Conscious Choice: Roads Not Taken: The Hague, National Forests, AAA

January 2001 | News of the Earth

Roads Not Taken: The Hague, National Forests, AAA

by Dave Aftandilian

What would you do if you lived on a planet where rising seas were swamping small islands, glaciers were melting and tundras were thawing, oceans were warming fast enough to kill off vast stretches of coral reefs (among the most productive regions in the seas, biologically speaking), ice shelves at one pole were breaking apart while sea ice at the other had thinned by 40 percent in just forty years, animal and plant species were being forced out of their habitats — and on top of all that, temperatures were predicted to rise by as much as six degrees Celsius (eleven degrees Fahrenheit) in the next century? What would you say if I told you that planet was Earth, and, judging from the climate change treaty negotiations that took place this past November in the Hague, the world’s governments are not doing a thing about it?

In 1990, scientists first sounded a clear alarm that the climate was warming. A report released by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1995 concluded that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." International negotiations to figure out what to do about global warming resulted in 1997’s Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that called on the Western nations that had caused global warming with their profligate fossil fuel burning to reduce their emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). The United States, for instance, would be required under the treaty to reduce its CO2 emissions by 7 percent from what they were in 1990 by 2008-2012. (Bear in mind that our emissions have already risen by more than 20 percent since 1990.) So far, only thirty nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and most of them are developing countries, which are not required to reduce their emissions. For it to go into force, at least fifty-five nations, representing at least 55 percent of the world’s fossil fuel emissions for 1990, must ratify the treaty.

Part of the reason so few countries have signed onto the Kyoto Protocol is that the mechanisms for reducing emissions reductions and the penalties for not doing so were not spelled out in the treaty. This past November, representatives from 180 countries met for two weeks at the Hague in the Netherlands to hash out those politically supercharged details. Two very different visions of how to achieve the necessary cuts butted heads at the meeting. The United States, together with its allies in Australia, Canada, and Japan, favors the use of carbon "sinks," such as forests and farmlands, to soak up the excess CO2 and count as emissions reductions. They also want to be able to pay for developing nations to plant or preserve forests, or help them pursue renewable energy projects, and also for businesses to be able to trade carbon emissions internationally, much as sulfur dioxide trading permits are currently traded within the United States. The European Union (EU), on the other hand, doesn’t much like the idea of carbon sinks or emissions trading, and prefers that nations be required to fulfill at least 50 percent of their emissions reduction targets through real cuts at home.

In the end, these two visions proved incompatible, and the talks collapsed. This is very bad news for the world. As Greenpeace put it in their press statement at the close of the talks, "this meeting will be remembered as the moment when governments abandoned the promise of global cooperation to protect planet Earth.... Governments must stop acting as if this was a game. Climate change is happening, and more and more people will be the victims." It’s especially embarrassing that the U.S. refusal to commit to serious emissions cuts at home was the main sticking point at the talks, because even though we only have 4 percent of the world’s population, we spew out 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas pollution, so we’re more responsible than any other nation for the current mess.

On the other hand, there was a fair amount of good news at the Hague. Fewer and fewer people, politicians, or business representatives doubt that global warming is happening. Even U.S. Senator Larry Craig, a notoriously conservative Republican and ally of the Wise Use movement sent as part of the congressional delegation to the talks, now says that "we ought to stay engaged with the rest of the world on this because science is starting to tell us we have a problem." This raises hopes that the Senate might someday ratify a global warming treaty. The problem is that the longer we wait to start counteracting global warming, the harder it will be, and the less assured we are of success. As Don Kennedy recently wrote of global warming in an editorial for Science magazine, "we are conducting a global experiment without protocol or hypothesis, and the result is uncertain."

Where do we go from here? President Clinton has told the EU that he would like to work out a deal before he leaves office, and the two sides have begun holding bilateral talks toward that end. The next round of full international negotiations will take place at Bonn this May, and we can only hope that the formal mechanisms for the Kyoto Protocol will be worked out then. A lot will ride on George W. Bush. We can probably expect at best a watered-down agreement, and quite possibly none at all. Public opinion does count here, as always, and if you feel that the United States should work hard to come to an agreement on the Kyoto Protocol that produces meaningful reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions, you might want to send a letter saying that to the next president. You can reach the President at The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20050.

National Forest Roadless Areas to Stay Wild

Last July, "News of the Earth" reported that the USDA’s Forest Service was seeking feedback on its proposed roadless area conservation plan. Thanks to more than 1.6 million public comments from folks like you — more than had ever been received on a proposed federal rule before — the Forest Service significantly revised its plan. The result isn’t perfect, but it is a significant improvement over the draft rule, and it could become "the largest and most important lands conservation policy of the last hundred years," in the words of Wilderness Society president William H. Meadows.

Initially, the Forest Service proposed that new roads be prohibited in all inventoried roadless areas bigger than 5,000 acres. Logging would still be allowed, provided it did not require roads (helicopter logging is already practiced in some areas), as would mining. And a decision on what to do with roadless areas in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest — the nation’s largest temperate rain forest — would be deferred until 2004. Environmental groups said this plan did not offer enough protection for roadless areas, and encouraged the general public to let the Forest Service know it should do more.

