Tag: environment

Still President Bush Still wants to Kill Us All

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Still President Bush still wants to kill us all using his proxies in the EPA to gut any and all regulatory restrictions on polluting. Rebecca Clarren has written a compelling overview of the problem in Salon.

the story of the hundreds of sick people who live near the former Kelly Air Force Base illuminates an entirely new manner in which the Bush administration has diluted science and put public health at risk. This year, largely in obeisance to the Pentagon, the nation’s biggest polluter, the White House diminished a little-known but critical process at the Environmental Protection Agency for assessing toxic chemicals that impacts thousands of Americans.

As a coalition of more than 40 national and local environmental organizations put it in a letter to EPA administrators [4 page PDF] this past April: “EPA, under pressure from the Bush White House, has given the foxes the keys to the environmental protection henhouse.”

[From Environmental Protection Agency The Stalin Era Salon ]

Mechanics at the former Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio used a toxic chemical called tetrachloroethylene (or PCE for short) to degrease parts on the various airplanes serviced at the base. The chemical was discarded haphazardly, and seeped into the ground and water everywhere.

Although it has conducted limited testing, the EPA acknowledges that it’s possible for PCE vapor to rise from groundwater into people’s living rooms and kitchens. Yet it says the Alvarados and their neighbors have nothing to fear. Based on EPA air quality tests inside five area homes, the nation’s environmental guardian claims that it’s safe for residents to live above the plume for the next 40 to 100 years, or the amount of time it will take for the chemicals to naturally dissipate.

The fact is, EPA scientists haven’t completed an updated scientific assessment of PCE, including its health risks, for a decade. Worse, a comprehensive review of the carcinogenic chemical may never be coming. Anti-regulatory crusaders inside the Bush White House have peopled the EPA with top officials apparently more concerned with limiting government spending than public health. According to critics within and outside the EPA, the agency has stifled independent research and compromised scientific assessments of all manner of toxins and carcinogens that Americans breathe, drink and touch.

“It feels like Stalin-era Russia, like the administration set themselves up to decide what’s allowable science and what isn’t,” says a high-ranking staff scientist at the EPA, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Until the recent economic crash, this has been such an anti-regulatory administration. One of the ways to undermine regulations is to undermine the science behind them. It’s absolutely shocking what’s going on.”

Public health officials say this attempt to derail the scientific evaluation of toxins is one of the most damning legacies of the Bush administration. In late September, the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing critique of the EPA’s new toxic-assessment procedures. It concluded that the secretive procedures compromise scientific credibility and sacrifice the public’s trust in government. Despite such hefty criticism, public officials fear that because the new procedures have been instituted at the EPA so far below the public radar, their harmful impact will survive long after Bush leaves office. It will take a bold and expedient move by Barack Obama or the next Congress to curtail the influence of the Pentagon and other government agencies on the EPA.

There is also the national scourge of perchlorate, an ingredient of rocket fuel that has been found in the water supply of most states.

Since the early 1990s, the EPA has been conducting a toxic assessment of perchlorate, a major component in rocket fuel, used by the military and its contractors in bases throughout the country.

The chemical is incredibly widespread. It shows up in the groundwater of 35 states from New England to California; it has contaminated 153 public water systems in 26 states. Between 17 million and 40 million Americans are exposed to perchlorate at a level many scientists consider unsafe. According to a 2006 CDC study, 36 percent of American women are iodine deficient, putting them at risk for perchlorate-related thyroid problems. Due in part to perchlorate-contaminated irrigation water, most Americans who eat lettuce in the winter ingest the chemical. It has also appeared in melons, spinach and milk, according to 2005 and 2006 studies by the Food and Drug Administration.

A 2002 IRIS assessment led the EPA to call for a safe exposure dose of one part per billion — roughly the equivalent of a drop of water in a home swimming pool. That finding was expected to propel a stringent cleanup policy, one that could cost the Department of Defense billions of dollars.

That did not happen because the Pentagon has an ally in the EPA, an ally that decided that the budget of the Department of Defense was much more important than the health and safety of the nation.

In 2005, the EPA distributed a proposal to revise the chemical assessment process; officials at the Office of Management and Budget sat down with the IRIS blueprint and pulled out a red pen.

The plan that emerged calls for expanding the role of other federal agencies in determining which chemicals are assessed each year. It allows agencies like the Pentagon, Department of Energy and NASA to identify “mission critical” chemicals to the agency’s operations.

