Project Bottle Breathe

Key Points

The U.S. is spending billions of dollars each year to combat the effects of ozone depletion and global warming on human health and weather patterns.
Two groundbreaking international treaties, the Montreal and Kyoto protocols, have failed to adequately curb use of the chemicals causing ozone depletion and global warming.
Ozone depletion and global warming are both man-made and interconnected, and they constitute the most serious environmental crises ever.

Problems with Current U.S. Policy

Key Problems

U.S. agencies responsible for implementing the Montreal Protocol are working at cross-purposes, leading to weak efforts to protect the ozone layer.
Washington has failed to support efforts to accelerate the HCFC phaseout.
The U.S. has not sufficiently supported the adoption of alternatives to ozone depleting and climate changing substances like HCFCs.



Lethargic Response to Ozone Layer Crisis Denounced at Cairo Meeting

Continued CFC production and its use in developing countries, methyl bromide, global warming & lack of controls on new ozone depleting substances still major concerns

CAIRO - November 23 - In a year marked by the largest-ever ozone hole in the Southern Hemisphere and predictions from scientists that depletion will worsen through the coming decades, delegates to the 10th meeting of the parties to the Montreal Protocol are taking insufficient action to counter the crisis, warned three environmental groups.

"The meeting has faced the emergency in the atmosphere with lethargy," said Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and Ozone Action representatives, in a joint statement released today. "The agents of ennui are predictable: representatives of power chemical industries, who fill several long rows of seats in the meeting room, are working hard to protect their investments in chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), methyl bromide, and new ozone depleting chemicals that continue to flood the marketplace and the atmosphere. On many issues, government representatives, led by the U.S. delegation, are marching in step with the industrial lobby."

The groups highlighted four critical issues treated gently by this meeting:

The Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol continues hypocritical funding of projects that consume HCFCs and potent global warming HFCs as replacements for chlorofluorocarbons in developing countries.
"It is totally unacceptable that the relatively paltry resources of the Multilateral Fund are being squandered on substances which will exacerbate our atmospheric crisis when environmentally safer technologies for meeting human needs are available in nearly all sectors," said Mr. John Mate, representative of Greenpeace International. "This is an example of industrialized countries promoting technologies in developing countries which will soon be considered as obsolete in their home markets, due to their use of substances which are to be phased-out or limited under the terms of the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols."



Science has established a firm link between global warming and prolonged ozone layer depletion. It is estimated that global warming will delay the beginning of the recovery of the ozone layer by at least 20 years, resulting in significant increases in dangerous ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth.

Toward a New Foreign Policy

Key Recommendations

The U.S. should legally link the two agreements to ensure that the implementation of the Montreal Protocol doesn’t undermine the Kyoto Protocol.
The U.S. should work to phase out HCFCs by 2004.
The U.S. should increase the amount of funding it provides to the Multilateral Fund by designating a portion of the existing ozone depleting chemical tax to the fund.


Sources for More Information

Organizations

Center for International Environmental Law
Email: dgoldberg@ciel.org
Website: http://www.ciel.org/
Contact: Don Goldberg

Friends of the Earth
Email: JVallette@foe.org
Website: http://www.foe.org/ptp/atmosphere/
Contact: Jessica Vallette

Greenpeace International
Website: http://www.greenpeace.org/
Contact: John Mate

Ozone Action
Email: ozone_action@ozone.org
Website: http://www.ozone.org/
Contact: Kert Davies/John Passacantado

Pesticide Action Network-Africa
Email: panafric@telecomplus.sn
Website: http://panafric.webjump.com/
Contact: Dr. Cheikh H. Sylla

Pesticide Action Network -Mexico
Email: rapam@mpsnet.com.mx


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Matter Matters

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, a great Jesuit of the century, was thought to be a controversial Christian. While reading his book The Phenomenon of Man, his great contribution to the world, especially to the world of philosophy, one is touched by his humble and simple religious life and by his exceptionally wide knowledge and the new way he looks at existence. At the same time, the reader is disturbed to know that Teilhard was sent to China as a punishment for his scientific approach.

