Tag: environment

Chevron and McCain

Seth Anderson0 comment

Saint McCain and his lobbyist pals, topic de jour. This time, trying to help out poor little Chevron from court ordered obligations to pay for its environmental disasters in Ecuador. Chevron, and friends, wants the Bush Administration to “quash” the case.

In 1993, a class action lawsuit on behalf of an estimated 30,000 Amazon residents was filed against oil giant Chevron, who at the time had recently purchased Texaco. The lawsuit alleged that Chevron was responsible for Texaco intentionally dumping “more than 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewaters” and “16.8 million gallons of crude oil” into Ecuador’s environment.

[snip]

Chevron’s lobbying offensive is being led by former senators Trent Lott and John Breaux, along with Wayne Berman, a top fundraiser for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):

Chevron is pushing the Bush administration to take the extraordinary step of yanking special trade preferences for Ecuador if the country’s leftist government doesn’t quash the case. A spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab confirmed that her office is considering the request. Attorney Steven Donziger, who is coordinating the D.C. opposition to Chevron, says the firm is “trying to get the country to cry uncle.” He adds: “It’s the crudest form of power politics.”

Chevron’s powerhouse team includes former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, former Democratic senator John Breaux and Wayne Berman, a top fund-raiser for John McCain—all with access to Washington’s top decision makers.

So far, Chevron’s power push has resulted in “a senior Chevron exec” meeting with Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte “on the matter.” “One Chevron lobbyist” told Newsweek that the company’s argument to the Bush administration is: “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this—companies that have made big investments around the world.”

[From Think Progress » Top McCain Fundraiser Lobbying Bush Admin To Help ‘Quash’ Toxic-Dumping Case For Chevron ]

Granite Countertop Radiation Risk

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Why Go to Night School?
[The Pope checks out our Volga Blue granite table]

A mildly scary story you are bound to hear of sooner or later1

SHORTLY before Lynn Sugarman of Teaneck, N.J., bought her summer home in Lake George, N.Y., two years ago, a routine inspection revealed it had elevated levels of radon, a radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer. So she called a radon measurement and mitigation technician to find the source.

“He went from room to room,” said Dr. Sugarman, a pediatrician. But he stopped in his tracks in the kitchen, which had richly grained cream, brown and burgundy granite countertops. His Geiger counter indicated that the granite was emitting radiation at levels 10 times higher than those he had measured elsewhere in the house.

[Click to read more details of What’s Lurking in Your Countertop? – NYTimes.com]

For me the real crime is hinted at in a paragraph towards the end of the article:

Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking and is considered especially dangerous to smokers, whose lungs are already compromised. Children and developing fetuses are vulnerable to radiation, which can cause other forms of cancer. Mr. Witt said the E.P.A. is not studying health risks associated with granite countertops because of a “lack of resources.”

What the hell is the EPA doing instead? Going to lunch with the chemical industry executives who are offering future employment? What? The Environmental Protection Agency should have the funding and desire to conduct careful study of such topics so that there is real data available for consumers to make informed decisions whether granite countertops are a risk or whether they are harmless. How about instead of buying yet another Trident Missile or B2 Spirit, the government throws a few pennies at the EPA?

—
update:
Dean Armstrong also notices this story, and writes, in part:

But is this a hazard? Granites I’ve encountered have rates ranging from nothing to about 10x background. This isn’t that much. Time spent at cruising altitude is about 40x background at 500ft. It certainly wouldn’t be worth the fuss of ripping up a kitchen, unless it was proven to be the source of elevated radon levels. After reading the literature about naturally occurring radon sources, I have difficulty assigning the radon to just a small granite piece. Any soil or rock within 4 gas-diffusion-days of the basement or slab can be a source of radon for a home, and the total amount of uranium in that quantity is going to exceed the amount in the countertop (especially the part of the countertop that is within radon’s half-life time of the surface). If you covered your walls in granite it might be different.

Footnotes:
  1. such news stories are custom made for our sensationalistic media [↩]

Workplace Toxin Rules

Seth Anderson0 comment

Bush cronies trying their best to get in a couple more body blows to the public before 2009.

