Click here for the latest update from our friends at the International Society For Cow Protection (ISCOWP)Kamis, 30 September 2010
Selasa, 28 September 2010
Adopt A Cow-It's Time!
From our friends at Brhadmrdanga.com and the New Govardhana farm at Australia
What is the true path to happiness for the whole world? His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the Hare Krishna Movement, has said that the happiness of mankind is directly connected to the happiness of the cows. He stated “Because the poor animals are always in anxiety, humanity is also put in anxiety by different strains of hot and cold wars.”
These simple, gentle creatures eat only grass and produce nutritious satisfying milk, like a gift from God to the world. And and out of love for the world herself the cow produces more milk than her calf can drink. Even her stool and urine have unlimited agricultural and medicinal uses. We also learn from the saints and sages that she is dear to God Himself.
At New Govardhana, our mission is to show the spiritual and material benefits that result from protecting and caring for the cows. To do this, we want to make New Govardhana a place in the world where everyone can see this demonstrated practically. A place where anyone, regardless of religious persuasion, can experience the peace and satisfaction that comes from personally caring for cows
Minggu, 26 September 2010
Notes On The Enthusiasm Gap
From Bill McKibben at the Huffington PostI got to see the now-famous enthusiasm gap up close and personal last week, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.
The backstory: I help run a global warming campaign called 350.org. In mid-summer, we decided to organize an effort to ask world leaders to put solar panels on the roofs of their residences. It was to be part of the lead-up to a gigantic Global Work Party on Oct. 10 (10-10-10), and a way to give prime ministers and politburos something easy to do in the hope of getting the fight against global warming slowly back on track. One of those crucial leaders is, of course, Barack Obama, who stood by with his arms folded this summer while the Senate punted on climate-change legislation. We thought this might be a good way for him to signal that he was still committed to change, even though he hadn’t managed to pass new laws.
And so we tracked down the solar panels that once had graced the White House roof, way back in the 1970s under Jimmy Carter. After Ronald Reagan took them down, they’d spent the last few decades on the cafeteria roof at Unity College in rural Maine. That college’s president, Mitch Thomashow, immediately offered us a panel to take back to the White House. Better still, he encouraged three of his students to accompany the panel, not to mention allowing the college’s sustainability coordinators to help manage the trip.
And so, on the day after Labor Day, we set off in a biodiesel college van. Solar road trip! Guitars, iPods, excellent snack food, and for company, the rock star of solar panels, all 6 x 3-feet and 140 pounds of her. We pulled into Boston that first night for a rally at Old South Church, where a raucous crowd lined up for the chance to sign the front of the panel, which quickly turned into a giant glass petition. The same thing the next night in New York, and then D.C., with an evening at one of the city’s oldest churches headlined by the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip-Hop Caucus.
It couldn’t have been more fun. Wherever we could, we’d fire up the panel, pour a gallon of water in the top, point it toward the sun, and eight or nine minutes later you’d have steaming hot water coming out the bottom. Thirty-one years old and it worked like a charm -- a vexing reminder that we’ve known how to do this stuff for decades. We just haven’t done it.
That’s what we kept telling reporters as they turned out along the route: If the Obamas will put solar panels back on the White House roof, or on the lawn, or anywhere else where people can see them, it will help get the message across -- the same way that seed sales climbed 30% across the country in the year after Michelle planted her garden.
There was just one nagging concern as we headed south. We still hadn’t heard anything conclusive from the White House. We’d asked them -- for two months -- if they’d accept the old panel as a historical relic returned home, and if they’d commit to installing new ones soon. We’d even found a company, Sungevity, that was eager to provide them free. Indeed, as word of our trip spread, other solar companies kept making the same offer. Still, the White House never really responded, not until Thursday evening around six p.m. when they suddenly agreed to a meeting at nine the next morning.
As you might imagine, we were waiting at the “Southwest Appointment Gate” at 8:45, and eventually someone from the Office of Public Engagement emerged to escort us inside the Executive Office Building. He seated us in what he called “the War Room,” an ornate and massive chamber with a polished table in the middle.