Significantly, the new process affords OMB more oversight and involvement in what critics say should be a purely scientific assessment. Now OMB and other non-health agencies have three additional opportunities to comment. Such comments are off-limits to public scrutiny and not available to congressional review unless subpoenaed. If OMB doesn’t agree with certain scientific findings, it can effectively block EPA from moving forward with the assessment.

Obama’s administration could reverse this crap, if they wanted. The question is, do they want to?

With a flick of a pen, Obama could reinstate the old IRIS process. Whether this will happen remains to be seen. His transition office didn’t return calls and e-mails asking if it would be likely to reverse the Bush administration changes to the IRIS process.

“If the Obama administration is serious about protecting poisoned communities, fixing the IRIS program is the place to start,” says Jennifer Sass, a toxicologist at Natural Resources Defense Council. “This should be the top priority at EPA. It’s really fundamental.”

Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Committee on Science and Technology, has taken matters into his own hands. In September, he introduced legislation that would make EPA solely responsible for the IRIS process. The agency would be barred from consulting with any agency, including OMB, that had a conflict of interest in the scientific review.

Read the entire article here.

Are you eating GM food without knowing it

swanksalot0 comment

If the FDA and its client, Monsanto, had their way, consumers would never realize if the food sold at grocery stores and restaurants was some sort of franken-food created in a laboratory, with long-term health effects unknown. Furthermore, Monsanto and a few other similar corporations would own the patents to the majority of the world’s food supply, with seeds that only lasted one year. Their nefarious plan is well on the way to being permanently in place.

CIA and the art of brussel sprout earings

Alexis Madrigal writes:

Wired Science – Wired Blogs:
The other part of the explanation is that US consumer attitudes don’t actually matter very much to the current GM food business. All Monsanto needs is for you to love Twinkies and Coca-Cola, the food machinery of this country does the rest. Monsanto’s model is business-to-business (B2B), like server sales or logistics. Monsanto is more like Oracle than Apple. To the average consumer, GM crops are invisible, especially because you don’t have to label them in the US.

The attitudes towards GMO that matter to Monsanto are those held by big agribusiness seed buyers and corporate farmers, not Joe Six Pack. And the IT managers of the farming world love Monsanto. The chart is of US GE crop adoption of their big three products, corn, soybeans, and cotton, which just happen to compose 75 percent of the revenue generated from non-fruit and vegetable cash crops.

If you’re an opponent of GM foods, here comes the scary punchline. A big chunk of all that genetically modified corn and soy go right into our processed foods and into feed for the animals we eat. So chances are, unless you are a raw or organic foodista, you ate a GM food derivative this very day.

Even organic food is probably tainted in some degree by GM food.

Southern Cal is going to be thirsty

Seth Anderson0 comment

Ru-oh. The water wars are getting closer. Better make those visits to Southern California sooner than later.

Listen to the Ice

As signals of climate change begin to come into focus in the Sierra Nevada, its melting glaciers spell trouble in bold font. Not only are they in-your-face barometers of global warming, they also reflect what scientists are beginning to uncover: that the Sierra snowpack – the source of 65 percent of California’s water – is dwindling, too.

More of the Sierra’s precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow, studies show, and the snow that blankets the range in winter is running off earlier in the spring. And snow in the Sierra touches everything. Take it away and droughts deepen, ski areas go bust and fire seasons rage longer.

Some glaciers already have melted away, including the first Sierra glacier discovered in Yosemite by John Muir in 1871. Today, the remaining 100 or so are withering, including Lyell, the second-largest, which could be gone inside a century.

“All across the Sierra, glaciers are transitioning into ice patches. Ice patches are transitioning to snow fields. And snow fields are transitioning into bedrock,” said Greg Stock, a geologist with Yosemite National Park who joined Devine last month on an annual survey of the Lyell glacier.

While this is not the first time glaciers have receded across the Sierra Nevada – they last did so about 20,000 years ago – this meltdown is more ominous, Stock said, because scientists increasingly believe it is sparked not by natural forces but by rising carbon dioxide levels from the burning of fossil fuels.

“We have entered new terrain with what’s going on in the atmosphere,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything like this in tens of millions of years.”

[From Yosemite glacier on thin ice – Sacramento News – Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee]

(H/T Cooky Jill over at skippy’s place.)

