Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas

the national science academies of the 13 most important countries release a landmark strong statement about the state of the world’s energy crisis? According to the grist, nobody listens. Well, here’s to my 10 or so readers (self deprecation is the best deprecation!), the rant!

Bad news re: good news about bad news | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

The bad news is that we are in quite a pickle.

The good news about the bad news is that the national science academies of the G8 countries, along with those of Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, China, and India, have issued a unanimous and remarkably strong statement about our global energy quandary.

The bad news about the good news about the bad news is that the press is almost totally silent about it, at least in English-speaking countries.

Among the crucial statements in this document (PDF):

• “Our present energy course is not sustainable.”
• “Responding to this demand while minimizing further climate change will need all the determination and ingenuity we can muster.”
• “The problem is not yet insoluble but becomes more difficult with each passing day.”
• “G8 countries bear a special responsibility for the current high level of energy consumption and the associated climate change. Newly industrialized countries will share this responsibility in the future.”

Let me be as polite as I can stand about this. Where in the @$#! is the press?

And it goes on in similar vein…

If you read the pdf, you will note that it has the obvious solutions (obvious to the half alive, that is)

1. Set standards and promote economic instruments for efficiency, and commit to promoting energy efficiency for buildings, devices, motors, transportation systems and in the energy sector itself.
2. Promote understanding of climate and energy issues and encourage necessary behavioural changes within
   our societies.
3. Define and implement measures to reduce global deforestation.
4. Strengthen economic and technological exchange with developing countries, in order to leapfrog to cleaner and more efficient modern technologies.
5. Invest strongly in science and technology related to energy efficiency, zero-carbon energy resources and carbon-removing technologies.

Nothing new here, just a very easy policy framework under which every major action taken by every one of these countries (and others) needs to work. Of course, planning, evaluation, implementation, etc. are difficult, especially on the technology transfer, behavioral change, and deforestation, but evaluate every major decision under this framework. You will see that things like corn ethanol (promotes deforestation, carbon intensive, not energy efficient), coal to liquid technology (carbon intensive, polluting, inhibits behavioral change), suburban sprawl (energy inefficient, inhibits behavioral change, etc.), excessive patent protection and intellectual property rights (inhibits technology transfer), war (well, everything on the list, really!), and I can keep going on, are just plain stupid, irresponsible and will lead the world to ruin.

just print that framework out (or better still, put it in your PDA) and evaluate every thing you read about energy policy using it. You’ll see why I beat my head against the wall a lot!

Also, note this simple two sentence evisceration of the “China and India are not doing it, so we won’t” argument…

G8 countries bear a special responsibility for the current high level of energy consumption and the associated climate change. Newly industrialized countries will share this responsibility in the future

I would add, of course, that G8 countries bear both current, and historical responsibility, other than that, well said.

Leftovers may explain perfluorinated compound puzzle:

See my earlier post about this. Looks like the EPA did want the companies to phaseout not just the PFOA, but the precursor compouds as well, and according to this article, quite a bit of progress has been made.

Eight companies have pledged to slash releases of several perfluorochemicals at their operations around the world, EPA announced on March 2.

Arkema, Asahi, Ciba, Clariant, Daikin, DuPont, 3M/Dyneon, and Solvay Solexis have agreed to reduce emissions of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), its longer chain homologs, and compounds that can degrade into PFOA, EPA said. The companies will also reduce levels of these compounds in their products. Responding to a challenge EPA made in January, the eight firms volunteered to cut industrial releases of PFOA as well as amounts of the chemical in products 95% from 2000 levels by 2010 or earlier. The companies also pledged to work on eliminating releases and content of PFOA in products by 2015.

Here are the individual companies’ commitment letters. They all loudly proclaim their commitment to reduce PFOA levels in their products, not quite so universally unequivocal on the precursors… I need a lawyer to parse some of the language. 3M, for instance, says that they do not “manufacture” the telomers’, which is not the same as saying they do not use them. Solvay Solexis, is extremely straigtforward and agrees to the EPA conditions in a letter actually written in plain English! Dupont, good letter too. Let’s see how this situation plays out, outright elimination in 10 years seems nice, which leads me to believe that the companies are already moving in this direction. The journal article suggests that the residuals are mainly due to inefficiencies in the manufacturing process. The reaction yield is 70%, meaning the 30% left behind from the monomer formation reaction will need to be removed from the product.

I begin to wonder how much of this was not known previously, and is coming out now, pushed by US domestic food interests who can suddenly become a little more competitive.

Reuters AlertNet – Pesticides next frontier in China food safety

China’s farmers overuse pesticides, skip protective clothing and have at their fingertips an array of banned and counterfeit products, raising another area of concern in the country’s fragile food chain. Spraying chemicals on crops improperly or using products that may be fake or banned risks the health of China’s hundreds of millions of farmers and could lead to unsafe levels of residues in fruits and vegetables, experts say. “The government has to stop banned or illegal pesticides being available in the market,” said Angus Lam, a Greenpeace Campaign Manager for Food and Agriculture based in the southern city of Guangzhou. China banned five high toxicity pesticides as of Jan. 1, but Lam said old stock was still in the market, in the hands of traders, retailers and farmers themselves. The government pledged last week to step up inspections in its food industry, saying checks on fertilisers and pesticides would be one of the priority areas.

China is not alone in this problem. Pesticides get overused in the US as well. But it’s as if all of a sudden, the mainstream press is waking up to the reality that is China. It is a developing country with high levels of growth in manufacturing, and a burgeoning middle class. But government regulation mechanisms have a long way to go to catch up.

The US surely knows this, and needed to have a more stringent testing regime with food imports from China. But the FDA was not given the mandate or the money. It is very easy to blame the FDA here. The fact of the matter is that any agency is only as good as the money and mandate it’s given. The political will to take a good look at where your food comes from, and how to ensure its safety needs to come first.

Technorati Tags: China, Food Safety, Pesticides