Judging from the revised preferred plan it submitted to the Secretary of Agriculture this past November, the Forest Service heard the public’s demand for greater protection for roadless areas loud and clear. The new preferred plan would prohibit all road building and reconstruction in roadless areas bigger than 5,000 acres, except where required to make existing roads safer, protect natural resources, or accommodate federal highway projects; stop all logging on these roadless areas, except for "defined stewardship purposes" (such as to improve habitat for threatened or endangered species, reduce the risk of wildfires, or restore proper ecosystem function); and extend all these protections for roadless areas to the Tongass National Forest beginning in April 2004. Provided Congress approves the necessary funds, the Forest Service would also spend $13 to $20 million to help communities that would be hardest hit by the new regulations move to local economies less dependent on timber harvest.

As might be expected, reactions to the revised plan varied widely. While Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said "the Sierra Club is thrilled that the Forest Service recognizes that the values of recreation, wildlife habitat, and clean water trump commercial logging in these untouched areas," he cautioned that "forest advocates need to remain vigilant to ensure that cracking the door ajar for‘forest stewardship’ doesn’t throw the floodgates open for wholesale clearcutting." Nathaniel Lawrence, director of the forests project for the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the plan "a real breakthrough," and the Washington Post wrote in an editorial that "future generations will have reason to be grateful" to the Forest Service for the plan.

Alaskan forest activists were disappointed that the plan would not include protections for roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest until 2004. Matt Zencey, director of the Alaska Rainforest Campaign, said "there still is no good reason to discriminate against the nation’s largest national forest and deny it full protection." On the other hand, Alaska’s timber industry was outraged by the roadless areas protections for the Tongass, even though their implementation would be deferred until 2004. Jack Phelps, executive director of the Alaska Forest Association, stated that "there is absolutely no justification scientifically, economically, or ecologically for any further roadless withdrawals in southeast Alaska. This is purely an attempt to put the last bullet in our heads."

Nationally, timber industry groups and their congressional allies also criticized the roadless areas plan. Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, derided the protections as "broad, blanket, cookie-cutter, command-and-control from Washington, D.C.," and "election-year politics." Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), a longtime timber industry ally, predicted that the plan would not survive challenges in court, and promised to fight it in Congress as well. George W. Bush might use the prerogative of the executive branch to set the plan aside, as industry groups such as the Montana Wood Products Association plan to ask him to do.

That would be a mistake. As Jim Lyons, the USDA’s undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, said, "we are responding to the will of the American people. These are public lands, and the public should have an opportunity to say how they want them managed." More than 1.6 million Americans took that opportunity, and told the Forest Service they want roadless areas in the nation’s forests protected from roads and from logging — for wildlife habitat, for clean air and water, for reduction of the dangers from wildfires and floods, and for future generations. The next president of the United States should recognize that the people have spoken, and listen to their wishes over those of a handful of timber industry spokespeople and their allies in Congress.

AAA Advocates for More Pollution and Sprawl

Most people join the AAA (formerly known as the American Automobile Association) for its roadside assistance, Triptiks and maps, auto insurance, and other helpful services for motorists. But according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), those services come with a hefty price tag for the Earth. In "The Secret Life of AAA," published in the winter 2001 issue of NRDC’s Amicus Journal, Michael A. Rivlin writes that "using its members as collateral, AAA, its local affiliates, and its partners work to influence national law and policy, and not to the good of the planet. AAA weighs in on highway funding, suburban sprawl, mass transit, car design and safety, air pollution, and global warming. Almost without exception, critics say, it advocates policies that damage the environment and endanger health."

AAA members can be forgiven for not realizing they’re supporting an organization that has opposed (among other environmental and public safety laws) the 1990 Clean Air Act, new EPA regulations proposed in 1997 to reduce smog and soot, state efforts to curb suburban sprawl, increased federal funding for mass transit, and mandatory air bags in passenger vehicles. After all, AAA keeps its lobbying efforts fairly quiet. For instance, according to its Web site, the mission of the AAA-Chicago Motor Club "is to provide high-quality products and outstanding service for the insurance, travel, and financial needs of our customers." Nothing there about pro-business, anti-environment lobbying.

But all you have to do is take a look at AAA’s history to see the skid marks on the pavement. For one thing, without the efforts of AAA and its members, there wouldn’t be much pavement to speak of in the United States or road signs to mark it. Since the group’s founding in 1902 (the Chicago affiliate started up four years later), it has erected road markers, advocated for more and better roads, and fought any government regulations that it felt might "threaten the personal mobility" of its current 43 million members (the quote comes from a press release written by the national AAA office stating its opposition to the 1990 Clean Air Act). It’s thanks in part to AAA that we have an interstate highway system.

Given that history, it’s actually not all that surprising that AAA almost always sides with automakers, oil and gas companies, and roadbuilding industries in federal and state legislative battles. As Ron M. Landsman, who investigated AAA for Ralph Nader in the early 1970s, puts it, the AAA clubs "wouldn’t oppose the auto industry if it was the price of their first-born child. They have the same interest in promoting automobiles as the industry does." Maybe that’s why AAA has joined the American Highway Users Alliance, an industry lobbying group whose biggest funders almost all build roads, the vehicles that drive on them, or the petroleum products that fuel the vehicles that drive on them. In concert with Ford, GM, Goodyear, the Portland Cement Association, the Associated General Contractors of America, and other similar organizations that are also members, the Highway Users (and AAA) sponsor public relation campaigns and lobbying efforts in Congress to push for new, improved, and wider roads instead of efforts to reduce sprawl and strengthen mass transit.

To find out more, you can read "The Secret Life of AAA" on NRDC’s Web site. And if you’re a AAA member who thinks AAA should get out of the pro-pollution, pro-sprawl, anti-environment lobbying business, you might want to write Mr. Robert L. Darbelnet, President and CEO, AAA, 1000 AAA Drive, Heathrow, FL, 32746-5063, and let him know your opinion.

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