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AR Philosophy > Opinionatedly Yours
Everybody knows the fight was
fixed: What has the potential to be the greatest cause of cruelty to all animals? No fair answering "humans." That's admittedly the only single answer possible, since cruelty, by definition, requires morality, and we're inclined to think of ourselves as the single "moral agent" among all species, or at least so we seem to be classified by the classics of animal rights literature. I remain uncertain that there are not other species that can determine "right" from "wrong" and sometimes choose the latter. However, such other species who may be "moral agents," if they exist, have negligible impact on animals compared to ourselves, and the degree of their ability to determine would be, if it exists at all, significantly less that ours. So among the countless ways we find to abuse animals (not to mention other humans ... well, I will mention it in passing because I think apart from the fact that humans are animals, all such abuse and exploitation is ultimately inextricable), what poses the greatest threat? Factory farming? Medical and other research using live animals? Deforestation? Commercial fishing? Hunting? The fur and leather trades? Pet overpopulation? Animals in entertainment? Toxic wastes? Global warming? Desertification? Ozone depletion? I don't know if these things can be neatly quantified; each causes widespread and horrendous suffering, either directly, indirectly, or both. But I suggest that what, in fact, might be of greatest concern to those of us who are advocates on behalf of animals; who seek "rights" for animals in forms that have lasting results in reducing or eliminating cruelty, the greatest threat to our work, hence to the animals, themselves, might be the MAI. There's a pretty good chance you haven't heard of the MAI. The acronym stands for the Multilateral Agreement on Investments. It has been called "A Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the corporations." What Is It and Why Should We Be Concerned? If you have access to the Internet, a huge number of hours to spare, and are less prone than I to headaches engendered by mind-numbing legal text, you can read for yourself what MAI is by going to http:www.web.net/coc/maitext.html. That will get you a table of contents that contains the following headings:
That's just part one. Part two's list of list of contents is similarly lengthy, and the actual language of the treaty is, take my word for it, dense and technical for those of us -- the vast majority of all people -- untrained and unaccustomed to acronym-laden treaty language and economic jargon applied to the rarefied world of high finance inhabited by the mightiest of the power brokers of government and commerce and fueled by the transboundary flow of huge volumes of capital. But the MAI will profoundly affect each of us. If it is to work as intended it will also blunt and damage the legislative tools, inefficient as they already so often are, utilized by those of us who seek social reform in the interest of justice for animals. As its name implies, MAI is to be an agreement among nations. Not just any nations, but, at least to begin with, the most rich and powerful -- the 29 members of the European-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Under MAI, the OECD countries are to agree to terms of transborder investment. It is not supposed to have negative effects on the sovereign rights of nations to govern themselves, or to interfere with their own domestic legislative controls over business. However, it is exactly such controls that motivated the development of the MAI in the first place, with no public input. Yes, your government will have to agree to it, probably sometime this year, but the U.S. is already an enthusiastic supporter. Citizen groups have formed to fight the MAI, but are hampered by the secrecy surrounding it, by the complexity of it, and by the fact that for some people, particularly those in positions of power and influence and many aspiring to such positions, it will certainly work very well. Both opponents and proponents are bombastic in their respective hyperbole. It has been argued that it, or something like it, is both "essential" and "inevitable." It certainly fulfills a powerful, right-wing demand for the "freedom" to earn profits without the interference of government restrictions. It is music to the ears of adherents of the "trickle-down" theory, that wealth generation benefits everybody. It is almost a theology we are seeing, and not a new or rare one, that separates the production of wealth from the imposition of exploitation that is all too likely to be the foundation for that wealth. It is easy to dismiss the concerns of those daring to question MAI as nosy pinko do-gooders and bleeding-heart liberals bent on destroying that which made America so great, in terms of being both rich and powerful. We in North America have seen precursors to the MAI in other international trade agreements, such as the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994, and its own precursor, the U.S.