On the 29th January 2017, three leading animal welfare campaigners from the UK made a mercy mission to Romania.

Anneka Svenska, 43, Wildlife TV Presenter and Conservationist who had previously rescued 300 dogs from Romania and dog meat trade. Anneka is the founder of Green World TV; an online TV channel she created solely to support animal welfare and conservation. She is also director of Angels for the Innocent Foundation. (AFI)

Nicky Stevens, 41, Founder of charity International Aid for the Protection and Welfare of Animals (IAPWA). Nicky has previously received a British Citizen Award for international achievement for her work in Borneo and won the Ceva ‘Charity of the Year’ Award in 2015.

Amanda Leask 46, animal rescuer and author from Scotland. Known for the famous “Miracle” the dog who ‘refused to die’, saved from the illegal dog meat trade in Thailand. Amanda is trustee for IAPWA with ambition to make change for animals on an international scale.

The reason for the trip was to film the plight of the Romanian street dogs and to bring their terrible suffering to a wider global audience. What they witnessed shocked everyone in the team and heightened the urgency of why the country desperately needs support and new legislation to protect its animals.

In Romania today there are around 64,000 feral dogs in Bucharest alone. The dog population arose as a result of systematization, a policy imposed during the Communist regime that ruled Romania for decades. Systematization forced people to move into apartment blocks and abandon their dogs.

On the second day, the campaigners visited a charitable vet practice Dog Rescue Romania headed up by husband and wife vets Garofita and Rudi Hofman. It was clear that the couple devoted their life to providing free vet care for as many of the Bucharest street dogs as possible. They stand by their word that no dog is ever released back onto the streets and if it cannot be treated and adopted, it would be cared for in their own sanctuary.

During the visit, the campaigners witnessed dogs with heart-breaking injuries, paralysis and medical conditions. Two men burst in with a dog who had been tragically run over and the vets fought for over an hour to save the dog before he died on their table.

But nothing was to prepare them for what was to come next and shortly after a female German Shepherd was rushed into the practice with some of the worst injuries ever seen – a victim of the most harrowing and extreme torture. The gentle old street dog had been beaten, partially dismembered and sexually abused with a knife. Even her teeth had been cruelly extracted. The vets fought hard and did everything they could to treat her and to pull her out of her critical condition.

The lady who found the dog, passed through every day to feed the strays and told Anneka on film that she had found three dead puppies in the same place as the mutilated shepherd that week, one cut in half, another’s with its skull caved in and the third disembowelled.  When she fell upon the German Shepherd, which she felt had been ‘carefully placed’, as if left their for her to find, she immediately took it as a sign that someone was trying to signal to her to stop feeding the street dogs.

When questioned to whether she felt the police would intervene, she said that she was not hopeful as in Romania there are no animal welfare laws upheld to protect stray dogs. Despite the evidently dangerous attacker and the risk he could pose to children and women, she still felt that the Romanian police were unable to act.

The dog has been named ‘Spirit’ and is on her way to a complete recovery thanks to vets Dog Rescue Romania. The dog will travel to the UK later in the year and be rehomed.

Call to Action

Having returned to the UK, the campaigners are taking immediate action to prevent more dogs having to suffer horrendous torture and are planning to create a petition to ask for changes in legislation, alongside Romanian lobbying organisations and charities in order to improve the welfare of street dogs and the prosecution of individual engaged in abuse and cruelty.   

They will be calling for:

• The reinforcement and strengthening of animal protection legislation for dogs

• Enforcement of penalties for crimes committed against dogs

• Improvement in standards of animal welfare provided to dogs in pounds

• A collaborative neutering campaign to reduce the number of strays suffering

Spirit has not been an isolated case of torture and mutilation in Romania and dogs have been reported regularly as victims of horrific mutilation, as was Phoenix, belonging to Amanda Leask, who was brutally skinned last year. Dog Rescue Romania, the vets treating Sprit have said that it is a regular occurrence to see dogs tied up and tortured.

IAPWA intends to approach the Prime Minister of Romania, Sorin Grindeanu and the Mayor of Bucharest Gabriela Firea to ask for support for this issues and to discuss changes to protect the strays. A neutering scheme will also be discussed to significantly reduce the number of strays, thus preventing their suffering, alongside education initiatives to create long term change.

To find out more about The Faith Project and the animals rescued please visit: www.iapwa.org and www.facebook.com/iapwa

There is no progress on the dog front. If anything I am going backwards. Can I afford it? All the vets bills, insurance and food? And with a dog comes entropy. A narrowboat is a small space and a labrador is a big dog. A big dog that likes getting wet and sheds lots of hair. I know from experience that within a very short time, a labrador (or two) can render my boat into utter chaos – chaos with the aroma of wet dog. When I know their tenure is only for a few weeks that’s no problem but a forever dog means a forever mess. I’m not changing my mind; it’s just that I haven’t made it up yet.

So, with the help of the Internet, I’ll keep pursuing the part-time dog-sharing option. Not that I’ve had any joy yet. Dog-owners want commitment it seems, not some floosie who’s just passing through in search of casual dates.

In the real world – if you can call Milton Keynes that – I met a man with 11 dogs: spaniels, papillons, mongrels. In a dimly lit underpass, they were all off their leads, milling around him, yapping. All 11 undesirable mutts were his he said. He had adopted them all. He yelled at them while pushing a dog-cage on wheels, which contained bags of poo and more empty bags ready to be deployed. The encounter did nothing to inspire me to adopt a dog. Look where it might lead. It was like a scene from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Milton Keynes is 50 this year (www.mk50.co.uk). The road is an essential backbone in the design of Britain’s largest ‘new town’. The centre of this Buckinghamshire metropolis is like one big office car park. Originally, there were plans for trams but the money ran out and so the central district’s boulevards have wide central strips, not used for anything much, not even gardens. In the surrounding conurbation – an amalgamation of villages – the ‘redways’ (pedestrian and cycle routes) constantly duck under roads. Granted, 50 years ago it was foresighted to include cycle-ways at all but let’s hope the government’s proposed 14 new garden villages are less car-focussed. People need places to live that prioritise pedestrians and bikes rather than simply accommodate them.

In my narrowboat home, I have just cruised along the Grand Union canal around Milton Keynes. The waterway skirts the town as if planners decided it should serve as a boundary rather than a feature.

A daydream I know but perhaps along with the new garden villages, the government could consider commissioning new canals? Instead of spending billions on HS2 so that a privileged few can travel faster we could resurrect 1940s plans for a Grand Contour Canal on which we travel more pleasurably. This 100ft-wide waterway would follow the 300ft contour line around England from Newcastle to London to Southampton and many places in-between. What fun it would be to commute to work by passenger boat.

I am about the same age as Milton Keynes. The closest I have come to car ownership was when I shared a 2CV with a friend for a year in my 20s. Bicycle, public transport, my narrowboat and Shanks’s pony are how I get around the country. I hate cars. On my continuous cruising of the 2,000 miles of waterways in England and Wales, I find mooring spots away from roads and the sound of traffic. But no matter how remote, there is invariably a background thrum of wheels on tarmac and boy racers giving it some throttle. The noise and reminder of constant, fast movement is stressful. A narrowboat life is all about being slow and quiet. It epitomises ‘hygge‘, the Danish concept of cosiness and contentment that has become a huge marketing gimmick this winter, prompting people to drive to superstores to buy all things ‘hygge‘ – candles and furry hot water bottles.

The busy roads are a bane of this country. They are not only noisy and dangerous but car exhausts of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulates cause respiratory illnesses and tens of thousands of premature deaths annually. Recent studies also link living close to traffic with dementia (http://www.nhs.uk/news/2017/01January/Pages/People-who-live-near-busy-roads-have-higher-dementia-rates.aspx) and obesity (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25710788). I am fortunate enough to be able to go for days on end without ever venturing near a road. My mind and waistline need all the help they can get.

When I do venture onto tarmac, from my perspective as a cyclist it seems that many car drivers treat the roadside as their litter bin. Waysides are strewn with cans and bottles and fast food packaging. Not that canals are immune to this problem. Although my present mooring spot in rural Northamptonshire is relatively litter-free, there are stretches of towpath where the bushes are stuffed with rubbish. Why come to such a place, away from the rush of 21st century life, where ‘nature’ has a foothold, and then leave your litter? It saddens me.

