From David Cromwell
Southampton
I find myself in the odd position of applauding John Gummer’s criticism of
President Clinton’s Earth Summit speech while bemoaning Michael Meacher’s
conciliatory noises about the “positive” tone of the speech.
By not setting targets for reductions in greenhouse gases, Clinton is
signalling that he is beholden to American “business as usual” consortia such as
the Global Climate Coalition. The GCC, which includes oil companies such as
Shell, have attempted to rubbish the considered judgment of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that “the balance of evidence suggests
a discernible human influence on global climate”.
It all adds up to a chilling postscript to Caspar Henderson’s first-rate
piece on the difficulty of reconciling free trade with environmental protection
(“What price free trade?”, 21 June, p 14).
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The balance looks set to swing even more heavily in favour of free trade as a
result of closed negotiations which have been taking place amongst the world’s
richest nations. The outcome will be a written constitution on global free trade
for transnationals. According to Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry, the
aims of this charter, known as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI),
are the “liberalisation of investment regimes and investment protection”. In
simple terms, the MAI would outlaw all restrictions and controls that national
governments might wish to impose on foreign investment. The MAI is supported by both the
European Union and the OECD.
With the World Trade Organization and MAI on their side, transnationals would
be able to operate in such a way that we would have little power to discriminate
between organic and genetically modified food, or sustainably and unsustainably
harvested timber. The Montreal Protocol, which protects the ozone layer, would
be at risk, as would the Climate Change Convention.
The damaging effects of growing transnational operations and free trade
are unsustainable. Climate change is a direct consequence of these activities.
The desire for further “liberalisation” of the global economy is simply greed
for value-free economic growth.
