Calling Al Gore! Vietnam Needs You.

The emission of carbon dioxide is believed to be a major contributor to global warming by those environmentalists raising alarm. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency should evaluate carbon dioxide emissions along with other particularates emitted into the atmosphere. Chemical & Engineering News speaks to the potential reach of the decision:

In the wake of last week's Supreme Court ruling that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, Congress is stepping up pressure on EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. In addition, the decision will affect an array of lawsuits focused on greenhouse gas emissions and could even lead federal courts to order controls on industrial CO2 releases.

The high court, by a 5-4 majority, ruled on April 2 that the Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from new cars and trucks.

The National Academy of Sciences just released a report that, as the AP reported, “confirms the effectiveness of tropical forests at reducing warming by absorbing carbon.” Ken Caldeira, from the Carnegie Institution department of global ecology, commented:

”It’s more important to preserve and restore tropical forests than had been previously recognized.” Tropical forests help cool the planet in two ways, Caldeira pointed out – by absorbing carbon dioxide and by drawing up soil moisture which is released into the air forming clouds. Those clouds reflect solar energy back into space, while reducing the amount reaching the ground.

So, aside from housing cuddly and interesting creatures and plant life, and aside from their unique sources for new drugs, and aside from providing traditional lifestyles for indigenous peoples and their cultures, and protecting watersheds necessary to downstream agriculture to feed people, and their great beauty, tropical forests help against global warming.

One of the world’s major offenders at clearcutting tropical forests is Vietnam. This coincides with historic prejudices against the hill peoples of the Central Highlands, communist vengeance against these Montagnards for fighting them alongside lowland Vietnamese and Americans during the war, and the profiteering exploitation by the ruling elite hand-in-pocket with Western companies.

Chris Lang, of the World Rainforest Movement, observes:

In the last decade hundreds of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese have moved to the Central Highlands, either on their own initiative or through state-sponsored transmigration programmes. The Montagnards have seen vast areas of their farmland, swiddens and forests converted to rubber, coffee and fast-growing tree plantations or flooded to make way for hydropower and irrigation dams.

In February 2001, Montagnards staged peaceful demonstrations in provincial capitals in the highlands. Vietnamese authorities brought in thousands of police and soldiers who violently broke up the protests.

Since then police have arrested hundreds of people, sometimes torturing them to extract confessions. Several hundred Montagnards have gone into hiding, living in camouflaged hideouts in forests or coffee plantations, in holes under people’s houses or in mountain caves.

Many more tried to flee to safety in Cambodia but in 2002, under pressure from Vietnam, the Cambodian government closed refugee camps on the border with Vietnam. Cambodian security forces now deport any Montagnards who try to cross the border from Vietnam. They are forced back to Vietnam and on returning many have been beaten, detained or put in prison.

A November 2006 conference on affected communities in Indochina, sponsored by NGO’s, (at the World Rainforest Movement website) reported:

Contrary to government claims that plantations contribute to national economic development and poverty alleviation, plantations have increased poverty by displacing entire communities, destroying crucial livelihood resources and preventing the access of communities to natural resources….

In many cases, plantations have come into communities with a certain level of violence; in some cases the violence has been open and obvious as in killings and imprisonments; in other cases, communities are subjected to intimidation and threats in order to frighten people so that they do not take action. The very act of taking land away from villagers is an act of violence. When communities stand up for their rights, they are often repressed by the police, local authorities and even at times, the military.

Chris Lang, of the World Rainforest Movement, reflects that:

[T]he development of industrial tree plantations to feed the pulp industry is heavily subsidised by the Vietnamese government as well as by bilateral and multilateral aid agencies. While the benefits of these subsidies go to the pulp and paper industry and to exporting industries, the impacts are felt by rural people.

So, where is Al Gore, and the rest of the environmentalists who ally with him, when they could not only be helping to protect the earth from global warming but actually helping victimized peoples?

Western liberals haven’t cared about the ongoing oppression in Vietnam, a place that deserved communism according to their defeatist votes in the 1970’s and continuing self-justifications for condemning tens of millions to tyranny and millions more to death. Even the collusion of Western companies, a usual target of anti-globalists and anti-capitalists, hasn’t drawn Western liberals to recognize Vietnam’s dismal human rights record, perhaps because Western liberals would also have to denounce themselves for creating these conditions in Vietnam.

Last week, however, on the steps of the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Hanoi, liberal Democrat Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez witnessed the brutalization of two dissident women coming to meet with her and the U.S. Ambassador. “There were about 15 goons roughing them up,” said Sanchez. Sanchez added, “The tourists don’t get to see the day-to-day problems that exist here.” She might have added that Western businesses paying $50 a month for 7-day/12-hour workweeks don’t care to see what they profiteer from, nor do Western consumers of cheap goods.

I wrote the lead for the Associated Press to follow up on here. We’re still waiting, for Al Gore and his MSM glorifiers to take note of something that really could help with global warming, and real people in need of Western support.