Red/Green environment policy an evil farce

Whereas 30% of the trees were sick when Trittin took office, now 30% are still healthy.

The policing of emissions and effluents by industry is writ small.
Environmental illnesses like neurodermitis and asthma in children have increased. Trittin continues the policy of his forerunner, Conservative Angela Merkel that provides for the "self-regulating and self-certifying entrepreneur" who can have himself certified as "ecological enterprise" with federal eagle. And he stands for the "environment polluting rights" and "ecological pipeline construction" in the reservations of indigenous people.

*Rotten nuclear consensus*

Red/Green had stepped up with the promise to scrap the nuclear power stations. Although Trittin gave himself good marks for his nuclear consensus, it is obviously worthless.

As the former Greens chairwoman Radtke revealed, Sunnyboy Trittin took cover in the consensus negotiations and talks with Chancellor Schröder and left Fischer to handle things ( http://www.politikforum.de/forum/archive/4/2001/03/1/7175).

In actual fact, not a single nuclear power station will be switched off under the consensus, unless it?s at the end of its running time set one way or another by the operators ? even without Trittin. If it still doesn?t work out then, Red/Green will still issue exceptional licences for the further operation of ancient power stations. ( http://www.oedp-bayern.de/presse/pm424.html).

And if an atomic power station actually is switched off as intended by the operator because its time is up, Trittin comes along to claim it as a success of his nuclear consensus. For example, on 14 November 2003 the environment ministry ran newspaper ads with our tax money picturing Trittin and asking: ?What?s Jürgen Trittin doing today? Switching off! The Stade nuclear power station is leaving the grid.? ( http://www.freitag.de/2003/48/03480203.php).

This is deception of the citizens, pure and simple. But not enough with that. To celebrate the day, Sunnyboy Trittin invited two hundred selected friends and acquaintances for 36,000 euros ? tax euros, of course ? to noble beverages and party appetizers in the Restaurant Sarah Wiener. That way green consensus policy is fun. ( http://www.landesgruppe.cdu-niedersachsen.de/news/1069664101.shtml).

In regard to the remaining nuclear energy of 2,600 terrawatt-hours, Sunnyboy Trittin has long ago lifted off earth ? he?s letting himself be feted for an event that?s to happen in the distant future.

How serious Trittin is about scrapping atomic power can be seen from power station operators still getting high tax breaks and the state continuing to promote research projects for this industry. And finally, under Trittin?s aegis new atomic power stations are being built again, such as the research reactor Garching II ( http://www.taz.de/pt/2003/04/17/a0070.nf/text)

*Trittin vetoed the EU directive on disposal of disused cars*

The specialists in the European environment ministries were already agreed to do something against pollution caused by the disposal of disused cars. With the participation of the industrial associations, an EU directive was developed to approval maturity to do a bit more for the environment in this area.

The German car companies privately lobbied Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Schröder ordered Trittin to vote against the EU directive, which he did by using his veto. By that, a Greens minister has outed himself as brakeman and blocker of environmental protection action. He acted against the environment. ( http://www.verbraucher.de/umwelt/inhalt/altauto_verordnung.html).

Reacting to criticism from within his party, Sunnyboy said he would not comment on ?backbenchers?. ( http://www.germnews.de/archive/gn/1999/06/29.html).

*On ozone Trittin is worse than Merkel*


Ozone is quite an aggressive gas that even corrodes rubber. Even in low concentrations it attacks breathing passages, causes breathlessness and can even destroy lung cells. Children and ill people are especially vulnerable to it. At 160 micro-grammes per cubic metre infections of the breathing passages can be shown in almost all adults. The work safety cap is 200 micro-grammes per cubic metre.

Under CDU-Angela Merkel the so-called Ozone Act laid down a procedure to set an environmental cap under which 240 micro-grammes have to be reported simultaneously by three measuring stations to set off an ozone alarm. This means that locally even higher readings are made because the maximum concentrations don?t unconditionally have to be in the areas of the measuring stations.