Every window blind was closed. It was a mahogany cave in which we could just make out two environmental bureaucrats sitting at the far end of the table. I won’t mention their names, on the theory that what followed wasn’t really their idea, but orders they were following from someone else. Because what followed was… uncool.
And actually, it’s kind of great. Still, I doubt many people are going to build their own vegetated fins, and anyway I was beginning to despair that nothing could stop the flow of self-praise until one of the three seniors from Unity raised her hand and politely interrupted.
Now, let me say that I already knew Jean Altomare, Amanda Nelson, and Jamie Nemecek were special, but my guess is the bureaucrats hadn’t figured that out. Unity is out in the woods, and these kids were majoring in things like wildlife conservation. They’d never had an encounter like this. It stood to reason that they’d be cowed. But they weren’t.
One after another, respectfully but firmly, they asked a series of tough questions and refused to be filibustered by yet another stream of administration-enhancing data. Here’s what they wanted to know: If the administration was serious about spreading the word on renewable energy, why wouldn’t it do the obvious thing and put solar panels on the White House? When the administrators proudly proffered a clipping from some interior page of the Washington Post about their “greening the government initiative,” Amanda calmly pointed out that none of her neighbors read the Post and that, by contrast, the solar panels had made it onto David Letterman.
To their queries, the bureaucrats refused to provide any answer. At all. One kept smiling in an odd way and saying, “If reporters call and ask us, we will provide our rationale,” but whatever it was, they wouldn’t provide it to us.
It was all a little odd, to say the least. They refused to accept the Carter panel as a historic relic, or even to pose for a picture with the students and the petition they’d brought with them. Asked to do something easy and symbolic to rekindle a little of the joy that had turned out so many of us as volunteers for Obama in 2008, they point blank said no. In a less than overwhelming gesture, they did, however, pass out Xeroxed copies of a 2009 memorandum from Vice President Biden about federal energy policy.
I can tell you exactly what it felt like, because those three students were brave and walked out graciously, heads high and kept their tears back until we got to the sidewalk. And then they didn’t keep them back, because it’s a tough thing to learn for the first time how politics can work.
If you want to know about the much-discussed enthusiasm gap between Democratic and Republican bases, in other words, this was it in action. As Jean Altomare told the New York Times, “We went in without any doubt about the importance of this. They handed us a pamphlet.” And Amanda Nelson added, “I didn’t expect I’d get to shake President Obama’s hand, but it was really shocking to me to find out that they really didn’t seem to care.”
Did I say I was impressed with these young women? I was more than impressed. Nobody I went to Harvard with would have handled it as powerfully as they did (maybe because they weren’t looking for a job in the White House someday). A few hot tears were the right response, followed by getting on with the work.
Our next question, out there on the sidewalk, was how to handle the situation -- which, indeed, we had to do right away, because in today’s blog-speed world, you’re supposed to Put Out a Statement to reporters, not to mention Tweet. So how to play it?
The normal way is to claim some kind of victory: we could have said we had an excellent exchange of views and that the administration had taken seriously our plea. But that would have been lying, and at 350.org, we long ago decided not to do that. The whole premise of our operation, beginning with the number at its core, is that we had better always tell the truth about our actual predicament.
Alternatively, we could have rounded on the administration, and taken our best shot. In fact, it would have been easy enough right then and there for me to chain myself to the White House fence with the panel next to me. It would have gotten some serious press (though not as much as if I’d burned a Quran). And in fact, some of our supporters were counseling that I head for the fence immediately.
We got an email, for instance, from a veteran campaigner I deeply respect who said:
Show Obama you can't be taken for granted, and I predict you will be amazed at the good things that come your way. This is a watershed moment: if they think they can get away with this with you, they'll judge they can get away with more in the future. If you show them they can't get away with it (at the very least without embarrassment), they will come your way more in the future. It's power politics, pure and simple. This is how the game is played. Get their respect!
And I think he was probably right. As he pointed out, Obama was even then on the phone with the mustachioed Florida geezer, the stack of Qurans, and the following of 50 or less. But I couldn’t do it, not then and there. Because… well, because on some level I’m a political wuss.