I must take inspiration from some words by Norwegian eco-philosopher, Arne Naess: ‘Should the world’s misery and the approaching ecocatastrophe make one sad?’ he questions. ‘The remedy against sadness caused by the world’s misery is to do something about it.’

A few cans and crisp packets are hardly an ecocatastrophe but litter’s abundance proves how many people are disconnected from the environment. Much of the rubbish blows into the canal and ends up in the sea to join the tons of plastic waste in our oceans. This knowledge and the jarring ugliness definitely affects my state of mind. I must do more litter picking. It’s an excuse for a walk too. Instead of taking a black labrador, I can take a black bin bag and my litter grabber. ‘Come on, walkies!’ I’ll say to the bin-bag, and we’ll amble along together in the winter sun.

This Author

Paul Miles is the Ecologist’s new Green Living columnist

One can hear the cry ringing through the boardrooms of capital: “Free trade is dead! Long live free trade!”

Think the ideas behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or the so-called ‘free trade’ regime are buried just because Trump scrapped them? Sadly, no. Definitely, no.

Some of the countries involved in negotiating the TPP seeking to find ways to resurrect it in some new form – but that isn’t the most distressing news.

What’s worse is the TPP remains alive in a new form with even worse rules. Meet the Trade In Services Agreement, even more secret than the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And more dangerous.

The Trade In Services Agreement (TISA / TiSA), currently being negotiated among 50 countries, if passed would:

• prohibit regulations on the financial industry;
• eliminate laws to safeguard online or digital privacy;
• render illegal any ‘buy local’ rules at any level of government;
• effectively dismantle any public advantages to be derived from state-owned enterprises; and
• eliminate net neutrality.

TISA negotiations began in April 2013 and have gone through 21 rounds. Silence has been the rule for these talks, and we only know what’s in it because of leaks, earlier ones published by WikiLeaks and now a new cache published January 29 by Bilaterals.org.

The backup plan for the failure of TPP or TTIP

Earlier draft versions of TISA’s language would prohibit any restrictions on the size, expansion or entry of financial companies and a ban on new regulations, including a specific ban on any law that separates commercial and investment banking, such as the equivalent of the US Glass-Steagall Act.

It would also ban any restrictions on the transfer of any data collected, including across borders; place social security systems at risk of privatization or elimination; and put an end to Internet privacy and net neutrality. It hasn’t gotten any more acceptable.

TISA is the backup plan in case the TPP and the TTIP don’t come to fruition. Perhaps fearful that the recent spotlight put on ‘free trade’ deals might derail TISA as it derailed TPP, the governmental trade offices negotiating it have not announced the next negotiating date. The closest toward any meaningful information found was the Australian government’s bland statement that the “Parties agreed to reconvene in 2017.”

The cover story for why TISA is being negotiated is that it would uphold the right to hire the accountant or engineer of your choice, but in reality is intended to enable the financial industry and Internet companies to run roughshod over countries around the world.

And while ‘liberalization’ of professional services is being promoted, the definition of ‘services’ is being expanded in order to stretch the category to encompass manufacturing. Deborah James of the Center for Economy and Policy Research laid out the breathtaking scope of this proposal:

“Corporations no longer consider setting up a plant and producing goods to be simply ‘manufacturing goods.’ This activity is now is broken down into research and development services, design services, legal services, real estate services, architecture services, engineering services, construction services, energy services, employment contracting services, consulting services, manufacturing services, adult education services, payroll services, maintenance services, refuse disposal services, warehousing services, data management services, telecommunications services, audiovisual services, banking services, accounting services, insurance services, transportation services, distribution services, marketing services, retail services, postal and expedited delivery services, and after-sales servicing, to name a few.

“Going further, a shoe or watch that measures steps or sleep could be a fitness monitoring service, not a good. A driverless car could be a transport service, not an automobile. Google and Facebook could be information services and communication services, respectively.”

Why are we kept in the dark?

Before we get to the details of the text itself, let’s take a quick look at how the world’s governments, on behalf of multi-national capital, are letting their citizens know what they are up to. Or, to be more accurate, what they are not telling you. Many governments have not bothered to update their official pages extolling TISA in months.

The European Union is negotiating TISA on behalf of its 28 member countries, along with, among others, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Norway, Switzerland, Pakistan and Turkey.

In the United States, the new Trump administration has yet to say a word about it. The Office of the US Trade Representative web site’s page on TISA still says “TiSA is part of the Obama Administration’s ongoing effort to create economic opportunity for U.S. workers and businesses by expanding trade opportunities.”

Uh-huh. President Donald Trump is not against ‘free trade’ deals; he simply claims he can do it better. The Trump administration has issued blustery calls for “fair deals” and braggadocio puffing up Donald Trump’s supposed negotiating prowess. A typical White House passage reads,

“To carry out his strategy, the President is appointing the toughest and smartest to his trade team, ensuring that Americans have the best negotiators possible. For too long, trade deals have been negotiated by, and for, members of the Washington establishment.”

More typical of the TISA negotiators is the latest report from the European Commission, which summarized the latest round, held last November, this way: “Parties made good progress in working towards an agreed text and finding pathways towards solving the most controversial outstanding issues at both Chief Negotiators and Heads of Delegation levels.”

The Canadian government’s last update is from last June and declares “Parties conducted a stocktaking session to assess the level of progress on all issues.”

Traveling across the Pacific brings no more useful information. Australia’s government offers this information-free update: “Parties agreed to a comprehensive stocktake of the negotiations, identifying progress made and areas which require ongoing technical work.”

New Zealand’s government can’t even be bothered to provide updates, instead offering only discredited, boilerplate public-relations puffery similar to other trade offices.

TISA may be in trouble – but we can’t afford to relax

The one hint that TISA negotiations are experiencing difficulty that could be found through an extensive online search is this passage in a US Congressional Research Service report dated January 3, 2017:

“Recognizing that outstanding issues remain and the U.S. position under a new administration is unclear, the parties canceled the planned December 2016 meeting but are meeting to determine how best to move forward in 2017.”

Given that the new administration is moving as fast as possible to eliminate the tepid Dodd-Frank Act financial-industry reforms, it would seem TISA’s provisions to dismantle financial regulation globally would not be a problem at all.

But that these talks are not progressing at the present time does not mean the world can relax. It took years of cross-border organizing and popular education to stop the TPP, and this effort will have to replicated if TISA is to be halted.

The details are the devils already known

Commentary accompanying Bilaterals.org‘s publication of several TISA chapters stresses that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, despite its apparent defeat, is nonetheless being used as the model for the Trade In Services Agreement. Thus we are at risk of the TPP becoming the ‘new norm’:

“Several proposed texts from the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have been transferred to TiSA – including state-owned enterprises; rights to hold data offshore (including financial data); e-commerce; and prohibitions on performance requirements for foreign investors.

“While these texts originated with the United States, they appear to be supported by other parties to the TPP, even though those governments were reluctant to agree to them in the TPP and will no longer be bound by that agreement. That suggests the TPP may become the new norm even though it has only been ratified in two of the 12 countries, and that was done on the basis of U.S. participation that no longer applies.

“TPP cannot be allowed to become the new ‘default’ position for these flawed agreements.”

Some of the most extreme measures have been dropped (at least for now) and much of the text is not agreed. Nonetheless, there is nothing to cheer about, Bilaterals.org reports.

“The effectiveness of opposition to TiSA has led governments to conclude that they cannot sell some of the more extreme proposals, which have thus been dropped from previous leaked texts. But the fetters on the rights and responsibilities of governments to regulate in the interests of their citizens from what remains would still go further than any single other agreement.

“There are no improvements on the inadequate protections for health, environment, privacy, workers, human rights, or economic development. And there is nothing to prevent developing countries becoming even more vulnerable and dependent in an already unequal and unfair global economy.”

De-development in the poorest countries

Hypocritically, TISA would prohibit developing countries from adopting measures that countries like the United States used to facilitate its industrial development when it was an emerging country in the 19th century.

In an analysis for WikiLeaks, Sanya Reid Smith of the Third World Network, an international coalition specializing in development issues, wrote:

“[T]he proposals in this text restrict the ability of developing countries to use the development paths taken by many of the developed TISA countries. Some experts call this developed countries ‘kicking away the ladder’ after they have climbed up, to prevent developing countries from developing the same way …

“In TISA, the USA is proposing restrictions on host countries being able to require senior managers be citizens of the host country. Yet when it was a capital importer, the USA had the opposite law: its 1885 contract labour law prohibited the import of foreign workers, i.e. the USA required senior managers (and all other staff) be Americans, which increased the chances of skills being passed to locals.”