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers’ on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May. Instead, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao ‘s intention to push for the rule first surfaced on July 7, when the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posted on its Web site that it was reviewing the proposal, identified only by its nine-word title.

The text of the proposed rule has not been made public, but according to sources briefed on the change and to an early draft obtained by The Washington Post, it would call for reexamining the methods used to measure risks posed by workplace exposure to toxins. The change would address long-standing complaints from businesses that the government overestimates the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals.

The rule would also require the agency to take an extra step before setting new limits on chemicals in the workplace by allowing an additional round of challenges to agency risk assessments.

The department’s speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.

[From U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules – washingtonpost.com]

Remember the old days, when government agencies tried to protect the public from the cruel indifference of Big Business? The Bush-ites want to return to the years before the government was involved in anything other than military endeavors.

Cheney’s Office Thwarts Climate Rules

swanksalot0 comment

These bums need to be run out of office sooner than 2009, else our planet will be destroyed. Environmental policy should not be set by oil corporations.

Bush administration officials agreed that greenhouse gases could endanger the public and should be regulated under clean-air laws, but later reversed course amid opposition from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the oil industry, a congressional report said.

The report, by the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, offers a look at the breadth of Bush administration support for regulations before such plans abruptly stopped. The report draws heavily on an interview with a former Environmental Protection Agency official who had told Congress that Mr. Cheney’s office tried to censor federal testimony on the danger of global warming. It is also based on confidential interviews with EPA staff and documents subpoenaed from the EPA.

“This is the dysfunctions and motivations of the Bush administration laid bare,” Chairman Ed Markey (D., Mass.) said in a statement.

[From Cheney’s Office Accused Of Thwarting Climate Rules – WSJ.com]

[Non-subscribers use this link to read the entire article]

Plastic Fantastic

Seth Anderson0 comment

You have to be insanely dedicated to even consider removing plastic from the items you consume. Just too ubiquitous, in nearly every food packaging, on your clothing, on your shampoo, toothpaste, everywhere. The scientific proof of harm from the body may still be murky1 , but the fear of plastic is custom made for our worry-wart culture. Another thing to feel inadequate about being unable to change about our environment.

Sun Like a Drug

[Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri] is a prominent member of a group of researchers who have raised worrisome questions in recent years about the safety of some common types of plastics. We think of plastic as essentially inert; after all, it takes hundreds of years for a plastic bottle to degrade in a landfill. But as plastic ages or is exposed to heat or stress, it can release trace amounts of some of its ingredients. Of particular concern these days are bisphenol-a (BPA), used to strengthen some plastics, and phthalates, used to soften others. Each ingredient is a part of hundreds of household items; BPA is in everything from baby bottles to can linings (to protect against E. coli and botulism), while phthalates are found in children’s toys as well as vinyl shower curtains. And those chemicals can get inside us through the food, water and bits of dust we consume or even by being absorbed through our skin. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 92% of Americans age 6 or older test positive for BPA–a sign of just how common the chemical is in our plastic universe.

Scientists like vom Saal argue that BPA and phthalates are different from other environmental toxins like lead and mercury in that these plastic ingredients are endocrine disrupters, which mimic hormones. Estrogen and other hormones in relatively tiny amounts can cause vast changes, so some researchers worry that BPA and phthalates could do the same, especially in young children. Animal studies on BPA found that low-dose exposure, particularly during pregnancy, may be associated with a variety of ills, including cancer and reproductive problems. Some human studies on phthalates linked exposure to declining sperm quality in adult males, while other work has found that early puberty in girls may be associated with the chemicals.

Does that mean even today’s minuscule exposure levels are too much? The science is still murky, and human studies are few and far from definitive. So while Canada and the Democratic Republic of Wal-Mart are moving to ban BPA in baby bottles, the Food and Drug Administration maintains that BPA products pose no danger, as does the European Union. Even so, scientists like Mel Suffet, a professor of environmental-health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, say avoiding certain kinds of plastics is simply being better safe than sorry.

As researchers continue to examine plastic’s impact on our bodies, there’s no doubt that cutting down on the material will help the environment. Plastic makes up nearly 12% of our trash, up from 1% in 1960. You can literally see the result 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of San Francisco in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic debris twice the size of Texas. The rising cost of petroleum may get plastic manufacturers to come up with incentives for recycling; current rates stand at less than 6% in the U.S. But the best way to reduce your plastic impact on the earth is simply to use less.

