Climate right to fight Bush, says US Green
By CLAIRE MILLER
Friday 6 April 2001
www.theage.com.au
Australia and the international community should unite to fight the United
States' cavalier stand on climate change, the key campaign organiser for US
Greens presidential candidate Ralph Nader urged yesterday.
Annie Goeke, who arrived in Australia yesterday for next week's global
Greens conference in Canberra, said she hoped the world would tell the US it
could not pull out of the Kyoto protocol without suffering consequences.
"This is a perfect opportunity for the rest of the world to finally say to
the US, `your arrogance is getting a little beyond the pale, and we are
telling you as the global community that we will enforce, some way or
another, that you pay attention to this issue'," Ms Goeke said.
She said next week's conference was intended to unite Greens as a global
political movement capable of mounting effective campaigns such as a boycott
of US oil products. More than 600 Greens from 60 countries are expected.
Australia has said the protocol is effectively dead without US involvement.
Environment Minister Robert Hill will go to New York to ask the US to stay
in the process, but other ministers have supported the hardline Bush
position.
But Canada, New Zealand and Japan - aligned with the US until now - have
joined Europe in condemning the US for jeopardising the protocol.
Ms Goeke said that while the corporate-driven US media and
Republican-Democrat duopoly ignored climate change as an issue, the American
people were gradually realising something was wrong as communities suffered
fires from prolonged droughts and massive flooding.
She said things would not be different if Al Gore was president because the
Democrats were as beholden to corporate sponsors as the Republicans.
The Clinton-Gore administration gave the impression of taking care of things
by continuing dialogue, but avoided decisions, Ms Goeke said.
"In some ways we feel it is time for the American public to wake up, and
sometimes it has to be done in a way where it is very clearcut," she said.
"We feel with President Bush that it is more likely people will be activated
to actually get up and do something. Now he has made this statement, I think
there will be a lot more interest in people getting to know the issues."
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