190 a 200 millones en sólo seis meses, según el sociólogo argentino Bernardo Kliksberg, asesor del Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD)[1]. Pero esto es apenas el comienzo.

Según Amartya Sen, premio Nobel de Economía con quien Kliksberg acaba de publicar el libro “Primero la gente”, desde hace treinta años se viene previendo que puede haber hambruna en los países productores de alimentos. La crisis alimentaria en curso, hija directa del estallido de la burbuja especulativa inmobiliaria, corta en seco cualquier análisis que pretenda eludir la responsabilidad del modelo en la generación de pobreza. Sobre todo, cuando se sabe que la región produce alimentos suficientes para atender a una población tres veces superior a la que contiene.

Combatir la desigualdad

América Latina es la región con más desigualdad del mundo. Pese a que buena parte de los países de Sudamérica cuenta desde hace varios años con gobiernos progresistas y de izquierda, la desigualdad sigue creciendo, por lo menos en el Cono Sur.

Un reciente estudio del Intituto de Investigación Económica Aplicada (IPEA) de Brasil, revela que el 10% de la población concentra el 75,4% de la riqueza. Las políticas sociales del gobierno Lula, que se aplican desde 2003 para aliviar la pobreza, han mejorado levemente la desigualdad, pero tan poco que apenas se nota. Lo grave es que se trata de los mismos niveles de desigualdad que existían en el siglo XVIII. Marcio Pochman, miembro del PT y director del IPEA, afirmó que los datos demuestran “cómo a despecho de los cambios en el régimen político y en el padrón de desarrollo del país, la riqueza continúa pésimamente distribuida entre los brasileños”[2].

Según Pochman, en el siglo XVIII en Rio de Janeiro el 10% más rico detentaba el 68% de la riqueza, mientras hoy concentra el 63%. Sao Paulo marcha delante de otras ciudades con el 73,4% de concentración de riqueza por el 10% más rico. En opinión del director del IPEA, “ningún país del mundo consiguió acabar con las desigualdades sociales sin una reforma tributaria de verdad”. Explica que los impuestos indirectos como el IVA (valor agregado), predominantes en la región, castigan a los más pobres: el 10% más pobre en Brasil paga un 44,5% más que el 10% más rico, ya que la carga tributaria representa un 33% de la renta de los más pobres y sólo un 22% de la renta de los más ricos.

Gobernabilidad conservadora

Un estudio del economista Claudio Lozano, de la Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA), difundido en febrero de 2008, revela que en los últimos cuatro años “de cada 100 nuevos pesos que se generaron, el 30% más rico se apropió de 62”. Por eso, estima, luego de cinco años de crecimiento económico (con un un PIB un 36% mayor que el de 2001), sigue habiendo un 30% de pobres.

Se trata de un modelo concentrador, al que denomina “gobernabilidad conservadora”, que está comenzando a bloquear la continuidad de la expansión y que impide aprovechar las buenas oportunidades como las que existieron en los últimos cinco años. Peor aún, porque el ciclo de crecimiento parece estar llegando a su fin, en medio de una espiral inflacionista especulativa. “La inflación actúa como mecanismo corrector y preservador de las ganancias extraordinarias del empresariado más concentrado”, asegura Lozano. A la vez, en el caso argentino es potenciada porque “los ricos consumen mucho e invierten poco y mal”[3].

El caso uruguayo, por completar un breve panorama de tres gobiernos surgidos como consecuencia de la oleada anti neoliberal, no es muy diferente. El de Tabaré Vázquez es el único gobierno que implementó una reforma tributaria importante, progresiva, que grava más a los que tienen mayores ingresos. Pero no grava al capital. Así, los datos avalan el crecimiento de la desigualdad aún en los tres años de gobierno progresista.

El índice Gini, con el que se mide la desigualdad, se viene deteriorando en Uruguay en los últimos 20 años, o sea desde la implantación del modelo neoliberal. Y lo hace de modo consistente, en períodos de crisis y de crecimiento, bajo gobiernos de derecha y de izquierda. En 1991 era 41,1 para pasar a 45 en 2002, en el pico de la crisis económico-financiera. En 2005, cuando asumió Tabaré Vázquez, bajó a 44,1 para situarse en 2007 en 45,7[4]. Incluso bajo el gobierno de izquierda, y en un país que presenta el menor índice de desigualdad del continente, el 20% más rico sigue concentrando cada vez más ingresos. En 2001 captaba el 46,4%, en 2002 llegó al 50,3% y en 2007, luego de la reforma tributaria, llegó al 51,1%.