I couldn’t stand to make that enthusiasm gap any wider, not seven weeks before an election. True, it’s the moment when you have some leverage, but no less true: The other side was running candidate after candidate who literally couldn’t wait to boast about how they didn’t believe in climate change. (Check out R.L. Miller’s highly useful list of "climate zombies.") That’s why we’re deeply engaged in fights this fall like the battle to defeat California’s Prop. 23 and save the state’s landmark climate law. As a group we can’t endorse candidates, but I came home and spent part of the weekend mailing small checks to Senate candidates I admire, men like Paul Hodes from New Hampshire, who have fought hard for serious climate legislation.
And a confession. We’d walked past Obama’s official portrait on the way out and, despite the meeting we’d just had, I couldn’t help but smile at the thought that he was president. I could remember my own enthusiasm from two years ago that had me knocking on doors across New Hampshire. I admired his character and his smarts, and if I admire them a little less now, the residue’s still there.
And so I couldn’t help thinking -- part of me at least -- like this: the White House political team has decided that if they put solar panels up on the roof, Fox News will use that as one more line of attack; that they somehow believe the association with Jimmy Carter is the electoral equivalent of cooties; and that, in the junior high school lunchroom that now comprises our political life, they didn’t want to catch any.
If that’s their thinking, I doubt they’re on the mark. As far as I can tell, the right has a far better understanding of the power of symbols. Witness the furor they’ve kicked up over “the mosque at Ground Zero.” My feeling is: We should use the symbols we’ve got, and few are better than a solar panel. Still, with the current craziness in mind, I was willing to give them a pass. So we just put out a press release saying that we’d failed in our mission and walked away.
At least for now, but not forever, and really not for much longer.
On Oct. 10, we’re having our great global work party, and ever since Obama stiffed us, registrations for its events have been soaring. Last week, with the heads of Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network, I issued a call for ideas about how to mount a campaign of civil disobedience around climate. Not a series of stunts, but a real campaign. At coal plants and drilling sites -- and at the places where our politicians do their work.
Actually, I’ll be surprised if the White House doesn’t put up solar panels within a year. But even if they do, that would just be the barest of beginnings. We’ve run out of spare decades to deal with climate change -- the summer’s events in the Arctic, in Russia, in Pakistan proved that with great clarity. I may be a wuss, but I’m also scientifically literate. We know what we need to do, and we will do it. Enthusiastically.
Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org and author most recently of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.
Copyright 2010 Bill McKibben
Follow Bill McKibben on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmckibben
Jumat, 24 September 2010
Eco-Valley: The Green Path Of Harmony-The Video
From our friends at Brihadmrdanga.com
Krishna-lila Devi Dasi is the Managing Editor of ISKCON News, The News Agency of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Krishna-lila is a scholar, activist, and filmmaker, and a devotee of Krishna. With a Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies and Indian Aesthetics from the University of Budapest, and a Certificate in Screenwriting from New York University, she is the author of 3 books, dozens of articles, and writer-producer of 25 documentaries. As a media spokesperson for ISKCON, she has led several international campaigns against religious and minority discrimination. Krishna-lila Devi Dasi lives in New York.
On 14th of December, Krishna-lila’s film entitled Eco-Valley: The Green Path of Harmony was screened at the United Nation`s 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. (Writer-producer: Krisztina Danka (Krishna-lila Devi Dasi), Director: Norbert Palinkas, Director of Photography: Denes Doboveczky)
Click here to watch an excerpt from Eco-Valley: The Green Path of Harmony
Senin, 20 September 2010
U.S Meat Farmers Brace For Limits On Antibiotics
Brian C. Frank for The New York Times
At Elite Pork, a large pork farm in Ralson, Iowa, pigs are fed antibiotics for weeks after weaning to ward off possible illness.
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: September 14, 2010 in the New York Times
RALSTON, Iowa — Piglets hop, scurry and squeal their way to the far corner of the pen, eyeing an approaching human. “It shows that they’re healthy animals,” Craig Rowles, the owner of a large pork farm here, said with pride.
Related
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Green Blog: Animal Rights and the Antibiotics Battle (September 15, 2010)
Brian C. Frank for The New York Times
The questions over antibiotics come at a time when animal confinement methods and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under attack.
