Environmental Racism Strikes

Byoliveridley

If you had not been following this story previously, the NY Times finally mainstreams it.

Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast – New York Times

Over the next few days, the skin of his 6-month-old son, Salam, bloomed with blisters, which burst into weeping sores all over his body. The whole family suffered headaches, nosebleeds and stomach aches. How that slick, a highly toxic cocktail of petrochemical waste and caustic soda, ended up in Mr. Oudrawogol’s backyard in a suburb north of Abidjan is a dark tale of globalization. It came from a Greek-owned tanker flying a Panamanian flag and leased by the London branch of a Swiss trading corporation whose fiscal headquarters are in the Netherlands. Safe disposal in Europe would have cost about $300,000, or perhaps twice that, counting the cost of delays. But because of decisions and actions made not only here but also in Europe, it was dumped on the doorstep of some of the world’s poorest people.

“Dark tale of globalization”?? More like blatant disregard for non-white life, just saying…

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    DuPont sets goal of eliminating Teflon processing chemical

    Byoliveridley

    See, it wasn’t too hard to come up with safe alternatives, improved processes and a decent timeline!

    DuPont sets goal of eliminating Teflon processing chemical

    One year after accepting a government challenge to work toward eliminating the use of a potentially dangerous chemical used to make Teflon and other products, the DuPont Co. said Monday it plans to stop using the chemical by 2015.

    The Environmental Protection Agency asked the Wilmington-based chemical giant and seven other companies last year to commit to a 95 percent reduction in environmental emissions and product content levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and associated chemicals by 2010.

    DuPont makes the chemical at a plant near southeast Ohio in Parkersburg, W.Va.

    The companies also were asked to work toward the elimination of PFOA and associated chemicals from emissions and products by 2015.

    On Monday, DuPont said technological advances have allowed it to remove more than 97 percent of trace levels of PFOA and associated chemicals from surface protection fluorotelomers used in products such as oil-resistant paper packaging and stain- and water-repellent textiles.

    DuPont also has been able to reduce PFOA content by at least 97 percent in fluoropolymer coatings used in Teflon cookware, architectural coatings and electronics applications.

    “We have been working for a long time, but particularly over the last year, on alternative technologies to PFOA,” said David Boothe, business manager for DuPont fluoroproducts. “We believe that work is going to allow us to eliminate the need to make, buy, or use PFOA by 2015… That’s firmer language than ‘work toward.'”

    For previous posts on this subject, see here. Who says a little pressure doesn’t help change even the all powerful Dupont!

  • Justices rule against Duke on pollution controls

    Byoliveridley

    Duke Energy, that is, not the Blue Devils!

    The Supreme Court sure has a green tinge today!

    newsobserver.com | Justices rule against Duke on pollution controls

    The Supreme Court gave a boost today to a federal clean air initiative aimed at forcing utilities to install pollution control equipment on aging coal-fired power plants.
    In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled against Duke Energy Corp. in a lawsuit brought by the Clinton administration, part of a massive enforcement effort targeting more than a dozen utilities.

    Most companies settled with the government, but several Clinton-era cases involving more than two dozen power plants in the South and the Midwest are still pending. The remaining suits demand fines for past pollution that if levied in full would run into billions of dollars.

    The justices ruled that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., overstepped its authority by implicitly invalidating Environmental Protection Agency regulations in a way that favored Duke. The case now returns to the lower courts.

    The appeals court’s decision “seems to us too far a stretch,” Justice David Souter wrote.

    The enforcement program is aimed at reducing power plant emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide that contribute to smog and acid rain. Sulfur dioxide is the leading cause of acid rain.

    The utility industry has long resisted installing costly pollution controls under the program called New Source Review. It waged vigorous campaigns against the program starting in the 1980s and more recently by battling it out with regulators when sued in federal courts.

  • Goldman Prize – The Green Nobel – Google Earth Narrative

    Byoliveridley

    This is very inspiring, and wonderful to watch.