[Click to read the rest of The Truth About Plastic – TIME]

Don’t forget that the oil barons who run our country don’t really want to change anything that might interfere with profits, so don’t expect any FDA or EPA studies concerning the interaction with humans and plastics anytime before the Rapture.

Footnotes:
  1. though compelling enough for this writer [↩]

Cheney Sought to Deny Climate Change

Seth Anderson0 comment

Wouldn’t want to be caught doing anything that might help our planet, would we now, Mr. Cheney?

A disclosure Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office sought to alter a federal official’s prepared testimony about the health consequences of global warming intensified an increasingly open conflict between the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House over how to respond to climate change.

The latest in a series of disclosures about internal disputes within the Bush administration came as President George W. Bush was in Japan with other leaders of the Group of Eight nations to forge an agreement on combating climate change. But back home, Mr. Bush’s critics contend that his aides are working to ensure that any actions his administration takes in response to climate change will have a limited impact.

The disclosure about Vice President Cheney’s role came from Jason Burnett, who until last month was the EPA’s associate deputy administrator

[From Cheney Sought to Alter Climate Discussion – WSJ.com]

snip

In his letter, Mr. Burnett notes that at the time of Dr. Gerberding’s testimony “there was extensive debate” over how the EPA should respond to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Mr. Burnett says the White House Council on Environmental Quality suggested to him that he could best serve the EPA “if I would convince CDC to delete particular sections of their testimony.”

In an interview, he declined to elaborate on the assertions in his letter, but said he left the EPA because “I thought I’d done as much constructive work as could be done under this administration” in response to the Supreme Court ruling.

Administration officials said in March that before declaring greenhouse gases endanger health or welfare, the government should first seek public comment. The EPA has yet to do so, however, largely because of a dispute between EPA officials and a White House office that reviews proposed regulations over how to frame the issue, people familiar with the matter said.

Dick Cheney is a truly horrible, corrupted man, though I guess we’ve known that since 1974.

Green Merchandise Mart

Seth Anderson3 Comments

Green Exchange
Cool1. I’ve always meant to take a photo of this building. Now I have more reason to – I think this is a great idea.

Green light goes on at old Cooper lamp factory | Crain’s Chicago Business :

A Chicago real estate developer aims to turn the former Frederick Cooper Lamp Co. factory in Logan Square into a green Merchandise Mart, with showrooms featuring eco-friendly products and services.
After churning out lamps for 35 years, the 250,000-square-foot building alongside the Kennedy Expressway would become the Green Exchange, housing a building supply business, a furniture maker, a printing company and other environmentally conscious businesses, says developer David Baum, who bought the property with his brother Douglas last year. The companies will have greater marketing power under one roof than they would apart, he says.
“If you’re a customer that wants to buy paint that has no toxins, you may also have interest in using a green architect and investing in a socially responsible mutual fund,” David Baum says. “I think we’re hitting a tipping point in environmentalism and it’s becoming mainstream.”
…
He says he won’t seek city subsidies for the project. Several businesses have signed non-binding “letters of interest” to lease space in the building, including Consolidated Printing Co., which uses an environmentally sustainable printing process, and Greenmaker Supply, which sells eco-friendly building supplies.

(H/T)
—
Website www.greenexchange.com

and another repost2 : We wrote about this previously, the Tribune has more details.

Going green: Project envisions eco-friendly shopping center :

When David Baum decided last year to convert the old Cooper Lamp factory in Logan Square into a one-stop shopping center of green businesses, he knew it would be a risky and expensive proposition.

“Wind turbines don’t necessarily make economic sense today, but we want to engage the imagination,” said Baum, who plans to spend more than $30 million renovating the sprawling yellow brick structure where craftsmen once turned out custom-made lamps. “We do still plan to make a profit, albeit a small one.”

Baum is aiming to tap into the growing consumer demand for eco-conscious merchandise and services. Dubbed the Green Exchange, he wants his project to become one of the first places in the nation to offer an entirely green space for entirely green work.