That is why experts reject these triggering readings as much too high. Hopes were placed in an environment minister who would fix it by bringing in maximum tolerances more appropriate to human beings. But after the Ozone Act ran out in 1999, Sunnyboy did nothing.

So no ozone tolerance level was intended, leaving children unprotected. Although there remains in force a maximum tolerance of 200 micro-grammes for the work places of healthy adults, which is now set by the labour minister (now BMWI) and not by the environment minister, Trittin now maintains ?that driving bans and other short-term measures are not suited to reducing an acute ozone burden.? ( http://www.bmu.de/de/1024/js/presse/2003/pm141/text.pdf).

This is the pretext for not setting a maximum tolerance. In this, Sunnyboy Trittin overlooks that starting a smog alarm also serves to warn and inform people in such a way that they can respond sensibly. There are recommendations for workers, for example, on what one can sensibly do when the ozone level is too high. For example stay indoors as much as possible because ozone concentrations are lower there. ( http://www.luft-rlp.de/ozonrlp/kap_6bb.htm). This can be meaningfully applied to children and ill people as well as asthma sufferers.

But for this to work, people have to be alerted to any such high ozone concentration. The measures have to be broadcast on radio. But this, a minimum protection of children from health-endangering pollutant concentrations like ozone, is not wanted. It might make people wonder about environmental policy?


*Car tax favours super-luxury offroaders*


On the towbar of the car-chancellor, Trittin asserted the strategy of the German motor industry not to reward with a single cent the use of the series-mature French FAP soot filters in the Euro4 and D4 exhaust regulations. This although the research findings and statistical evaluations of the carcinogenic and sensitising effect of ultra-fine dust from diesel engines especially on children have been out for about 11 years.

Even the head of an association in the motor industry accused Trittin: ?If you had demanded soot filters two years ago we?d have introduced them and they?d be there now!"

Red/Green also agrees that super luxury offroaders weighing tonnes, such as the Mercedes M class, are taxed like cars. And that managers and many officials can personally be totally indifferent through the official car model and the exhaust regulations to their car burning 15 or five litres of fuel per 100 km. These people have all their fuel and maintenance costs paid by their employers. It was good that the press provoked Trittin by simply claiming that he was planning consumption-related taxes. But Trittin denied this immediately. ( http://www.ftd.de/pw/de/1074926709932.html?nv=5wn).


*Car taxes rising most for environmentally friendly cars*


Punctually for the start of 2004 Sunnyboy Trittin and innovation minister Stolpe raised the car tax. Do you think, dear reader, that the tax for environmentally friendly cars (Euro/D 3 and Euro/D 4) was raised more, or was it raised more for environment-unfriendly cars like Euro 2? If you?ve read this far, you should know.

For Euro 3 and Euro 4, that is the ?clean? cars, the taxes for the diesel variants rise from ? 13.80 to ?15.44 per 100 ccm, an increase of ? 1.64.
For Euro 2 there?s a rise from ? 14.83 to ? 16.05, i.e. ? 1.22. That means that Trittin has raised the taxes for the diesel vehicles with the strictest exhaust regulations more than for diesel vehicles with outdated exhaust rules and greater emission of pollutants.


*Threat to animals from large-scale projects*


Hundreds of kilometres of high-speed railway tracks are being built. Many animals such as red deer, martens, foxes, badgers, weasels, hares and ground-living birds are being hindered in their natural migration movements and procreation because these senseless railway lines are totally fenced in. This will lead to the loss of rare animals.

The eco-audit regulation introduced by Merkel (CDU) is being silently continued by The Greens and rated ?positively?. An information brochure published when Merkel was still the minister said the whole thing was meant for the public relations purposes of the enterprises. For opulent fees the companies are audited by ?independent experts? and have to show and publish an ecology management system. The procedure does not, however, provide for data to be obtainable, e.g. in cases of law-breaking, from authorities, insurances and private certification organisations like the TÜV.

