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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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Infinito case comes to a key point
Dear A.M. Costa Rica: Regarding the Las Crucitas arbitration; The initial meetings of the arbitration tribunal, addressing charges that Costa Rica breached terms of the Canada Costa Rica Bilateral Investment Treaty, are being held soon. The setting is the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. By now, I'm sure everyone is aware and probably tired of the political mismanagement and extensive lobbying by special interest groups that has led us to this critical point, therefore I will not restate the history. At these first meetings, the Ministerio of Comercio Exterior and its legal team representing the interests of Costa Rica will submit a jurisdictional objection to the tribunal, challenging the tribunals authority to preside over the case. That challenge is the only hope for Costa Rica to avoid paying compensation costs to Infinito Gold. I'll put this as simply as I can. Costa Rica will argue that the Las Crucitas issue was settled by the Costa Rican judicial system, and Infinito will argue that it did not receive "fair and equitable treatment" as described in the terms of the bilateral investment treaty and therefore seeks remedy with the tribunal. There are other legal technical arguments that will be raised but suffice to say that Infinito's case is strong. The tribunal will (according to recent cases) note Costa Rica's objection and will issue its decision after it hears submissions on the merits of the case at a later date. Now to the cost. Infinito's claim is for $93,896,754 plus costs and interest. The company also asks for other such compensation as the tribunal sees fit. It is that claim that allows the tribunal to place a value on Las Crucitas on the day it was annulled. That value is easily in the $300-$400 million dollar range. Gold was averaging around $1400/ounce at that time, and the value of Las Crucitas, if it were sold to another company, represented a fully permitted project with resources of 1.24 million ounces of gold in the ground. That value is almost 1 percent of Costa Rica's GDP, money that could have been put to better use improving schools, hospitals and local infrastructure. The allegations by special interest groups that an illegal donation was made to the Arias foundation and the ridiculous malfeasance charges laid against six environmental employees (eventually proved innocent) reduced Costa Rican politics to a level previously thought impossible. These actions have only hardened Infinito's resolve to see this case through to its rightful conclusion. If Las Crucitas had been cancelled by the Abel Pacheco administration and termination costs paid to Infinito, which they are on record as stating, then Costa Rica would not be in this situation. This international arbitration case is not an environmental issue. Infinito Gold would have utilized state of the art equipment. Infinito Gold was and is fully committed to protecting the environment. Its environmental impact assessment was approved and actually commended as exceeding requirements. No, this arbitration is entirely about the fact that Infinito was encouraged to invest capital in Costa Rica, was given legal assurance by the Sala 1V that its project at Las Crucitas could legally continue, received presidential approval for the project and then had its concession annulled by a lower court and denied an appeal by the Sala 1V court which had previously approved the project. It is now time for the Costa Rican people to ask the question, who is running Costa Rica, the duly elected government or special interest groups? These special interest groups and the politicians who jump to their every whim must be held accountable when the compensation payment is determined. $300 Million will take a lot of explaining. Stewart Hay
Canada  A typical Nathan's A touch of Coney
Island at July 4 picnic
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Those who go to the American Colony Committee Independence Day bash better be hungry. The committee reports that 3,500 Nathan's Famous hot dogs will be available. And they will be grilled, not drowned in hot water, picnic organizers promise There are plenty of stories behind the Nathan's hot dog that originated in Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century. They are beef with special ingredients. These New York-style dogs are just one of the incentives to visit the picnic July 4 at the Cervercería Costa Rica grounds west of San José from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Admission is 5,000 colons and the beer and hot dogs are free. The picnic is primarily for expat youngsters who might not have experienced a U.S. Independence Day. There's a pretty good chance that they never have experienced a Nathan's dog because the company is relatively new to Costa Rican food courts. The climax is the raising of the U.S. Flag by members of the U.S. Marine security detachment at the U.S. Embassy. This is the 55th annual picnic for U.S. expats and their families. More information is HERE! Taiwan courting tourists from mainland By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Taiwanese people seldom saw tour groups from their old political rival China before 2008. Since the two sides reached an agreement on tourism that year, millions of mainlanders have visited the nearby island to take in its sights. But tourists and Taiwanese now complain of how they are treated. Now, Taiwan’s government has a new scheme to ease rising tensions. Chinese tourists have been able to visit Taiwan in groups for seven years, but find bus rides too long with too many mandatory shopping stops. Some wait 40 days to get permits for the trip. Taiwanese complain that the same groups are too loud, litter the ground and bargain too hard on small purchases. Taiwan’s government hopes to ease those complaints with a month-old scheme that would guarantee quick permits and smooth travel for those willing to spend the most money. Anthony Liao, president of Phoenix Tours in Taipei, said this program to lure high-end travel groups will increase overall travel from China by 10 percent. The former standing supervisor in a local travel association adds that Chinese tourists want more quality time at Taiwan’s attractions. He said there has been a saying among mainland Chinese coming to Taiwan, which is that they eat worse than pigs and run faster than horses. Liao said that is their way of making light of things. For decades, mainland Chinese seldom visited Taiwan because the Beijing government sees the island as part of its territory and Taiwanese officials had worried that an influx of people would undermine their self-rule. After Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008, the two sides shelved political differences to begin signing economic agreements, which included a deal to open group tourism. The island now receives as many as 5,000 group tourists per day, bringing the total arrivals from China to 2.8 million last year alone. Their visits gave the Taiwanese hospitality sector revenues of $14 billion last year, more than twice the figure of 2008. Industry people say the surge in arrivals has increased competition among travel agencies, in turn lowering prices and quality of service. That growth in low-end tourism has angered both sides, prompting a search for new ways to sustain the benefits to Taiwan's hotels, restaurants and travel agents..