Brian C. Frank for The New York Times
Craig Rowles, the owner of Elite Pork, said that antibiotics help keep down the cost of his pork.
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Mr. Rowles says he keeps his pigs fit by feeding them antibiotics for weeks after weaning, to ward off possible illness in that vulnerable period. And for months after that, he administers an antibiotic that promotes faster growth with less feed.
Dispensing antibiotics to healthy animals is routine on the large, concentrated farms that now dominate American agriculture. But the practice is increasingly condemned by medical experts who say it contributes to a growing scourge of modern medicine: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including dangerous E. coli strains that account for millions of bladder infections each year, as well as resistant types of salmonella and other microbes.
Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians.
The agency’s final version is expected within months, and comes at a time when animal confinement methods, safety monitoring and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under sharp attack. The federal proposal has struck a nerve among major livestock producers, who argue that a direct link between farms and human illness has not been proved. The producers are vigorously opposing it even as many medical and health experts call it too timid.
Scores of scientific groups, including the American Medical Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, are calling for even stronger action that would bar most uses of key antibiotics in healthy animals, including use for disease prevention, as with Mr. Rowles’s piglets. Such a bill is gaining traction in Congress.
“Is producing the cheapest food in the world our only goal?” asked Dr. Gail R. Hansen, a veterinarian and senior officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has campaigned for new limits on farm antibiotics. “Those who say there is no evidence of risk are discounting 40 years of science. To wait until there’s nothing we can do about it doesn’t seem like the wisest course.”
With the backing of some leading veterinary scientists, farmers assert that the risks are remote and are outweighed by improved animal health and lower food costs. “There is no conclusive scientific evidence that antibiotics used in food animals have a significant impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics in people,” the National Pork Producers Council said.
But leading medical experts say the threat is real and growing. Proponents of strong controls note that the European Union barred most nontreatment uses of antibiotics in 2006 and that farmers there have adapted without major costs. Following a similar path in the United States, they argue, would have barely perceptible effects on consumer prices.
Resistance can evolve whenever drugs are used against bacteria or other microbes because substrains that are less susceptible to the treatment will survive and multiply.
Drug use in humans, including overuse and misapplication, clearly accounts for a large share of the surge in antibiotic resistant infections, a huge problem in hospitals in particular. Yet biologists and infectious disease specialists say there is also enormous circumstantial and genetic evidence that antibiotics in farming are adding to the threat.
Livestock and poultry have been identified as the most likely sources of drug-resistant strains of microbes like salmonella and campylobacter that have caused outbreaks of severe intestinal illness in people and of E. coli strains that cause serious bladder, blood and other infections. (Resistant strains have not been implicated in the recent outbreak of salmonella contamination in eggs.)
In a letter to Congress in July, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cited “compelling evidence” of a “clear link between antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.”
As drug-resistant strains of microbes evolve on the farms, they are passed along in meat sold in grocery stores. They can infect people as they handle the uncooked product or when eating, if cooking is not thorough. The dangerous strains can also enter the environment via manure or the clothes of farm workers.
Genetic studies of drug-resistant E. coli strains found on poultry and beef in grocery stores and strains in sick patients have found them to be virtually identical, and further evidence also indicated that the resistant microbes evolved on farms and were transferred to consumers, said Dr. James R. Johnson, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota. Hospitals now find that up to 30 percent of urinary infections do not respond to the front-line treatments, ciprofloxacin and the drug known as Bactrim or Septra, and that resistance to key newer antibiotics is also emerging. E. coli is also implicated in serious blood, brain and other infections.
“For those of us in the public health community, the evidence is unambiguously clear,” Dr. Johnson said. “Most of the E. coli resistance in humans can be traced to food-animal sources.”
The proposed Food and Drug Administration guidelines focus on the use of antibiotics to speed growth. Just how antibiotics have this effect, which has been known for decades, is unclear, but scientists suspect that the drugs improve the absorption of nutrients as they prevent low-grade disease.
