6/5/02

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1. Action Needed On Fast Track - Call Toll Free
2. Citizens Summit on Global Justice
3. News Flash #1: Organic Farming is Better
4. News Flash #2: Global Warming is Real

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After a hotly contested battle between trade liberalists and a feisty alliance of conservationists, family farmers and labor, the Senate finally passed a Fast Track bill on May 25. Now the pending law moves back to the House for a final vote and calls are urgently needed to House representatives. 

Fast Track, also known as Presidential Trade Promotion Authority gives the President streamlined powers to make trade laws and handcuffs Congress' ability to amend these laws. Many  believe Fast Track opens a presidential "Pandora's Box" with no oversight preventing the president and staff from writing trade laws that ensure corporate profits over common-sense safeguards for labor, family farmers and the environment. 

A similar bill passed the House by one vote last December and calls to House Representatives are needed immediately. You can reach your Rep in Washington at this toll free number sponsored by the AFL-CIO. 877-611-0063. Find your representative and view sample letters to the editor.

An alliance of 54 rural Montana NGO's, businesses, and the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Montana are planning a 5-day "citizens' summit" for Missoula, Montana, June 20th - 24th. This "Global Justice Action Summit" will feature national and international speakers, panel sessions, and action workshops on the topics of Agriculture, Global Justice, Human Rights, and Environment. The event is described as a "counter G8 conference" coinciding with the next G8 Summit to be held in the 'hidden away' Kananaskis Provincial Park, in Canada, starting June 26, 2002. 

Other activities being planned for the 5 day event are a local/organic foods banquet, a festival of sustainability with exhibits games and music. Following the event a sustainable transportation caravan to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park on the Canadian/US border will transport citizens to a solstice/peace ceremony taking place under the full moon. Most activities are free. Visit: www.globaljas.org for more information on the event and housing, etc.

This month's issue of "Science" magazine contains the results of a 21-year study which concludes that the benefits of organic farming far outweigh the slight reduction in yield. The study, conducted by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture and the Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and Agriculture, compared organic and conventional means of growing potatoes, winter wheat, barley, beets and clover. Researchers found that while organic plots yielded about 20% less per acre, they were much more efficient than conventional methods, when the energy costs of pesticides and fertilizers was figured in. Organic fields also had much higher biodiversity and healthier soil, with pest-eating insects and fungi that help plant roots absorb nutrients.

4. NEWS FLASH #2: GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL

In this week's other tortuous route to the obvious, the Bush administration this week formally admitted in a report to the United Nations that global warming is real and is caused by human inputs of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. This event comes about one year after the President shocked the international community by abruptly ending any US involvement in global warming negotiations. 

While "The Climate Action Report" predicts that, given stable precipitation levels, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be good for certain agricultural crops in America, it paints a fairly grim scenario of global warming over the coming decades, predicting water shortages, heat waves, and the disappearance of unique ecological features like alpine meadows and coastal marshes. Unfortunately, the administration's sudden embrace of the reality of climate change goes no farther than warning that Americans should prepare to adapt to the warming globe.