    The Goldman Prize has developed a tour that uses 3-D Google Earth imagery to tell the stories of the 2009 Prize recipients. Narrated by Robert Redford, the tour allows viewers to travel the world, visiting huge mountaintop removal mines, ship breaking yards and other locations where the Prize winners live and work.

    Goldman Prize – Google Earth Tour

    The Goldman honours grassroots environmentalists all over the world.

  • Au Revoir, Clean Water Act?

    Byoliveridley

    Just like that, the Supreme Court chips away at one of the foundations of this country’s Environmental Law.
    Court Splits Over Wetlands Protections – New York Times

    By DAVID STOUT. WASHINGTON, June 19 — The Supreme Court set the stage for a re-examination of the 1972 Clean Water Act, as it narrowly ruled today in favor of two Michigan property owners who have sought to develop tracts designated as wetlands.

    By 5 to 4, the justices overturned lower court judgments against the Michigan land owners, who had run afoul of the Clean Water Act over their plans to build a shopping mall and condominiums.

    The ruling was not the resounding, unambiguous triumph that the land owners, John A. Rapanos and June Carabell, may have hoped for. Instead, five justices found that regulators may have gone too far in trying to thwart their plans, and it returned the case to lower courts for further deliberation. One of the five justices, Anthony M. Kennedy, even suggested in a separate opinion that the property owners might lose once again in the lower courts.

    I was very afraid when I last thought about this challenge way back in February. It was pretty clear at that point that Kennedy was the swing vote and that 8 out of 9 minds were probably made up. Kennedy’s lawmaking seems to be a little incoherent in this case. He was obviously not comfortable with the Scalia-Alito-Roberts-Thomas cabal’s clearly ideological decision, but can’t bring himself to make the centrist decision.

    But Justice Kennedy wrote that the evidence in the long-running Rapanos and Carabell cases suggests “the possible existence of a significant nexus,” or connection, between their properties and navigable waterways — a connection that, if established in the lower courts, would reaffirm the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act over the tracts and could cause the property owners to lose again.

    If you thought that there was a “significant nexus”, what kind of logic would then make you turnaround and support the opinion that there is no connection?

    But Justice Scalia had a different perspective as he questioned the extent of federal jurisdiction. Under the government’s logic, he said, “a storm drain, even when not filled with water, is a tributary.”

    “I suggest it’s very absurd to call that ‘waters of the United States,’ ” Justice Scalia added. “It’s a drainage ditch.”

    Where Hon. Justice Scalia pretends to misunderstand the concept of drainage? I wonder if he would feel the same way if it was a pollution issue in his neighbor’s backyard.

    This will make things confusing for a while, and you all know who confusion favors!

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    Numbers, policy and advocacy

    Byoliveridley

    I got into a twitter discussion with Andrew Leach, who writes thoughtfully about energy policy and economics at his blog and occasionally for the globe and mail. The topic of discussion was a number put up by Bill McKibben of 350.org stating the following:

    By some calculations, the tar sands contain the equivalent of about 200 parts per million CO2

    Now this was a throwaway line in an article warning us that the Obama administration was not doing anything to stop runaway carbon emissions from coal and petroleum. But Prof. Leach made the point that this was a bit dishonest because at the current (and future) rate of oil extraction, it would take over 1500 years, and was  ridiculous. But let’s look at the calculation itself. 200 ppm seems like an outrageously large number. After all, the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 393 ppm. Is Bill McKibben actually saying that the taroilsands (I can’t pick on tar vs. oil, and I will campaign for taroil) can contribute half of what’s currently in the atmosphere? That can’t possibly be true. I mean, it is a huge project and all, but still, only 6.5% of Canada’s emissions in 2009.

