Dear Ms. Broten,
Here is the link to our latest news release (issued at
13:58 today)
Attention News/Political/Science/Environment
Editors:
NRSP to hold Governments Accountable for Environmental
Review Processes
OTTAWA, April 18 /CNW Telbec/ - The Natural Resources
Stewardship Project (www.NRSP.com)
announces the launch of its second campaign, the "Science
Audit Centre".
Like NRSP's first and on-going initiative, "Understanding
Climate Change", audit centre activities will be
led by NRSP Chair, Dr. Timothy Ball. As an environmental
consultant and past climatology professor at the University
of Winnipeg, Dr. Ball has, for many years, conducted
environmental science reviews, most specifically related
to climate change, water management and pollution control.
"Governments must be held more publicly accountable
for their environmental policy decisions," said
Dr. Ball. "Their plans must be subject to unbiased,
transparent and scientifically rigorous hearing processes
in which experts from all sides of environmental issues
are invited to testify along with the affected parties."
While NRSP will tackle a variety of topics as part
of the Science Audit Centre campaign, it is particularly
concerned that government strategies designed to reduce
carbon dioxide emissions are not being subject to appropriate
review by leading experts. As a consequence, costly
plans are being forced onto taxpayers without appropriate
consideration of their actual implications for the country.
"Tax dollars must not be squandered on feel-good
'green' plans that have little basis in real science,"
said Dr. Ball. "This approach only hurts the economy
by diverting tax dollars away from important environmental
issues where attention is needed."
The recent committee hearings into the federal government's
Clean Air Act and the Kyoto Implementation Bill are
prime examples of politicized processes that entirely
excluded experts on one side of the issue. These hearings
were symptomatic of an overarching problem in society
- the yielding of government and industry to the frequently
unreasonable and groundless demands of environmental
activists.
NRSP will select a range of current policy decisions
and focus on the actual environmental science review
processes used. The intent is to highlight good processes
and bad processes, and ultimately to ensure that an
effective peer-reviewed mechanism - a science audit
centre - is established. Similar to fiscal auditing
of decision-making, this is intended to ensure that
where governments use science as the rationale for decisions,
the science is in fact peer-reviewed, the process is
transparent, and the range of views in the scientific
community on the issue is properly considered.
For further information: about NRSP, or to set up interviews
with NRSP participants, please visit www.nrsp.com
or contact:
Tom Harris, Executive Director, NRSP, (613) 234-4487,
tom.harris@nrsp.com
or
Timothy F. Ball, PhD, Chairman, NRSP, (250) 380-7784,
timothyball@shaw.ca
