Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (13077)	6/4/2002 4:50:42 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 93284

By Geoffrey Lean Environment Editor 02 June 2002 European governments have long suspected it. Environmentalists have long proclaimed it. But now there is clear evidence that President George Bush's environmental policy is indeed a load of crap. For the United States is blocking an international plan to halve the number of people, two-fifths of the population of the planet, who have no sanitation. Some 2.4 billion people lack even a bucket for their wastes, and this is one of the main causes of world disease. European and developing nations, meeting in Bali, Indonesia, want the world's leaders to agree to meet this target by 2015. They are proposing that the plan be put in front of the leaders when they meet for a new "Earth Summit" in Johannesburg in August. The summit – officially called the World Summit for Sustainable Development – is to concentrate on the environmental problems faced by the world's poorest people. The Bali meeting, which is the final preparatory conference for the summit, is running into trouble, with the Bush administration, in the words of one top Whitehall source, being "very, very negative". More than 2.2 million people – mainly children – die in the Third World every year from diseases caused by lack of sanitation and by dirty drinking water. The United Nations says that "the incidence of some illnesses and death could drop by as much as 75 per cent" if adequate clean water and sanitation were provided. Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, who is leading Britain's delegation to Bali, describes dealing with this issue as "absolutely key to any prospect of tackling poverty". The US position is baffling the other countries at the conference because the Bush administration has already agreed a target of halving the number of people without clean drinking water by the same date – and this is seen as inseparable from solving the problem of sanitation. The British officials held a special meeting with the American delegation on Thursday, but did not receive any clear reason for their objection to the plan. The clash over sanitation is only one of a range of issues holding up an agreement on a plan of action to present to the summit. Opec countries are opposing a plan – originating from an initiative by Tony Blair – to halve the number of people, currently two billion, without any modern sources of energy, mainly by tapping into renewable sources. And the US, Canada, Japan and Australia are objecting to European proposals to make energy consumption in developed countries more environmentally friendly. Senior British ministers fear that if the Bali conference fails to reach agreement it will be hard for the Johannesburg summit to succeed – and the best chance of tackling world poverty in two decades will be lost for the indefinite future.