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, June 19, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 120 | |
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| Old photo of a national hero surfaces and becomes a gift to
country |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
By the late 1850s portrait photography was well established. The science of taking photos evolved from the mid-1830s as newer procedures and chemicals reduced the time needed to expose a film from hours to a few seconds. One of those who posed for a photo was Juan Rafael Mora, who served as president of Costa Rica. There are plenty of paintings of him, but until this week Costa Rica did not have a clear and detailed photo. Cornell University had one, and a digital copy has been given to Costa Rican officials who visited New York to sign a scholarship agreement. The photo is believed to have been taken in Panamá, said a summary from Casa Presidencial. It attributed the history to a researcher named Luko Hilje. The government also praised Costa Rican businessman Mauricio Ortiz Ortiz and its U.S. ambassador, Román F. Macaya Hayes, for arranging the delivery of the copy. Mora was the president who rallied the country in 1856 to defeat William Walker and the filibusterers in Nicaragua. Political victories are tenuous, and Mora was ousted a short time later and had to flee the country. According to Casa Presidencial, he gave the photo of himself to the captain of a ship that carried him into exile. That was John M. Dow, whose photo album ended up at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, according to Casa Presidencial. Mora was born in 1814, and the country has been celebrating the bicentennial of his birth. Ortiz of Mudanzas APA Worldwide Movers is making documentaries related to |
 Casa Presdiencial photo
Juan
Rafael Mora photo is displayed in New York.
the theme, Casa Presidencial said. Government officials are a little sensitive about Mora because when he returned to Costa Rica both he and his brother-in-law, Gen. José María Cañas Escamilla, failed to find the public support they expected and were sent to firing squads. |
| Pavas man detained in another case of fraud via Internet ads |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial agents detained an individual Thursday they said was the outside man for a ring of scammers who are operating out of the nation's prisons. The 23-year-old man was detained in Lomas del Río en Pavas. The Judicial Investigating Organization said that he served as the link between victims and imprisoned scammers. There are at lest six fraud cases involved, but the list probably could include many more. This is another one of those cases that involves victims who posted articles for sale on the Internet. The articles ranged from motorcycles, to video games, to beauty shop items and even to animals. Most of the time innocent third parties were enlisted to pick up goods or to pay for them. Bad checks were used, but the |
seller
did not
know that until the check bounded a day later, said judicial agents. Then there was the old trick of pretending to be a physician and meeting the seller at a hospital. In these cases innocent taxi drivers were used to accept the item for sale. Later they received telephone instructions of where to delivery the item. Meanwhile the seller was off in a futile search trying to locate the office where he or she would be paid. Sometimes, agent said, the ring would locate a messenger from the very same Internet source. Agents accused the man detained Thursday of filling many roles, including accepting money and also being the final recipient of the item. Prisoners can make calls from their cells using smuggled cell telephones. The man detained Thursday also was accused of making deposits to the accounts of jailed confederates. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| DNA analysis of Kennewick
Man ties him to Native Americans |
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By the Stanford Medicine news staff
DNA from the 8,500-year-old skeleton of an adult man found in 1996 in Washington is more closely related to Native American populations than to any other population in the world, according to an international collaborative study conducted by scientists at the University of Copenhagen and the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding challenges a 2014 study that concluded, based on anatomical data, that Kennewick Man was more related to Japanese or Polynesian peoples than to Native Americans. The study is likely to reignite a long-standing legal dispute regarding the skeleton’s provenance and its eventual fate. “Using ancient DNA, we were able to show that Kennewick Man is more closely related to Native Americans than any other population,” said postdoctoral scholar Morten Rasmussen. “Due to the massive controversy surrounding the origins of this sample, the ability to address this will be of interest to both scientists and tribal members.” Rasmussen is the lead author of the research, published online in Nature. The senior author of the study is Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for GeoGenetics. Rasmussen initiated the study at the Centre for GeoGenetics and completed the analysis of the DNA sequences at Stanford, working with Carlos Bustamante, professor of genetics. The skeleton, known as Kennewick Man, is called the Ancient One by Native American groups, which believe the bones are those of a long-ago ancestor. In 2004, five Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest requested repatriation of the remains for reburial, but the proceedings were halted to allow further investigation into the skeleton’s origins. Now an exhaustive genetic study of the tiny bits of ancient DNA from a bone in the skeleton’s hand rebuts the conclusions of the 2014 study. The researchers used the latest in DNA isolation and sequencing techniques to pick out and analyze the skeleton’s DNA. “Although the exterior preservation of the skeleton was pristine, the DNA in the sample was highly degraded and dominated by DNA from soil bacteria and other environmental sources,” said Rasmussen. “With the little material we had available, we applied the newest methods to squeeze every piece of information out of the bone.” The researchers compared the DNA sequences from the skeleton with those of modern Native Americans. They concluded that, although it is impossible to assign Kennewick Man to a particular tribe, he is closely related to |