Teilhard, a prophet, a mystic, a scientific philosopher, and a committed priest, was born in 1881 at an Auvergne in the heart of France. He was the fourth in a family of 12 children. At the age of 12 he was sent to the Jesuit college of Longre. His teacher, Henri Bremond, said that he was a serious student, “perhaps too serious”.

At the age of 18, he joined the Jesuit Order. He had hardly started his studies in geology in Paris when the World War I broke out. He was enlisted as a stretcher-bearer and served during the whole period of the war. When the war was over, he returned to his scientific research and became a Professor of Geology in 1920 at the Catholic Institute of Paris.

After three years of Teaching he went to China as a member of the scientific expedition which eventually discovered the Synanthropus, one of the most primitive specimens of man. When he returned to France in 1924, he faced opposition to his scientific ideas from his superiors. It was about this time he made the pathetic remark: “If one tries to break new ground, or to walk in a new path, one walks straight to Calvary.”

In 1927 he went back to China and lived uninterruptedly for 27 years. It was there that he wrote his two famous books: Divine Milieu (1927) and The Phenomenon of Man (1938). Death came to him suddenly at the age of 74 after his return to the USA in 1954. He died peacefully on Easter Sunday April 10, 1955 at St. Patrick’s Church, New York. After Mass he mingled with the crowds, that human phenomenon he loved so much and then went to a concert. That is when he fell. And his last words were: “I don’t remember a thing … oh … this time it is terrible”.

A few years before his death Teilhard had told a priest friend, “Pray hard for me that I may not die bitter”. In fact he did not die bitter, but died as a deserted son. Neither the Church nor the Jesuit Order encouraged him in his work during his life-time. It was only some years after his death; the Church authorities and individual clergymen realized the importance and relevance of Teilhard’s scientific and philosophical ideas. Today more and more people, Christians as well as non-Christians, accept his views and take keen interest in studying his philosophy.

Teilhard’s message
In his book The Phenomenon of Man he talks about pre-life, life, the Alpha Point, the Omega Point, and so on. According to him the pre-life is what we call matter. In calling it ‘pre-life’, he wants to imply that there is already a direction, a tendency, an obscure sort of will in matter.

He distinguishes three things in matter: plurality, by virtue of which the substratum of the tangible Universe, dizzily numerous and minute, slopes down towards a limitless base, disintegrating as it goes. Secondly Unity, which pushes the elements towards each other so as to comprehend them together in one great whole, the Universe. And finally Energy, or capacity for interaction. The immediate consequence of this is that the world forms ‘a system by its plurality, a Totum by its energy’.
What is new here is that we can see matter under the twin categories of duration and of evolution, instead of fixity and geometry. The whole universe in fact, is found to be engaged in an immense evolution, to which astronomy claims to be able to assign an initial date – between five billion five hundred million and eight billion five hundred million. Teilhard recalls at this point that two principal laws rule matter – that of the conservation of energy and that of the degradation of energy. The more the quantum of energy in the world functions, the more it gets used up. This is the fundamental phenomenon of the world which necessarily leads to the “Phenomenon of Man”.

Law of Complexity
The great factor in the evolutionary phenomenon as expounded by Teilhard is the “great law of complexity and consciousness’. It is a law implying a structure, a converging psychic curvature of the world upon itself. This is called the metaphysics of union and fits well into the evolutionary conception of the cosmos. Evolution takes place along the axis of complexification – we pass from the relatively simple to the complex. Thus we pass on to atoms from atomic particles, from atoms to molecule and successively to molecular compounds, carbon compounds, viruses, cells living organism, plants, animals and finally man; briefly pre-life, life and thought.

“All energy”, says Teilhard, “is of a psychic nature.” But this fundamental energy is divided in to two distinct components: a tangential energy, which brings together all the elements of the world in an ever-increasing complexities, and a radical energy which draws it in the direction of a state even more complex and even more directed towards the future.