Letting banks decide what’s good for you

These proposals are more extreme than language in existing bilateral trade agreements. Many of TISA’s provisions are lifted from TPP, but some go beyond the latter’s already extreme proposals. For example, not even the TPP contemplated the entire elimination of regulations of any kind against the financial industry.

Article 14 of TISA’s annex on financial services, which had contained the most explicit language prohibiting regulation, has been removed, but Article 9 still contains language requiring no limitations beyond those applying to domestic financial firms. In other words, a smaller country would be required to allow a giant bank from a bigger country to take over its entire banking system.

Incredibly, regulations against financial derivatives yet to be invented would be illegal. A Public Citizen analysis states:

“TISA would require governments to allow any new financial products and services – including ones not yet invented – to be sold within their territories. The TISA Annex on Financial Services clearly states that TISA governments ‘shall permit’ foreign-owned firms to introduce any new financial product or service, so long as it does not require a new law or a change to an existing law.”

As another example, the financial-services annex (in article 21) would require that any government that offers financial products through its postal service lessen the quality of its products so that those are no better than what private corporations offer.

Article 1 of the financial-services annex states that “activities forming part of a statutory system of social security or public retirement plans” are specifically covered by TISA, as are “activities conducted by a central bank or monetary authority or by any other public entity in pursuit of monetary or exchange-rate policies.”

That social security or other public retirement systems are covered is cause for much alarm because they could be judged to be ‘illegally competing’ with private financial enterprises. It is conceivable that central banks could be constrained from actions intended to shore up economies during a future financial crisis if banks decide such measures ‘constrain’ their massive profiteering off the crisis.

Freedom of information – strictly for the corporations

Article 10 of the annex continues to explicitly ban restrictions on the transfer of information in “electronic or other form” of any “financial service supplier”.

In other words, EU laws guarding privacy that stop US-based Internet companies from taking data outside the EU to circumvent those privacy laws would be null and void. Laws instituting privacy protections would be verboten before they could be enacted. These rules, if enacted, could also provide a boon to companies like Uber whose modus operandi is to circumvent local laws. The Bilaterals.org analysis accompanying the leaks notes:

“The main thrust of TiSA comes through the e-commerce, telecommunications, financial services and localisation rules and countries’ commitments to allow unfettered cross-border supply of services.

“Together they would empower the global platforms who hold big data, like Google, without effective privacy protections, and tech companies like Uber, who have become notorious for evading national regulation, paying minimal tax and exploiting so-called self-employed workers. Given the backlash against global deals for global corporations TiSA will simply add fuel to the bonfire.”

Who interprets the rule is crucial

The language of TISA, like all ‘free trade’ agreements, is dry and legalistic. How these rules are interpreted is what ultimately matters.

TISA contains standard language requiring arbitration by judges possessing “requisite knowledge”. That language means that the usual lineup of corporate lawyers who represent corporations in these tribunals will switch hats to sit in judgment. The tribunals used to settle these ‘investor-state disputes’ are held in secret with no accountability and no appeal.

The intention of ‘free trade’ agreements is to elevate corporations to the level of governments. In reality, they raise corporations above the level of governments because only ‘investors’ can sue; governments and people can’t.

‘Investors’ can sue governments to overturn any law or regulation that they claim will hurt profits or even potential future profits. On top of this, a government ordinarily has to pay millions of dollars in costs even in the rare instances when they win one of these cases.

Each ‘free trade’ agreement has a key provision elevating corporations above governments that codifies the ‘equal treatment’ of business interests in accordance with international law and enables corporations to sue over any regulation or other government act that violates ‘investor rights’, which means any regulation or law that might prevent the corporation from extracting the maximum possible profit.

Under these provisions, taxation and regulation constitute ‘indirect expropriation’ mandating compensation – a reduction in the value of an asset is sufficient to establish expropriation rather than a physical taking of property as required under customary law.

Tribunal decisions become precedents for further expansions of investor ‘rights’ and thus constitute the ‘evolving standard of investor rights’ required under ‘free trade’ agreements. TISA contains the usual passages requiring ‘equal treatment’.

What it’s really all about: deregulation and corporate empowerment

At bottom, ‘free trade’ deals have little to do with trade and much to do with imposing corporate wish lists through undemocratic means, including the elimination of any meaningful regulations for labor, safety, health or the environment. TISA is another route to imposing more of this agenda.

And the TPP itself isn’t necessarily dead – both Chile and New Zealand are holding discussions with other TPP countries to salvage some of the deal. Chile has invited TPP countries, plus China, to a March summit and the New Zealand trade minister is visiting Australia, Japan, Mexico and Singapore.

Working people around the world scored a major victory in stopping the TPP, at least in its current form. The activists who achieved this deserve much credit. But there is far more to do. Capital never rests; nor can we.

Here we have class warfare in naked fashion, and there is no doubt on which side the capitalist world’s governments lie.

Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet and photographer, and writes on Systemic Disorder. His book ‘It’s Not Over: Lessons from the Socialist Experiment‘, a study of attempts to create societies on a basis other than capitalism, was recently published by Zero Books.

This article was originally published on Systemic Disorder.

Mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong to ignore. While the extent to which climate change is due to man-made causes can be questioned, the risks associated with future warming are too big and should be hedged.

At least we need an insurance policy. For too long, many Republicans have looked the other way – forfeiting the policy initiative to those who favor growth-inhibiting command-and-control regulations, and fostering a needless climate divide between the GOP and the scientific, business, military, religious, civic and international mainstream.

Now that the Republican Party controls the White House and Congress, it has the opportunity and responsibility to promote a climate plan that showcases the full power of enduring conservative convictions. Any climate solution should be based on sound economic analysis and embody the principles of free markets and limited government.

As this paper argues, such a plan could strengthen our economy, benefit working-class Americans, reduce regulations, protect our natural heritage and consolidate a new era of Republican leadership. These benefits accrue regardless of one’s views on climate science.

The four pillars of a carbon dividends plan

1. A gradually increasing carbon tax

The first pillar of a carbon dividends plan is a gradually increasing tax on carbon dioxide emissions, to be implemented at the refinery or the first point where fossil fuels enter the economy, meaning the mine, well or port.

Economists are nearly unanimous in their belief that a carbon tax is the most efficient and effective way to reduce carbon emissions. A sensible carbon tax might begin at $40 a ton and increase steadily over time, sending a powerful signal to businesses and consumers, while generating revenue to reward Americans for decreasing their collective carbon footprint.

2. Carbon dividends for all Americans

All the proceeds from this carbon tax would be returned to the American people on an equal and quarterly basis via dividend checks, direct deposits or contributions to their individual retirement accounts. In the example above, a family of four would receive approximately $2,000 in carbon dividend payments in the first year.

This amount would grow over time as the carbon tax rate increases, creating a positive feedback loop: the more the climate is protected, the greater the individual dividend payments to all Americans. The Social Security Administration should administer this program, with eligibility for dividends based on a valid social security number.

3. Border carbon adjustments

Border adjustments for the carbon content of both imports and exports would protect American competitiveness and punish free-riding by other nations, encouraging them to adopt carbon pricing of their own.

Exports to countries without comparable carbon pricing systems would receive rebates for carbon taxes paid, while imports from such countries would face fees on the carbon content of their products.

Proceeds from such fees would benefit the American people in the form of larger carbon dividends. Other trade remedies could also be used to encourage our trading partners to adopt comparable carbon pricing.

4. Significant regulatory rollback

The final pillar is the elimination of regulations that are no longer necessary upon the enactment of a rising carbon tax whose longevity is secured by the popularity of dividends.

Much of the EPA’s regulatory authority over carbon dioxide emissions would be phased out, including an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan. Robust carbon taxes would also make possible an end to federal and state tort liability for emitters.

To build and sustain a bipartisan consensus for a regulatory rollback of this magnitude, the initial carbon tax rate should be set to exceed the emissions reductions of current regulations.

Helping working-class Americans

President Donald J. Trump’s electoral victory stems in large part from his ability to speak to the increasing frustration and economic insecurity that many voters feel the political establishment has failed to address.

This frustration has found expression in a growing populist sentiment and yearning for fundamental change. A carbon dividends plan responds to these powerful trends.

Today’s economic insecurity is driven by both technological progress and globalization. As such, it does not lend itself to easy answers. A carbon dividends program provides a rare exception: a simple idea that strengthens the economy and elevates the economic prospects of the nation’s disaffected.