Plastics industry has FDA in their pocket

Seth Anderson0 comment

Corruption in the FDA? Really? Who woulda-thunk?

A government report claiming that bisphenol A is safe was written largely by the plastics industry and others with a financial stake in the controversial chemical, the Journal Sentinel found.

Although the Food and Drug Administration will not reveal who prepared its draft, the agency’s own documents show that the work was done primarily by those with the most to gain by downplaying concerns about the safety of the chemical.

That includes Stephen Hentges, executive director of the American Chemistry Council’s group on bisphenol A, who commissioned a review of all studies of the neurotoxicity of bisphenol A and submitted it to the FDA. The FDA then used that report as the foundation for its evaluation of the chemical on neural and behavioral development. The American Chemistry Council is a trade group representing chemical manufacturers.

The FDA’s draft, released in August, found no cause for worry about bisphenol A, which is found in thousands of household products, including baby bottles, infant formula containers and the lining of aluminum cans.

That finding is at odds with the conclusions of the FDA’s own advisers from the National Toxicology Program. The NTP announced in September that the chemical is of some concern for effects on the development of the prostate gland and brain, and for behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children. The NTP also found some concern for the neurodevelopment of young children, infants and fetuses.

Last week, the government of Canada declared that bisphenol A is a toxin and is banning its use in baby bottles and other products used by children.

The FDA draft finding no harm is under review by a subcommittee, which will decide if the conclusions need to be amended. That assessment is expected to be released any day and will be presented Oct. 31 in Washington

The Journal Sentinel reported earlier this month that subcommittee chairman Martin Philbert is founder and co-director of an institute that received $5 million from a retired medical supply manufacturer who said he considered bisphenol A “perfectly safe.” The donor, Charles Gelman, told the newspaper that he has expressed his views to Philbert in several conversations.

Philbert at first denied ever having been contacted by Gelman about bisphenol A. He now says that he is aware of Gelman’s views but is not influenced by them.

[From JS Online: Plastics industry behind FDA research on bisphenol A, study finds ]

Keep away from children

Not surprising, but despicable. The FDA should be ashamed, and those corrupt officials who are behind this latest travesty should lose their jobs, and be banned from working for any plastic-related corporations for 20 years.

The newspaper reviewed the body of evidence that the task force considered. It found memos with entire sections blacked out, reviews commissioned by the American Plastics Council, an arm of the American Chemistry Council, and reviews completed by consulting firms with clients who havefinancial interests in the sale of bisphenol A.

Many of these reviews of individual studies are at odds with the NTP’s reviews of the same studies.

For example, one study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense looked at the effects of bisphenol A on prostate development in rats.

The FDA called it “severely limited,” in contrast to the NTP’s review, which labeled it of “high utility.”

Another government-funded study, which also looked at the effects of the chemical on the prostate, again was considered of “high utility” by the NTP for its evaluation, and it was deemed “very limited” by the FDA.

Much of the science that the task force considered was 20 years old or older, including a study commissioned in 1976.

The older studies are not as sensitive as modern tests. They used high doses of the chemical and did not consider the unique effects on the endocrine system.

See also
Plastic fantastic

Clash on Safety of BPA

Plastic Soup of the Pacific

or more or even more

Plastic linked to smaller penises

Seth Anderson0 comment

Nice. No wonder the Republican EPA wants to ensure phthalates in the nation’s water supply: parity. Republicans already start out with a disadvantage, they are looking for anything that can even the odds.

Exposure of expectant mothers to phthalates, a common ingredient in many plastics, has been linked to smaller penis size and incomplete descent of testicles in their baby boys, according to a new research paper that found the chemical also appears to make the overall genital tracts of boys slightly more feminine.

The findings are sure to add more controversy to phthalates, a chemical that is added to polyvinyl chloride plastic to make it less brittle, and to many types of personal care products including fragrances, hair sprays and nail polish.

The research was conducted on children from three different areas of the United States, and found a strong statistical correlation between expectant mothers who had above-average levels of the chemical in their urine while pregnant and the feminizing effect on their sons.

Phthalates are “probably reproductive toxins and should be eliminated from products gradually because we don’t need them,” said Shanna Swan, director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester’s school of medicine, who led the team of scientists who examined the boys.

The paper is published in the current issue of the journal Environmental Research.