According to Teilhard, matter and psychism were co-created. Just as man’s body goes back to some primordial matter, which has gradually evolved, so does his psychism or soul. The whole matter is permeated by the spirit, although this is not evident at all levels. The whole man, body and soul, thus emerged form matter. Just as matter evolves from the very beginning into a body that becomes more and more human, so psychism from the very beginning evolves into psychism that becomes more and more human. To put it in Teilhard’s own words: “We must accept what science tells us that man was born from the earth. But more logical than scientists when they lecture to us, we must carry the lesson to its conclusion, that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world, not only his flesh and bones, but also his incredible power of thought.”
The most revolutionary and fruitful aspect of our present age is the relationship it has brought to light between matter and spirit; spirit is no longer independent of matter and vice versa. It follows from this that spirit and matter are two facets of one and the same thing. Man’s soul and his body, the inside and outside (Teilhard would say “within and without”) have existed at all times. In Teilhard’s words: “In the world nothing could ever burst forth as final, across the different thresholds, successively traversed by evolution which has not already existed in some obscure primordial way.” And this applies to life, to consciousness and thought.

Everything matters but only while it’s transforming… Pure energy and back again… it matters… while you got it, better spend it wisely cause we can only spend it once, and by the time it returns… we’re gone, cause we’re wasting it… so really, we’re burning time all while cooling off… like the dead… gone is gone and I, For One, am not gonna waste it! Or atleast just waste as little as possible.

My pictures… in my pictures, I’m saving some of the waste… saving a bit of it, therefore; being busy makes time speed up… so like I said, we’re burning it, DAMMIT! Fastly… and if my subjects would just really look at themselves, they could burn less, by saving themselves… in a picture that only costs 5 dollars.

Well, actually… I need 10 dollars to cover expenses and make a little profit per picture… but that 10 dollars can save some of the time gone by… Lost… and thereby make up for lost energy in remembering who they were, just now… on film.

The Asteroid of 2029 is out there and it’s coming right by us… and if it bumps into another asteroid we haven’t mapped yet… then it in FACT it is coming right AT US! And we don’t even know it! If you will only remember this picture whenever you go… you might just be fortunate enough to recognize our destiny before it returns to haunt as fate.

In the land of the rising… before it’s too late… we’re waiting blindly, while the rising comes… the rising will obliterate us before 2029... We won’t even make it to 2029... SHIT! We may not even make it to Christmas!

I’m scared that I may have already waited too long to save myself… because my depression wastes energy… burns it… and trying not to drink too much is depressing… which makes me waste more than I can save. So, basically, I drink to forget how depressing everything is… But everything matters.

Especially my portraits… which energize the moment and theoretically can slow the effects of time… stop it even… while Polaroids cool down, so are we… therefore; my pictures save lives… a little bit at a time… because the Instant Memory applauds us and our Heroism is Living a great life, NOW. Bad lives burns more cells.

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The Actuarial Probability

Actuarial science applies mathematical and statistical methods to finance and insurance, particularly to risk assessment. Actuaries are professionals who are qualified in this field through examinations and experience.
Actuarial science includes a number of interrelating disciplines, including probability and statistics, finance, and economics. Historically, actuarial science used deterministic models in the construction of tables and premiums. The science has gone through revolutionary changes during the last 30 years due to the proliferation of high speed computers and the synergy of stochastic actuarial models with modern financial theory (Frees 1990).

Actuarial science became a formal mathematical discipline in the late 17th century with the increased demand for long-term insurance coverages such as Burial, Life insurance, and Annuities. These long term coverages required that money be set aside to pay future benefits, such as annuity and death benefits many years into the future. This requires estimating future contingent events, such as the rates of mortality by age, as well as the development of mathematical techniques for discounting the value of funds set aside and invested. This led to the development of an important actuarial concept, referred to as the Present value of a future sum.