The Department of Treasury estimates that the bottom 70% of Americans would come out ahead under such a program. Carbon dividends would increase the disposable income of the majority of Americans while disproportionately helping those struggling to make ends meet.

Yet these dividends are not giveaways; they would be earned based on the good behavior of minimizing our carbon footprints.

Increasingly, voters feel that the American political and economic system is rigged against their interests. Populism threatens the current policy consensus in favor of liberalized trade and investment. The best remedy is to redirect this populist energy in a socially beneficial direction.

Carbon dividends can do just that based on a populist rationale: We the People deserve to be compensated when others impose climate risks and emit heat-trapping gases into our shared atmosphere. The new ground rules make intuitive sense: the more one pollutes, the more one pays; the less one pollutes, the more one comes out ahead.

This, for once, would tip the economic scales towards the interests of the little guy.

Strengthening our economy

An ideal climate strategy would simultaneously reduce carbon emissions and steer America towards a path of more durable economic growth.

A carbon dividends plan can do exactly that. A carbon tax would send a powerful market signal that encourages technological innovation and largescale substitution of existing energy and transportation infrastructures, thereby stimulating new investment.

Second, the plan would offer companies, especially those in the energy sector, the predictability they now lack, thus removing one of the most serious impediments to longerterm capital investment. Third, because many regulations would become unnecessary, the plan would give companies the flexibility to reduce emissions in the most efficient way.

A well-designed carbon dividends plan would further contribute to economic growth through its dynamic effects on consumption and investment.

Just as central banks rely on forward guidance to influence future market expectations, if investors know that a carbon tax will increase steadily over time, the stimulatory effect of the final tax rate would be felt almost immediately for infrastructure and utility projects, especially ones that have long-term paybacks.

In addition, forward-looking households would have an incentive to borrow to make durable purchases that would reduce their carbon footprint. Congress might even consider allowing individuals to borrow against their future dividend income for certain clearly defined purposes, such as higher education or the purchase of an electric vehicle.

Less government, less pollution

In order to separate the consideration of carbon taxes from debates over size of government, most carbon tax proposals are now revenue-neutral. This proposal, however, would go one step further by shrinking the overall size of government and streamlining the regulatory state.

Eliminating or phasing out an array of energy-related regulations would reduce government bureaucracy, promote economic growth and free up the financial and personnel resources now allocated to administer and comply with these programs.

A gradually increasing carbon tax would also eliminate the rationale for ever more heavy-handed regulations of greenhouse gas emissions in future years.

For the elimination of heavy-handed climate regulations to withstand the test of time and not prove highly divisive, they must be replaced by a market-based alternative. Our policy is uniquely suited to building bipartisan and public support for a significant regulatory rollback.

It is essential that the one-to-one relationship between carbon tax revenue and dividends be maintained as the plan’s longevity, popularity and transparency all hinge on this. Allocating carbon tax proceeds to other purposes would undermine popular support for a gradually rising carbon tax and the broader rationale for far-reaching regulatory reductions.

Stabilizing an unstable world

Our reliance on fossil fuels contributes to a less stable world, empowers rogue petro-states and makes us vulnerable to a volatile world oil market. Carbon dividends would accelerate the transition to a low-carbon global economy and domestic energy independence.

Not only would this help prevent the destabilizing consequences of climate change, it would also reduce the need to protect or seek to influence politically vulnerable oil-producing regions. With our electric grids susceptible to cyber attacks, a transition to cleaner power sources combined with new distributed storage technologies could also strengthen national security.

Carbon pricing would also encourage domestic nuclear energy, further promoting climate stability and America’s energy independence.

Consolidating conservative leadership

The opposition of many Republicans to meaningfully address climate change reflects poor science and poor economics, and is at odds with the party’s own noble tradition of stewardship. A carbon dividends plan could realign the GOP with that longstanding tradition and with popular opinion.

Recent polls indicate that 64% of Americans worry a great deal or a fair amount about climate change, while a clear majority of Republicans acknowledge that climate change is occurring. Meanwhile, one telling survey finds that 67% of Americans support a carbon tax with proceeds returned directly to them, including 54% of conservative Republicans.

Concern about climate change is greatest among Americans below the age of 35, Latinos and Asians. And it is, of course, younger voters who hold the key to the future political fortune of either party. Increasingly, climate change is becoming a defining issue for this next generation of Americans, which the GOP ignores at its own peril.

Meanwhile Asians and Hispanics – the fastest growing demographic groups – are also deeply concerned about climate change. A carbon dividends plan offers an opportunity to appeal to all three key demographics, while illustrating for them the superiority of marketbased solutions.

The imperative to lead

• A carbon tax should increase steadily and predictably over time so that companies and consumers can plan accordingly, and the previously mentioned economic stimulatory effects can be harnessed.
• At the completion of a five year period, a Blue Ribbon Panel could recommend whether the tax rate should increase further, based on the best climate science available at the time.
• Provisions must be established for the unbanked to receive their quarterly dividend checks, possibly through commercial services such as PayPal or Western Union.
• The dividend income should be tax-free. Exports by companies in sectors with greater than 5% energy cost in final value should have any carbon taxes rebated on leaving the United States.
• Finally, non-emissive fossil fuel products (e.g. asphalt for road use) should be exempt, with a refund for any tax previously paid.

With the privilege of controlling all branches of the government comes a responsibility to exercise wise leadership on the defining challenges of our era, including global climate change. It is incumbent upon the GOP to lead the way rather than look the other way.

Republicans now have a rare opportunity to set the terms of a lasting market-based climate solution that warrants bipartisan, industry and public support.

No less important, this is an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the conservative canon by offering a more effective, equitable and popular climate policy based on free markets, smaller government and dividends for all Americans.

The Climate Leadership Council is an international research and advocacy organization whose mission is to mobilize global opinion leaders around the most effective, popular and equitable climate solutions. As a central part of this mission, the CLC develops and promotes new policy frameworks based on carbon dividends for each of the largest greenhouse gas emitting regions. Currently active in Washington and London, the Council will expand to Berlin, Beijing and New Delhi.

This article was originally published by the Climate Leadership Council (CC BY-NC).

The Authors

James A. Baker, III served as Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush, Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan and White House chief of staff under both. He is a senior partner in the law firm of Baker Botts.

Martin Feldstein served as Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984 under President Reagan. He is the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the NBER.

Ted Halstead is the founder, President & CEO of the Climate Leadership Council. Previously, he founded New America, a leading public policy think tank. He is co-author of The Radical Center: The Future Of American Politics.

Henry M. Paulson, Jr., served as Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush. Previously, he served as chairman and chief executive officer at Goldman Sachs. He is the founder and chairman of the Paulson Institute.

George P. Shultz served as Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan, and as Secretary of Treasury and Labor under President Nixon. He is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Thomas Stephenson is a partner at Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Stephenson previously served as the United States Ambassador to Portugal from 2007 to 2009 under President George W. Bush.

N. Gregory Mankiw served as Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005 under President George W. Bush. He is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Rob Walton served as chairman of the board of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer and employer, from 1992 to 2015. He is currently Chairman of the Executive Committee of Conservation International.

Back in the 1930s, English planners came up with a novel idea to prevent urban sprawl: a ring of countryside surrounding the city, protected from development by law.

This ‘green belt’ would preserve the unique characters of historic towns, safeguard the countryside from development and encourage the regeneration and reuse of urban land.

It was adopted nationally in 1955, and around 13% of England is now zoned as green belt land.

But today, the UK is experiencing a housing crisis. The nation requires 220,000 new homes each year to keep up with demand – not to mention making up for the undersupply from previous years. In the year to September 2016, only 141,000 were built. This deficit has sparked renewed debate over the value of the green belt.

Leading housebuilders and think tanks argue that selectively releasing parts of the green belt would help to meet the government’s ambitious housebuilding targets. Meanwhile, other pressure groups claim that the green belt should be sacrosanct, to safeguard the environmental and health benefits it provides for nearby towns and cities.

Under threat?

In theory, the green belt is protected within the government’s planning framework. Alterations to the green belt boundaries can only be made by local governments in exceptional circumstances, and individual planning applications on green belt sites are only approved under very special circumstances.

In practice, though, it seems the criteria aren’t always quite so strict. Increasingly, greenfield sites (undeveloped land, which can include the green belt) are being favoured by developers because they are cheaper to exploit than brownfield sites (previously developed land, such as disused industrial estates), which have much higher transaction costs.

