LETTERS: BIG BUSINESS SEES KYOTO TREATY AS AN ADVANTAGE

To the editor:

There are plenty of examples of how Big Business uses consumer groups to help pad its profit margins, but few people know that multinational corporations use environmental groups to lobby governments on their behalf.

Large corporations can absorb the costs of additional regulations more easily than smaller or upstart businesses. They simply spread the costs out among all the consumers of their different products. The costs associated with trying to meet government regulations can hinder or bankrupt small businesses. Not only does this cut back on competition for the market, but it also cuts back on new ideas, initiatives and products.

Llewellyn Rockwell points out in "The Power Behind Kyoto" that many large energy companies support parts of the Kyoto agreement. There are a few big corporations that favor some form of limits on so-called greenhouse gas emissions, and they are lobbying the Bush Administration to be less implacable on the subject. They favor mandatory limits and impositions that would curtail production in the United States. What's more, some of them have connections to the Republican Party and are among the party's biggest donors.

These companies aren't nuts. They are thinking of their bottom lines. They know they can absorb the additional costs and later pass them on to their consumers, but that smaller companies can't. They also know that an international agreement favors larger companies over smaller competitors.

JAMES NALL

Marble Hill, Mo.