In the history of warfare, nuclear weapons have been used only twice, both during the closing days of World War II. The first event occurred on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type device code-named "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The second event occurred three days later when the United States dropped a plutonium implosion-type device code-named "Fat Man" on the city of Nagasaki. The use of these weapons, which resulted in the immediate deaths of around 120,000 people and even more over time, was and remains controversial. (See Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a full discussion).
Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for testing and demonstration purposes. The only countries known to have detonated such weapons are (chronologically) the United States, The former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, The People's Republic of China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
Various other countries may hold nuclear weapons but have never publicly admitted possession, or their claims to possession have not been verified. For example, Israel has modern airborne delivery systems and appears to have an extensive nuclear program with hundreds of warheads (see Israel and weapons of mass destruction), though it officially maintains a policy of "ambiguity" with respect to its actual possession of nuclear weapons. According to some estimates, it possesses as many as 200 nuclear warheads. Iran currently stands accused by the United Nations of attempting to develop nuclear capabilities, though its government claims that its acknowledged nuclear activities, such as uranium enrichment, are for peaceful purposes. South Africa also secretly developed a small nuclear arsenal, but disassembled it in the early 1990s (For more information see List of states with nuclear weapons).

In October 2004, the Iraqi interim government warned the U.S. that nearly 380 tons of conventional explosives had been removed from the Al-Qa'qaa facility. The Bush Administration was criticized for failing to guard known weapons stashes of this size after the invasion. Critics of the Bush Administration claimed that U.S. forces were to blame for the looting, which put weapons that were formerly under UN control into the hands of insurgents.
The Bush Administration asserted before the 2004 U.S. election that the explosives were either removed by Iraq before invaders captured the facility, or properly accounted for by US forces[1], even while White House and Pentagon officials acknowledged that they had vanished after the invasion.[2]
MSNBC News wrote:
"Whether Saddam Hussein’s forces removed the explosives before U.S. forces arrived April 3, 2003, or whether they fell into the hands of looters and insurgents afterward — because the site was not guarded by U.S. troops — has become a key issue in the campaign."[3]
Time Magazine reported the sequence of events: "In late April IAEA's chief weapons inspector for Iraq warned the U.S. of the vulnerability of the site, and in May 2003, an internal IAEA memo warned that terrorists could be looting "the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Seventeen months later, on Oct. 10, in response to a long-standing request from the IAEA to account for sensitive materials, the interim Iraqi government notified the agency that al-Qaqaa had been stripped clean. The White House learned about the notification a few days later."[4]
Evidence indicated that the explosives were most likely removed after invading US forces captured the facility. The looting was witnessed by U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsman from separate units as well as officials of the new Iraqi government.[5] Frank Rich editorialized in the New York Times (May 15, 2005):

Russia possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the world. Russia declared an arsenal of 40,000 tons of chemical weapons in 1997 and is said to have around 16,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled in 2005 with perhaps only 7,200 of them operational, and around 8,800 inactive, making its stockpile the largest in the world. The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol on January 22, 1975 with reservations. The reservations were later dropped on January 18, 2001.

As of 2005, Russia is estimated to have around 7,200 active nuclear warheads in its arsenal, and around 8,800 inactive or on "inactive reserve," for a total nuclear arsenal of around 16,000 warheads.[1] Russia is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" (NWS) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Russia ratified (as the Soviet Union) in 1968.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of Soviet-era nuclear warheads remained on the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Under the terms of the Lisbon Protocol to the NPT, and following the 1995 Trilateral Agreement between Russia, Belarus, and the USA, these were transferred to Russia, leaving Russia as the sole inheritor of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. It is estimated that the USSR had approximately 35,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled at the time of its collapse.


USSR/Russian nuclear warhead stockpiles, 1949-2002.
In 2002, the United States and Russia agreed to reduce their stockpiles to not more than 2200 warheads each in the SORT treaty. In 2003, the US rejected Russian proposals to further reduce both nation's nuclear stockpiles to 1500 each. Many say that this refusal was a sign of US aggression and accuse the US of thus leaving the danger of US and Russia's mutual destruction. On the other hand, Russia is actively producing and developing new nuclear weapons. Since 1997 it manufactures Topol-M (SS-27) ICBMs which current US air defence systems are unable to destroy.

This is not a plea of WMD propaganda...this is simply a factual look at probabilities...if something can...IT WILL.

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