 Smithsonian/ Brittany Tatchell
Rconstruction
of the Kennewick Man
members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington. Willerslev and Bustamante are well-known for their studies of ancient DNA. Willerslev and Rasmussen recently published the genome of a young child, known as the Anzick boy, buried more than 12,000 years ago in Montana. That study showed that the boy was also closely related to modern Native American groups, in particular those of South and Central America. In 2012, Bustamante and colleagues used DNA from the 5,300-year-old Iceman mummy called Otzi to show the man likely hailed from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia rather than the frigid Alps, where his body was found. “Advances in DNA sequencing technology have given us important new tools for studying the great human diasporas and the history of indigenous populations,” said Bustamante. “Now we are seeing its adoption in new areas, including forensics and archeology. The case of Kennewick Man is particularly interesting given the debates surrounding the origins of Native American populations. Morten’s work aligns beautifully with the oral history of native peoples and lends strong support for their claims. I believe that ancient DNA analysis could become standard practice in these types of cases since it can provide objective means of assessing both genetic ancestry and relatedness to living individuals and present-day populations.” |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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| Hate crime charge likely for church shooting suspect By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. authorities said they would pursue federal hate crime charges after the man allegedly behind Wednesday night's fatal mass shooting at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, was arrested. The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified Dylann Storm Roof, 21, of Lexington, South Carolina, as their suspect. Roof was stopped in a car in North Carolina Thursday afternoon and taken into custody in Shelby, North Carolina, about 400 kilometers from the church. The suspect was flown back to South Carolina in the evening, in the custody of the FBI. Carson Cowles, the suspect’s uncle, said that he recognized Roof in a photo released by police and described him as quiet and soft-spoken. Roof's father gave Dylann Roof a .45-caliber pistol for his 21st birthday in April, Cowles added. Charleston Chief Greg Mullen said at a news conference earlier Thursday that the gunman, described as a white male in his early to mid-20s, walked into the church during a weekly prayer meeting and sat with the churchgoers for about an hour before he opened fire, killing nine people. Several others were wounded, Mullen said. In televised remarks to the press, President Barack Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, personally know several members of the church, including the pastor who was murdered. “To say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and community doesn’t say enough to communicate the heartache, sadness and anger that we feel,” Obama said. The president condemned the killings as "senseless." Obama noted Emanuel African Methodist's long involvement in the nation's civil rights movement. "Mother Emmanuel is in fact more than a church," he said. "This was a place of worship founded by African-Americans seeking liberty." He said Americans must come to terms with increasing gun violence in the nation. "Now is the time for mourning and for healing, but let's be clear — at some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries," he said. Wednesday's incident was at least the 11th time the president has publicly addressed the country following a mass shooting, a review of White House records shows. The U.S. Justice Department said earlier Thursday it had opened a federal hate crime investigation into the shooting. The hate crime investigation involves the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in South Carolina. “This is a crime that has reached into the heart of that community ... acts like this have no place in our country," U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said. Three men and six women were killed in the church. Clementa Pinckney, the senior pastor and a South Carolina state senator, was killed in the rampage. Pinckney, 41, was a married father of two who was elected to the statehouse at age 23, making him its youngest member at the time. Choking back tears, South Carolina's Gov. Nikki Haley asked for prayers for the victims' families. "We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken. And so we have some grieving to do and we've got some pain we have to go through. Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe, and that's not something we ever thought we had to deal with," she said. Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley called the assault "a most unspeakable and heartbreaking tragedy." “The only reason that someone could walk into a church and shoot people praying is out of hate,” Riley said. “It is the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine, and we will bring that person to justice. This is one hateful person.” Riley pledged the Charleston community would "put our arms around that church and that church family." One part of U.S. trade plan salvaged by House vote By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. House of Representatives has rescued President Barack Obama’s ambitious Asia-Pacific trade agenda for the time being, but its future remains uncertain. After the president’s free-trade agenda suffered a stunning defeat last week, the House voted 218-208 Thursday to pass legislation to give presidents the power to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments. Most Republicans joined with pro-trade Democrats to pass a stand-alone trade promotion authority bill. The House separated trade promotion authority from a related measure, trade adjustment assistance, the aim of which is to help workers who are hurt by international trade agreements. The trade adjustment assistance was unexpectedly defeated last Friday by a large number of the president’s fellow Democrats voting against it in a strategic move to sink trade promotion authority. Republican leaders in the House and the Senate say they are committed to passing both the trade promotion authority and the trade adjustment assistance, but a number of Democrats say they do not see a path to the workers' assistance bill passing in the House. The path forward for so-called fast-track authority for the president to wrap up trade agreements is uncertain. The bill just passed by the House goes back to the Senate, where all eyes will be on pro-trade Senate Democrats. Some of them have said they will not vote for it without assurances that the workers relief bill will pass in both chambers – a difficult undertaking. Asked about the complicated maneuvering on the different bills, with Republican leaders collaborating with the White House to push free trade, Republican House Speaker John Boehner called it bizarre. On the House floor Thursday, pro-trade Republicans and Democrats on the one side and anti-trade agreement Democrats on the other side had their second heated debate on trade promotion authority in two weeks. Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican, started the debate by saying, “Welcome back!” Ryan said it is not complicated to understand why America needs to be a part of multinational trade agreements: “Ninety-five percent of the world’s consumers - they don’t live in America, they live in other countries. And if we want to make more things here, and sell them there, then we need to tear down those trade barriers that make America’s goods and services more expensive,” he said. Some Democrats agreed. But other Democrats, labor unions and environmentalists strongly oppose fast-track authority, saying past free trade agreements have resulted in thousands of American jobs being sent overseas. Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat, said, “This bill is catastrophic for our national security. It hollows out our manufacturing base. And it is the greatest gift to China that we could possibly make.” Sherman said the bill formally sanctions China’s currency manipulation. Passionate debates on the merits of free trade agreements are likely to continue in the House and Senate next week. Refugees hold celebration in U.S. State of Texas By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Texas has become a favored place for refugee resettlement in the United States, especially Houston. Ten percent of the refugees in the U.S. live in the Lone Star State. At a recent World Refugee Day celebration, people who left everything behind to find a new home in Houston enjoyed music, dancing, food and play. Saniha Lakhpaty, who works with the Catholic Charities refugee program, organized this year's event, held at the University of Saint Thomas. “They left behind a lot, and now they are here, settling into a new home," Lakhpaty said. "Houston has more refugees than any other city — many Houstonians actually do not know that. This is an opportunity for us to come together once a year and celebrate them.” Most refugees avoid talking about what compelled them to leave their countries. “Refugees do not want to tell their story," Lakhpaty said. "They don’t want to relive it. It is already difficult for them to resettle because many of them don’t speak English. So, you have engineers and doctors working labor jobs just to get started and make life for their family.” One thing that helps is the increasing diversity of Houston’s population. Zain Alattar, who works with the YMCA’s refugee program, speaks Arabic and several other languages. “I was raised in a pretty multicultural, multilingual environment, so now I help out with the refugees and I enjoy supporting the cause,” Alattar said. Refugees from various countries find common ground playing football, called soccer in the United States. So World Refugee Day planners brought teams from various nationalities together in a park for a set of games. One team, the Texas Tigers, was made up of Sudanese refugees. Another squad, made up mostly of players from Cuba, Algeria and Iraq, included women like Romi from Honduras, who works with Interfaith Ministries. “I just want to have fun and see some of the people from other agencies," she said, "because we don’t talk that much with them and I would like to meet them.” Russia holdings in West frozen by court judgment By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Moscow has protested the seizure of Russian government assets in France and Belgium, a move taken to enforce a multi-billion-dollar judgment in a lawsuit filed by shareholders of Yukos, the now-defunct Russian oil company founded by tycoon-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Last July, the Permanent Court for Arbitration in The Hague ordered Russia to pay $50 billion to former Yukos shareholders, including Khodorkovsky, who charged that the government had used tax claims to destroy the company. Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday that it summoned Belgium's ambassador in Moscow, Alex Van Meeuwen, Tuesday to protest the seizure of accounts belonging to the Russian Embassy in Belgium, Russia's representative offices at the European Union and NATO in Brussels, and a number of other Russian organizations in Belgium. The ministry demanded Brussels take immediate measures to restore the Russian Federation's sovereign rights and guarantee the normal operation of Russian institutions and legal entities in Belgium, or possibly face appropriate retaliatory measures against Belgian property in Russia, including that belonging to its embassy in Moscow. Russian media reported that 47 Belgian and Russian enterprises registered in the Brussels region were notified Wednesday that they must submit a list of Russian assets in their possession within 15 days. Tim Osborne, the director of GML, a holding company created by the five major shareholders in Yukos, told the French news agency Thursday that accounts in around 40 banks and eight or nine buildings in France had been frozen. Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said Thursday the amount of Russians funds frozen in France and Belgium was insignificant, but that his government considered the seizures illegal and would challenge them. He and other Russian officials indicated that similar action against Moscow was likely elsewhere. Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, after which Yukos was broken up and sold off, with the state oil company Rosneft acquiring most of its assets. The former tycoon, who was released from prison in December 2013 after serving 10 years, said via a Russian social network Thursday that he was glad about "seizure of the property of our bureaucracy in Belgium" and expected to see the money from those assets go towards projects useful to Russian society. Military leading the list of in what Americans confide By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Americans still have faith in the U.S. military even though they have lost confidence in many of the other institutions that are central to U.S. society. Americans also feel good about small businesses, which are often the cornerstones of their communities. The military and small business are actually rated higher than their historical norms, with a significant percentage of people saying they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in both. Confidence in the police (52 percent) and organized religion (42 percent) are also at all-time lows, well below their historical averages. “The church and organized religion is losing its footing as a pillar of moral leadership in the nation’s culture,” according to Gallup. The polling service says confidence in religion started falling in the 1980s, and experienced a sharp decline between 2001 and 2002 when the Roman Catholic Church was embroiled in a major sexual abuse scandal involving priests. And, in recent months, incidents involving the actions of white police officers that led to the deaths of black male suspects have captured headlines across the country. Congress and big business fare even more poorly. Both fall to the bottom of the scale with only 8 percent expressing confidence in Congress and 21 percent in big business. See a graphic with results HERE! The results are based on a Gallup poll conducted June 2 to 7. Americans’ frustration with the government’s performance has eroded the trust they have in all U.S. political institutions, according to Gallup, which adds that Americans’ confidence in banks fell after the housing bubble burst and the financial crisis that followed. Americans’ confidence in most major institutions has fallen since 2004, the last time most institutions were at or above their historical average levels of confidence. Since then, the United States has been bogged down with prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a major recession, and partisan gridlock in Washington. The year 2004 was also the last time Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the country averaged better than 40 percent. Right now, 28 percent of Americans say they’re satisfied with the state of the nation. Gene switch defeats cancer in experiment with rats By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
By manipulating a single gene, researchers turned cancerous colorectal cells back into normal tissue in experiments with mice. The strategy may eventually become one of the mainstays for a hard-to-treat malignancy, which kills nearly 700,000 people a year. If caught early using a screening technique called a colonoscopy, colorectal cancer is easily treated by surgery. But once cancer spreads, it becomes very hard to conquer, according to Scott Lowe, a researcher with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Toxic chemotherapy drugs are often used in an effort to kill malignant cancerous cells. But they also kill healthy cells and many patients end up dying anyway. As the cancer evolves, Lowe says a tumor suppressor gene called Apc becomes less active in the vast majority of patients. But his team genetically manipulated Apc with a surprising result. “The cells basically went back to normal. They didn’t die, they didn’t go away; they underwent the process of differentiation where a stem-like cancer now becomes a differentiated normal cell that