Parece evidente, como señala el citado informe de las economistas Verónica Amarante y Andrea Vogorito, que “no se puede esperar que las políticas de transferencias de ingresos solucionen por, sí solas”, los problemas de pobreza e indigencia. Se refieren a los planes sociales vigentes en Uruguay, pero también en Brasil y Argentina, que aliviaron la pobreza hasta que la especulación con los alimentos comenzó a revertir los pequeños avances del último lustro.

* * *

Parece fuera de duda que lo que está en cuestión es la continuidad del modelo neoliberal en su fase de apropiación de los bienes comunes (minería, forestación, soja, caña para agrocombustibles). Hasta ahora, la exclusión y la pobreza que genera se venían suavizando con planes sociales, que en el caso de Brasil abarcan al 25% de la población. Pero la voracidad del capital impone un cambio de rumbo. Las reformas en los impuestos y los planes sociales seguirán siendo instrumentos necesarios. Pero la pobreza y la desigualdad, sólo bajarán de forma significativa cuando el actual modelo de acumulación por robo y especulación, sea archivado y se implemente otro asentado en el crecimiento endógeno.

- Raúl Zibechi, periodista uruguayo, es docente e investigador en la Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, y asesor de varios grupos sociales.

Agrocombustibles y derecho a la alimentación en América Latina - Realidad y amenazas

Una proporción cada vez más importante de la llamada bioenergía se produce en la actualidad a partir de cultivos agrícolas tradicionalmente utilizados como alimentos y piensos. La producción de cultivos no alimentarios para producción de energía también precisa tierra y agua. Esto crea una competencia directa por los recursos necesarios para alimentar a la población mundial de la cual cerca de 854 millones de personas sufren hoy hambre y malnutrición, la mayoría de ellas habitants de zonas rurales. Los posibles efectos de los agrocombustibles sobre el disfrute del derecho humano a la alimentación adecuada de los grupos sociales más oprimidos y marginados deben ser considerados antes de aplicar políticas y programas de fomento a la producción, inversión y comercio de agrocombustibles.

Autores: Sofía Monsalve, Delma Constanza Millán Echeverría, Jesús Alfonso Flórez López, Roman Herre, Natalia Landívar, Juan Carlos Morales González, Enéias da Rosa, Valéria Torres Amaral Burity, Jonas Vanreusel, Alberto Alderete

Editores : Beatriz Martínez Ruiz

Contactos : Transnational Institute - Email: tni@tni.org / FIAN International e.V. - E-mail: fian@fian.org

Para acceder a este documento (formato PDF) haga clic sobre el enlace a continuación y descargue el archivo:

Agrocombustibles y derecho a la alimentación en América Latina - Realidad y amenazas

Taken from Raj Patel's "Stuffed and Starved" blog:

Save Civic Center Farmers Market!

Photo Credit: trp0

Beautiful celebrations of love aren't the only thing happening here in San Francisco. If you go down to City Hall today, you'll also see a few people pissed off at the government's inconsistencies. While fighting for equality, and even sponsoring the transformation of land in the middle of town into a Victory Garden, the government is also trying to stamp out local control of one of the city's oldest farmers markets.

"Budget and Finance Committee" aren't usually words to get the pulse racing. But today there are a couple of items on the Committee's agenda that will be of interest to folk concerned with San Francisco's Food Systems: Item 9 concerns a "Resolution for revoking the permit for a farmer's market at U.N. Plaza."

I've opined against this take-over in today's San Francisco Chronicle, a newpaper which has taken a strong editorial line against the power-grab here, here and here. Read it all below the fold, and see y'all at City Hall.

The food crisis is over (if we want it)

The era of cheap food is over. Over the next decade, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, butter prices, for example, will be up 60 percent and vegetable oils 80 percent just 10 years from now. We're running up against the ecological and economic limits of industrial agriculture. But there's hope. And it springs from the heart of the city - including San Francisco.

An April report from a panel of scientists pointed the way. The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, a 3-year scientific collaboration, was cursed with a clumsy name, but endowed with more than 400 of the world's brightest scientists and led by Robert Watson, the man who helmed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These scientists set out to understand how we'll feed a planet that by 2050 will have 9 billion people. They agreed that today's fossil fuel and water-hungry agriculture won't be able to feed the world. Instead, they called for a more sophisticated, organic, democratic and local agriculture.

