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- From: Greenpeace via Jym Dyer <jym@mica.berkeley.edu>
- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism,talk.environment
- Subject: NEWS: Greenpeace Opposes NAFTA
- Followup-To: talk.environment
- Date: 1 Sep 1992 22:22:06 GMT
- Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
- Lines: 51
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Message-ID: <Greenpeace.1Sep1992.7am2@naughty-peahen.org>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
- Originator: jym@remarque.berkeley.edu
-
- [Greenpeace Press Release from Greenbase -- Redistribute Freely]
-
- GREENPEACE OPPOSES NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
-
- TORONTO, 12 August, 1992 (GP) Greenpeace called today's
- announcement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
- a major step backwards for environmental protection in Canada,
- the U.S., and Mexico.
-
- "This draft trade deal puts corporate interests before the
- interests of citizens in our three nations," said Greenpeace
- spokesperson Traci Romine in Washington. "Instead, we have an
- agreement that rewards polluters and cheats our children."
-
- The NAFTA, a draft trade agreement, has been 18 months in the
- making, constructed in a series of secret negotiations and
- consultation with a narrow group of special corporate interests.
- This process has taken place without the input of the citizens
- and public interest groups in each nation. The draft agreement
- also supports efforts to undermine environmental safeguards by
- setting standards at the lowest common denominator.
-
- An example of the NAFTA's framework for environmental
- destruction is the chapter on energy. Polls show that citizens
- want energy demands met through efficiency and conservation.
- However, the proposed agreement would instead strip Canada and
- Mexico of resources through extraction, in order to flood the
- U.S. energy market with cheap oil and gas. Moreover, this would
- result in Canada and Mexico absorbing most of the social, labour
- and environmental costs associated with energy supply.
-
- "If this NAFTA deal is enacted, it will set us back decades,
- both in terms of energy reform and in our efforts to combat
- climate change," said Kevin Jardine, Greenpeace Canada Energy
- Efficiency Campaigner.
-
- Research by the Greenpeace pesticide campaign has also found
- that the NAFTA will lead to increased pesticide use,
- environmental contamination and the poisoning of farmworkers in
- Mexico. The draft proposes only "end of the pipe" approaches and
- does not consider "pollution prevention" approaches, which would
- reduce pesticide use and create ecological and sustainable
- agriculture.
-
- Greenpeace demands that any trilateral trade deal must harmonise
- environmental standards upward along the lines of conservation
- and not economics, ensure improved measures of trilateral
- enforcement for those standards, and include increased
- accountability to the public. In addition, we support the
- call of Mexican environmentalists to maintain control over
- such key sectors as energy and basic grain production.
-