Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) publishes commentaries, briefs, and reports on its website and organizes briefings for the public, media, lawmakers, and legislative staff.

As world leaders discuss the threat to the planet in various venues around the world, it’s the poor who face the dire consequences. Marginalized and vulnerable populations--from small farmers in Africa to fisher folk on the banks of island nations--suffer most from the refusal of developed nations and corporations to cut back on emissions that are heating up the planet. But these same populations offer important and sustainable solutions to global warming.

The problem is that the world’s leaders are not listening. And that is not likely to change at the meeting on climate change in Cancun, Mexico that will start at the end of November and run through December 10...

...All signs point to an intensification of market-based proposals for bringing the planet away from the brink of environmental disaster. Rather than addressing the current model of production, trade, and consumption that has caused the crisis, these false solutions aim to deepen it.  A closer look at the so-called “Clean Development Mechanisms” (CDM) shows how.

The CDMs defined in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol are essentially a dodge that allows developed polluting countries to avoid immediate and significant cutbacks in emissions by “offsetting” them with projects in developing countries to conserve carbon sinks (areas that store carbon, such as forests and jungles) and other schemes. The $127 billion global carbon trading market has become a lucrative marketplace for turning planetary salvation into business deals. The upshot is that the polluter is allowed to keep on polluting. Meanwhile, areas previously cared for by local communities are pulled into management systems overseen by the polluters and international organizations that have purchased their “environmental services.”

Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) is a “Think Tank Without Walls” connecting the research and action of more than 600 scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

WASHINGTON — As the players here remake the nation’s vast regulatory system, they have been grappling with a subject that is more the province of poets and philosophers than bureaucrats: what is the value of a human life?

The answer determines how much spending the government should require to prevent a single death.

To protests from business and praise from unions, environmentalists and consumer groups, one agency after another has ratcheted up the price of life, justifying tougher — and more costly — standards...

...The Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a life at $9.1 million last year in proposing tighter restrictions on air pollution. The agency used numbers as low as $6.8 million during the George W. Bush administration.

The Food and Drug Administration declared that life was worth $7.9 million last year, up from $5 million in 2008, in proposing warning labels on cigarette packages featuring images of cancer victims.

The Transportation Department has used values of around $6 million to justify recent decisions to impose regulations that the Bush administration had rejected as too expensive, like requiring stronger roofs on cars.

See: Climate Co-benefits and Child Mortality Wedges | Fracking Resource Guide.

What is the value of a human life? Climate change is going to kill millions of children, does it matter that they're not yours?

See also: Associated Press. "How to value life? EPA devalues its estimate: $900,000 taken off in what critics say is way to weaken pollution rules." 2008-07-10.

Is America witnessing the birth of a new civil war?  A polarization of political ideologies has paralyzed the democratic process and poisoned the relationship needed between politics, science, and hermeneutics.

This conservative organization's action page has form letters on a number of issues that Republican voters may send to their representatives to let them know that the party line may not be in their best interests.

Whether or not the debate is about jobs, public radio, oil and gas, or America's military footprint in the world; all Americans will benefit by the preservation of our resources.  Conservative Republicans, Liberal Democrats, and everyone in between and on the fringes can work together to provide the regulatory leadership that demonstrates our respect for all life and a basic human right to clean water and air.

The "Big Lie" perpetrated by climate change doubters and insincerely debated by Global Warming Experts, warrants the recall of those representatives whose bullying is tantamount to treason and rends our union vulnerable to the extremist, irresponsible policy that cites Climate Change as a lie, endangering the health and safety of our children, and putting us at the brink of disaster. (Neil Zusman, 2011-03-17).

The Senate letter, "Congress Should Pass a 'Clean' Continuing Resolution" includes:

As a Republican voter, I urge you to support a fair 2011 continuing resolution that does not target environmental and conservation programs for a disproportionate share of budget cuts and is free of the anti-environmental riders that were, unfortunately, included in a resolution that the House passed on February 19.

I understand the need to correct the federal government’s fiscal imbalances, and it is fair to require reductions in environmental and conservation programs. It is not fair, however, to require these programs to shoulder a disproportionate share of the reductions. Nor should the resolution include the shockingly extreme riders that were in the House’s resolution. These riders would weaken bedrock environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, as well as public lands protection and wildlife conservation.

Republicans were not elected to weaken laws that protect Americans’ health and protect our nation’s scenic, historic, and wildlife treasures for future generations.

Congressional Republicans must return to the traditional conservatism that values stewardship, saving for the future, and making frugal and careful use of our country’s natural as well as its fiscal resources.

Please support a continuing resolution that takes a rational approach towards correcting our nation’s fiscal imbalances, and avoids indulging the anti-environmental agendas of political extremists.

See: Smackdown: climate science vs. climate economics.

See: Climate Co-benefits and Child Mortality Wedges.

See: Snubbing Skeptics Threatens to Intensify Climate War, Study Says.

See: Climate Zombies Now Run The House.

See: GOP Budget Amendments Would Destroy Health, Economy, Planet

See: EPA chief faces hostile House GOP

See: Energy & Commerce Committee Investigates Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing

A federal proposal laying out new standards for a controversial natural-gas drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing likely won’t be issued until after the 2012 elections, an energy analyst said Thursday.

The practice is certain to be an election issue for lawmakers from states in which hydraulic fracturing is prevalent, but the timing of the standards would take that hot-button issue off the table.

Comment:

"This new process is a Godsend…BY Grandma" on 02/11/2011 at 20:52

The federal government must step in and start regulating fracking. Hydraulic fracturing should NOT be exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act and Clean Water Act. This industry is killing people by contaminating aquifers across the nation. Fracking is shaping up to be the cause of the biggest environmental and public health disaster this country has ever witnessed. 2012 is too long to wait to start correcting this horrific wrong that has been committed against the people of the United States.

See: Toledo. Free Press. "Kasich says Marcellus Shale could be ‘godsend’ for Ohio." Toledo. Free Press. 2011-01-01.

See: U.S. Congress. Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. "Hearing Highlights Lack of Objectivity in Draft EPA Fracking Study--No Evidence of Drinking Water Contamination from Fracking, Witnesses Say".  May 11, 2011