Baum envisions places like an organic restaurant, an environmentally friendly building supply store, green-friendly architects and eco-design firms. There could even be a sustainable clothing store, a bicycle shop and a car showroom, he said.

The project would be three times larger than The Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center in Portland, Ore., where roughly 20 tenants, including Patagonia, offer sustainable goods and services in a 70,000-square-foot facility.

Continue reading “Green Merchandise Mart”

Footnotes:
  1. Reposted from my old blog to house a new photo [↩]
  2. combining two entries into one [↩]

White House Blocks EPA Emissions Draft

Seth Anderson0 comment

Withered and Died

The White House, on its way out to the dustbin of history,1 wants to gut the Clean Air Act before the end of the year. Lovely.

WASHINGTON — The White House is trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from publishing a document that could become the legal roadmap for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., said people close to the matter.

The fight over the document is the latest development in a long-running conflict between the EPA and the White House over climate-change policy. It will likely intensify ongoing Congressional investigations into the Bush administration’s involvement in the agency’s policymaking.

The draft document, which has been viewed by The Wall Street Journal, outlines how the government, under the Clean Air Act, could regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from mobile sources such as cars, trucks, trains, planes and boats, and from stationary sources such as power stations, chemical plants and refineries. The document is based on a multimillion-dollar study conducted over two years.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has asked the EPA to delete sections of the document that say such emissions endanger public welfare, say how those gases could be regulated, and show an analysis of the cost of regulating greenhouse gases in the U.S. and other countries.

[From White House Blocks EPA Emissions Draft – WSJ.com]

Non WSJ subscribers use this Digg-enabled link to full article which includes some colorful charts.

Cheney wants to ensure his oil buddies won’t have to alter any of their polluting practices until after the Rapture:

“Clearly [White House officials] don’t want to leave behind a blueprint that suggests that the Clean Air Act could offer a potential pathway in a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” said one of the people close to the matter who supports the EPA document’s analysis. “Leaving a blueprint behind could leave the next administration a document they could work from, and that’s not in their interest,” the person said.

If the agency establishes a policy direction in this phase of the rule-making but later changes direction in the proposed rule, it could create opportunities for legal challenges under the Administrative Procedures Act, said Peter Robertson, a former deputy administrator at the EPA and a partner at the Pillsbury law firm specializing in environmental public policy.

“There wouldn’t be a reason for OMB to monkey with this document if it weren’t going to be an important step in the process now and later on,” Mr. Robertson said.

Footnotes:
  1. and that’s being very kind [↩]

Justices Cut Damages Award in Exxon Valdez Spill

Seth Anderson0 comment

Gears Grind Slow

Nice to have the profits to be able to afford teams of highly compensated corporate attorneys to work on the case for almost 20 years (spill occurred in 1989).

The commercial fishermen, Native Alaskans, landowners, businesses and local governments involved in the lawsuit have each received about $15,000 so far ”for having their lives and livelihood destroyed and haven’t received a dime of emotional-distress damages,” their Supreme Court lawyer, Jeffrey Fisher, said when the court heard arguments in February.

First-quarter profits at Exxon Mobil Corp. were $10.9 billion. The company’s 2007 profit was $40.6 billion.

[From Justices Cut Damages Award in Exxon Valdez Spill – NYTimes.com]

The Supreme Court reduced damages from $2,500,000,000 way down to $500,000,000. Exxon Mobil’s legal fees for this matter were probably another $400,000,000 or so, meaning somebody’s having a party tonight with nearly $2 billion dollars. Assholes.

Estimated by Amerian Law Daily as $400,000,000:

Those expenses are nothing when compared to the bills Exxon has been paying during the last two decades to firms like O’Melveny & Myers, its primary outside counsel on the litigation. In 1990 alone, according to a feature story in The American Lawyer following the jury verdict, Exxon reportedly paid $60 million in defense fees. O’Neill estimates that Exxon has likely spent about $400 million defending the case during the last two decades, citing numbers that one of his team’s lawyers saw during litigation that was related to the case. Exxon spokesman Tony Cudmore declined to confirm that figure. “We have not released a figure for legal costs,” he says. “I can tell you they have been significant, but I am not able to provide a number.”

