Want to know where the factory farms are? Want to see a nice graphical representation of the number of hogs, or cows, or chickens that live next to you in factory conditions? Well, look no further than Factory Farm Map.
You will find, for instance, that Iowa is the hog king at 13 million hogs, followed closely by North Carolina at 9.8 million. However, Iowa has them spread out through the state while North Carolina has them in one part of the state (Down east), exacerbating the concentration of the pollution, and the differential impacts of the pollution with geographical location. There are 2.19 million hogs in Duplin County alone, that is 40+ hogs to every human that lives there, or 25000+ hogs per square mile, nice…
Do watch. In a one minute commercial, GE manages to greenwash on clean coal, be incredibly sexist, and, in an act that screams a giant F@#$ You to all involved, use as a soundtrack, a song about the misery of coal mining and the hardship faced by miners. I thought it was a parody, it had to be, apparently, NOT!
Sixteen Tons
Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said “Well, a-bless my soul”
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’, it was drizzlin’ rain
Fightin’ and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol’ mama lion
Cain’t no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin’, better step aside
A lotta men didn’t, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t a-get you
Then the left one will
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.
The journalist who wrote this piece lets some unsupported talking points just slip by. First of all, coal does not solve the US dependence on “foreign oil”. Coal is used for electricity, oil is used for cars, there is little overlap. Secondly, he claims that mountaintop mining is safer. I guess it is safer because it is cheaper to ensure the safety of the miners above ground rather than underground. But, that does not make it inherently safer!
For all the devastating effects of mountaintop removal mining, including death, water pollution, habitat destruction, flooding, landslides, read this grist article from 2006.
The go-to site for activism relating to this issue is IloveMountains. Go see it!
You may remember from a few weeks back when the supremes in a very rare unanimous decision ruled that the Duke Energy would have to install new pollution controls if it made modifications to its power plants that increased annual emissions without increasing hourly emissions. Well, never mind that, the EPA released a “rule” that “clarifies” this issue.
The government proposed a pollution standard for power plants Wednesday that critics said flouts the spirit of a Supreme Court ruling on clean air enforcement.
The proposal would make it easier for utilities to expand plant operations or make other changes to produce more electricity without installing new pollution controls.
The proposal would allow the use of average hourly smokestack emissions when determining whether a plant’s expansion or efficiency improvements require additional pollution controls. The EPA hopes to make the proposal final before year’s end.
Opponents of the hourly standard recently argued before the Supreme Court that this standard lets a plant put more smog-causing chemicals and other pollution into the air, even if hourly releases do not increase.
Environmentalists long have contended the EPA should continue using annual emissions to determine whether new pollution controls are needed under the Clean Air Act.
Let’s get this straight, “environmentalists contend”? There is nothing to contend here, it’s simple math. If you keep hourly rates the same and run your plant for longer, you will emit more pollution, which is not good. Less pollution good, more pollution bad, there is no point of contention here. Hourly standards and annual standards are used for two different things. The hourly standard sets a lower limit on the efficiency of the pollution control operation for the plant. The annual standard measures the plant’s overall impact. Both of them need to be regulated. It is only common sense that if you put out twice the amount of pollution in a year because you run 20 hours per day instead of 10, you need to control it. The Supremes rightly tagged this argument as dishonest, only to see the EPA very happily turn around and reissue it as an official rule.
Interesting paper out of the Berkeley Global Economy Journal
Trade Agreements and the Environment: An Industry Level Study for NAFTA
Raymond MacDermott. Global Economy Journal Volume 6, Issue 3 2006 Article 3
We find strong evidence of both the pollution-haven hypothesis and the positive impact of the NAFTA on FDI. In addition, we find the trade agreement exacerbates the pollution-haven effect. That is, the incentive to invest in countries with weak environmental regulations is greater under a trade agreement such as the NAFTA. Surprisingly, stronger evidence of this effect is found in lower polluting industries than in higher polluting industries.
The biodiesel boom has a high environmental cost, however. Critics say it’s contributing to global warming. Tropical forests help remove millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. Burning and clear-cutting not only eliminates one of the planet’s crucial air-filtration systems, the process also releases even more carbon dioxide into the air, in smoke or as gases released during the decomposition of forest waste. Annual clearing of Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands alone releases some 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases, according to a Greenpeace report. Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the U.S. and China, says the World Bank. “We liken what’s going on [in Indonesia] to pouring petrol on a fire,” says Martin Baker, a Hong Kong–based communications officer for Greenpeace International. “It’s completely ridiculous to produce green fuels from places like this.”
This just makes we want to jit my head against the wall. Tropical forests are some of the most efficient sinks of carbon, and countries that hold these sinks should be paid as well as countries that are sources of carbon. Yes, this means setting a realistic carbon pricing scheme that can eliminate this perverse incentive to destroy tropical rain forests so Western nations can claim to be environmentally friendly.
This is not a bribe, or an incentive, it is recognition of the fact that carbon sinks have a monetary value.
Alain Gachet, who used satellite images and radar in his research, said the area received too little rain and had the wrong rock types for water storage. But the French geologist said there was enough water elsewhere in Darfur to end the fighting and rebuild the economy.
On Wednesday, Boston Universitys Farouk El-Baz said he had received the backing of Sudans government to begin drilling for water in the newly-discovered lake, in North Darfur.
No wonder they say that water is the 21st century oil. This guy’s going to be drilling for water (also known as well digging!).