In fact, national planning policy encourages development on greenfield sites through the use of highly questionable ‘objective’ assessments (or rather, estimates) of housing need, based on past trends and dubious population projections. What’s more, measures of economic viability only take stock of profit, and fail to incorporate environmental or social considerations.

The case for development is also propped up by overly simplified claims that much of the green belt is poor-quality, unproductive land, with no clear requirements for good management.

The hidden public value of green belt land

This incremental assaults on the green belt overlook the need for vital infrastructure and services to create strong, resilient communities and sustainable places.

In fact, the green belt holds significant market and non-market value for urban economies, which pose a challenge conventional economic arguments in favour of more houses on ‘unproductive’ green belt land.

For one thing, releasing the green belt in the wrong place comes with certain costs, such as longer commutes, worse congestion and more dangerous levels of air pollution, as well as increased risk of surface water flooding. These costs are normally exacted after development, and don’t appear in initial assessments.

The green belt when seen as part of critical green infrastructure has the potential to deliver multiple benefits for cities: it provides space for agriculture, protection from flooding and drought, it improves air quality and mitigates the urban heat island effect, as well as enabling recreation and enhancing biodiversity.

The challenge, then, is to identify where these benefits of the greenbelt can be optimised, and the costs of development minimised.

Ad hoc, piecemeal development is not good enough!

At a national level, England lacks a strategic plan to to identify the best sites for housing, jobs and key infrastructure. This is needed to drive sustainable growth and address deep-rooted problems, such as the divide between the wealthy but congested south-east, and the less prosperous north.

On a local level, it means planning to put the right developments in the right place. This isn’t limited to houses: city outskirts can be rejuvenated by community food-growing initiatives, or wetlands created for flood protection and biodiversity.

Local authorities should think and plan strategically and form long-term visions about the kind of places they want to create – just like the great planners of England’s historic garden cities.

The recent housing white paper requires local authorities to meet housing demand, but crucially fails to move away from fetish on housing numbers and address the current strategic planning void. It does however, propose a standard method for calculating housing need, which is welcome and will prevent delays to local plans over disputed methodologies.

Strategic, cross-boundary planning can help to make the green belt more productive and deliver more houses. Green belt value can be enhanced through positive management of its natural capital.

It’s time to leave behind the polarised and siloed green belt debate, and recognise that housing, industry, transport, community, landscape and environment are vital pieces of the planning jigsaw for cities, towns and countryside.

Alister Scott is Professor of Environment and Spatial Planning, Northumbria University, Newcastle.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The vote to leave the EU will force the government to reassess the rules that govern the use of pesticides in agriculture, amenity and homes and gardens in the UK.

On the one hand, this could be a golden opportunity for the UK to take the lead in pesticide legislation by ensuring that the most rigorous, precautionary regulations are put in place to protect us from these toxic chemicals.

But on the other hand, the pressure to remove ‘red tape’ for the farm and food industry is strong. The powerful pro-pesticide lobby would like to see the current legislation watered down. If they succeed, this could result in:-

• Greater exposure to pesticides that are linked to cancer, reproductive problems and endocrine disruption;

• Higher levels of pesticide residues allowed in the food that we eat;

• Increased use of pesticides that are highly toxic to bees and other pollinator species

What should happen?

PAN UK has already called on the UK Government to strengthen the current pesticide regime and make the UK a world leader in sustainable agriculture. [1] Today we have gone further by publishing a list of policy measures that the UK could adopt as part of a new plan to protect you and the environment.

Measures include introducing mandatory pesticide reduction targets, monitoring regimes, rewards for good practice and disincentives for bad, and more use of the precautionary principle.

But the risk now is that instead of adopting such a plan, the government will weaken pesticide legislation in the UK. So today, PAN UK is also launching a campaign to help UK citizens to place pressure on their MPs to let them know that the vote for Brexit was not a vote to dismantle environmental protection.

Politicians are being targeted by highly paid lobbyists from agribusiness who want weaker rules. We need to remind them that they represent us and they have an obligation to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the people and environment of the UK and that the priorities of any pesticide policy should be to protect human health and the environment.

How could weaker rules affect you and your environment?

Greater exposure to dangerous chemicals

At present, the UK is subject to the rules and legislation that apply throughout the EU. Whilst not perfect, it is one of the strictest regulatory frameworks for pesticides in the world. It was strengthened in 2009 when the EU moved from a ‘risk-based’ system to a more ‘hazard-based’ system.

This new approach means that any pesticide with dangerous characteristics – for example carcinogenic, reprotoxic or endocrine disrupting – should be taken out of use.

Currently over 100 pesticides are banned in the EU for health and environmental reasons, and more – including dozens of chemicals that are thought to be endocrine disrupting – are likely to be banned before we leave the EU. [2]

Successive UK governments have been very sympathetic to the pesticide lobby and actively opposed strengthening EU pesticide legislation. [3] Once outside the EU, the pesticide industry and its allies could get their way and persuade the Government to allow harmful substances banned in the rest of Europe to be used in the UK on the food we eat and in our public spaces like parks and playgrounds.

Last year the UK was among a minority of Member States that backed the re-licensing of the herbicide glyphosate – a probable human carcinogen. [4] Many other countries, including large agricultural countries like France and Italy, called for it to be banned.

In the face of this disagreement, the European Commission agreed to licence for just 18 months, meaning that glyphosate could be banned in the EU by the end of this year. Some EU countries are choosing not to wait and have already begun to restrict its use.

The UK government, responding to pressure from the NFU and chemical industry, continues to back glyphosate, [5]and if the UK goes its own way on pesticides, it could remain in wide use here, needlessly exposing us and our children to a chemical that probably causes cancer.

More pesticides in your food, greater threats to bees and wildlife

Approximately 60% of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK contain residues of one or more pesticide. [6] The current system sets Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) for pesticides and food, and for any pesticide that is banned from use in the EU, the level is set at zero.

This is not a perfect system, but it does help to reduce our exposure to pesticides. Yet some are pressing for less stringent MRLs once we leave the EU to allow an ‘acceptable’ level of residues for currently banned pesticides. [7]

In December 2013, the European Commission implemented a partial ban on three bee-toxic neonicotinoid insecticides [8] Once again the UK government opposed the ban. [9] This year, the Commission could decide to make the ban permanent in 2017 and even extend it to cover some other uses and more pesticides.

Highly vocal neonicotinoid supporters in the UK – including the NFU and influential politicians like former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson – want to see the ban overturned. They believe that once the UK is out of the EU it will be possible to overturn decisions that are based on a precautionary approach.

This would be a disaster for bees and other pollinators in the UK. We need a more precaution not less and we need to ensure that the farming lobby does not get its way on this issue.

What you can do?

These threats are very real and we need to alert politicians fast. We need them to grasp the greatest opportunity in generations to reduce pesticide use in the UK and switch to more environmentally friendly farming approaches.

Now is the time for the UK to set out a clear vision of a sustainable future for farming, food production and pesticide regulation so the UK can protect the health of its citizens, and become a world leader in, sustainable agriculture.

Brexit has been lauded as an example of democracy in action, but to be successful, democracy must a continuous process not a single question. Politicians need to engage with the people they represent, and we need to let them know what we want.

You can make a difference – don’t stand on the sidelines while rules designed to protect the environment and our health are bartered away. The pesticide industry and agribusiness may be wealthy and powerful, but if enough of us stand together, we can prevent them from getting their way.

Keith Tyrell is Director of PAN UK.

Action: Simply go to our action page to send an email to your MP – we have created a sample message and it should only take a minute.

References

1. http://www.pan-uk.org/news/pan-uk-sets-out-its-vision-for-uk-agriculture-outside-the-eu

2. https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/pesticides/approval_active_substances_en

3. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1299141/uk_fights_eu_attempts_to_bring_in_stricter_rules_on_pesticide_and_crop_spraying.html

4. http://www.pan-uk.org/publications-resources/glyphosate-monograph

5. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/08/eu-vote-on-controversial-weedkiller-licence-postponed-glyphosate

6. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/healthy-eating/organic-food-what-to-buy/

7. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/17/pesticide-residue-breads-uk-crops

8. https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/live_animals/bees/pesticides_en

9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24024634

Vaccines are big business. Pharma is a trillion-dollar industry with vaccines accounting for $25 billion in annual sales.