That means that the auditing expert would not know whether the firm being audited was illegally disposing of asbestos on a large scale or breaching environmental regulations such as the dangerous goods ordinance or the Federal Emissions Ordinance. Information of the public about the ?environmental guidelines? of an enterprise is a joke. For example, employees can be dismissed without notice if they claim that the company has disposed of tonnes of solvents via its roof.

This system of informing the public makes no provisions, either, for companies to out themselves in case they breach environmental ordinances. Even companies that build up new plants in Germany with the use of tonnes of chlorinated hydrocarbons receive their Eco Audit Certificate under a Green environment minister.

It appears that The Greens have developed the industry-friendly regulations of the CDU into an even more industry-friendly administrative practice.


*No reaction to environmental crimes*


That is illustrated by a case in Bavaria. With permission from the authorities a farmer ploughed poisonous chemical waste from the Agfa company into his fields. When this became known and was stopped, after the scandal the farmer was able to grow food crops on the same field without having done anything to clean it up! Neighbours who observed this brought it to public notice. Any measures from the environment or consumer protection ministries for effective control of such happenings? No.

The new laws for electricity feed-in and heat-power cogeneration are family-hostile rip-offs of consumers. The cogeneration projects sought by the Green government are only good for the big corporations, which first put up a gigantic brown coal power station (Gartzweiler II, a Red-Green moon landscape) and then force every power consumer to subsidise the connection of the eco-hostile monsters to family homes.

This again strengthens the big utility and disposal companies against which the consumer has no defence. They said yes because they can make extra cash. The power prices were simply raised. The money is used to build pipelines that are still definable as power-heat cogeneration. Even a toll-collect pipeline system, regardless of how senseless and ineffective it is, brings in money. In the present negotiations on power in-feeding, just like on the atomic consensus, Trittin is not at the table when the Chancellor and the energy industrialists are bargaining. ( http://www.faz.net/s/RubFC06D389EE76479E9E76425072B196C3/Doc~E29ED1DB9892841AD9967C6C0EC73BB25~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html)


*Political control of the nature protection organisations*

The chairman of the Naturschutzbund (NABU), Jochen Flasbarth, has not called Trittin the ?greatest environment minister in Germany?s history? for nothing ( http://www.naturkost.de/meldungen/020808o1.htm). That shows that the nature protection organisations have long since been under political control. The connections are manifold.

Not just Greens members of parliament, but also the second and third tiers have consultant contracts with Business. For example Greens MP Christine Scheel has received money from the consultative committees of the Barmenia and Hamburg Mannheimer insurance companies, while at the same time she was in the finance committee of the Deutscher Bundestag and on the supervisory board of the Federal Agency for Supervising Financial Services. ( http://www.taz.de/pt/2003/12/02/a0039.nf/text,  http://www.christine-scheel.de/scheel/cs_index.htm).

The Greens hold leading positions in the nature protection organisations while on the other side of the counter they also hold leading positions in industry, organisations, institutions which commission work to the same nature protection organisations and on top of it all have the backing of the environment and consumer ministries.

Let?s have a closer look at this at NABU. A central figure in the Berliner Landesbank scandal with its ?40 billion hole was Hugo Holzinger. Under the SPD finance senator Fugmann-Heesing he moved from head of the office for open asset issues to the building administration. At the same time he was on the supervisory board of the Gesobau AG, a 100% subsidiary of the Berliner Landesbank. Through the Gesobau Foundation, Gesobau AG commissioned the consultants Alba Consulting, which passed on Gesobau AG contracts in garbage disposal, for which Holzinger was also active. On top of this NABU also received substantial orders through cooperation with Gesobau ( http://www.nabu-berlin.de/gebaeudekataster.html).

That?s just one source of money. NABU also receives funds from industry, e.g. Lufthansa, Duales System Deutschland, Tengelmann Group, etc.. All these enterprises are out to create ecological images for themselves via NABU. ( http://213.198.75.194/de/downloads/presse/downloads/publikationen/lh_gb_2002.pdf). But the Duale System Deutschland has been proven to have broken laws. The TÜV-approved Russian plants for recycling, that even appeared in a DSD image film, didn?t exist.