Mr. Rowles, the proprietor of Elite Pork and a trained veterinarian himself, estimates that by feeding his pigs an antibiotic in their final months he is saving $1 to $3 per animal in feed costs. For the consumer, this is negligible, but from his perspective it looms larger because, he said, in good years his net profit is only $7 to $10 per animal.
More contentious is the routine use of antibiotics to prevent disease, as Mr. Rowles and other pork producers do with newly weaned pigs.
Dr. James McKean, an extension veterinarian at Iowa State University, said experience in Denmark, Europe’s leading pork producer, showed that ending the practice would result in more illness, suffering and death among pigs, and cause a jump in antibiotic treatments of actual disease.
Dr. McKean estimated that a ban on most nontreatment uses of antibiotics would raise the cost of pork by 5 cents a pound.
Others counter that farmers in Denmark have learned to hold down illness in young pigs by extending the weaning period, altering feeds and providing more space and veterinary scrutiny of the animals. Some of the drugs used in prevention by farmers like Mr. Rowles would also be permitted under the measure before Congress because they are not used in human medicine.
“In the end, the producers will do what is right,” Mr. Rowles said. “We will make sure we deliver a product that meets the needs of consumers.”
“My only concern is that we make decisions in a scientific fashion, not a political fashion,” he said.
Sabtu, 18 September 2010
Cows Need Your Help Now!
From our friends in Australia at brihadmrdanga.com
By Antony Brennan
Krishna by His practical example taught us to give protection to the cows, and Srila Prabhupada spoke often with great force and feeling on the need to protect cows. As time progresses and as more and more of us live in urban environments, cow protection seems as if it could slip through our fingers and disappear.
ISKCON has played a pioneering role in advocating and practising cow protection by establishing farm communities and goshalas, all over the world. In these difficult economic times we should try and not forget the request of Krishna, the Vedic literature, and the Srila Prabhupada, that we protect cows.
It can seem that there is little those devotees living in urban areas can do, but there is something. Quite a few cow protection organisations have web sites which allow you to adopt a cow.
Cow protection is not usually a profit making business, so donations to programs such as adopting a cow can be very important. Donations help provide for the general feed and care of cows, this is a very useful and helpful contribution to carrying on the business of protecting cows.
Click on: www.krishnafarm.com for the New Govardhana farm in NSW and scroll down to see photo’s of the resident cows and find ways you can help with the protection effort underway there.
At New Govardhana their mission is to show the spiritual and material benefits that result from protecting and caring for the cows. To do this they want to make New Govardhana a place in the world where everyone can see this demonstrated practically. A place where anyone, regardless of religious persuasion, can experience the peace and satisfaction that comes from personally caring for cows. Practically demonstrating our gratitude to her, not only will we receive her blessings, but God himself will smile upon us in appreciation. Of this there is no doubt.
Click on: www.newgokula.com for the New Gokula farm in the Hunter Valley in NSW. Click on COWS on the menu to see photo’s of the resident herd and click on CONTACT then DONATE on the menu to donaste funds for assisting with the protection of cows.
Winter is a hard time to survive if you’re one of our cows or bullocks hit especially hard by the intense frosts the likes of which have not been seen in this region in a very long time. New Gokula Farm spent over $350 per week on lucerne feed for cows and bullocks to help see them through the harsh winter months. They are requesting everyone to try and contribute any donation big or small to gain Krishna’s blessings by performing this extremely important Go-seva. You may contribute directly to the cause via the paypal link on the web site or in person if you are visiting the farm. “Thank you for your support of New Gokula Farm and our cow protection program which Srila Prabhupada stressed was the essence of human civilzation.”
Click on: www.careforcows.org and choose ‘How Can I Help’ on the menu bar. Here you will find a variety of ways you can help the Care for Cows care for the cows of Vrindavan.
Care for Cows in Vrindavan (India) maintains abandoned cows, bulls, retired oxen, and orphaned calves. Iinternational volunteers offer talents and resources to tend to the neglected cows living in Krishna’s holy land. Care for Cows provide stray cows with hay, flour, fresh grass, medical attention and a place where they can recuperate from injuries. At present they host a herd of three hundred.
