Environmental Racism, Global Warming Edition

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.

Overheard this morning on The Marketplace morning report…

“The use of scrubbers have made coal fired power plants much cleaner”

Umm, this only refers to the scrubbing of particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. Unless some marvelous scrubber has been invented and perfected (top secret, the coal fired power plants don’t want you to know about all the good things they do!) that picks up all the CO2 belching out of those smokestacks, no claim can be made that coal is cleaner.

Dear Marketplace, your own website says the following:

KAI RYSSDAL: And it’s official. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The Supreme Court says so. The Bush Administration had been arguing the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases

To argue this from a strictly legalistic standpoint, coal is dirtier now than it has ever been because we finally count CO2 as a pollutant (Yes, I know, Supreme Court only ruled on automobile emissions because that was the case in front of it, but gas is gas!).

Dear Marketplace, please stop using the words clean and coal in the same sentence unless and until CO2 emissions from coal are scrubbed!

Update 30Aug07: Apparently (see comments!), NPR does not like the use of the word NPR in the blog title because (and I quote)

“Marketplace” is not an NPR show. It is produced by American Public Media, a separate company, and has its own news operation”

True, so it’s not dear NPR anymore, it’s “dear American Public Media”. There, that takes care of that. My point obviously stands, coal is not clean!!

At a time when this country faces major environmental challenges, including catching up with the rest of the developed world on global warming, the agency that would have to do the heavy lifting on environmental regulation ain’t getting the money to do diddley squat. A 25% cut in inflation adjusted terms over 4 years is huge, especially considering that the EPA was not a cushy agency even before that.

ES&T Online News: Budget cuts increasingly damaging to EPA

Support for research and development at EPA has declined by 25% in inflation-adjusted terms between the recent high point in 2004 and the proposed 2008 budget, according to figures from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Morale has never been so low here since the days of Ann Gorsuch, and even then there was more money,” says one scientist, referring to the time during the early 1980s when former administrator Gorsuch, who resigned under a cloud, did her best to shrink the agency.

But George Gray, assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), says he fully supports the proposed budget. “This budget fulfills every presidential environmental commitment and maintains the goals laid out in the EPA’s strategic plan, while spending less,” he says. The budget cuts come on the heels of EPA’s program to cut $2 million from the agency’s fund for specialized libraries.

The scientists’ difficulties are likely to increase if the proposals in a June 2006 memo from Lyons Gray, EPA’s chief financial officer, are carried out. The memo, which was released by the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) directs ORD to reduce laboratory physical infrastructure costs by a minimum of 10% by 2009 and another 10% by 2011. The memo suggests that this will require closing, relocating, and consolidating EPA’s laboratory and field locations, as well as reducing or relocating staff. ORD chief George Gray told Congress that EPA does not intend to shut down any labs or get rid of any scientists during the current administrator’s tenure.

The U.S will pay the price for this deliberate destruction of government infrastructure. You won’t see it now, it will be a little more apparent in a few years.

Study Says U.S. Companies Lag on Global Warming – New York Times

European and Asian companies are paying more attention to global warming than their American counterparts. And chemical companies are more focused on the issue than oil companies.

Those are two conclusions from “Corporate Governance and Climate Change: Making the Connection,” a report that Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists, expects will influence investment decisions.

The report, released yesterday, scored 100 global corporations — 74 of them based in the United States — on their strategies for curbing greenhouse gases. It covered 10 industries — oil and gas, chemicals, metals, electric power, automotive, forest products, coal, food, industrial equipment and airlines — whose activities were most likely to emit greenhouse gases. It evaluated companies on their board oversight, management performance, public disclosure, greenhouse gas emissions, accounting and strategic planning.

The report gave the chemical industry the highest overall marks, with a score of 51.9 out of a possible 100; DuPont, with 85 points, was the highest-ranking American company in any of the industries. Airlines, in contrast, ranked lowest, with a score of 16.6; UAL, the parent of United Airlines, received just 3 points.

Well, clearly government policy and media attitudes have more to do with market behavior and regulation than the “free market fundamentalists” would care to accept.

Well, if you believe that correlation = causation, that is! But jokes aside, every time an anti-environmental icon goes down, the salmon rejoice. Not that I know much about fisheries, but salmon and Larry Craig, that’s a great combination right there!

Sen. Craig’s fall may benefit salmon – Yahoo! News

The surprising fall of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, removes a longtime obstacle to efforts by Democrats and environmentalists to promote salmon recovery on Northwest rivers.
Craig, who was removed from leadership posts on the Senate Appropriations and Energy committees after a sex scandal, is known as one the most powerful voices in Congress on behalf of the timber and power industries. Environmentalists have fought him for years on issues from endangered salmon to public land grazing.

At issue is the protection of salmon migration trails in Western rivers full of dams. The Bush administration in 2005, among other things, issued a salmon recovery plan that, among other things, counted farmed salmon in claiming that salmon populations were recovering (can’t even be bothered to argue against that!). Craig’s fall will let Harry Reid (Nevada) and Maria Cantwell (Washington) spearhead more sensible legislation.

Pentagon pressured EPA on perchlorate

The federal government has been inconsistent and at times intentionally silent on how much perchlorate is safe in drinking water. As a result, environmental groups contend, defense contractors and the government have been indefinitely shielded from cleanup costs while infants and pregnant women are exposed to a chemical that impairs thyroid function and can slow infant brain development.

Perchlorate is the oxidizing component of rocket fuel that has been proven to interfere with thyroid function at low levels. The defense department is probably the single largest source of localized contamination. So, expecting the EPA (politically appointed head) to regulate the defense department (politically appointed head) is a little naive.

Industry advocates argue that the science on perchlorate is not precise enough to warrant strong — and extremely costly — remedies.

Ah, where would we be without the plutocracy-protectionary principle!