[From globeandmail.com: Plastics ingredient linked to smaller penises]

Palin Lie about Climate Change

Seth Anderson4 Comments

More discussion of last nights debate later (still half-formed in my mind, and you probably aren’t losing any sleep waiting for my opinion on it anyway), but this Palin lie jumped out:

99 in the Shade

PALIN TONIGHT: “We have got to encourage other nations to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that. As governor I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.”

FACTS: PALIN WAS NOT THE FIRST GOVERNOR TO ACT ON CLIMATE CHANGE OR REORGANIZE HER CABINET TO DEAL WITH IT

In JANUARY 2007, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick Began Sweeping Cabinet Reorganization to Integrate Energy and Environment to Deal With Climate Change. “The challenge of climate change illustrates vividly the need to integrate energy and environmental policy,” added Governor Patrick, who has begun a sweeping Cabinet reorganization that combines energy and environmental affairs agencies into a single secretariat.” [Gov. Patrick Press Release, 1/8/07 ]

· Nevada Created Climate Committee in April, 2007. On April 10, 2007, “Governor Jim Gibbons today signed an executive order creating the Nevada Climate Change Advisory Committee and named its 13 members. The Committee is tasked with making recommendations to the Governor on reducing Nevada’s greenhouse gas emissions.” [State of Nevada Press Release , 4/10/07]

· By May of 2007, 29 States had Taken Action On Climate Change. “Among the 29 states that have taken steps to curb their contributions to global warming, some have been more active than others. Massachusetts sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and won a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court last month. California, at the urging of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, passed the nation’s most stringent emissions control legislation. California also worked with several New England states to set up the carbon registry.” [St. Petersburg Times, 5/10/97 ]

Palin Created Subcabinet on Climate Change In SEPTEMBER 2007. According to a press release, “Governor Sarah Palin today signed Administrative Order 238 establishing a sub-cabinet to prepare a climate change strategy. ‘Many scientists note that Alaska’s climate is changing,’ Governor Palin said. ‘We are already seeing the effects. Coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice and record forest fires affect our communities and our infrastructure. Some scientists tell us to expect more changes in the future. We must begin to prepare for those changes now.’” She also said that the sub-cabinet would look at ways to develop the state’s renewable energy sources. [Palin press release, 9/14/07]

[From Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need]

So in her mind, being 30th is the same as being first. Interesting math.

The full transcript of this portion of the debate, and a bonus wordie map, here

EPA hates Americans

swanksalot1 Comment

The Bush cronies in the EPA want to kill and maim American citizens, presumedly to bring on The Rapture. Their latest scheme to damage public health: ignore perchlorate in the nation’s drinking water because cleaning it up would cost the Pentagon too much money. The Pentagon has much more important tasks to accomplish with its trillion dollar budget: like killing people in other countries.

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there’s no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.
EPA reached the conclusion in a draft regulatory document not yet made public…

The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.

The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a “meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems.”

[From EPA won’t limit rocket fuel in U.S. drinking water – USATODAY.com]

I like to eat paste

The EPA chooses to ignore common sense, and the criticism of non-Bushies like Barbara Boxer:

“This is a widespread contamination problem, and to see the Bush EPA just walk away is shocking,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate’s environment committee.

Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., added: “This is an unconscionable decision not based upon science or law but on concern that a more stringent standard could cost the government significantly.”

The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.

The Pentagon could face liability if EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly clean-up efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning EPA’s conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.

Lutz is a Putz

Seth Anderson0 comment

General Motors has long been a reactionary company; Bob Lutz just proved nothing has changed.

Tangents

General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz, on the 100th anniversary of GM’s founding, appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show last night, and embarassed his company. Lutz, unfortunately for this aging industrial giant, is a Luddite, supporting the most extreme crackpot denials of the science of climate change and attacking the Volt — GM’s next-generation hybrid automobile that can run entirely on electricity for trips of 40 miles or less — as a weak, unattractive car. His extremism was barely matched by Colbert’s parodic statements:

Colbert: Why not just call this the Chevy Gore? You don’t believe global warming is real, you’ve said so.

Lutz: I accept that the planet is heated, but I, like many noted scientists, I don’t believe in the CO2 theory.

Colbert: Exactly! I just think that people are leaving their toaster ovens open. [Or] it’s just sun-spot activity.