There are approximately three to four hundred abandoned cows in Vrindavan requiring accommodation. Unless they are protected they are destined to subsist on refuse and become plagued by various debilitating and often terminal diseases or suffer injury from careless motorists. However, the most immediate danger is that they become abducted for slaughter by cattle rustlers who are active in this area today. The present facility is full and there is an urgent need to acquire more land for their protection.
Click on: www.iscowp.org and choose the ‘How to Adopt a Cow’ link. Here you will find photos of some cows who can be adopted and details on how you can make a payment.
The ISCOWP web site says: “5000 years ago, Lord Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, appeared on earth to protect His devotees and to demonstrate His pastimes. Among those pastimes was his childhood role as a cowherd boy. The cows were very dear to Him because of their affectionate and gentle nature as well as their contributions to human society, and He was kind to them in return and protected them. We should follow His example.”
Click on: www.gitanagari.org and choose the ‘Adopt A Cow’ link. Then choose the adoption program link. There are a variety programs and payment options you can choose from.
The Gita Nagari website says: “If You Drink Milk, You Have a Responsibility: This responsibility cannot be assumed by someone else. If milk from protected cows is not available, then compensatory donations should be made on a regular basis to support cows and cowherds on a devotee farm. Large-scale commercial milk production is likely to result in over-breeding and future neglect of retired animals; therefore it should be strongly discouraged.”
Click on: www.newtalavana.org and choose the ‘Adopt-a-Cow’ link. Choose from the donation options that suit you.
The New Talavan website says: “New Talavan has been protecting cows for over 30 years. We cannot do it without you. Please contribute and be one of Bhagavan Sri Krsna’s eternal cowherd boys and girls.”
Click on: www.savethecow.wordpress.com and click on ‘Adoption Options. Here you will find the options available and the cows who need your help.
The Save the Cow website says: “Every cow and ox protected by Save the Cow’s dedicated staff and donors lives a happy, natural life. Feeling secure, each one expresses a unique personality. Some are shy and some playful. Some are explorers and others pranksters. When Krishna tended cows in Vrindavan He knew each of them by name and treated them as individuals. Through cow protection, Save the Cow creates a Vrindavan atmosphere in North Central Florida at New Raman Reti farm.”
It may be that due to the current economic climate adopting a cow may be beyond your means. The web sites mentioned above also allow one off donations to the amount that you can afford
Click on: www.firstgiving.com/mgosh, another site where even a small amount will be put to good use.
Kamis, 16 September 2010
Banks Grow Wary of Environmental Risks
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
A West Virginia surface mine.
By TOM ZELLER Jr. in the New York Times
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
A Massey Energy mountaintop site. Some lenders that previously extended credit have eliminated ties to the company.
For a growing number of banks, however, that does not seem to matter.
After years of legal entanglements arising from environmental messes and increased scrutiny of banks that finance the dirtiest industries, several large commercial lenders are taking a stand on industry practices that they regard as risky to their reputations and bottom lines.
In the most recent example, the banking giant Wells Fargo noted last month what it called “considerable attention and controversy” surrounding mountaintop removal mining, and said that its involvement with companies engaged in it was “limited and declining.”
The bank was a small player in the sector, representing about $78 million in bonds and loan financing for such companies from 2008 to April of this year, according to data compiled by the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group tracking the issue.
But the policy shift by Wells Fargo follows others over the last two years, including moves by Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank, to increase scrutiny of lending to companies involved in mountaintop removal — or to end the lending altogether.
HSBC, which is based in London, has curtailed its relationships with some producers of palm oil, which is often linked to deforestation in developing countries. The Dutch lender Rabobank has applied a nine-point checklist of conditions for would-be oil and gas borrowers that includes commitments to improve environmental performance and protect water quality.
In some cases, the changing policies represent an attempt to burnish green credentials in areas where the banks had little interest, and there is no indication that companies engaged in the objectionable practices cannot find financing elsewhere.
Still, banking analysts and others suggest that heated debate over climate change, water quality and other environmental considerations is forcing lenders to take a much harder — and often uncomfortable — look at where they extend credit, and to whom.
