US castoffs resuming dirty career - Boston Globe

[Eugene]

Source: Boston Globe

US castoffs resuming dirty career
Old plants, buses are sold to poorer nations

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | August 19, 2007

Sixth in a series of occasional articles examining
climate change, its effects, and possible solutions.

TURNERS FALLS -- Some townspeople in this 19th-century
mill village on the Connecticut River celebrated when workers
began tearing down a shuttered coal-fired power plant this
year. First, they dismantled the towering boiler. In June,
the smokestack that belched hundreds of thousands of tons
of heat-trapping gases into the air came down. Last month,
workers hauled away the five-story steel skeleton, leaving
just a concrete silo as a reminder of this local icon of
global warming.

But the demolition is hardly a victory in the battle against
manmade climate change.

Virtually every piece of the 2,600-ton plant is being shipped
to Guatemala to be rebuilt, girder by girder, to power a
textile mill that sells pants, shirts, and sportswear to the
United States. It could last, and continue to pollute, for
another 50 years.

From 4-ton trucks to 40-ton boilers, US vehicles and
equipment are finding a second life in developing countries
-- postponing meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions by inefficiently using energy or directly emitting
carbon dioxide.

-snip-

A generation ago, economists and scientists envisioned a
different future. Rich, developed countries were going to
invest in cutting-edge technology to demonstrate its
effectiveness. Then, developing countries would use that
climate-friendly technology to leapfrog over wealthy
nations' cast-offs.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/19/us... /

[Kolesar]

1. We paid for and built this fantastic transportation infrastructure so corp's can exploit our markets

...with cheap products made by underpaid workers with no medical coverage and no right to organize.