Treaties that the White House should reconsider:

To slow global warming from burning fossil fuels, the White House must agree with other nations to curb using fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide from cars accounts for 60 percent of air pollutants and chlorofluorocarbons, (CFCs), account for 23 percent. Global warming, resuting from air pollution, causes sea level rise, coastline submergences and droughts.

Ozone holes above us bode more skin cancer. Fossil fuel usage creates 5 billion tons of carbon, while deforestation emits one billion tons. Our Gulf War smogged more.

Ozone Montreal Treaty: While the White House refused to sign the 1987 ozone treaty to control carbofluorocarbon emissions by 50 percent, CFCs increase 30 percent yearly. Despite the benefits, the White House refused to partially aid developing nations to use higher-priced CFC substitutes.

General Agreement on Tariffs-Trade (GATT): The White House should not promote deregulation of the 90 percent of international commodities controlled by this revised 1992 agreement. It would devastate environmental, consumer and worker safety regulations, increasing even more unhealthy, pesticided imports here.

Approval of GATT will force nations like us to open markets to produce, containing 50 times EPA’s acceptable DDT level. Observing even weak EPA rules can be termed free-trade restraint. Obliterating trade standards on safety is GATT’s purpose, profiting the trans-national companies.

GATT aims to end all farm subsidies tha partly defray the below-cost pricing set since 1948. The GATT agreement aims at below-cost, non-parity, agricultural pricing and ending any compensating subsidies here and worldwide, forcing more family farmers off their farms or onto marginal land use.

The Non-proliferation Treaty signed by most nations aims to keep most countries from building nuclear bombs if the superpowers observe the treaty. The United States has 30,000 bombs, China has five, Israel’s has the potential for 10 daily, Iraq has a mere suitcase-sized one.

Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban: The White House refuses to stop nuclear bomb testing, despite the Cold War’s end.

Bernice Russell

Alumnus

Economics