- Canada Free Trade Agreement of 1989 (FTA). We have Latin American and Pacific Rim coalitions. We have seen the trade barriers fall in Europe under consolidation of the European Commission (EC) which has proposed a global investment treaty to be administered under the World Trade Organization (WTO). That last idea found little favor in Washington, where the fear was that it would include too many small, poor countries whose domestic concerns could weaken the effectiveness of the treaty. So, instead, we have the U.S. now enthusiastically backing an elite assemblage consisting of the world's 29 richest nations to, as U.S. officials have stated, obtain a high-standard multilateral investment agreement that will protect U.S. investors abroad. The old British Empire, not to mention a few others, lies tattered as we enter a new era of monetary imperialism linked not by the flag of conquest, but by the monetary unit of conquest. Might still makes right as determined not by gunboats so much as by corporate wealth; not so much by government policy as by fiscal policy; not so much by voters as by shareholders. What Right Have They? As I have argued so often (see Opinionatedly Yours #1 and Opinionatedly Yours #2), rights are things we make up and stick to, and in this case the rights to be established are those for the transnational corporations (TNCs) to conduct business without obstruction from the hard-won legislation that seeks to restrict or prohibit the exploitation of others, including animals, or to protect the environment in each country. We are in the process of developing a true "new world order," ironically the thing the extremist fringe of the American ultra-right so fears. But here the advantage goes to the strong, and to the degree that the strong are American and other OECD members, the MAI gains much support, perhaps even among national isolationists who might otherwise object to agendas being determined by non-elected, foreign individuals. But Should We Worry? In Canada, where I live, we have had experience with how such international agreements can work against our social interests. Consider MMT. That is the name of a fuel additive that is considered to be a dangerous toxin. It is linked to many respiratory problems. Canada bans it. The U.S. does not. Therefore Canada will not import from the U.S. fuel containing MMT. So the Ethyl Corporation, a TNC, has launched a $350 million lawsuit against the Canadian Government (which means against taxpaying people like me) under NAFTA. The purpose of such agreements is to create a "level playing field" so that the producers in one country do not enjoy a legislated advantage over their foreign competitors. Or put another way, so that the producers in one country do not experience a legislated disadvantage to the benefit of their foreign competitors. Obviously Canadian fuel producers, by eliminating MMT and selling it to a market that, because of legislation, precludes MMT, have an "unfair" advantage over a company like Ethyl Corporation, or so the argument goes. By reducing the exposure of consumers to such toxic substances, we help them and the animals sacrificed in endless research seeking to cure diseases which we could more effectively deal with by eliminating the toxins that contribute to their occurrence. The problem is, in doing so we interfere with the profits of those who benefit from the production of such toxins or the products that contain them. Or consider Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH). All milk produced in Canada is pooled in a common source. So if BGH is given to any of the cattle, there is no protection for a consumer who does not wish to consume BGH when consuming milk or milk products. BGH compromises dairy cattle's health and welfare. Already these unfortunate animals are treated badly enough in the interest of a grossly over-hyped product we are indoctrinated from childhood to consider essential -- milk. But with BGH the production of milk increases, which, critics claim, leads to serious health conditions in the cattle. But BGH is produced by Monsanto, a powerful TNC who has won approval to market the product in the U.S., and is now leaning on Canada with all the weight that massive profits can generate. An improbable and minimally funded grassroots coalition of animal rights advocates, milk producers, nationalists, human health advocates, and mothers has so far been able to keep BGH at bay, but it seems unlikely the question may well be resolved, again, not by the will of the people most affected, but by NAFTA. Certainly, and more directly involved with animal concerns, API and other organizations ran up against NAFTA a few years ago when we tried to stop the importation of puppies from puppy mills in the U.S. into Canada. Because the two countries have free trade and because animals are considered mere property, the best we could get was an agreement that shipments would be turned back if any one animal within the shipment showed signs of communicable disease or illness. This protected the Canadian consumer from being a dumping ground for sick animals, but even then it was a tough battle, not against puppy mills, but against the U.S. government arguing on their behalf under the rubric of free trade. It's not that puppy mills are such huge players, financially speaking, it is the principle of a challenge to NAFTA that worried the American government. Ordinary people like you and me, much less animals, lack the resources of big businesses and big governments to fight such battles. We were lucky to find cooperation among Canadian government officials. In fact that partial victory produced an enormous decline in animals being shipped north, a complete ban being impossible under NAFTA. Troubled Waters Perhaps the most visible and volatile of such binational arguments between the two nations has been generated by the Pacific Salmon Treaty, agreed to by the U.S. and Canada in 1985. In a report by David W. Strangway and William D. Rucklehaus submitted to the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States on January 12, 1998, the situation is summarized:
That's an understatement. Tensions have led to such extremes as last spring's three-day blockade of an Alaskan ferryboat by Canadian fishers at Prince Rupert, British Columbia. An already ugly incident turned worse when an American flag was burned in front of TV news cameras, and justifiably outraged American tourists aboard the blockaded ferry. Later the news come out that the flag burner was, in fact, an expatriate American. Last May 20, U.S. negotiator Mary Beth West, a career public servant from the State Department, met with her Canadian counterpart, Yves Fortier, in an effort to break through three years of talks without resolution of the arguments dividing the two countries. Fortier walked out of the talks in frustration. Americans charged that his tantrum was purely political, with a federal election only two weeks away. From the Canadian perspective the latest deal was less a concrete, workable proposal than a promissory note with too many loopholes, designed to placate the two biggest American stakeholders, Alaska, which catches salmon to the north of British Columbia, and Oregon, to the south. I won't bore you with a recital of proposals and counterproposals between the two countries over the sharing of the salmon. The losers in all this are the salmon themselves. It is not only overfishing that is at the root of serious declines in commercially valuable stocks. Bad forestry practices on both sides of the international border; dams in spawning streams and increased pollution from pulp mills and other heavy industries, urbanization and agricultural runoff have further degraded salmon spawning streams. Japanese and fishers of other nationalities can intercept salmon on the high seas. After decades of conflict over the abundance of salmon in the Pacific, the Salmon Treaty of 1985 was naively expected to resolve the concerns of both countries. It required the U.S. to reduce its catch to "only" seven million Fraser River sockeye salmon over a three year period, giving Americans about a third of the "Canadian" fish. But good conservation in British Columbia produced far more salmon than expected, and the U.S. began taking more than their allocated amount, causing Canadians to cry foul. "The treaty is clear," said a representative of the Canadian side, Parzival Copes, a fisheries expert at Simon Fraser University. "The main interest and responsibility for salmon lies in the country of origin." In 1996, the two countries asked former New Zealand ambassador Christopher Beeby to provide an independent assessment of the stalemate. The report, offering several options to the two countries, was rejected by the U.S., who tried to suppress its release, further annoying the Canadian side. Beeby's report was non-binding, and the issue is far from resolved. The bottom line, of course, is that there are not enough salmon to support all who want access to the fishery. And hostility is not only between two countries, but between jurisdictions within each country as states and the province of British Columbia conflict with their respective federal governments. I don't mention these issues out of Canadian frustration. On the contrary, the U.S. has far more and better domestic legislation protecting native wildlife than does Canada or most other nations. And while conflicts between the two countries are regrettable, they really pale in comparison to the degree of mutual respect and cooperation that has long marked their amiable relations. But can such legislation and agreements that attempt to protect national interests, including those designed to conserve wildlife or protect animals, be maintained in the face of an international trade agreement designed by the business sector specifically to facilitate the international flow of money, labor and products? If they don't work without MAI, how can they work with it? The problems that flow from the few examples given should at least give pause. Economic Jurisdictions It has lately been pointed out by economists that more and more regions identify themselves with economic interdependence that transcends national boundaries. Again our two countries, Canada and the United States, provide examples. In the Toronto area, where I live, the businesses and markets in upstate New York have far more influence on us, than do those in Vancouver or St. John's, and businesses and markets in Toronto have far more influence on Buffalo, than do those in Baton Rouge or Los Angeles. That means that each part of the unit that forms an unofficial economic state must be in harmony, in terms of rules and regulations, to best facilitate the interests of business -- the production of profits. Under MAI, if a country or a state or province or even a city were to attempt to enact a new law to protect the environment, or a species of animal or plant at risk from commercial exploitation, it could be considered a form of expropriation. As John McMurtry, of the University of Guelph, in Ontario, put it, "The MAI will grant transnational corporations the right to own any salable natural resource of other countries and have national right to any concessions, license or authorization to extract its oil, forest, mineral or other resources with no obligation to sustain these resources or to use them in the interest of the host country." An essay produced by the Boston Area MAI Action Groups reads, in part:
Could Both Be Right? I do not pretend to be an economist. But too often economists seem to pretend to be conservationists and environmentalists. I'll get to that point further down, but for now let me say that reading the pros and cons of the argument is frustrating, as both sides seem to score points. In my opinion MAI is too vast and far reaching to allow accurate prediction of its ultimate effects on our ability to provide local legislation to protect animals and the environment. Opponents who point to NAFTA to support their opposition are balanced by proponents who also point to NAFTA as indication of success. Did not President Clinton rise up from his sea of troubles last January 28 to proudly claim in his State of the Union message that the deficit had been defeated? The problem is that the two sides are talking about apples and oranges; each is right as each is addressing a different interpretation of success, and both interpretations have their merit. As the U.S. is the strongest partner in NAFTA, is it significant that the Canadian dollar reached, as I was typing this column, its lowest value in history, or that last year Mexico fell into economic catastrophe requiring a multibillion dollar bailout, with subsequent dependence on the TNCs? Am I, for whom a balance sheet is only vaguely more edifying than a column of Egyptian hieroglyphics, not to worry that while economists predicted the boom would continue, the Asian economy recently