Lutz: In the opinion of about 32,000 of the world’s leading scientists, yes.

Watch it:

[Click to watch the video and finish the article Wonk Room » Revolting: GM Executive Bob Lutz Denies Global Warming, Trashes His Company’s Car ]

And yet GM and other Detroit dinosaurs want a taxpayer bailout. If I had a vote on the matter, I’d say, “Hell no!” Companies that refuse to live in the present, that actively cling to the out-dated past, are not companies that deserve taxpayer-funded largesse.

Lutz’s “32,000 of the world’s leading scientists” nonsense is taken from press releases by the right-wing industry-funded Heartland Institute, amplified by right-wing blogs and radio shows. This is a zombie lie, which was begun in 1998 by theright-wing industry-funded Oregon Institute. The National Academy of Sciences, whose name was misleadingly used, issued this warning on April 20, 1998:

The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science.

One might think Lutz was merely joking along, but this February, Lutz called global warming “a total crock of shit.”

BPA in plastics linked to diabetes, heart disease

Seth Anderson1 Comment

But never worry, I’m sure the FDA will issue reassurances that plastic is good for you. Good enough that no FDA employee will ever use a plastic water bottle again, but we wouldn’t want to cause panic, nor cause our close friends in the plastic industry to lose any shareholder value.

Thirsty?

The chemical Bisphenol A (BPA), widely used in plastic food and beverage containers, has been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and liver abnormalities, according to a study released Tuesday.

The report to be published in the September 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that adults with the highest concentrations of BPA in their urine had nearly triple the odds of cardiovascular disease, compared with subjects found to have the least amounts of the compound in their systems.

Of 1,455 adults studied, those with the highest BPA levels had more than double the odds of having diabetes, the report found.

“Higher urinary concentrations of BPA were associated with an increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and liver-enzyme abnormalities,” the authors wrote.

[From The Raw Story | Chemical in plastics linked to diabetes, heart disease: study]

Plastic, it’s what’s for breakfast1

NPR ran a story on the same topic, and concluded:

At this time, the FDA finds the current level of exposure to BPA through food containers safe.

[From FDA Weighs Safety Of Bisphenol A : NPR]

Don’t you feel much better now? Especially after 8 years2 of fealty to corporate profit instead of consumer safety?

Footnotes:
  1. and lunch, and dinner [↩]
  2. though, one could easily add the Clinton years here to this total, and Bush the Smarter, and Reagan. So really 28 years of the FDA and similar regulatory agencies protecting the interests of industry over the health of citizens [↩]

Will Congress Extend Wind, Solar Tax Breaks

Seth Anderson0 comment

Would seem as if this should be bigger news: McCain would rather devote alternative energy tax credits to the poor, poor oil corporations who are underwriting his campaign instead of renewing or expanding tax credits to new green-collar industries.

Windy Day Just Like Any Other Day
[Windy Day Just Like Any Other Day]

The whole clean-energy ecosystem, from investors to manufacturers to developers, is on tenterhooks to see what will happen with the credits.

Of course, that’s not necessarily the fault of the Democrats who control Congress. Sen. John McCain famously missed the decisive vote on renewing the tax credits earlier this year, and missed another vote after that.

But it does explain why, as California senator Barbara Boxer said last night in Denver, “In the Senate, 60 is the new 50!”. Sixty Demcratic senators is a filibuster-proof majority. That means policy ideas turn into policies. Which is why some observers, like the WSJ edit page, figure the most important votes this election season won’t necessarily come at the top of the ticket—Obama versus McCain—but at the Congressional level.

With 60 Democratic senators, clean-energy advocates like Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell may just get their wish: permanent tax credits for renewable energy.

[From Environmental Capital – WSJ.com : Pay Me: Will Congress Extend Wind, Solar Tax Breaks?]

1. Renewable resources like wind and solar, or 2. petro-dollar dictators like the Saudi princes. Hmmmm, let us collectively noodle on that choice for a second. Gee, let’s choose door number 1, Alex!

Bush officials sneak-attack on Endangered Species Act

Seth Anderson0 comment

Assholes, all. As someone commented somewhere1 “What did the planet do to Cheney that he hates it so much?”

In the excitement of the Olympics, the run-up to the presidential conventions and the flurry of late summer vacations, it was easy to miss the Bush administration’s stealth attack on the Endangered Species Act last week. A proposed regulation would simply eliminate independent scientific reviews that have been required for over 30 years.

