Tea Party Group (The Institute for Liberty) Lobbies for Asian Pulp & Paper

[amborin]

Odd Alliance: Business Lobby and Tea Party



....a group in the United States, the Institute for Liberty, has vigorously defended the freedom of a giant Indonesian paper company to sell its wares to Americans without paying tariffs. The institute set up Web sites, published reports and organized a petition drive attacking American businesses, unions and environmentalists critical of the company, Asia Pulp & Paper.

snip

Tariff-free Asian paper may seem an unlikely cause for a nonprofit Tea Party group. But it is in keeping with a succession of pro-business campaigns — promoting commercial space flight, palm oil imports and genetically modified alfalfa — that have occupied the Institute for Liberty’s recent agenda.
Last year, the two groups also supported the effort by the agribusiness giant Monsanto to ease federal restrictions on its pesticide-resistant alfalfa. (In February, regulators agreed to do so.) Mr. Langer said he decided “to try out our grass-roots method on that, and frame it as a dairy issue and access to affordable food.”

snip

Domestic paper companies and their employee unions, complaining that China and Indonesia were subsidizing exported paper products, petitioned federal trade officials several years ago to slap tariffs on them. The main target, Asia Pulp & Paper, is also under attack for its logging practices; several big retailers have stopped selling its paper.

Last year, with a tariff decision looming, Asia Pulp & Paper went on the offensive. It deployed lobbyists and retained Mr. Oxley, the Australian who runs a Washington-based policy group, World Growth International, which has long defended commercial forestry and palm oil interests in Southeast Asia.
World Growth issued a report last June, “Green Protectionism,” asserting that groups like Greenpeace colluded with American labor unions and paper manufacturers to hobble Asian paper imports. In September, Asia Pulp & Paper released an Oxley review criticizing a Greenpeace study of the company’s logging practices.
Three days later, Mr. Langer came out with his own detailed report that hewed to these same themes, and put up a Web site, pulpwars.com, to promote it. Titled “Empires of Collusion,” it reads like a brief for Asia Pulp & Paper and has been followed by reports on subjects like palm oil and American paper industry subsidies that are important to Asia Pulp & Paper and its parent company, Sinar Mas. He has worked these issues into podcasts, Facebook postings and opinion columns, often with a folksy Tea Party-friendly twist.

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/us/politics/31liberty.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all


***************************************


meanwhile, in Indonesia:

How Sinar Mas is pulping the planet

A new investigative report from Greenpeace, "How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet," shows how major brands like Wal-Mart and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)are fueling global warming and pushing Sumatran tigers and orangutans towards the brink of extinction.

These companies are using or selling paper made from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), part of the notorious Sinar Mas group that is destroying Indonesia’s rainforests and carbon- rich peatlands.

The new Greenpeace investigation shows how two important rainforest areas on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the Kerumutan peatforest and Bukit Tigapuluh Forest Landscape, are being destroyed by Sinar Mas. APP uses the logs from these rainforest areas to feed its Sumatran-based pulp mills, which export pulp and paper products worldwide.

Many companies are responding to evidence of Sinar Mas group’s destructive practices by canceling their contracts with the Indonesian palm oil and paper giant. Greenpeace is calling on the rest to follow suit.....

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/media-center/reports/How-Sinar-Mas-is-pulping-the-planet/



******************************************************************************


...APP’s operations are driving massive deforestation and expose the contradiction between President Yudhoyono’s international commitments to stop deforestation and the actions of his Forestry Ministry. Destruction of the Kampar Peninsula and Sumatra’s peat forests is devastating for the thousands of people dependent on the forests for their livelihoods, their unique biodiversity and the carbon they store....

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/media-center/news-releases/Greenpeace-Halts-Rainforest-Destruction-in-Kampar-Again-by-Pulp-and-Paper-Giant-APRIL-/

********************************************************************************************************



INDONESIA'S RAINFORESTS AND PEATLANDS


On the ground, it's easy to see the massive destruction that has taken place here. A drive through the Kampar Peninsula reveals acre after acre of forest conversion from healthy rainforest to palm oil plantations. There is no sign of animal life or biodiversity — just row after row of palm. The roads are congested with trucks carrying out palm kernels and the sky is filled with the smoke from hundreds of fires set to clear the land for planting.

"Indonesia is a stark example of the need for a robust plan and the provision of international funds to protect tropical forests. According to the latest available figures, it has one of the fastest rates of deforestation. This emits so much CO2 that Indonesia is the third largest climate polluter, after China and the US.

The reason these emissions are so high is twofold. It is caused by the rapid rate of deforestation, and the drainage and burning of the carbon rich peat soil the forests grow on. Deforestation of tropical forests is driven by global demand for products like paper, palm oil (which is used in toothpaste), chocolate, and as a biofuel. Since 1950, over 182 million acres of Indonesia's rainforests have been destroyed completely and others have been seriously degraded.

In a recent report, the Indonesian Government identified the oil palm, pulp and paper, agriculture, and logging industries as those primarily responsible for draining peat, for destroying its forests, and for causing the country's enormous CO2 emissions. It predicts that, unless action is taken, these emissions will continue to increase.....



http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/indonesias-rainforests-and-the-climate-crisis/blog/25781

[Angry Dragon]

1. teabaggers care nothing about the planet, people, nor animals