These calls already have been heeded in San Francisco. For years, urban gardeners have been sowing the seeds of change with gardening projects in the city. Those seeds need to be nurtured, and there's a chance to do just that with an upcoming project: a victory garden on the lawn outside City Hall. Victory, in this case, is learning to grow food close to those who will eat it. Hatched by a number of groups, including Garden for the Environment, SF Victory Gardens and Slow Food Nation, this project will not only create a fruit-and-vegetable garden in Civic Center Plaza, it'll create an archipelago of urban agriculture throughout the city, mostly in families' back yards.

But the victory garden deserves to be part of a longer-term vision for feeding the city. Which is why it's so profoundly disappointing that at the same time as the land is being prepared at the Civic Center Plaza to promote sustainable agriculture, the land on U.N. Plaza is being taken over to prevent sustainable agriculture.

Next to the proposed victory garden is the Heart of the City Market. Started by Quakers and farmers in the 1980s to serve low-income families, this farmers market is a community hub and one of the few places near the Tenderloin to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. It's run on a shoestring by a nonprofit whose board members are elected by the farmers who sell their produce at the market. And it is about to be taken over by City Hall's Real Estate Division.

The planned Slow Food Nation harvest event in August, around which this victory garden is centered, has as its motto that food should be good, clean and fair. The Heart of the City market is the kind of community initiative that makes available affordable good, clean food for working families, and supports democratic and sustainable food.

There have been great successes for urban vegetable gardens elsewhere. Toronto, for instance, has for decades had a Food Policy Council, a space within the municipal government that works to create community gardens, and even educational schemes for at-risk youth. But there have been failures too. In Los Angeles, the South Central Farm built a community of 350 families, a refuge for children at risk from gangs, and a haven of hundreds of species of plants. It was destroyed when the Los Angeles City Council ceded its rights to a developer.

Whether the San Francisco victory garden is a stunt, or a step toward the Bay Area becoming a model for sustainable urban agriculture, is something that depends on the willingness of City Hall. If we are to have sustainability, we'll need a greater commitment to democracy and equality. That's the commitment at the Heart of the City Market. We won't, after all, feed the world with political window dressing.

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De los transgénicos a la biología sintética

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero/Especial para Claridad 19 de junio 2008