“I have been working on the Endangered Species Act for 15 years and have never seen such a sneaky attack,” declared John Kostyack, executive director of wildlife conservation and global warming at the National Wildlife Federation.

In a proposal, first reported by the Associated Press, biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service would no longer have input into the actions of many other federal agencies in evaluating projects that could impact endangered species.

Essentially it would be up to officials at agencies like the Forest Service, the Minerals Management Service and the Department of Transportation to decide for themselves if a new timber allotment, mining project or road would harm endangered animals and plants, without consulting third-party biologists from Fish and Wildlife.

Many of the agencies, which would now be making decisions affecting the fate of species themselves, don’t even have biologists on staff to make such determinations. The proposal presents a conflict of interest, which could effectively gut the Endangered Species Act, by asking the very agencies the act regulates to also enforce it. A 2008 Fish and Wildlife Service memorandum obtained by environmentalists states that when agencies regulated themselves in the past, they consistently violated the Endangered Species Act.

If the new regulation is approved by the Department of the Interior in the next couple of months, it would undercut the authority of the Endangered Species Act. “With this change, the Bush administration threatens to undo more than 30 years of progress,” said Kostyack. “This move is consistent with other efforts by the administration to cement industry-friendly policies before leaving office in January.”

[From Bush officials sneak-attack nation’s wildlife | Salon ]

I hope they aren’t allowed to get away with this brazen act of ignoring the wishes of the public.

Green Zone

Announcing the proposal last week, the Department of the Interior asserted that greenhouse gas emissions are exempt from regulation under the Endangered Species Act. It stated the “proposed rule is consistent with the FWS [Fish and Wildlife Service] current understanding it is not possible to draw a direct causal link” between the fate of a species, like the polar bear, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalists say the Bush administration’s motive is to preempt environmental groups from suing the government in the name of protecting the polar bears when the feds do things that would increase greenhouse gas emissions, like approving new coal-fired power plants.

To add insult to injury, the Bush administration said it will accept public comment on the proposed changes for a mere 30 days, and itwill not accept such comments via e-mail, which is the common way that many environmental groups activate their memberships to fight egregious policies. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now accepting public comment about the proposed changes through Sept. 15 on the Regulations.gov Web site.

Rep. Nick J. Rahall II, D-W.V., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, called the proposed changes to the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act “deeply troubling.” Sen. Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works committee, said that they’re “illegal.” The senator from California has legal precedent for that charge. In 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved hundreds of pesticides for use without consulting either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Services about their implications for endangered wildlife and sea critters. When environmental groups sued, a federal judge ruled against the EPA.

“It takes great hubris to resurrect an issue the court has already definitely struck down,” stated Patti Goldman, an attorney for Earthjustice. “This is like a zombie movie … their proposal to toss the Endangered Species Act over the cliff died, but now has somehow come back to life.”

Footnotes:
  1. I don’t remember where I read it, or I would cite the reference [↩]

Military Air Show Should be Grounded

Seth Anderson0 comment

I have never been fond of the pageantry of the Chicago Air and Water Show1. Apparently, I’m not alone, though for different reasons. Colin McMahon is an Iraq vet, and thinks the display is sickening.

Contrails

Here we were, toasting our firepower even as young American men and women were dying at sickening rates in a foreign land. Oohing and aahing on the beach while the very types of warplanes we were celebrating were inflicting horror on some good, innocent people—not merely on the bad guys.

It seemed beyond anachronistic. It seemed perverse. And it was freaking me out.

That was a couple of years ago. But even if the roar of the Blue Angels no longer bedevils me, I remain convinced that the militaristic aspects of the Chicago Air & Water Show should be accorded honors and laid to rest. Especially today, with jet fuel costing what it does and all of us trying to consume less energy.

[From Ground military air show — chicagotribune.com]

If you want to see a photo gallery of the display2, Frank Hashimoto created a public Flickr group.

Footnotes:
  1. or other similar displays in other cities [↩]
  2. which is actually quite aesthetically pleasing, in an abstract way. Airplanes are beautiful feats of engineering. [↩]

Great Salt Lake’s High Mercury Levels

swanksalot1 Comment

Stewards of our planet, failing again.

