Bottled Water for the Homeless, Challenging NAFTA and Green-on-Green Violence
North Carolina officials pass out winter aid kits to the homeless.
Barack Obama’s presumptive pick for trade representative suggests that the U.S. should renegotiate the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The offices of environmental activist group Environmental Defense are raided by members of the more radical Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP).
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1. HEALTH
North Carolina officials pass out winter aid kits to the homeless.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Risk and Environmental Policy Angela Logomasini on how bottled water is part of the aid packages:
“Bottled water is often a lifesaver in times of natural disaster or when communities have problems with tap water. It also has applications for helping the poor. This winter, it is being used by charities that are compiling backpacks filled with items to help homeless individuals survive the winter. It is also an important aid during summer months. Will the greens call this use wasteful? Hopefully not!”
2. INTERNATIONAL
Barack Obama’s presumptive pick for trade representative suggests that the U.S. should renegotiate the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith on the pitfalls of changing the terms of NAFTA:
“To revisit NAFTA and try to include protectionist measures would be a huge mistake. What many NAFTA critics may not realize is that the trade agreement benefits all three countries – the U.S., Canada and Mexico – and the U.S. has some sweet deals from NAFTA. Take a look at just one benefit the U.S. would stand to lose if NAFTA were rewritten. It’s likely that the Canadians would try to renegotiate the extremely preferential treatment the U.S. receives in energy imports from Canada. (Canada by far is the U.S.’s largest provider of crude oil and petroleum imports. Mexico has usually been the second.)
3. ENVIRONMENT
The offices of environmental activist group Environmental Defense are raided by members of the more radical Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP).
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on the split in the green movement.
“Hardcore Greens like the GJEP are understandably upset at supposed allies ‘sleeping with the enemy.’ But large activist groups like Environmental Defense went mainstream long ago and are now more like the big businesses they used to scorn rather than the than grassroots groups they started out as. In contrast to GJEP’s hand-scrawled 2006 tax return showing revenues of a mere $103,349, ED’s neatly typed out 2006 tax return showed revenues of $83,827,034. Environmentalism has become an industry of sorts. According to a recent Forbes report, the 11 largest environmental groups have combined annual revenues of about $1.8 billion and own billions of dollars of assets. By selling out, Big Green has cashed in.”
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