NABU does not go into confrontation with these enterprises. Instead, joint advertising campaigns are planned with Daimler-Chrysler and Deutsche Bank for the desired certificate trading and ?ecological self-commitment?. ( http://www.thur.de/philo/uvu/uvu68.html).

I feel sorry for the members of the grass roots groups of these nature protection organisations who still work for animals and nature and are being misused politically.


*The rain forest needs no "sustainable ecological theft of wood"*


It appears that NABU, under Green leadership, has gone too far with the "ecological certification" of "sustainable forestry economy". We know that huge parts of Amazonia have been denuded. A vast fortune greedily eyed by the internationally organised timber industry is represented by the remaining reservations for indigenous people. Their lobby now says, our protecting the reservations didn't work and that's going to continue that way for the Indians - unless we set up a sustainable, ecological timber industry in the reservations that is properly implemented. ( http://mitglied.lycos.de/regenwaldsem/newpage4.html).

The Green methods are the same as those before: promises, propaganda, intimidation and bribery of the chiefs. Should the indigenous people resist and the bribery of the chiefs fail, white interests are violently asserted. ( http://www.wald-online-bw.de/pdf/synopse_finalissimo.pdf). There is no provision for self-determined management by the indigenous people of the trees they don?t want harvested. Indigenous people who look through the eco mask and are allowed to reject ?help? are not in the plan. Instead, like in the SPD 15 years ago, there is talk of ?balancing interests between North and South?.

The balancing looks like this: Land and trees for sustainable timber harvesting. One can have the whole thing certified by TÜV or AGRIZERT Gesellschaft zur Qualitätssicherung in der Agrarwirtschaft. The tree felled in the indigenous reservation then gets a green eco label. Implementation of these aggressive programmes in the developing countries is promoted by the environment ministry. ( http://www.taz.de/pt/2004/01/26/a0156.nf/textdruck).

The Green hype about a showcase project of this kind then sounds like this: ?That is why a caoutchouc (raw rubber) project was started in three villages thinking about ways of making additional income. In it the Indians are working with a traditional technique long used to impregnate transport bags. With the support of the CPI the villages have been able to sign up to fair trade contracts. A firm buys the product to make bags, jackets, shoes and accessories from the ?couro vegetal?. The project is running very successfully. And why? Because harvesting the latex is an integral part of indigenous cultures, pursued ecologically compatibly; because the technique is simple, adapted to local conditions and can be carried out by the villagers themselves.?

Not a word about the ?traditional technique? of the whites formerly enslaving the indigenous people as latex gatherers. "Fair trading contracts? ? fair is when the whites do not assert their ecologically camouflaged economic interests in the indigenous reservations. In actual fact, what is described above is quite normal work dressed up in nice words, in which the indigenous people plant caoutchouc tress and harvest their latex for whites. The only difference is that these days no one chops off their hands any more and lets them starve for not working enough. The indigenous people who don?t want the ?nice new green world? are ground down.

How the Red/Green government does that is shown by the pipeline through indigenous reservations in Ecuador, financed by the statal Westdeutsche Landesbank. All the protesting indigenous people were thrown into jail. At first the West-LB insisted that "all environment standards? are being met. ( http://www.tropenwaldnetzwerk-brasilien.de/aktuell/news/news.latein/news.latein.2002/news.latein.20020405/)

It was interesting for Greens MPs to check that out. The Greens now do not assume that adherence to their eco standards is a rights certificate to cut down forest or build a pipeline on indigenous land. Especially not if, like for the past 100 years in rain forest denuding, government representatives are bribed and indigenous land is made white land by a stroke of the pen.

The indigenous people in the rain forest live better with THEIR trees on THEIR land without certified ecologically sustainable forest harvesting á la Red/Green. It is the old colonial imperialism. Its ecological packaging in Ecuador and elsewhere disguises the interest of the Germans in the riches and exploitation of others.

