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UC Berkeley officially enters Faustian deal with oil giant BP
Student Campaign to Stop BP at Berkeley Wednesday Nov 14th 2007
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/14/18461214.php
"Our Generation's Manhattan Project" is now reality; students, faculty,
citizens outraged
Berkeley, Calif. - As the San Francisco Bay Area reels from the worst oil
spill in living memory, UC Berkeley and oil giant BP secretly signed a $500
million deal despite public criticism and calls for transparency. The contract
will create an "Energy Biosciences Institute" (EBI) to do research on
genetically engineered agrofuels (also known as biofuels) and microbes for enhanced
oil and coal production. The final agreement, released today, allows BP to
conduct secret research in the publicly-funded EBI building, while reaping the
benefits of the open research done by university scientists on the same
project.
The deal has become infamous since its preliminary announcement on February
1, 2007, as a threat to public research at the world's premier public
university. Its signing has been fraught with controversy as Berkeley faculty
charged administrators with bypassing standard processes of governance. UCB
administrators, who said the deal was negotiated "at warp speed," also disregarded
an external review the University commissioned in the wake of the equally
ill-received Novartis-Berkeley deal of 1998, which advised them to "avoid
industry agreements that involve complete academic units or large groups of
researchers." The university's student government passed a strong resolution calling
for the deal to be delayed so its terms could be studied.
The BP/Berkeley research, and schemes for large-scale agrofuel production in
general, are facing strong popular resistance around the world, for instance
from farmers in Africa, peasants and consumers' groups across South America,
and environmentalists from Papua New Guinea to Denmark and Germany. The use
of land for large-scale agrofuel farming would place the unconstrained energy
"needs" of first-world consumers into direct competition with cash-poor
countries' food supplies and conservation of rare and important ecosystems. These
conflicts are already reality, even in today's tiny agrofuel market, as U.S.
ethanol production has led to riots over skyrocketing corn prices in Mexico
earlier this year, and palm-oil farming for export threatens to drive the
orangutan to extinction in Indonesia and Malaysia.
BP scientists will be treated like tenured faculty at Berkeley, with
privileges such as teaching classes, mentoring students, and conducting research in
a building constructed with $70 million of taxpayer funding.
The Institute's researchers, including both Berkeley and BP scientists, will
be housed in Berkeley's Strawberry Canyon, a mere few hundred meters from
the Hayward Fault, probably the most dangerous earthquake fault in Northern
California. Untested genetically-modified organisms could easily be released in
case of a serious earthquake.
This new development is a direct continuation of UC Berkeley's past
involvement in global devastation and inequality, from its participation in the
devastation of native tribes and desecration of native remains to the development
of nuclear weapons, all of which continue to this day. The research and
technologies the EBI is designed to create are a direct threat to indigenous and
traditional communities around the world. They have the potential to create
new global catastrophes beyond the climate crisis, ranging from predictable
extinctions and financial crises resulting from excessive pressure on the global
agricultural economy to ecological collapses brought on by escaped
genetically modified organisms.
BP and Berkeley administrators have referred to this project as "our
generation's moon shot" and compared it to the Manhattan project, the unprecedented
large, fast and secret research project that created the Atomic Bomb. Like
the Manhattan Project, the EBI is unprecedented in scale, is being initiated at
Berkeley, and has been rushed into existence in secrecy. Democracy has no
more place in this project than in its predecessor, and the damage it
ultimately causes may be just as severe.
Resistance to the BP project, and any further violations of the UC's
responsibility to California and the world, will continue undeterred by this latest
disgrace committed by the university's administration. The Student Campaign
to Stop BP at Berkeley (http://StopBP-Berkeley.org) has opposed the deal
unequivocally since it was announced. Its recent international petition calling
for transparency and a halt to negotiations quickly received nearly 1,000
signatures from people in over 50 countries.
For further information:
Student Campaign to Stop BP at Berkeley http://StopBP-Berkeley.org
Related recent news:
BP Executive pied in Europe
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383831.html
BP/Berkeley deal featured on Boston Legal season premiere
http://chronicle.com/blogs/facevalue/index.php?id=683
http://stopBP-Berkeley.org
(info [at] stopBP-Berkeley.org)
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