MONSANTO WINS AWARD FOR WORST CORPORATE CLIMATE LOBBYIST
Organic Consumers Association
December 15, 2009
[Visit the link above to watch videos of the Angry Mermaid Award presentations. --DS]
COPENHAGEN - The winner of the Angry Mermaid Award 2009, announced by award-winning writer and journalist Naomi Klein at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen today is the biotech giant Monsanto with 37 per cent of the total vote [1].
Oil giant Shell took second place (18 per cent) in the Award for lobbying to sabotage effective action on climate change, followed by the American Petroleum Institute (14 per cent).
Ten thousand people voted in the Angry Mermaid Award, named after the iconic Copenhagen mermaid who is angry about corporate lobbying on climate change.
Eight candidates were put forward for public vote at angrymermaid.org and individuals at the Klimaforum were also invited to vote [2].
Agriculture giant Monsanto was nominated for promoting its genetically modified (GM) crops as a solution to climate change and pushing for its crops to be used as biofuels. The expansion of GM soy in Latin America is contributing to major deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.
The Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) of which Monsanto is a member, is helping to promote the company’s cause by allowing GM soy to be labelled as “responsible”. Monsanto also wants GM soy to be funded under the Clean Development Mechanism [3].
Speaking for the award organizers, Paul de Clerk from Friends of the Earth International said: “Monsanto has attracted thousands of votes from individuals who are outraged that such an environmentally-damaging form of agriculture should be put forward to tackle climate change.
“Big business must not be allowed to sabotage action against climate change by promoting their vested interests. All the candidates for the Angry Mermaid Award have lobbied to protect their own profits and prevent effective action to tackle climate change. Governments need to stop listening to them and choose real solutions to the climate crisis.”
The Angry Mermaid is organized by Attac Denmark, Corporate Europe Observatory, Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International, Oil Change International and Spinwatch.
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NOTES:
[1] Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times and #1 international bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
[2] The eight nominees for the Angry Mermaid Award were:
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE)
American Petroleum Institute (API)
European Chemical Lobby (Cefic)
International Air Transport Association (IATA)
International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)
Monsanto
Sasol
Shell
[3] Monsanto was nominated for lobbying for carbon credits for their RoundupReady crops, which are being grown for agrofuel. RoundupReady soy doesn’t need ploughing because it can be heavily sprayed with herbicides. Not ploughing the fields leaves more carbon dioxide in the ground, but the vast spread of soy monocultures in Latin America have caused deforestation, the displacement of people, and massive amounts of toxic weed-killer being used instead.
Monsanto also wants GM soy to be funded under the Clean Development Mechanism which would allow polluting industry in the developed world to offset their emissions by buying credits from GM soy projects. Offsetting is a false solution to climate change and does not lead to emissions reductions in developed countries.
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WHY MONSANTO WON THE ANGRY MERMAID AWARD
By Alexis Baden-Mayer & Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association
December 17, 2009
Climate activists have hung Copenhagen's "Angry Mermaid Award" around Monsanto's neck for being a "corporate climate criminal." Monsanto, perhaps the world's most hated corporation, is a major driving force in polluting the atmosphere with billions of pounds of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases (Co2, methane, and nitrous oxide), while at the same time offering false high-tech solutions -- profiting off biotech bullying, environmental destruction, a highly subsidized and unhealthy food chain, and rural poverty.
Even though food security experts agree that mitigating and adapting to climate change is going to require a return to non-GMO organic agriculture, Monsanto has been successful in promoting itself in the US and among world leaders as a so-called no-till "sustainable agriculture" company helping farmers survive climate change by selling them genetically engineered seeds that resist drought and flood.
In fact, Monsanto has never commercialized a single drought or flood-resistant crop. Monsanto's seeds are resistant to one thing: Monsanto's toxic (and increasingly expensive) herbicide RoundUp, which farmers are forced to buy, (and consumers are forced to consume) in ever-larger quantities.
Monsanto rapidly saturated the market with its Frankenseeds by buying up seed companies and making conventional varieties unavailable, and then bullying governments in the Global South, including US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, to accept laws that recognize patents on life and prevent farmers from breeding, saving and sharing seeds.
Monsanto's goal is to patent living organisms, monopolize seeds, outlaw seed saving, and economically and legally enslave farmers, thereby destroying the "competition," the seed and crop biodiversity that farmers have painstakingly cultivated over the last 10,000 years. Instead of the 20,000 different kinds of corn, the 4,000 kinds of potatoes, and the tens thousand other food crops bred for different climates and characteristics, Monsanto wants to make available just a few varieties that are genetically modified to require their chemicals.
Life on Earth will become Life in Hell if Monsanto is allowed to tighten its stranglehold over our seeds and food. To mitigate climate change, we need to shift from chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture to organic farming practices on the world's 12 billion acres of farm, pasture, and rangeland (thereby cleaning up 40-100% of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere) and at the same time drastically reduce the 44-52% of greenhouse gases directly or indirectly caused by industrial agriculture: carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels, cutting down rainforests and destroying soil fertility; methane (CH4) from animal factory farms and rotting non-composted waste in garbage dumps; and nitrous oxide from billions of pounds of nitrate-based fertilizer. To save the climate and ourselves, we need to break Monsanto's stranglehold over food and farming, and instead protect and support the world's remaining 1.5 billion traditional and organic small farmers - the peasants and family farmers who produce 75% of the world's food and fiber and steward what's left of the world's crop and animal biodiversity.
The most devious part of Monsanto's business model is that their Frankenseeds can cross-pollinate with organic and traditional varieties, destroying their unique biodiversity and infecting them with genetically engineered chemical dependence. The Angry Mermaid Award recognizes Monsanto for threatening human survival by pushing a greenhouse gas belching industrial food system that is killing people with obesity and diet-related diseases, while actively attacking healthy alternatives by unleashing genetic pollution that has already begun to contaminate the diverse seed stock that organic and traditional farmers are trying to preserve.
We are in a race against time. Monsanto has already endangered the world's corn, soy, cotton, and canola by saturating the US market with their experiments in genetic engineering. Monsanto's modification of food crops has already modified life as we know it.
With Monsanto's genes in roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., there probably isn't much conventional or even organic soy or corn that hasn't been contaminated. Foreign countries that accept our food aid or are subject to "free trade" agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement are being contaminated, too, even if they haven't officially accepted genetically modified crops. Monsanto corn imported into Mexico for food and feed has been found growing in ditches and ancient Mexican varieties have already been contaminated.
Monsanto was only a niche player in the seed business 12 years ago when it began buying seed companies and aggressively patenting seed genetics. Monsanto bought 24 independent seed companies in the last few years alone and now it has control over as much as 90 percent of seed genetics.
How can we let one corporation have so much power over the world's food supply? We must stop Monsanto before it's too late!