Regenwald.org reports how special units, under the command of the OCR consortium, to which West-LB belongs, is beginning to drive the indigenous people off their land. That is the policy of Red/Green. For if one reads the Düsseldorf state parliament minutes of The Greens, the problem is not the foreign-determined use of the indigenous area, but whether their eco standards stand up to scrutiny to justify it. ( http://www.gruene.landtag.nrw.de/themen/oekologie/material/WestLB-Pipeline/Ecuadorbericht%20Neufassung%2029.05.022.htm). The pro-rain forest link of the regenwald.org: http://www.regenwald.org/pdf/rdr-report0204.pdf.

On 18 February 2002 The Greens voted for the construction of the pipeline in the One-World Committee and the Europe Committee of the state parliament. They are perpetrators and fully co-responsible for the actions of special units in the indigenous areas. Perhaps that is why for his most recent trips to South America Trittin at short notice cancelled the German air force plane for the Amazonia visit and had it fly home - ? 27,000 wasted for this wrong booking. You can do a lot for the environment with that amount. ( http://www.sueddeutschezeitung.de/deutschland/artikel/473/20453/)
That is why, folks at Nabu and BUND: resign your membership of The Greens!

*?Consistent corruption and buddyism?*


In 1995 the environment minister of Hesse state, Iris Blaul resigned from the Alliance 90/The Greens party. She had made her life-companion head of the central department of the environment ministry, but that wasn?t the only reason. Another was the refusal by her state secretary, Schaedler, to commission work from relatives and acquaintances without calling for tenders. Under Blaul such orders benefited party friends, without comparing offers and without tendering. ( http://www.jungewelt.de/frameit.php?/1998/08-06/011.htm)

Under the then Hesse premier Hans Eichel (now federal finance minister) the next environment minister, Magarete Nimsch, was also a member of Alliance 90/The Greens. And the graft continued merrily under the second Green minister; as far as I can recall, hr3 radio even reported that a privately used flat was renovated with tax money. More orders without tendering. It was all ?an evilly intended media campaign?, responded Alliance90/The Greens at the time.

State Secretary Gerd Harms of The Greens, before changing over to Saxony-Anhalt as minister, in 1998 had Premier Manfred Stolpe give him the personal assurance that he could return at any time into the civil service of Brandenburg state, with corresponding pay. When the Höppner government was voted out, Harms came knocking on the door back in Potsdam. Since there was no appropriate post for him, a trick was resorted to. Forty-nine-year-old harms was appointed state secretary for a juridical second and immediately thereafter pensioned off, which was to secure for him the corresponding retirement income without doing anything for it in return. After that Stasi medal recipient Stolpe backtracked, saying a ?position? would be found for him.
(Sources:  http://www.wolfgang-boernsen.de/public/pms/02-06-12-pol-Lage.pdf Der Tagesspiegel 5.6.2002, Bild 7.6.2002 )

In 1997 the Greens Bundestag member Cem Özdemir stood down not just because of bonus miles, but because his own media adviser had brokered an interest-free loan of DM 70,000 for him.

Trittin denied having privately used bonus miles collected with flights on official business. "Herr Trittin had to use more than 110,000 bonus miles for that," a reporter calculated at the time. "He claims to have collected all bonus miles for these flights privately. Then he would have had to book more than 90 simple domestic German flights privately. That'?s a remarkable number for a politician who scourges private air transport in public speeches." ( http://www.message-online.de/arch4_02/42_kuehn.html).

The same PR man, Moritz Hunzinger, contact with whom brought grief to Özdemir, as a weapons lobbyist organised meetings between arms maker Thyssen and Green politicians. At the same time he was a donor to Alliance90/The Greens. ( http://www.ftd.de/pw/de/1027494280692.html?nv=rs).

And The Greens, as "the consistent anti-war party" (in the words of former chair, Claudia Roth) appear never to have had problems accepting money from arms lobbyists.