So it seems that every time there is a WTO meeting, there are massive protests. Now, normal people such as myself who are ignorant to their cause generally dismiss them as leftist wackos, but now I am starting to wonder if they have a point. Since these protests are so huge, perhaps they have a point...I realize that this may be an appeal to popularity, but I digress.
I know next to nothing about the WTO, or why people oppose it so I have been reading through its website as well as the Public Citizen website (made by our good friend Ralph Nader) to try to shed some light on this. The WTO site has a list of 10 myths that people believe about it that are supposedly untrue (which spins nicely what is about to follow), but I found the following on Nader's site:
And there's also this:The Tuna-Dolphin, Shrimp-Turtle and Venezuela Gas rulings reveal a systemic bias in the WTO rules and the WTO dispute resolution process against the rights of sovereign states to enact and effectively enforce environmental laws. All three rulings have led (or will lead, if implemented) to the weakening of the U.S. laws in question. Four years after a 1992 GATT panel ruled against the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) law forbidding sale in the U.S. of tuna caught by domestic or foreign fisheries using techniques that had killed hundreds of thousands of dolphins, the Clinton Administration lobbied Congress intensively to amend the MMPA to implement the GATT ruling after Mexican threats of a WTO enforcement case. In fall 1999, the U.S. will again import tuna caught using mile-long nets set around schools of dolphins. In fact, under the Clinton Administration-pushed MMPA amendments, this tuna can be certified as "Dolphin-Safe."
I am not all about overly restrictive regulations on fishing and whatnot, but on the other hand, I'd like to see steps taken to insure that dolphins don't get killed needlessly, as well as endangered sea turtles. I'm no hippie/tree hugger/PETA person but if you can take steps to stop it you might as well. I realize there may be another side of the story to this that I don't know about, and if anyone can shed some light on this it would be much appreciated. Thoughts?In the Shrimp-Turtle case, the appellate panel ruled against the effective implementation of a law requiring all foreign- and domestic-caught shrimp sold in the U.S. to be harvested while safeguarding endangered sea turtles. The U.S. turtle protection rules fall under the Endangered Species Act. This ruling, if implemented, would defang the U.S. law by requiring the elimination of the law's provisions requiring foreign countries to mandate use of Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) on their shrimp trawlers. The U.S. will only be allowed to target individual shrimp boats and will encourage the practice of "shrimp-laundering," wherein shrimp that are harvested on boats without TEDs, but are imported on boats with TEDs, are passed off to U.S. consumers as "turtle-friendly." In the Venezuela gas case, the U.S. was forced to amend gasoline cleanliness regulations under the Clean Air Act, adopting a policy towards limiting contaminants in foreign gasoline that EPA had earlier rejected as effectively unenforceable.