Plaintiffs attorneys are crying tonight, as are all the residents of Alaska.

Oil Boondoggle

Seth Anderson1 Comment

pump primer frostpocket 1995

Continuing on a theme, David Fuller of Peotone, Illinois writes in to Altercation to say:

Turns out that the oil companies currently hold 10,000 drilling permits right now, and have leases to 68 million acres of land that is going undrilled — no need to “open up ANWR or the Gulf Coast right now” as Newt Gingrich would have everyone believe. (Drilling permits are apparently what happens right before the drill bit hits the ground — so oil companies are confident that oil is there.) Check out this June 2008 report [PDF] from the Committee on Natural Resources.

Among the most interesting points:

  • Drilling on federal lands has steadily increased since the 1990s
  • Drilling permits have gone from 3,802 five years ago to 7,561 in 2007
  • Oil and gas companies have shown that they cannot keep pace with the rate of drilling permits (so opening the Gulf and ANWR would help how, exactly?)
  • Although permits have gone up, the price of gas has ALSO gone up, refuting the idea that more drilling will automatically reduce prices
  • The Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; yet, only 18,954 wells were actually drilled (a difference of 9822)
  • Of the 47.5 million acres of on-shore federal lands that are currently being leased by oil and gas companies, only about 13 million acres are actually in production
  • Offshore, only 10.5 million of the 44 million leased acres are currently producing oil or gas
  • According to the Minerals Management Service, of all the oil and gas believed to exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, 82% of the natural gas and 79% of the oil is located in areas that are currently open for leasing
  • Nearly 91 million acres are currently open to leasing in the Arctic region of Alaska, including onshore and offshore lands. Oil and gas companies have leased only 11.8 million of the 91 million acres.

  • The report goes on to say that just drilling in these 68 million acres (this excludes the Alaska acreage, because much of it is still unleased by the oil companies even though it is available to lease) of untapped areas without drilling anywhere else would likely produce six times the amount of oil in ANWR. Yes, that’s right: SIX TIMES what ANWR is estimated to be able to produce at peak production. And if they’d bother to lease the Alaska areas that are available, that number would undoubtedly go much higher.

    There’s much more in the report, but suffice to say, the next time one of us hears the claim that we need to drill in ANWR or off the coast of Florida to reduce our oil dependence and affect pricing, we should (confidently!) ask why in the world we aren’t making use of the 10,000 permits already issued and the 68 million acres of unused, currently leased land to drill on first, and why the additional drilling we’ve already done since the 90s hasn’t reduced prices at all.

    Shock Doctrine, indeed — don’t fall for it. Educate folks on this, so our politicians can confidently vote “No” to the Gingrich nonsense with the knowledge that the American people have been sufficiently educated about this issue to know better than the lines we’re being fed by the oil companies and those shilling for them.

    [From Media Matters – Slacker Friday]

So why isn’t this sort of analysis being made in the corporate media? I’ve read some stories explaining that if new oil leases are sold, in the Great Lakes, and off the coast of Florida, and of course, in Alaska, the new leases won’t start producing meaningful oil for 20-30 years, but why isn’t that fact contrasted to the existence of 10,000 permits already in place that aren’t producing meaningful oil either? Crazy. He who asks the questions sets the agenda, presumedly, and Bush/McCain/Gingrich were the first out of the gate leveraging complaints re: high consumer gas prices against Big Oil’s future drilling rights. A shame that there isn’t push-back on the topic, except in obscure corners of the web (echoed in even more obscure corners of the web, such as this humble webzine).

McCain’s Driller Instinct

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Wrong Bus
[Wrong Bus, Juneau, Alaska.]

Paul Krugman piles on to McCain’s stupid energy policy pronouncements.

In his Monday speech on energy, Mr. McCain tried to touch all the bases. He talked about conservation. He denounced the evils of speculation: “While a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most Americans are coming up on the short end.” A weird aspect of the current energy debate, incidentally, is the fact that many of the same market-worshipping conservatives who first denied that there was a dot-com bubble, then denied that there was a housing bubble, are utterly convinced that nasty speculators are responsible for high oil prices.

