European Parliament fails planet, panders to profits

The debate in the European Parliament today was ostensibly about regulating a class of chemicals, fluorinated greenhouse gases, known as F-gases.  But it was really a battle between the interests of a multimillion dollar industry and the future of our planet.

Members of Parliament at the plenary session in Strasbourg rejected a proposal to replace hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs (a fluorinated gas 1,300 times stronger than carbon dioxide), in household refrigerators, even though the EU market is already dominated by the climate-friendly alternative Greenfreeze technology.  They rejected other strong measures recommended by their own environment committee and instead approved only the weakest provisions.

F-gas: the cure that's as bad as the disease

F-gases are used in many appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioning, foam blowers and car tyres. They replaced ozone-depleting gases such as chlorofluorocarbon (CFCs), which are being phased out globally as part of the 1990 Montreal Protocol. F-gases like hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs) are thus often portrayed by their manufacturers as 'environmentally friendly'.

However, while they were introduced to address the problem of the hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer -- discovered in 1985 --they were introduced before scientists became worried about dangerous climate change, and were subsequently discovered to be highly potent greenhouse gases.

In most appliances, natural alternatives to F-gases are either already available and widely used, or are in development. For example, Greenpeace and German company DKK Scharfenstein introduced "Greenfreeze" hydrocarbon refrigerators into the European market in the 1990s.

"Greenpeace began research on Greenfreeze (hydrocarbon) refrigeration technology to reduce the destruction of the ozone layer. It is now a highly successful example of a green organisation and industry working together..."

--UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking at the launch of the Sustainable Development Commission (October 2000).

Today fridges made by major European companies such as Siemens and Bosch are nearly all F-gas free. Big food corporations are switching to F-gas free commercial refrigeration.

But American manufacturers continue to expand their use of F-gases, and they're looking for new foreign markets, despite the documented dangers of these chemicals for our planet's climate.

They also hold a sizeable market share in Europe, and have not been idle in trying to ensure that profits, not the planet, are primary on the EU agenda.

The counterforce

Enter Mahi Sideridou, one of the secret weapons in the Greenpeace arsenal. You won't have seen pictures of her handcuffed to an anchor chain or hanging a banner from a smokestack. As a Greenpeace climate and energy policy advisor stationed in Brussels, she's more likely to be decked out in a smart suit than a wetsuit, working the corridors of the European Parliament. And if it weren't for her nearly lone presence, the industry would be the only point of view that European Ministers would hear.

"I'm totally outnumbered here" she said in a recent phone interview. "There are dozens of industry lobbyists yammering on about how these climate-killing chemicals are 'a part of the social fabric of Europe' and suggesting that banning them will mean disaster for European industry. When I tell parliamentarians that the home refrigeration market has already demonstrated that alternatives are available and commercially proven, it's often the first they've heard that alternatives even exist."

Because she works for Greenpeace, Mahi has found herself excluded from the back-room discussions that industry flacks like to have with parliamentarians in private. But despite the smart suit, Mahi is Greenpeace: getting into a closed door meeting --like getting into the grounds of a nuclear power plant -- just takes a bit of determination and inventiveness.

"I found out about a closed lunch session that was being held the day of a debate between Parliamentarians on F-gases. Industry was going to tell key parliamentarians why they should water down legislation that we thought was weak already. I called the German Liberal party representative who was hosting it and asked if I could be included to give a balanced view. He replied that there was no room.

I said I was a very small person, but he didn't seem to get the joke.

So I called the UK Liberal representative and asked him if he'd known about the meeting, as the issue was technically his area of responsibility. He invited me to come along as his guest. This didn't go down very well at the door, and they insisted there was only a place for one. The British MEP graciously excused himself and instructed that I be given his chair. Had I not been there, nobody would have challenged the "facts" according to Hill and Knowlton, the industry's PR company, which turned out to be running the lunch."

Hard work and hard information led the EU environment committee to propose extremely aggressive controls on the F-gas industry. But all that fell victim today to a well-funded industry assault.

Why would a PR company be lobbying the EU?

The most vocal lobby on the F-gas regulation has undoubtedly come from the F-gas producers themselves. But they generally do so in disguise. If you, as a parliamentarian, were asked to take a meeting with the 'European Partnership for Energy and the Environment' to hear their views on F-gas regulation, you'd probably expect to be meeting with environmentalists. From Europe.

You'd be wrong on both counts.

It's actually an industry front group, made up largely of American and Japanese multinationals with plants in Europe, who are lobbying against regulation of F-gases out of cost concerns. And while their website makes a flashy show of how their chemicals don't destroy the ozone (which is true) they fail to mention that they're contributing to global warming.

It's exactly the kind of economy with the truth you could expect from a smarmy PR agency. In this case, Hill & Knowlton is painting DuPont and other f-gas manufacturers in earth-friendly shades of green for their wonderful ozone-friendly chemicals.  Ironically, Hill & Knowlton is exactly the same company which, in 1975, trotted out reports and scientists claiming that the Ozone hole was a myth, environmentalists were scare-mongering, and industry shouldn't be required to take costly and unnecessary action to ban CFCs.  They now make flash animations which pat themselves on the back for not making the ozone hole any bigger than the 8 times larger than Europe that it already is.

Democracy: on sale now at prices any multinational can afford

Under current EU legislation, lobby groups such as the European Partnership for Energy and the Environment are not required to reveal their funding sources. Unless MEPs do some digging, or Greenpeace or Climate Action Network tells them, decision-makers might never know that the same multinationals which are making money off polluting chemicals are the ones asking them not to regulate them.

And, as Sideridou points out, that's not the only place where democracy fails.

"While the parliamentary discussions and votes are open and transparent, the discussions of the environment ministers are closed. So we have to depend on leaks to find out what's happening behind those closed doors."

When the environment committee of the European Parliament recently endorsed the tough legislation which went to the full Parliament, the industry responded with a detailed action plan. It instructs their lobbyists to "raise safety issues," "call to question the committee's competency," "find friends who can put doubt on results...and carry the message to wider parliament." What are friends for?

Unfortunately, industry's friends succeeded in weakening what would have been a good step toward addressing global warming.

"Why does anyone vote against phasing out a harmful, man-made greenhouse gas if alternatives are commercially available and already on the market? The companies that produce fluorinated gases have argued that life as we know it would come to a halt if these chemicals were gradually replaced. This couldn't be further from the truth. The European Parliament has today failed in its duty to act in the interests of the public and the environment," said Sideridou.

But while she found today's vote particularly depressing, she's not quitting.

"I've taken this very, very personally. A year ago I thought about giving up --wondering what the point of banging my head against the wall might be. But the motivation for staying is that if you leave the other side wins. And when you're right, you just can't let the other side win."