Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 32


     
     1
     2        So that is all I have to say from his opening speech.  I am
     3        sorry that was a bit of a digression.
     4
     5   MS. STEEL:   I don't know whether it is something that has been
     6        switched. I was trying to make some notes from the computer
     7        but it is all going off the end of the screen.  I don't
     8        know if anyone else has the same problem or not.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Is the computer being given to you to use
    11        for your note or not?
    12
    13   MS. STEEL:   I am trying to copy something down.
    14
    15   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yours has gone over to the right, has it?
    16
    17   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.
    18
    19   MR JUSTICE BELL:  Can you do a quick swap?
    20
    21   MS. STEEL:   That one is the same.
    22
    23   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let us pause.  (Pause)  Now, let us carry
    24        on.
    25
    26   MR. MORRIS:   Now, as far as the word 'rainforest', what does it
    27        mean?   First of all, looking at the test in the leaflet,
    28        in the first box, 50 acres every minute, which is the first
    29        time this issue really has been brought in, it does mention
    30        the word rainforest but it specifically relates there to --
    31        well, it goes on to talk about Amazonia, again without
    32        distinguishing which part of Amazonia is relevant, which is
    33        not relevant.  So again the concern is with the whole of
    34        Amazonia which, as I understand it, and evidence was given,
    35        is the area which is the general geographic basin in which
    36        the tributaries of the Amazon and tributaries of those
    37        tributaries run into the Amazon and the vegetation around
    38        those.  And it talks again, as I said before, about one
    39        billion people depending on water flowing from these
    40        forests, which again to me, on a common sense basis, would
    41        refer to all tropical forests.
    42
    43        And then we come to under the heading, 'Why is it wrong for
    44        McDonald's to destroy rainforests'.  Really, this is like
    45        the definition of what we are talking about.  The first
    46        paragraph there, we would say, is the definition of the
    47        problem.  Around the equator there is a lush green belt of
    48        incredibly beautiful tropical forest untouched by human
    49        development for one hundred million years supporting about
    50        half of all earth's life forms, including some thirty 
    51        thousand plant species, and producing a major part of the 
    52        planet's crucial supply of oxygen. 
    53
    54        To me, that obviously reads as a definition of rainforests,
    55        implying that all tropical forests -- explaining, defining
    56        that as all tropical forests.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Why not say tropical forests in the
    59        headline?   If the answer to that is, as more than one
    60        witness either expressly or implicitly says, because it

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