The item that made news, however, was Mr. McCain’s call for more offshore drilling. On Tuesday, he made this more explicit, calling for exploration and development of the currently protected outer continental shelf. This was a reversal of his previous position, and it went a long way toward aligning his energy policy with that of the Bush administration.

That’s not a good thing.

As many reports have noted, the McCain/Bush policy on offshore drilling doesn’t make sense as a response to $4-a-gallon gas: the White House’s own Energy Information Administration says that exploiting the outer shelf wouldn’t yield noticeable amounts of oil until the 2020s, and even at peak production its impact on oil prices would be “insignificant.”

But what I haven’t seen emphasized is the broader picture: Mr. McCain has now aligned himself with an administration that, even aside from its blame-the-environmental-movement tendencies, has established an extensive track record as the gang that couldn’t think straight about energy policy.

Remember, they didn’t just insist that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators; on the eve of the Iraq war, administration officials were also adamant that regime change in Iraq would add millions of barrels a day to the world oil supply, driving oil prices way down. (In fact, Iraq’s oil output took five years just to recover to preinvasion levels.)

[From Paul Krugman – Driller Instinct – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]

Krugman also points out the energy companies aren’t so keen to drill in the frozen tundra of Alaska in any case.

Big Pander to Big Oil

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I like to eat paste

An interesting study in contrasts. The reliably corporate-friendly New York Times editorial board comes out strongly against the idea that $4 a gallon gasoline price is easily reduced by drilling for oil off of the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific states, and in Alaska. In other words, the case for increased domestic drilling must be pretty weak. The truth is that even if all suspected domestic untapped oil reserves were jumped upon tomorrow, actual oil wouldn’t start flowing for many years (2030, or later). So any politician who proclaims drilling is the short-term answer is either a liar or deluded, or in the case of George Bush, both.

It was almost inevitable that a combination of $4-a-gallon gas, public anxiety and politicians eager to win votes or repair legacies would produce political pandering on an epic scale. So it has, the latest instance being President Bush’s decision to ask Congress to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America’s continental shelf.

This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.

There is no doubt that a lot of people have been discomfited and genuinely hurt by $4-a-gallon gas. But their suffering will not be relieved by drilling in restricted areas off the coasts of New Jersey or Virginia or California. The Energy Information Administration says that even if both coasts were opened, prices would not begin to drop until 2030. The only real beneficiaries will be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of public land before their friends in power — Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney — exit the political stage.

The whole scheme is based on a series of fictions that range from the egregious to the merely annoying. Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, noted the worst of these on Wednesday: That a country that consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil supply but owns only 3 percent of its reserves can drill its way out of any problem — whether it be high prices at the pump or dependence on oil exported by unstable countries in Persian Gulf. This fiction has been resisted by Barack Obama but foolishly embraced by John McCain, who seemed to be making some sense on energy questions until he jumped aboard the lift-the-ban bandwagon on Tuesday.

A lesser fiction, perpetrated by the oil companies and, to some extent, by misleading government figures, is that huge deposits of oil and gas on federal land have been closed off and industry has had one hand tied behind its back by environmentalists, Democrats and the offshore protections in place for 25 years.

The numbers suggest otherwise. Of the 36 billion barrels of oil believed to lie on federal land, mainly in the Rocky Mountain West and Alaska, almost two-thirds are accessible or will be after various land-use and environmental reviews. And of the 89 billion barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie offshore, the federal Mineral Management Service says fourth-fifths is open to industry, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan waters.

Clearly, the oil companies are not starved for resources. Further, they do not seem to be doing nearly as much as they could with the land to which they’ve already laid claim. Separate studies by the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Wilderness Society, a conservation group, show that roughly three-quarters of the 90 million-plus acres of federal land being leased by the oil companies onshore and off are not being used to produce energy. That is 68 million acres altogether, among them potentially highly productive leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

With that in mind, four influential House Democrats — Edward Markey, Nick Rahall, Rahm Emanuel and Maurice Hinchey — have introduced “use it or lose it” bills that would force the companies to begin exploiting the leases they have before getting any more. Companion bills have been introduced in the Senate, where suspicions also run high that industry’s main objective is to stockpile millions of additional acres of public land before the Bush administration leaves town.