“It’s one thing if your potential borrower is dumping cyanide in a river,” said Karina Litvack, the head of governance and sustainable investment with F&C Investments, an investment management firm based in London. “But if they’re dumping carbon dioxide into the air, which is not exactly illegal — what do you do? Banks are in kind of a quandary, because they are competing for business, and if they get holier-than-thou and start to play policeman, they risk allowing other banks to take that business.”
Environmental risk has been on the radar for lenders since the 1980s and early 1990s, when courts began forcing some measure of responsibility on banks for the polluting factories, superfund sites and other environmental problems that had, to one degree or another, been facilitated by their financing.
Congress passed a law in 1996 that limited the exposure of lenders on this front, but since then, most major banks have developed environmental risk management divisions as part of their commercial banking due diligence efforts.
Now, the rise of murkier issues like global warming, along with increasing scrutiny by environmental groups of banks’ investments in many other industries — like oil and gas development, nuclear power, coal-fired electricity generation, oil sands, fuel pipeline construction, dam building, forestry and even certain types of agriculture — are nudging lenders into new territory.
“We’re taking a much closer look at a much broader variety of issues, not all of which are captured under state and local laws,” said Stephanie Rico, a spokeswoman for the environmental affairs group at Wells Fargo.
Ms. Litvack, of F&C Investments, pointed to large protests last week by many climate activists outside the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. At least a dozen protesters have been arrested in demonstrations against the bank’s financing of oil sands development in Canada.
The Royal Bank of Canada, meanwhile, responding to intense pressure from environmental advocates denouncing the bank’s financing of oil sands projects, hosted 18 international banks in Toronto in February for “a day of learning” on the “regulatory, social and environmental issues” surrounding the oil sands.
Globally, banks and environmental advocates are seeking to make things easier by developing best practices and other voluntary standards. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley helped initiate the Carbon Principles, which aim to standardize the assessment of “carbon risks in the financing of electric power projects” in the United States. Several international financial institutions — including HSBC, Munich Re and others — have formed the Climate Principles, which aim to encourage the management of climate change “across the full range of financial products and services,” according to the compact’s Web site.
In the United States, mountaintop removal mining has become both increasingly common and contentious, as coal companies vie to feed the nation’s appetite for inexpensive electricity. An expeditious and disruptive form of surface mining, it involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the debris in valleys and streams below.
A report published in May by the Sierra Club and the Rainforest Action Network estimated that nine banks were the primary lenders for companies engaged in mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia, and that they had provided nearly $4 billion in loans and bond underwriting to those companies — chiefly Massey Energy, Patriot Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources — since 2008.
The Rainforest Action Network, which has headed a campaign to highlight financial institutions with connections to the mining, said this month that the policy shifts were chipping away at the financing.
Citing Bloomberg data, for example, the group noted that Bank of America — listed as recently as 2008 as one of the “syndication agents” on a $175 million revolving line of credit to Massey Energy — has eliminated that and all other connections to the company. The group also pointed to JPMorgan, which had previously underwritten $180 million in debt securities to Massey, but no longer has any financial ties to that company. In May, the bank said it would be subjecting all future engagements with companies involved in mountaintop removal mining to “enhanced review.”
Some environmental groups have criticized that and other policies as providing too much wiggle room — and whether any of it has any real impact is an open question. Mining industry representatives say such policies often fail to consider laws already in place requiring coal companies to limit their environmental impact, and to restore former mine sites when they are finished.
Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, an industry group, said that most of the policies in question position the banks to phase out lending over time — and only to companies that primarily engage in mountaintop removal mining. “Companies are still getting financing for their projects,” she said.
Roger S. Hendriksen, the vice president for investor relations for Massey Energy, suggested that environmentalists were overstating things, and that his company was having no trouble securing financing.
“While some banks no longer provide financing for companies conducting surface mining, there are many who will,” Mr. Hendriksen said. “We have and will continue to replace their services with alternate bank providers with little difficulty.”
But Rebecca Tarbotton, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, said in a published statement that the banks’ moves nonetheless send “a clear signal that these companies have a high risk profile and that other banks should beware.”
“Bottom line,” she added, “as access to capital becomes more constrained it will be harder for mining companies to finance the blowing up of America’s mountains.”
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