Los transgénicos están passé. Así como lo oyen. Al menos ése es el parecer de los científicos y empresarios en el nuevo campo de la biología sintética. Conocida también como “synbio” o “biología 2.0”, la biología sintética va más allá de la ingeniería genética, tecnología que se usa para alterar organismos existentes para crear organismos genéticamente alterados (transgénicos). Lo que busca la biología sintética es construir organismos nuevos desde cero. “Usando una computadora tipo laptop, información pública de secuencias genéticas y ADN sintético ordenado por correo, prácticamente cualquiera tiene el potencial para construir genes o genomas enteros de la nada”, informó el Grupo ETC, organización no gubernamental con sede en Canadá. En junio de 2007 tomó lugar en la ciudad suiza de Zurich el Tercer Encuentro Internacional de Biología Sintética, en el cual hicieron su presentación en sociedad varias iniciativas, como la fundación “Emergence” y el proyecto “Tessy” (“Towards a European Strategy for Synthetic Biology”), que promueven la biología sintética en Europa. De Estados Unidos participó el “Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center” (www.synberc.org), institución financiada por la Fundación Nacional de las Ciencias. Además de gobiernos y corporaciones transnacionales, también tenemos un puñado de científicos-empresarios montándose en el tren de la biología sintética. Están formando empresas, como LS9, Amyris y Codon Devices, utilizando fondos públicos y capital de riesgo. Ellos aseguran que la biología sintética se puede utilizar para crear organismos artificiales que harán de todo, desde combatir la malaria hasta producir combustible. El más prominente y farandulero de estos tecno-capitalistas de nuevo cuño es el polémico J. Craig Venter, quien se hizo famoso haciendo un mapa del código genético humano con su compañía Celera Genomics. En 2005 Venter fundó la compañía Synthetic Genomics, que aspira a crear microbios sintéticos que producirán combustibles como etanol e hidrógeno. El “Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives”, un ente sin fines de lucro fundado por Venter, recibe fondos del programa Genomas para la Vida del Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos, que desarrolla el uso de plantas y microbios para faenas variadas desde generar energía hasta remover carbono de la atmósfera. La mitad del capital inicial de “Synthetic Genomics” vino del magnate mexicano Alfonso Romo. El señor Romo tiende a aparecer dondequiera que se mueven los capitales de la biotecnología. Fundó en 1991 el Grupo Púlsar, poderoso conglomerado con operaciones en más de 110 países y grandes intereses en agroindustria, biotecnología y bioprospección. En 1994 Romo fundó la empresa Seminis (www.seminis.com), un gigante de la agroindustria que en poco tiempo llegó a ser el mayor desarrollador, cultivador y mercader de semillas de frutas y vegetales del mundo, controlando 40% del mercado de semillas de vegetales de Estados Unidos, incluyendo 75% de los tomates vendidos en ese país, más numerosas variedades de lechuga, repollo, melón y espinaca. Hoy día tiene ventas en 156 países, sus réditos de 2007 fueron de $606 millones, y posee 20% del mercado mundial de semillas de vegetales. Desde 2005 Seminis es subsidiaria del gigante de biotecnología Monsanto. La compra de Seminis, a un costo $1,400 millones, hizo de Monsanto la compañía de semillas más grande del mundo. Biopiratería Venter ya es bien conocido por los grupos de sociedad civil latinoamericanos, que lo han acusado de biopiratería. En 2004 navegó a Bermudas, México, Costa Rica, Panamá, Chile y las Galápagos en el Sorcerer 2, su laboratorio flotante de 90 pies de largo. Los participantes en el Foro Social de las Américas, que tomó lugar ese año en Ecuador, denunciaron la expedición como un intento de patentar y privatizar la biodiversidad. “La expedición de Venter en busca de microbios pone sobre la mesa serias cuestiones aún sin resolver en torno a la soberanía sobre los recursos genéticos y la privatización de éstos mediante su patentamiento,” dijo Silvia Ribeiro, del Grupo ETC. “La pretensión de Venter es una de las mayores amenazas para la privatización y comercialización de la vida, por lo cual nos oponemos a su presencia acá y en el resto de países de la región”, declaró Lucía Gallardo, de Acción Ecológica, un grupo ambientalista ecuatoriano. Romo también ha sido acusado de biopiratería. Por varios años fue miembro de la junta directiva de Conservación Internacional (www.conservation.org), uno de los grupos conservacionistas más adinerados del mundo. Con sede en Wáshington DC y operaciones en más de 40 países, CI administra áreas naturales protegidas y proyectos de bioprospección y ecoturismo en varios continentes, ha recibido fondos de corporaciones como McDonald’s, Exxon, Citigroup, Ford, Sony y el ya mencionado Grupo Púlsar, y su junta directiva tiene ejecutivos de Starbucks, Hyatt, Wal Mart, JP Morgan, UBS e Intel. CI “representa el caballo de Troya de grandes corporaciones transnacionales y del gobierno estadounidense”, según el Centro de Análisis Político e Investigaciones Sociales y Económicas de México (CAPISE). “La estrategia de CI es recabar información y comprar grandes extensiones de tierra con altos potenciales de bioprospección, lo que le permite administrar los recursos naturales y/o estratégicos y ponerlos a la disposición de las grandes transnacionales.” Peligro La idea de organismos sintéticos novedosos levanta banderas rojas para los críticos de la biotecnología. Preocupa a muchos que la biología sintética se mueve a toda velocidad, sin debate en la sociedad o supervisión regulatoria. Advierte el grupo ETC: “En última instancia la biología sintética significa herramientas más baratas y ampliamente accesibles para construir armas biológicas, patógenos virulentos y organismos artificiales que podrían representar graves amenazas para la gente y el planeta. El peligro no es solamente bioterror, sino el ‘bio-error’.” “La creación de nuevas formas de vida entraña complejidades enormes. ¿Cómo podría evitarse su liberación accidental al ambiente o cómo podrían evaluarse los efectos de su liberación intencional? ¿Quién los va a controlar, y cómo? ¿Cómo se fiscalizará la investigación? ¿Deberíamos rediseñar la vida de esta manera cuando los cuestionamientos ambientales y en torno a la seguridad humana son tan vastos? ¿Quién debería decidir?” En 2006 una coalición internacional de 35 organizaciones, incluyendo científicos, ambientalistas, sindicalistas, expertos en guerra biológica y defensores de la justicia social exhortaron al debate público, regulación y fiscalización de la biología sintética. Los firmantes explícitamente rechazaron las propuestas de “autorregulación”. “No se puede permitir que científicos que crean nuevas formas de vida actúen como juez y jurado”, declaró Sue Mayer, directora de GeneWatch UK. “Las posibles implicaciones sociales, ambientales y de armas biológicas son demasiado serias como para ser dejadas en manos de científicos bien intencionados pero con intereses propios. Se necesitan debate público, regulación y fiscalización.” Para más información: http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/search/label/Synthetic%20Biology carmelo_ruiz@yahoo.com

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