This cannot be allowed to happen. The Congressional moratoriums on offshore drilling were put in place in 1981 and reaffirmed by subsequent Congresses to protect coastal economies that depend on clean water and clean coastlines. This was also the essential purpose of supplemental executive orders, the first of which was issued by Mr. Bush’s father in 1990 after the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill the year before.

Given the huge resources available to the energy industry, there is no reason to undo these protections now.

[From Editorial – The Big Pander to Big Oil – Editorial – NYTimes.com]

and in contrast, the also corporate-friendly, but slightly more Republican, Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Silva writes an entire article basically repeating George Bush’s assertion that the answer to $4 gallon is just to start drilling, with barely a mention that drilling’s payoff, such as it is, won’t occur until 20-30 years later.

Just a few months ago, President George W. Bush said he “hadn’t heard” that gas might reach $4 per gallon.

But now that the $4-and-climbing price of summer gas has become a flash point for deep public anxiety in a presidential election year, the departing Republican president wants everyone to hear what his party hopes to do about it. That includes offshore oil drilling, an approach long off-limits for fear of environmental disasters and alienating a huge bloc of voters.

The pinch of rising gas prices is such a politically powerful symbol of an economy on the wrong track that the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has shifted course to embrace offshore drilling, long politically taboo in coastal states.

Even in environmentally minded Florida, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, a McCain ally, is willing to “take a look” at drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as an answer to America’s energy woes.

[From Bush leads calls to drill off U.S. shore — chicagotribune.com]

Now, it is possible, albeit unlikely, that Mr. Silva wrote a few more words about the long payoff for increased drilling, and his editors redacted this explanation. I doubt it though.

Chicago Center for Green Technology

Seth Anderson0 comment

Took a trek out to the very cool Chicago Center for Green Technology at 445 N. Sacramento Boulevard yesterday to inquire about green roofs and to solicit advice re: Neighbor Space parks.

Chicago Green Tech’s building was originally constructed in 1952. Since then a number of different companies have owned the building. When it came to the attention of the Chicago Department of Environment (DOE) in 1995, the building and its 17 acres were owned by Sacramento Crushing, a company which had a permit to collect limited construction and demolition debris. The Department of Environment became involved because Sacramento Crushing had gone far beyond the scope of its permit and had filled all 17-acres with illegally dumped debris. The site was littered with 70-foot high piles of rubble, one of which was so dense it sank 15 feet into the ground.

The Department of Environment successfully fought Sacramento Crushing in court and not only closed down their operation but also became the owner of the site itself. It was then DOE’s job to clean up this Brownfield. The clean up took 18 months to complete and cost about $9 million. In this process, the site was cleared of over 600,000 tons of concrete, which took 45,000 truck loads to remove. The city recouped some of the clean up cost by selling the concrete and other materials to recycling firms and to other city departments for use in their projects. For example, some of the crushed concrete was used by the Chicago Department of Transportation to lay the foundation of the parking garage at the new Millennium Park.

In 1999, DOE was the proud owner of a cleaned site and vacant building. Rather than simply renovating the building using traditional methods, DOE seized the opportunity to create an energy efficient building using the highest standards of green technology available. The Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment formed a design team for the project. This team of local architects, led by Farr Associates, designed the building using a set of guidelines established by the US Green Building Council called LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design).

[From Chicago Center for Green Technology – History]

Apparently, some of the mounds of debris were over 70 feet tall, and compressed the ground below another 15 feet. Anyway, the building is worth a visit if you are into such things. Plus they gave us each 2 LED light bulbs.

Vegetative Green Roof – Chicago Center for Green Technology. Wild chives, succulents, and clover, I believe.
Vegetative Green Roof - Chicago Center for Green Technology

Vegetative Green Roof closeup- Chicago Center for Green Technology
Vegetative Green Roof closeup- Chicago Center for Green Technology

We didn’t get much help regarding Neighbor Space parks and City of Chicago plant and soil resources, but we learned a lot about green roofs. I’d love to be able to install a meadow on our roof like this one, but the roof would need to be able to support 40 lbs/sq. foot, which might not be easily accomplished. Maybe, though, so a next step would be to ask a structural engineer to investigate. There are also the smaller modular vegetative green roof options: a box about 12 inches by 12 inches, filled with a few inches of soil and covered with succulents. You would use as many as you needed, they weigh less, and are easier to remove if necessary. The meadow concept is more fun though – I’d be napping up there right now if I could.