    But, if you follow the mathematics:

    1. 1.75 trillion barrels of bitumen in place , as opposed to the 10% of that deemed recoverable in 2006 assuming 2006 prices and current technology.
    2. One Barrel is approximately 0.5-0.7 metric tons CO2 if you take into account both the production and the combustion. Note that there is a lot of uncertainty in this estimate because most of the data come from the Canadian and Albertan governments, and from the producers themselves, very interested parties. Let’s use the 0.7 for an upper end.
    3. 2.13 GT Carbon emitted adds 1 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere.

    This gets us to approximately about 160 ppm. Note that the 0.7 MT of CO2 uses a number for land use that takes into account the current devastation of the boreal forest and peat bog. If all the oil needs to get out of the taroil sands, the land use number would explode and likely account for the remaining 40 ppm. Anyway, a rough calculation puts the 200 ppm number in context.

    But it is an unrealistic number, because taroilsands extraction is very energy and water intensive, time consuming, and promises to remain that way. Barring some magic technology that makes cheap energy possible, in which case, we’d just use that and avoid all the mess, we won’t ever get to that number.

    To summarize, 200 ppm is a reasonably accurate mathematical calculation that is wildly out of context. Sounds familiar?

    The larger point is that advocates of all stripes, politicians, lobbyists, chambers of commerce, industry interest groups, corporations, and organizations pushing against them use numbers to make things sound scary and big. People who rail against government spending routinely talk about Canada’s deficit being in the billions of dollars, but when we look at it as a deficit/GDP ratio, the numbers are under control, and there’s no need to panic. In advocacy, it’s great to find a number that makes a fantastic point, somehow to bring a message home. I am sure you remember this one in the wake of the BP oil mega spill. Businesses do this all the time as well, with much greater success. I’m sure you’ve heard this trope about small businesses being the engine of job creation based on just the gross number of jobs they create. Yes, but they’re also the engine of job destruction because they go under a lot, but we don’t see that often.

    As someone who has all their training as a scientist, and who does not like numeric misleading, being an activist/advocate is tricky. You work with people who are (rightly in many instances) trying to fight bad policy, and bad outcomes. The taroilsands are terrible, especially given that we’re cooking the planet and we’re deliberately spending billions of dollars investing in them. Regardless of whether they’re going to be responsible for 20 ppm, or 200 ppm, the trajectory of investing in an especially inefficient fossil fuel extraction when we should be phasing out all fossil fuel use is the big egregious wrong here. You are also trying to influence a public that finds it very hard to put numbers in context. No one will ever see a billion dollars, there’s no perceived difference between a million barrels and a trillion barrels, it’s all big numbers! So, the temptation is to use big numbers to scare people. I can understand how that happens, but I can’t bring myself to necessarily be okay with it. I will tolerate it, I guess, because the corporations, governments who produce the raw data underlying these numbers know what they mean, but distort them continuously to serve their agenda, and the media, some of whom are number literate abet this misleading. So some push back is necessary, but I will roll my eyes when it happens.

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    Melamine Adulteration investigation gets cracking

    Byoliveridley

    FDA agents raid pet food plant, offices – Yahoo! News

    WASHINGTON – Federal agents searched facilities of a dog and cat food manufacturer and one of its suppliers as part of an investigation into the widening recall of pet products, the companies disclosed Friday. Food and Drug Administration officials searched an Emporia, Kan., pet food plant operated by Menu Foods and the Las Vegas offices of ChemNutra Inc., according to the companies. Menu Foods made many of the more than 100 brands of pet food recalled since March 16 because of contamination by the chemical melamine. ChemNutra supplied the manufacturer with wheat gluten, one of the two ingredients tainted by melamine used in recalled pet products. Both companies said they were cooperating with the investigation.

    The initial “let’s blame China for everything” drumbeat is subsiding a little as the FDA finally begins its inspections, and we find the tangled web of the food import business unraveling just a little bit. At this point in time, the charges are flying like crazy.