seems to have many of its normal functions," said Lowe. Stem cells are master cells that, in different conditions, can be transformed into any kind of cell. Manipulating a human Apc tumor suppressor gene in mice with colorectal cancer, Lowe’s team saw tumor growth stop in most of the rodents and begin switching back to normal tissue within four days. After two weeks, tumors were eliminated, and there were no signs of cancer months later. The research was reported in the journal Cell. Lowe stresses that the work is early and treating cancer by restoring the function of tumor suppressor genes could be years away. He explains that each colon cancer is different, caused by genetic mutations unique to each patient. But he predicts that identifying and correcting DNA abnormalities will likely join chemotherapy one day, as a standard of cancer treatment. “For now what we found is something I think is a really profound effect, a surprisingly profound effect, particularly given that we see it in cells that have become real cancer cells with other genetic changes that by and of themselves can contribute to cancer," he said. Lowe says 90 percent of colorectal tumors contain mutations that have a silenced Apc tumor suppressor gene, suggesting that reactivating the gene might cure the vast majority of colon cancer patients. Different mutations are involved in other types of cancer, and he suggests that they, too, could someday be reversed through genetic manipulation. |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Pope Francis called on the world Thursday to combat global warming to prevent environmental ruin to the Earth. In a landmark letter, the pontiff supported scientific evidence that climate change is mostly caused by human activity that he said could lead to an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems in this century. He called for an end to what he said is a culturally perverse economic system in which the world's wealthiest countries exploit the poorest, leaving the Earth looking "more and more like an immense pile of filth." Francis said a massive political and economic transformation is needed, to replace without delay the world's dependence on highly polluting fossil fuels that lead to climate-changing global warming. He said the world's resources are "being plundered because of shortsighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production." The pontiff's plea came in a 191-page encyclical aimed directly at the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, but more broadly at world leaders considering a global climate pact later this year at a Paris conference. It was the first such papal environmental statement in the centuries-long history of the church. His statement drew praise from global and environmental leaders but was attacked by conservative Republican presidential candidates in the United States as news of the pope's views leaked in recent days. President Barack Obama said Thursday that he welcomed the pope's letter and that he deeply admired Francis' decision to "make the case, clearly and powerfully and with the full moral authority of his position," for action. "We must also protect the world's poor, who have done the least to contribute to this looming crisis and stand to lose the most if we fail to avert it." the president said. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has made ambitious action on climate change one of his signature issues since taking the helm of the United Nations nearly a decade ago, expressed deep thanks to Francis "for taking such a strong stand on the need for urgent global action." The international community will meet in Paris in December with the intention of agreeing on a universal, legally binding climate treaty, the objective of which would be to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius a year by 2020, when the deal would go into force. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim noted that global climate change has led to an increasing number of extreme weather events, which he said are "most devastating" for the world's impoverished people. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said, "The vision laid out in these teachings serves as an inspiration to everyone across the world who seeks a more just, compassionate and healthy future." But climate change skeptics dismissed the papal statement, and there is widespread conservative opposition in the U.S. to a binding agreement on pollution standards to limit greenhouse gases. U.S. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a convert to Roman Catholicism, rejected the papal statement in advance, saying, "I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope." The Heartland Institute, a U.S. group promoting free-market solutions to global problems, said the pope "made a grave mistake by putting his trust and moral authority behind agenda-driven bureaucrats at the United Nations who have been bearing false witness about the causes and consequences of climate change for decades." While many conservatives recognize the Earth is warming up, they do not believe human activity is the cause and point to natural fluctuations in the global temperature, which they say has been going on since the planet was born. Some opponents of a global warming treaty say some parts of the Earth have actually cooled off in recent years. In the statement, Francis said, "Humanity is called to recognize the need for change of lifestyle, production, and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it." But he said one tactic some environmentalists favor — the use of carbon credits to curb development by some corporations to allow other business activity — is ineffective. |
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