disintegrated like a roll of toilet paper tossed into a vat of sulfuric acid? It has been argued that NAFTA has been very good for all concerned. And certainly if we define "all concerned" as those who make the most money, the point is well taken. But can we honestly look about us and say that there are now fewer people suffering from poverty in NAFTA countries? Can we say that animals are no longer at risk from trade? I'm not suggesting that profits haven't increased profoundly for many institutions (no matter the state of the Canadian dollar, which actually helps Canadian trade anyway while the Canadian banks continually post record profits while trying to figure out how to get still more). What I do suggest is something more serious. It's not only that ever more money is concentrated in the hands of ever smaller numbers of people, or that the TNCs are seeking to establish policy in place of elected officials. There is something worse that bothers me: sustainability, or lack thereof. "Sustainable use" and its derivatives have become the latest buzzwords of the business community and its followers as they attempt to look suitably "green" and concerned about the environment. It presumes, I fear, a philosophy that has been likened to that of the cancer cell: that there is no check to indefinite growth; that more is better, and that success is its own reward -- even unto the death of the host. And that is why I fear MAI. Sustaining the Sustainable Myth Many animal protection organizations and individuals have refused, on principle, to become involved in certain fora that are key to providing protection for wild animals. The reason is that such organizations and individuals do not wish to support "sustainable use." On one level I can't blame them; the doctrine of "sustainable use" has come to mean exploitation, the very thing we do oppose. But the fact is that the alternative to sustainable use of animals (and plants) is non-sustainable use. We are biological beings and we are animals, thus we cannot divorce ourselves from our dependence on exploitation of other biological beings, both plants and animals. In fact all other species essentially practice sustainable use; to suggest that we cannot do so is to suggest that we are something other than animals. Such separation is, I submit, the basis of the very hubris that, ironically, contributes to our excesses. What is meant by sustainable use? Biologists and ecologists have been known to amuse themselves by trying to ask those who are hooked on the phrase, what it really means. Put rather simply, it means that if we use a living organism -- Pacific salmon, for example -- we ought to use it at a level that is low enough to allow the species to replace its population. Orcas do it. Sea lions do it. Sharks do it. All eat salmon and have eaten salmon from time immemorial without damaging the fish stocks, so why can't we? Support of sustainable use should not be mistaken for mandated use, as seems to be popularly believed; all it means is that when or if such use occurs, it ought to be sustainable. The governments and industries of the world, not to mention various treaties and MAI, itself, all pay lipservice to sustainability. But the very concept of sustainability is at odds with the concept of economic growth, which is the agenda of MAI and of the TNCs who seek to be the policy setters for rest of us. It certainly appears to me that Eythel Gasoline is not concerned about whether or not people, through decisions made by elected governments in the interest of their citizens, are protected from a gasoline additive linked with health hazards; they care about whether or not their ability to make profits has been damaged. Conservation Compromised A growing "right-wing" antipathy toward effective international conservation has created a dogma that economic return is essentially the only effective motivation for conserving wild animals and plants. The exploiters, the dogma goes, will not over-exploit the very thing that provides them with income, therefore the guarantee of income becomes the most effective reason for saving things. It's utter nonsense, the "Big Lie" that nevertheless is strongly supported by those who are themselves motivated by greed, and quite literally can comprehend no other motivation. Worse, too often they can perceive of no other manner of seeking such profits but through the consumptive use of "natural resources." Remember Aristotle Onassis? If he was not the world's richest man during his lifetime, he was certainly the best known of the world's richest men. Like many billionaires, his investments and enterprises were many and varied, but primary among those upon which he built his fortune was whaling. That the bar stools of his yacht were covered with leather made from the sex organs of whales tells you something none too pleasant about his attitude toward the animals whose deaths were among the primary origins of his vast wealth. But did the profits that derived from whaling guarantee the protection of those whales? Of course not. On the contrary, the profits drove the whale killers to such excesses of exploitation as to render species after species endangered. The endangerment followed a pattern, from those whales that provided the best profits, moving on to each less profitable species as the more profitable were wiped out. Did this killing "the goose that laid the golden egg" make sense? In fact, economically speaking, it most certainly did. The men who did the actual killing made modest enough amounts, and loss of whales might well have meant loss of income for them. But loss of whales caused no hardship to the profiteering Onassis. What capitalists need is capital, and it made good sense to maximize returns and invest those profits in still other endeavors. That was understood even in the previous century when Herman Melville, in his great novel, Moby Dick, wrote: "The moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his pipe, and then himself evaporate in a final