A Center for Disease Control (CDC) decision to add a vaccine to the schedule can guarantee its manufacturer millions of customers and billions in revenue with minimal advertising or marketing costs and complete immunity from lawsuits.

High stakes and the seamless marriage between Big Pharma and government agencies have spawned an opaque and crooked regulatory system.

Merck, one of America’s leading vaccine outfits, is currently under investigation for deceiving FDA regulators about the effectiveness of its MMR vaccine. Two whistleblowers say Merck ginned up sham studies to maintain Merck’s MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) monopoly.

Big money has fueled the exponential expansion of CDC’s vaccine schedule since 1988, when Congress’ grant of immunity from lawsuits suddenly transformed vaccines into paydirt. CDC recommended five pediatric vaccines when I was a boy in 1954. Today’s children cannot ­­ school without at least 56 doses of 14 vaccines by the time they’re 18.

An insatiable pharmaceutical industry has 271 new vaccines under development in CDC’s bureaucratic pipeline in hopes of boosting vaccine revenues to $100 billion by 2025. The industry’s principle spokesperson, Dr. Paul Offit, says that he believes children can take as many as 10,000 vaccines.

There’s more to the vaccine boom than public health!

Public health may not be the sole driver of CDC decisions to mandate new vaccines. Four scathing federal studies, including two by Congress, one by the US Senate, and one by the HHS Inspector General, paint CDC as a cesspool of corruption, mismanagement, and dysfunction with alarming conflicts of interest suborning its research, regulatory, and policymaking functions.

CDC rules allow vaccine industry profiteers like Dr. Offit to serve on advisory boards that add new vaccines to the schedule. In a typical example, Offit in 1999 sat on the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and voted to add the rotavirus vaccine to CDC’s schedule, paving the way for him to make a fortune on his own rotavirus vaccine.

Offit and his business partners sold the royalties to his rotavirus vaccine patent to Merck in 2006 for $182 million. Offit told Newsweek, “It was like winning the lottery!”

A 2009 HHS Inspector General’s report found that the CDC certified financial disclosure forms with at least one omission for 97% of committee members – and most forms had more than one type of omission. The same report stated that as many as 64% of committee members had potential conflicts of interest that CDC did not identify or resolve before certifying their forms.

In addition to lucrative business partnerships with Merck, Offit holds a $1.5 million research chair, funded by Merck, at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. From this industry sinecure, he broadcasts vaccine industry propaganda and annually publishes books urging unlimited vaccinations and vilifying safe-vaccine advocates.

Thimerosal-autism link backed by 37 scientific studies

The corruption has also poisoned CDC’s immunization safety office, the research arm that tests vaccines for safety and efficacy.

In August 2014, 17-year CDC veteran Dr. William Thompson, who is author of the principal study cited by CDC to exculpate mercury-preserved vaccines from the autism link, invoked whistleblower protection, and turned extensive agency files over to Congress.

Thompson, who is still employed at CDC, says that for the past decade his superiors have pressured him and his fellow scientists to lie and manipulate data about the safety of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal to conceal its causative link to a suite of brain injuries, including autism.

Thimerosal is 50% ethylmercury, which is far more toxic and persistent in the brain than the highly regulated methylmercury in fish. Hundreds of peer reviewed studies by leading government and university scientists show that thimerosal is a devastating brain poison linked to neurological disorders now epidemic in American children.

My book, Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak, is a summary of these studies, which CDC and its credulous jour- nalists swear don’t exist. Although Thompson’s CDC and vaccine industry colleagues have created nine patently fraudulent and thoroughly discredited epidemiological studies to defend thimerosal, no published study shows thimerosal to be safe.

The common canard that US autism rates rose after drug makers removed most thimerosal from pediatric vaccines in 2003 is wrong. That same year, CDC added flu shots containing massive doses of thimerosal to the pediatric schedule. As a result, children today can get nearly as much mercury exposure as children did from all pediatric vaccines combined in the decade prior to 2003.

Worse, thimerosal, for the first time, is being given to pregnant women in flu shots. Furthermore, CDC’s current autism numbers are for children born in 2002, when kids were still getting thimerosal in their pediatric vaccines.

The best science suggests that thimerosal’s complete removal from vaccines is likely to prompt a significant decline in autism. For example, a 2013 CDC study in JAMA Pediatrics shows a 33% drop in autism spectrum disorder in Denmark following the 1992 removal of thimerosal from Danish vaccines. That paper is among 37 peer-reviewed studies linking thimerosal to the autism epidemic.

Mainstream media are now industry propagandists

Thimerosal has precipitated a journalistic as well as a public health crisis. Big Pharma pumps over $3.5 billion annually into TV, newspapers, and other advertising, targeting news departments, which have become vehicles for pharmaceutical sales and propaganda platforms for the industry.

Television and print outlets feature spokespeople like Dr. Offit – without identifying their industry ties – while censoring criticisms of vaccine safety andexcluding the voices of informed vaccine safety advocates. Busy journalists parrot the deceptive talking points dispensed by government and pharma officials rather than reading the science themselves.

Unable to argue the science, they bully, pillory, and demonize vaccine safety advocates as ‘anti-vax’, ‘anti-science’, and far worse. The unwillingness of the press to scrutinize CDC has emboldened both industry and agency to follow the lowest paths of easy profit and bureaucratic preservation.

The measles scare was classic disaster capitalism, with media outlets dutifully stoking public hysteria on editorial pages and throughout the 24-hour broadcast cycle. With Dr. Offit leading the charge, CDC, drug makers, and industry-funded front groups parlayed a garden variety annual measles outbreak into a national tidal wave of state legislation to ban religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions.

The national media frenzy over 159 measles cases left little room for attention to the the autism cataclysm which has debilitated 1 million American children since the pandemic began in 1989, with 27,000 new cases annually. CDC refuses to call autism an ‘epidemic’.

In defiance of hard science, and common sense, CDC and Offit have launched a denial campaign to gull reporters into believing the autism plague is an illusion created by better diagnosis.

Bought: our democratic representatives

Big Pharma is among the nation’s largest political donors, giving $31 million last year to national political candidates.  It spends more on political lobbying than any other industry, $3.0 billion from 1998 to 2014 – double the amount spent by oil and gas and four times as much as defense and aerospace lobbyists.

By February, state legislators in 36 states were pushing through over one hundred new laws to end philosophical and religious vaccine exemptions. Many of those state lawmakers are also on the industry payroll. You can see how much money bill sponsors from your state took from Big Pharma on maplight.org.

Normally plaintiffs’ tort lawyers would provide a powerful check and balance to keep vaccines safe and effective and regulators and policymakers honest. But Pharma’s dirty money has bought the industry immunity from lawsuits for vaccine injury no matter how dangerous the product.

An obliging Congress disposed of the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial, making it impossible for vaccine-injured plaintiffs to sue pharmaceutical companies for selling unsafe vaccines. That’s right! No Class Actions. No discovery. No depositions and little financial incentive for the industry to make vaccines safer.

Vaccine industry money has neutralized virtually all of the checks and balances that once stood between a rapacious pharmaceutical industry and our children. With the research, regulatory, and policymaking agencies captured, the courts closed to the public, the lawyers disarmed, the politicians on retainer and the media subverted, there is no one left to stand between a greedy industry and vulnerable children – except parents.

Next: take away parents’ right to say ‘No!’

Now Big Pharma’s game plan is to remove parental informed consent rights from that equation and force vaccine hesitant parents to inject their children with potentially risky vaccines that the Supreme Court has called “unavoidably unsafe”.

Ending exemptions is premature until we have a functioning regulatory agency and a transparent process. The best way to insure full vaccine coverage is for the vaccine program to win back public trust by ending its corrupt financial ties with a profit-making industry.

To educate yourselves about CDC corruption and the truth about vaccine science, I hope you will read Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak and download the important movie Trace Amounts and insist your legislators watch it before voting on any of these bills.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is a resolute defender of the environment and a veteran eco-litigant with a long track record of successful legal actions. He was named one of Time magazine’s ‘Heroes for the Planet’ for his success helping Riverkeeper lead the fight to restore the Hudson River. He tweets @RobertKennedyJr. See also his website.

