Open Letter to “Hands off Mother Earth”
from the Greek Movement against Chemical Aerial Spraying
Volos,
Greece
Dear Hands
off Mother Earth,
Our organization wishes to express its support for your rejection of atmospheric geoengineering and your campaign
against it, including the moratorium recommendation
to be submitted in October to the
United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
We
note that the Capodistrias-Spinelli-Europe
initiative and the Belfort
group, with whom we have a relationship of collaboration, have been included
in the list of supporting organizations and we would like similar recognition to
be given to the support we offer.
Our opposition to atmospheric
geoengineering broadly coincides with the opposition expressed at the May
2010 Belfort
group symposium in Ghent, Belgium on “the illegal spraying of harmful
substances in the atmosphere by airplanes”,
as registered in the “Case
Orange” report commissioned by the
organizers of that symposium and reviewed at the symposium by the scientist Coen
Vermeeren.
(For Dr. Vermeeren’s review of the report see
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7299427
, starting at minute 35.)
The conclusions of the Case Orange report are
significantly different from those of Hands off Mother Earth, particularly in
relation to recognition of atmospheric geoengineering
not as a proposal or a practice at most in a preliminary experimental stage but
rather as a well-entrenched, and systematically denied, planetary reality.
We would like to invite you to explain the factors,
political and/or legal, that prevent you from reaching the same conclusions as
the Case Orange report in this respect. It is quite possible to do this without
modifying or altering your public stance.
We would
like to emphasize that we do NOT wish to conduct a “scientific” debate with
you. Our fear is that such a debate could resemble the street
debate conducted in San Diego in February
2010 between scientist Alan Robock, known as a “critic” of
geoengineering, and activists.
This debate was degrading for both parties, exposing
the activists as naïve and Dr. Robock as an insincere politician, not a
scientist researching and describing reality.
We would
appreciate a written reply to this message. We propose at some future date, when
we are in a position to conduct a symposium ourselves, to invite you to it so
that a similar discussion may be conducted there also, hopefully with more
public involvement and participation.
In the meantime, please continue, with our support,
your campaign in the international organizations and keep us informed of your
progress.
Sincerely,
Nikos Katsaros (chemist),
Wayne Hall (translator)
Aliki Stefanou (journalist)
Freideriki Zougrou (economist)
Georgios Karayannis (attorney)
Response to Open Letter from Diana
Bronson (click)
Rosalie Bertell response to Diana Bronson (click)
Correspondence with Rosalie Bertell and other activists