puff." The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was initiated in 1931. Although it protected the two most critically endangered species, right whales and bowheads, for decade after decade it really oversaw massive destruction of ever decreasing stocks of whales. In 1946 the convention was superseded by the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, which came into force on November 10, 1948. The Whaling Convention established the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which regulates whaling through provisions agreed to by signatory countries at annual meetings. For the first 15 years of IWC's existence the slaughter of whales was relentless. The peak kill was reached in the 1960/61 season, with approximately 64,000 whales killed. It was not a sustainable "catch" and it generated a powerful coalition of conservationists and animal protectionists. In 1982 the IWC accepted amended the Schedule governing whaling as follows:
Thanks in good measure to the deaths of whales during whaling so excessive as to actually destroy the industry, Aristotle Onassis had money to get what he wanted, and that meant, among other acquisitions, the hand of Jacqueline Kennedy in matrimony. I mention the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (as she was often called in the media) because of a comment made by one of her fashion designers. He pointed out that his most famous client was a trend setter, and when a picture of her wearing a leopard skin pillbox hat appeared on the cover of a major magazine, it led to such demands for leopard fur that the species eventually became endangered. He seemed rather proud of that fact. Far from guaranteeing the survival of the species as a valuable resource, its monetary value was responsible for decidedly non-sustainable exploitation. And the investors take their profits and move on. The endangerment of the leopard happened at a time when the world was awakening to the fact that species after species of valuable animal and plant was being wiped out through unregulated international trade. In what was, in my opinion, a somewhat more socially conscious and idealistic time in western history than now, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was initiated. It took at least ten years of concentrated effort by many different people and organizations, but in 1973, CITES was formed. The preamble begins:
And what followed was the text, continually altered through time, of an international agreement that has probably done more than any other such treaty to directly protect wild animals and plants whose value is motivation for their destruction. For starters, it stopped, almost cold, the wholesale destruction of those leopards. I'll be brief about how CITES worked. Put simply, it created three appendices. Appendix I consisted of animals and plants that the parties agreed were critically endangered and at risk of extinction from international trade. Animals and plants placed on Appendix I, including "parts and derivatives" could not be traded between signatory countries (excepting those that placed "reservations" on decisions made by CITES) for "primarily commercial" purposes. Animals and plants on Appendix II, including parts and derivatives, could be traded internationally, but required a permit from both the country of origin and the country receiving the product, said permit establishing that the trade won't contribute to the endangerment of the species, or other species. Usually animals are put on Appendix II because of concern, as expressed by voting by signatory countries, that the species might be at risk from excessive trade. Another reason for being on Appendix II is because of the "lookalike" provision in the text of CITES. The listings apply to the animal, "its parts and derivatives." So while the giant otter of South America is, for example, endangered, and thus protected under Appendix I, our native river otter is not endangered. But a giant otter pelt, in trade, could easily be passed off as a river otter skin by unscrupulous smugglers, and so the non-endangered river otter is placed on Appendix II as a "lookalike" species. There is also an Appendix III category, which can be unilaterally applied by one country to the population of a species of plants and animals in that country. Trade of specimens of Appendix III animals from that country must be treated as Appendix II animals by the importing states. We often hear that CITES does not work. Certainly making it illegal to trade in a given animal or plant product does contribute to illegal trade, but if it's trade, itself, that causes the problem, than the illegal trade becomes an issue of enforcement. My belief is that CITES, in fact, does work, and that is why it has engendered such hostility. Fortunes are to be made from such products as "tortoise shell" (which does not come from tortoises, but rather, from sea turtles); ivory; leopard skin; rhino horn; whale oil and meat; black coral; rare orchids; exotic butterflies and so on. The profits typically accumulate in countries far from the living sources of those profits. The ivory trade did not make the people who butchered elephants rich, but it did make ivory dealers rich, and wealth is a powerful means of influencing government policy. MAI Day! All of which brings us back to MAI. International treaties that seek to provide environmental protection (and there are many, involving everything from clean air to bluefin tuna) too often don't work. The ideals are good, but they ultimately come up against economic interests, just as CITES has done. How much more attractive to the world's top power-brokers would be an international agreement whose purpose is not to protect social interests, the environment, you or me or any animals, but to protect the processes of accumulating those profits that derive from "national-less" international flow of products, labor and profits? The attraction, to those in the most influential positions, is irresistible. And once more it is the animals, I fear, who will lose, big-time. |