This article was originally published on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s website. It is Copyright © Robert F. Kennedy Jr, 2017

Notes

• Forbes Magazine & CDC’s Rogue Scientist (8/31/2015)
• My speech to a concerned group of citizens about SB 277 (7/18/15)
• RFK, Jr. versus Frank Bruni (7/5/2015)
• 39 published peer reviewed studies linking Thimerosal to Autism (7/5/2015)
• Anna Almendrala attacks Jim Carrey for demanding the removal of the mercury based preservative, Thimerosal from vaccines. (07/02/2015)
• Letter to Shawn Hubler – Sacramento Bee (6/24/2015)
• CDC’s Latest Tuskegee Experiment African American Autism and Vaccines (7/2/2015)
• RFK, Jr. interview on Jesse Ventura’s show “Off The Grid”
• Why The American Press Does Not Want You To Read this Article
  My manifesto (printed below) ran in USA Today as a full-page ad in the weekend issue April 24-26.  The broadside is partially a jeremiad on press suppression of the thimerosal issue – the debate that CBS reporter Sharyl Atkinson calls “the most censored and misreported story” of the century. Ironically, my manifesto had already run afoul the Kafkaesque industry taboo that one national reporter has characterized as “a borglike impenetrable cocoon”. Before we ran it as a full-page ad, opinion editors at virtually all of the nation’s leading papers rejected a shorter version of the same article. read more.
• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: An Invitation to Open Debate On Thimerosal
  Alternet.org (August 2014)
• “Why is everyone lined up against you?”
  RFK, JR on Bill Maher (04/24/15)
• James Grundvig on RFK Jr….the mercury tipping point
• Trace Amounts: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. No Anti-Vaccer
  San Francisco Examiner (4/11/15)
• The Mercury Tipping Point: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
  The Epoch Times (04/27/15)
• RFK Jr. on Good Day LA- Fox 11  April 22, 2015
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the misognyistic rhetoric of safe vaccine opponents – Sacramento, CA April 8, 2015
• CDC Scientist Still Maintains Agency Forced Researchers To Lie About Safety Of Mercury Based Vaccines
  Ring of Fire Blog (February 2015)
• Vaccine Courts Trampling Justice and Public Health
  “In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.”
• “CDC is paralyzed by anything to do with autism…I have a boss who is asking me to lie.”
  CDC Senior Scientist, Dr. William Thompson
• “Thimerosal causes tics (in children of pregnant women)…there is biologic plausibility that thimerosal causes autism like features.”
  CDC Senior Scientist, Dr. William Thompson
• “When I talk to you who has a son with autism … I’m completely ashamed by what I did…the higher ups wanted to do certain things, and I went along.”
  CDC Senior Scientist, Dr. William Thompson
• CDC Chief Julie Gerberding tells Sanja Gupta that vaccines can trigger autistic-like symptoms in vulnerable children April 2008
• In 2005, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote an article, ‘Deadly Immunity‘, that was co-published by Rolling Stone magazine and Salon.com about the connection between the vaccine preservative thimerosal and the autism epidemic. After several revisions to the article and nearly 6 years after the original publication date, Salon.com retracted the article from its website archives without consideration or opportunity for rebuttal. Below is the full corrected article, a link to Salon’s retraction and the real reason behind it, as well an email delivered to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by David Talbot, the founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon.com
• The real reason Salon retracted Deadly Immunity, caving to Pharma.

Imagine if you could take pollution produced by diesel engines and turn it into a non-carcinogenic substance used in ink, reducing the need for burning fossil fuels.

A team of innovative scientists with a desire to clean up the air we breathe has come up with a way to create exactly this thanks to plenty of research and innovative thinking, with a new product called Air-Ink.

Witnessing the impact caused by air pollution first hand in India, Graviky Labs founders Anirudh Sharma, Nikhil Kaushik, and Nitesh Kadyan have spent the last three years working in some of the most polluted areas of India devising a specialist kit that captures 93% of pollution emitted from an engine’s exhaust pipe (specifically the unburned carbon released from incomplete combustion).

From this pollution, the team creates ink for use in fabric paint, screen-printing, oil based paints and markers. Just 45 minutes’ worth of car emissions can produce one fluid once of ink, enough for one Air-Ink pen.

Anirudh Sharma was working on his research studies with MIT Media Lab, (from which Graviky Labs became a spin-off), when he noticed the shirt he wore would become far dirtier during the day in Mumbai than it did in Boston. He started to consider the best ways in which to re-purpose that dirt. Back at the lab he and his fellow researchers created a small prototype from an Inkjet printer, that would print from candle soot (which led to a lot of interest from various people around the world).

Now he and his co-founders at Graviky hope that Air-Ink will make a real impact on the world. “Each stroke made with Air-Ink arrests particulate matter, which would have otherwise ended up in the lungs of people,” he said. “Scaling this is saving lives.

“Using our pollution capture devices, we capture the particulate matter (PM 2.5 and PM 10), which is a highly carcinogenic matter and poses significant risk to human health. The particulate matter derives its carcinogenic properties from its micron size, which does not get filtered by our respiratory system and so can enter the lungs. By binding these carcinogenic particulate matter into inks, we take away their carcinogenic properties since they are no longer a free agent that can mix with the air we breathe in.”

Sri Lankan scientist and inventor Suranga Nanayakkara, head of the Augmented Human Lab at Singapore University of Technology and Design, and an advisor to the project adds: “In the developing world, product designers are faced with unique challenges, but they are also faced with amazing opportunities to help people. Air-Ink is a game-changing technology in this space as it would allow future generations to breath fresher air.”

To create the ink the pollution has to go through several processes. The devices firstly capture the particulate matter pollutants which consist of around 2.5 and 10 pm carbon, heavy metals, and dust. After this pollution has been captured, it is treated through proprietary processes to remove the heavy metal and dust. What remains is a substantially carbon-rich pigment. This pigment is further ground down to achieve consistency in particle size. After this, standard industrial processes are used to make variety of inks wherein the pigment is used as the coloring agent. 

The process means that the pollution is no longer airborne and the capture of the heavy metals ensures they aren’t free to pollute water sources, soils, forests and farms, damage ecosystems or contribute to acid rain.

In addition, the particulate matter that is captured replaces the need for deliberately burning fossil fuels to make pigments for conventional inks. Through AIR-INK, the founders are promoting the idea of looking beyond conventional fossil fuels to make inks.

At present, the emission-capturing devices are fitted to cars owned by private individuals and cab drivers in Bengaluru. Medium-term plans are to have these units fitted to as many vehicles as possible through collaborations with governments and large logistics companies with the Graviky team responsible for fitting these devices. In the long term, these devices will be manufactured as “plug and play” devices which users can install on their own. Supply of inks is currently governed and restricted by the ability to capture pollution but the Graviky team plans to increase the scale of pollution capture in the near future.

The response has been very positive so far. Several artists across the world have used Air-Ink and individuals, organizations, universities, and even a museum are all waiting for the launch of Air-Ink for retail purchase.

Now, the team is turning to Kickstarter to bring Air-Ink to creative people around the world. Co-founder, Nikhil Kaushik believes this campaign will help create a global art and sustainability movement: “Currently, our pollution capture process is very labor intensive and the inks are manufactured to order,” he said. “This Kickstarter campaign will help us to bring Air-Ink to as many people as possible. “

In return for their donations, Kickstarter backers can pledge for varying quantities of Air-Ink markers, Air-Ink T-shirts, screen-printing ink sets, artwork and products created using Air-Ink, an opportunity to work with Graviky Labs for their next video campaign, a visit from the Graviky Labs team to collect pollution in your city, and more. The 30-day Kickstarter campaign will launch on February 7 this year (2017) run until March 9.

You can find out more about Graviky Labs and Air-Ink at http://www.graviky.com/ and watch the video here.

This Author

Laura Briggs is the Ecologist’s UK-based reporter

@WordsbyBriggs

Despite multiple commitments and increased international attention, efforts to save the world’s most endangered marine mammal are proving woefully inadequate.

The vaquita, a very rare species of porpoise found only in the northern Gulf of California in Mexico, stands today on the very edge of extinction.

Almost half those remaining were lost between 2015 and 2016, and the species is thought to number only about 30 individuals.

In the past five years, its population has declined by 90% as a result of entanglement in gillnets, many set to illegally catch the totoaba, a large and critically endangered fish that is also endemic to the Gulf of California.

Without urgent and effective action from Mexico, the US and China, the vaquita’s final demise seems inevitable.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has carried out a series of investigations into the totoaba trade since 2015. Our September 2016 report Collateral Damage warned that the vaquita, the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean, was doomed to extinction if substantial targeted and coordinated enforcement efforts were not immediately put in place to eliminate threats to its survival.