Another thought would be to install a rain water cistern and drain system, so as to utilize the water to keep plants moist at the street level (where our Neighbor Space park allegedly will be located).

Solar Panels – Chicago Center for Green Technology
Solar Panels - Chicago Center for Green Technology

Solar panels would be cool, even if the technology isn’t advanced enough to supply all of our electric needs, we still could ameliorate some of our electric costs (and have backup power if ComEd has problems as they so often do).

Money to pay for it all? Ha, that’s what home equity loans are for. There are a few tax credits available (Federal, some state programs, even less at the City level) for installing solar and green roofs, but the national demand is much greater than the supply of money available, so one’s application has to be blessed with the support of somebody politically connected to get approval. Got to fund wars in the desert, don’t you know; we as a country don’t really want to encourage sustainable living. Unfortunately.

White House and Amtrak veto

Seth Anderson0 comment

Train I Dont Rides (sic)
[Train I Don’t Rides (sic)]

Bush and his oil buddies want to eliminate train service, or reduce its functionality, because otherwise, if trains are reliable, clean, run on time, yadda yadda, people won’t drive three hours to go somewhere, and oil companies won’t have record-breaking profits, quarter after quarter. Simple, right? Never mind that more cars means more pollution, more energy use, more congestion, more forests destroyed (for roads), and a whole litany of effects. Screw that: the Bush-ites are only interested in encouraging gasoline/auto consumption.

The White House is threatening to veto legislation that would fund Amtrak for the next five years.

The Bush administration says House members didn’t include language in the bill making the railroad more accountable for its decisions.

The legislation would authorize more than $14 billion dollars and set up a program of federal matching grants that states could use to set up or expand rail service.

But the White House says the measure provides little opportunity for competition on existing Amtrak routes and doesn’t include provisions that would condition Amtrak’s funding based on the progress of reforms.

The Bush administration has pushed for ending Amtrak subsidies and eliminating unprofitable lines, while supporters in Congress argue there’s no major national railway in the world operating without government subsidies

[From White House threatens Amtrak veto ]

Via Atrios

Death at Blommer Chocolate

Seth Anderson5 Comments

The ABCs of Chocolate
[The ABCs of Chocolate-across from Blommer Chocolate Company]

First off, I have great sympathy for Gerardo Castillo’s family, that’s got to be a hard way to die.

Chicago officials and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration hunted Monday for the cause of a fatal gas release that killed a North Side man and hospitalized two others at a chocolate factory on the Near West Side over the weekend. Gerardo Castillo, 30, was killed Sunday in the second fatal accident since 2001 at Blommer Chocolate Co., 600 W. Kinzie St.

Castillo of the 1700 block of West Olive Avenue was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after a release of ammonialike fumes at the factory. A substance mixed into the chocolate somehow triggered a gaseous chemical reaction, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman said.

[snip]

OSHA last inspected the facility in 1994, said federal compliance officer Tricia Railton, who was reading from a report. Those safety investigations had to do with workers who were cleaning a piece of equipment that either had not been disconnected or was not marked as being potentially dangerous to the cleaners if turned on. It was not immediately clear if an injury prompted that inspection, Railton said. In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent an inspector to check the factory after a neighbor complained about the aroma of burnt chocolate. The unidentified complainant also noted a powder-filled plume churning out of a roof duct.

Based on what the inspector saw two mornings in early September, the EPA cited Blommer for violating limits on opacity, or the amount of light blocked by the factory’s grinder dust.

[From U.S., city probing death at chocolate factory — chicagotribune.com]

But this EPA thing has been ongoing for a while. In fact, we mentioned it to Alderman Reilly when we met him in his office just prior to Reilly being sworn in, and his staff was going to look into it. Pollution and particulates are pollution and particulates, even if they smell like chocolate, and shouldn’t be allowed to permeate the lungs of local residents (like myself, ahem). I am curious as to what the details of this September investigation actually were.

Previous coverage of Blommer on my old blog

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