Wheel of transformation
[Wheel of transformation]

The Great Salt Lake is so briny that swimmers bob in the water like corks. It is teeming with tiny shrimp that were sold for years in the back of comic books as magical “sea monkeys.” And, for reasons scientists cannot explain, it is laden with toxic mercury.

“We’ve got a problem, but we don’t know how big it is,” said Chris Cline, a biologist for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service who has been collecting the eggs of cinnamon teal ducks from nests along the rim of the lake so that they can be cracked open and analyzed in the laboratory.

Three years ago, in an alarming finding, tests by the federal Geological Survey showed the lake had some of the highest mercury readings ever recorded in a body of water in the United States.

…

Researchers say mercury released into the atmosphere from coal-fired power plants in the West, gold mines in Nevada, volcanoes in Indonesia or industries in rapidly developing countries such as China or India may be settling in the lake.

[From Studying Great Salt Lake’s High Mercury Levels – NYTimes.com]

Let us speculate: man-made pollution from coal plants, or some unknown natural phenomenon? What are the odds? My money is on coal plants, whether locally, or elsewhere.

Palast on McCain and Nukes

Seth Anderson0 comment

Greg Palast discusses John McCain’s love for all things nuclear, a part of McCain’s goofy energy plan.

I’m guessing it was excessive exposure to either radiation or George Bush, but Senator John McCain’s comments from inside a nuclear power plant in Michigan are so cracked-brained that I fear some loose gamma rays are doing to McCain’s gray matter what they did to Homer Simpson’s.

On Tuesday, the presumptive Republican candidate descended into the colon of a nuke to declare we need to build 45 new nuclear plants – that this is the way out of our energy crisis. Nuclear power, declared the senator, is a “safe, efficient [and] inexpensive” alternative to oil.

Really? We can argue all day about whether nuclear plants are safe (they aren’t –period). But there can be no argument whatsoever that these giant radioactive tea-kettles are breathtakingly expensive.

Nuclear plants are cheap until you actually try to build one. Not one of the last 49 nuclear plants cost less than $2 billion apiece. I’m looking down the road at the remainders of the Shoreham nuclear plant which took nearly 20 years to build at a cost of $8 billion – or close to $7,000 per customer it was supposed to supply. When I say “supposed to,” it was closed for safety reasons after operating just one single day.

We’re told that the new generation of plants will be different. Just like an alcoholic child-beater, the nuclear plant builders promise us that, “This time it will be different.” Sure. And McCain believes them.

[From Greg Palast » The McCain Plan: Homer Simpson without the Donut ]

and the nuclear plant waste issue is still unresolved, as we’ve mentioned previously

While The New York Times reporters following McCain repeated his line about “inexpensive” nuclear power without question, a buried wire story on the same day noted that the Energy Department is putting the unfunded bill for disposing nuclear plant waste at $96.2 billion – nearly a billion dollars per plant operating today. And no one even knows exactly how to do it, or where. Obama has the audacity to ask about the nuclear waste’s cost. “Can we deal with the expense?” he said on Meet the Press.

McCain’s plan to spend endless billions on nuclear plants without a waste disposal system in place is like building a massive hotel without toilets. D’oh! I suppose you can always tell the guests to poop in buckets until someone comes up with a plan for plumbing. But the stuff piles up. And unlike the fecal droppings of tourists, nuclear waste will stay hot and dangerous for a thousand generations.

Read the whole article here

Nuclear Power Costs

Seth Anderson0 comment

Still don’t think giving tax breaks to the Exelons1 of the world to build nuclear plants is the answer to our energy woes.

Satanic Gift

Even if no new reactors are built, getting rid of the country’s nuclear waste will cost $96.2 billion and require a major expansion of the planned Nevada waste dump beyond limits imposed by Congress, the Energy Department said. The government now says the Yucca Mountain project, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will cost $38.7 billion more than was anticipated in 2001, when the department estimated the life cycle cost of the program at $57.5 billion.

[From High Cost Seen on Nuclear Dump ]

Oh, what’s a few billion between lobbyist friends. Or $38,700,000,000 in this case.

The estimates cover waste only from existing reactors and from the military.

And if we don’t figure out how to dispose of the waste safely, we’ll regret it eventually. Dumping the entire region’s toxic waste under a mountain isn’t really a solution, just a cover-up.

Footnotes:
  1. our local power company, and a large operator of nuclear plants [↩]