    The origin within China of the wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate remains murky. For example, ChemNutra’s source for the twovegetable proteins, Suzhou Textile Import and Export Co., told The AP that food ingredients aren’t part of its business — but that employees often take on side deals. Stern said ChemNutra dealt with the company’s president.

    Side deals? How quaint? The solution is simple: Quarantine every food item from China until it has been tested for melamine. You do not know the extent of the problem yet. It only seems to get worse everyday. Make the manufacturers pay for the testing.  Tighten up the paperwork, exercise tighter control over where the ingredients come from, get everything in writing.

    Meanwhile, the manufacturers are getting their press releases out. From Blue Buffalo foods…

    We at the Blue Buffalo Company have just learned that American Nutrition Inc. (ANI), the manufacturer of all our cans and biscuits, has been adding rice protein concentrate to our can formulas without our knowledge and without our approval. This is product tampering, and it apparently has been going on for some time. The can formulas that we developed, and trusted them to produce, never contained any rice protein concentrate. It appears that only an FDA investigation of ANI’s rice protein concentrate supplies forced them to reveal this product tampering to us.

    While this activity by ANI is in itself unlawful, the situation is further clouded by the fact that ANI has been receiving rice protein concentrate from Wilber-Ellis, some of which the FDA has determined to be contaminated with melamine.

    If this is true (and we don’t know that for a fact), it’s plain ol’ cheating and food adulteration. What does American Nutrition have to say?

    The FDA has urged American Nutrition to issue a voluntary recall of pet foods manufactured using Wilbur-Ellis rice protein. None of these products is sold under an American Nutrition brand, but are sold through other independent companies. No American Nutrition brands or other products they manufacture for other businesses are affected by this recall.

    Why would I trust the word of anyone who’s accused of adding ingredients off the label? This story gets curiouser and curiouser, and it is pretty clear that between the “side dealers” in China and some greedy middlemen suppliers here, we have plenty of blame to go around.

    Stay tuned for more…

4 Comments

  1. The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

    The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

    Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

    Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
    Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
    Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
    Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.

    Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

    If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

    Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.

    When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

    There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

    People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

    Emotion ends.

    Man becomes machine.

    A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

    A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

    A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.

    FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.

    SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.

    A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.

    A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.

    To read the complete article please follow either of these links :

    PlanetSave

    EarthNewsWire

    sushil_yadav

  2. Europe has perfected the art of “progress” on the backs of the South. It was industrial progress at one time (Switzerland, I’m looking at you too) and now it’s a clean surroundings for some at the cost of others.

    America is even better since it doesn’t even see the need to pretend anything. I met the local congresswoman the other day and she wanted to know what I thought of her plan to remove the oil rigs from just off the coast of SB. When I asked her where they were to go, her answer was “Oh! We’ll move them to Mexico!” That’s it. That thing too seeks a spot under the umbrella of environmentalism.

    One of the most depressing sights I’ve seen is the slum just next to the domestic terminal in the Mumbai airport. Imagine living a few meters from the taxiway in a shaky tin and plastic dwelling. That’s got to be one of the most noise-polluted neighborhoods on earth. I guess that has no relevance here, but I was just reminded of that scene out of my plane window when I thought of enivronmental cost borne by the poorest for our
    “progress”.

    Hey B, why is noise pollution so often ignored?

    Sorry for the all-over-the-place comment.

  3. Hey Mr Morphsim-ism:

    Why is Noise pollution ignored? Good question. From a cynical perspective (Do I ever have any other perspective?!), it is a one variable problem, just plonk that decibel meter down and measure away. Scientists and researchers are understandably bored by doing this repeatedly, don’t write grants to fund measurements, and so the work never gets done. Do you have a better explanation?

  4. Hmmm.. That sounds good. I don’t have a “better” explanation. I didn’t mean scientific research into it. Just people’s reaction.

    Could it be that the effects of noise pollution are long term whereas other types of pollution (air, water) are usually associated with disease that does damage in the (relatively) short term?

Comments are closed.