US Officials Meet and Spar With Eco-Activists Over WTO
10/21/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: U.S. Officials Meet - and Spar With - Eco-activists
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 21, 1999
Byline: Robert McClure
A boisterous crowd of eco-demonstrators challenged the United States'
head environmental regulator yesterday when she came to Seattle with
a seemingly conciliatory message: The World Trade Organization,
properly tweaked, could help preserve the Earth.
Peppering U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol
Browner and her Clinton administration allies with catcalls, the
protesters would not take yes for an answer.
Browner and the other administration officials acknowledged that the
WTO must change significantly to better preserve the environment.
Critics say the organization's rules are being used to subvert hard-
won environmental protections.
"As we deal with the realities of global trade, it gives us an
opportunity to work around the world to secure environmental and
public-health protections," Browner said. "The president has been
very clear that it is important to integrate environmental and
public-health protections in the WTO."
But the demonstrators were not swayed. Their signs answered:
"WTO -- Trading away life."
"WTO = Fascists."
And so did their voices.
"Don't fix it -- dismantle it!" shouted one protester.
The crux of the disagreement -- amending the WTO vs. scrapping it --
simmered just below the surface for most of a two-hour "town meeting"
at the Town Hall in downtown Seattle. It was one of a series of
appeals to WTO opponents the Clinton administration is organizing in
preparation for a meeting of WTO ministers in Seattle Nov. 30-Dec. 3.
"The United States can't impose an agenda on the rest of the World
Trade Organization," said Dorothy Dwoskin, assistant U.S. trade
representative. "We are engaged in an important consensus-building
effort."
Browner started the meeting with a request to the approximately 175
people who showed up, mostly environmentalists: "I would ask you to
do one thing, and that is listen with an open mind."
Browner and her fellow officials contend that if environmental and
labor protections can be written into WTO rules, countries around the
world will be compelled to go easier on the Earth and on workers in
order to get a piece of the trade pie.
Getting those rules written into the WTO, though, is going to be
difficult, they acknowledge. Poor countries suspect rich countries of
using environmental policies as self-enriching protectionist trade
policies.
WTO defenders say the organization's rules are imposed only on
countries that wish to join. The rules, they point out, only say that
nations cannot discriminate against products because of where they
are produced. A shrimp is a shrimp. A chair is a chair.
Critics, though, say countries should be allowed to discriminate. For
example, shrimp caught by fishing vessels whose nets drown sea
turtles are not the same as shrimp caught more judiciously by boats
equipped with special turtle-sparing devices.
WTO rules, though, will soon force the United States to allow the
importation of shrimp from Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand and India --
even though shrimpers' nets there kill sea turtles.
"Many say that Nelson Mandela would still be in prison if the WTO had
been in place then," said town hall panel member and Washington state
Rep. Velma Veloria, D-Seattle, recalling the international boycott
that forced South Africa to abandon its institutionalized policy of
racism.
A key point of disagreement came over a WTO ruling that forced
Browner's agency to rewrite rules on imported gasoline. The rules
deal with measuring levels of pollutants in Venezuelan and Brazilian
gasoline imported for sale in pollution-choked northeastern U.S.
cities.
Browner began to explain her position, but was interrupted by members
of the audience.
"You know, we're not going to agree on this," Browner said. "You are
convinced that we changed an air pollution standard. . . . I never,
ever agreed to change an air pollution standard."
When a protester began to interject, she snapped: "Excuse me, but if
you want me to answer the question, please pay me the courtesy of
listening to my answer. I paid you the courtesy of listening to you."
"Have you?" came the answer.
Browner cut short her reply, asking "Why don't we move on?"
Frank Loy, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs, insisted
that the United States' internal environmental regulations will not
be affected by the WTO.
Patti Goldman, a lawyer with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund,
said the Venezuelan gas case reveals that Loy's line already has been
crossed.
"We're not opposed to trade. . . . Our complaint is with the rules
this organization has in place," Goldman said. "The WTO should not be
second-guessing individual governments' decisions about protecting
the environment. . . . The administration has sidestepped the core
issue."
Loy admitted that the WTO's Committee on Trade and the Environment,
the organization's mechanism for wrestling with environmental policy,
is not adequate.
"The way it operates, I don't think is right," Loy said. "It has not
been a successful body. . . . We need more than the Committee on
Trade and the Environment is going to be able to produce."
Goldman pressed on, accusing the administration of saying one thing
but doing another.
"The United States has not been a passive victim of these trade
rules," Goldman said. "It has been an active proponent when it served
our economic interests."
Examples Goldman cited include U.S. opposition to two European Union
proposals: "ecolabels" on paper products to inform consumers about
recycled content, and eliminating lead, cadmium and other toxins in
electronic equipment.
The gathering ended when about a dozen "radical cheerleaders,"
interrupting a scripted question-and-answer format, marched to the
front of the cavernous meeting room to chant in unison:
"WTO, your scheme and system we are going to overthrow. . . . The
corporations have blood on their hands. When so few own so much, it's
time to take a stand. Take back the power.
Stop corporate greed."
Browner dashed out a side door to catch her plane back to Washington,
D.C.