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An unofficial view of an international negotiation:

ANALYSIS. . .PARALYSIS, Late edition POPs negotiations: Musings of a common man, the return!

Today was the fifth day and eve of the final day of the negotiations to conclude a treaty to eliminate 12 of the world's most dangerous chemicals. Delegates had spent much time pouring over the legalese that would form the main body of this Convention. This ability to communicate in legalese, jargon, acronyms and numbers is no mean feat. People go to law school for several years in order to make themselves this incomprehensible to the lay-person. But it must be said that some of the Government delegates had probably put in more work in these last five days than they had in an entire year back home.

Unfortunately, with less than a day left before negotiations end, some of the most fundamental issues determining a strong treaty capable of protecting the environment and public health remain unresolved. Essentially, the debate was about introducing laws in the Convention that would require taking a precautionary approach when dealing with dangerous, life-threatening chemicals like DDT, dioxins and other superpoisons. Science has to be dealt with humility. Experience shows us that what we don't know is far more than what we know.

More than 60 years ago, when DDT was first used, people thought it was the best thing that happened to humanity. In 1960s, Rachel Carson, in an environmental classic called "The Silent Spring," declared with sufficient evidence to convince anybody with an iota of common sense that DDT was an environmental poison. . . that it has the potential to wipe out entire populations of birds and animals by messing around with their reproductive systems and their bodies' ability to resist disease. Carson was dismissed as a hysterically mad woman by the chemical industry and the US government for daring to question their magic profit-making products.

But over the decades, after years of grueling scientific mudslinging, the woman who was dismissed was proven right. The experts of the world agreed that what kills the birds and the bees can kill human beings. If precaution had been exercised when the first evidence emerged that a chemical has potent environmental problems even in the absence of scientific certainty, much damage can be averted. But relying on a precautionary approach based purely on science is not good enough.

Even today, the industry's mercenary scientists and governments like the United States insist on seeing contaminated babies and smoking guns before taking action to stop an environmental poison from being released into the environment.

I learnt that, in this week's negotiations, Australia and the United States were the main proxy spokespersons for the Chemical Corporations in the negotiations. I'm told that for the United States and the pack of nations it leads called JUSCANZ, it is standard practice to trash every environmental negotiation. In fact, people say that this group just cans every intervention aimed at improving the quality of life on the planet as a whole, especially if it means that the chemical industry's right to pollute is infringed upon.

Interestingly, the United States doesn't seem to be in any mood to hide its allegiance to its corporate bosses. In an interview that the US delegation had with US-based activists during the negotiations, Brooks Yeager, the USEPA deputy assistant secretary for Environment from the US Department of State, declared that "We don't want to take home a treaty that the industry will veto."

If the US goes in for another round of elections, and if they don't mess it up the way they did the last one, perhaps, the industry should run for presidency. After all, it appears that they are in power regardless of who is President.