A report by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA) released last week reveals that, despite significant efforts of the Mexican Government in coordination with Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, illegal fishing still continues.

Mexico clamps down on totoaba trade

The swim bladder of the totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) is highly sought after in China for use in traditional medicine and in 2016 EIA investigations revealed an ongoing trade in Guangdong province, China, despite such trade being illegal.

Illegal fishing of the totoaba has typically been concentrated in the winter and recent weeks have seen a spate of seizures of totoaba swim bladders in Mexico.

On December 21, 2016, three totoaba swim bladders were seized from a car on the road between San Felipe and Puertecitos, two towns on the Gulf of California coast. Two people were arrested after admitting they were driving from Puertecitos to sell the swim bladders in Mexicali, a well-known smuggling hub on the US border.

On December 28, police seized 8.5kg of totoaba from the premises of a logistics company. Then on December 29, another totoaba swim bladder was seized, again from a car on the San Felipe-Puertecitos road.

The New Year has provided no respite, as 12kg of fresh, unprocessed totoaba bladder were seized on January 12, on the same road. A single totoaba bladder was seized on January 14. And on January 19, 14 were seized from an abandoned vehicle on the road to Mexicali.

China: too little, too late

In comparison, no totoaba seizures, arrests or prosecutions have occurred in mainland China, the main market for totoaba. In December 2016, China held an enforcement training workshop which brought together agencies from mainland China, Hong Kong, Mexico and the US.

Last month, China’s Fisheries Bureau, Market Regulation and Administration Office and CITES Management Authority publicly launched a month-long market inspection and education campaign in Guangzhou, targeted at illegal trade and consumption of totoaba.

While these efforts are very welcome, China has not gone far enough to effectively tackle illegal trade in totoaba. Intelligence-led operations, using information supplied by EIA and others, are required to track down the key players in these organised criminal operations.

Arrests, prosecutions and convictions carrying sentences strong enough to deter repeat offenders are needed to send a strong message that no trade in totoaba will be tolerated. Enforcement operations must target all fish maw markets – reported market inspections to date have been limited to Guangzhou, despite clear evidence that the bulk of the totoaba trade is based in Shantou.

China, together with Mexico and the US, a key transit country, need to collaborate urgently to investigate and crack down on smuggling routes between the Gulf of California and China.

The need for international collaboration was recognised at the CITES Conference of the Parties meeting in September 2016 where a decision was passed requiring range, transit or consumer states to conduct awareness-raising and demand reduction campaigns, and increase enforcement efforts to address the poaching and trade in totoaba.

Mexico’s mysterious failure to ban gillnets in vaquita range

But ultimately, the fate of the vaquita lies with Mexico – and political will from Mexico is clearly lacking. In July 2016, the White House announced the outcome of the US-Mexico bilateral meeting which, according to the US, agreed that

“Mexico will make permanent a ban on the use of gillnets in all fisheries throughout the range of the vaquita in the upper Gulf of California.”

However Mexico is yet to announce such a ban, leading to great concern over what happens when the current two-year ban runs out in April this year. At the same time, Mexico’s fishing authorities have been clear that they intend to continue to allow the corvina fishery, despite the fact that it is used as a cover for illegal totoaba fishing.

While the work of those involved in seizures and net-recovery is highly commendable, the lack of uniform effort across the various responsible Mexican agencies means that the country’s overall efforts to save the vaquita are woefully inadequate, with tragic consequences.

So precarious is the plight of the vaquita that plans are now underway to capture surviving animals and hold them in closely guarded ocean enclosures – a highly risky, last-ditch attempt to save the species, especially given that no live vaquita has ever been successfully captured let alone bred in captivity.

Action must be taken now!

It is critical that the Mexican Government steps up efforts to impose and enforce a total ban on all fishing within the range of the vaquita, along with a ban on the sale and possession of all gillnets on land or at sea in the northern Gulf of California. This is the only way to provide the vaquita with any long-term chance of survival.

Even if the planned capture is successful, the vaquita will need a safe and healthy ecosystem to return to. Moreover, the totoaba is itself a critically endangered species in urgent need of protection; the continued use and abandonment of gillnets in the Gulf threatens their continued existence and harms a range of other marine species through bycatch, including dolphins and sea turtles.

As highlighted in Collateral Damage, totoaba poaching can only be stopped with the collaboration of other countries, particularly the main consumer market of China. Without eliminating the market for totoaba swim bladder, or ‘maw’ as it is known in its processed state, the high prices it commands will encourage continued poaching.

EIA urges China to significantly strengthen its enforcement efforts, including engagement with authorities in Mexico and the US. The recent announcement of the closure of domestic ivory markets has demonstrated that the political will exists in China to take the action needed to save a species threatened by trade – we encourage China to show the same leadership to end the illegal trade in totoaba.

This is the very last chance we have to save the vaquita. To lose it forever would be a sad indictment of the global community and a terrible legacy to leave future generations.

Aron White is Wildlife Campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency.

This article first appeared on the EIA Blog.

It’s not everyday that you get approached to help head up a one off event for the UNs World Food Program. But then its not everyday that you realise there are some great and good people out there working towards goals you have been shouting about for years. Want diversity in world farming? So does the WFP. Want more sustainable food systems with greater resilience? So does the WFP. Want to help people care more about what they eat, and get nutrition as well as energy from their diet? So does the WFP. In a nutshell this was a no brainer for me. Would I like to help? Would I ever!

The good news didn’t stop there either, I was to team up with eco foodie legend – and the brains behind The People’s Supermarket – Arthur Potts-Dawson to create and deliver a “Healthy not hungry” dining event in London with a zero budget to highlight not only the fantastic work the WFP delivers on a daily basis in some of the toughest situations on the planet but also to get people talking about change, diet, wellbeing, hunger and nutrition, education and action.

So aside from all the challenges of delivering this on a zero budget – and I mean zero – how were we going to create a menu to reflect these ideas; how was it to tell its story and what are the most important stories to tell? Arthur and I had a very long phone call about that one and several longish ones after that initial brainstorming, hammering out the finer details.

We both firmly believe that long term, we all need to eat less meat, and we almost opted for a vegetarian/vegan menu but decided against it after we thought through the “Incidental meat” that is a part of our food production systems – in this case wild wood pigeon which is a major agricultural pest and shot for control resulting in meat, better to use it than waste it. Then the menu went to nutritionists and medicinal herbalists and was tweaked again – we were NOT allowed to smoke the onions due to free radicals and we MUST get some fermented food in there…In the end the menu covered many bases well and told the stories we wanted it to clearly and in depth – but that’s all ‘chefy’ self congratulatory of course.

What was really, really amazing about the Healthy not hungry dinner held in London on the 25^th January 2017 was not the food, nor even the drinks, or the fabulous surroundings of the Glaziers Hall at London bridge. It was the overwhelming sense of support. The 60-odd (in the sense of ‘ish – I don’t mean they were all odd) volunteers that came to help; the Swedish vegan chef who “popped over” to help out, the support of the event by the wider community via the instant world of social media, the enjoyment of the guests and oh so much more. The human response to this task – the wearisome challenge to do good – was immense and rewarding. It restored my faith that we can achieve more, make better decisions and improve food globally by working together.

I left at the end of the evening in awe, not of the physical thing we had done but of the immeasurable power that went into making it happen, the plain and simple rightness of the whole thing. Yes, we served onions baked in their skin, yes there was bread made from pea flour – all to show how simple things can be great whilst being more nutritious and less impactful on the environment. Yes, there was a swanky Macadamia nut oil emulsion in place of butter to highlight the expense of producing dairy as against the sustainability of permaculture of nut trees. Yes, there was Indian street food mid courses by the Michelin-starred chef Atul Kochhar, yes there was a kohlrabi salad and NO there was not a veggie alternative to the pigeon because the pigeon was only there to represent the fact that some meat is unavoidable and if you choose not to eat it that’s fine by me, we will do you a plate without it.

But what this event ended up being about was unity, the power of the collective will to do good and the simple honest truth that great food is found in even the most humble of places.

I am indebted to WFP for the opportunity, Arthur deserves a holiday for all his hard work overseeing the action on the night and I cannot wait to do it all again next year.

This Author

Chef Tim Maddams is the Ecologist’s Ethical Foodie writer and the founder of the Hall & Hearty community Pop Ups.

@TimMaddamsChef