Carbon tax Front and Centre in the Canadian Campaign

Byoliveridley

The battle for Quebec in the federal election campaign heated up on Thursday with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper telling a Montreal audience that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's carbon tax proposal threatens Canada's national unity.

"The carbon tax will do more than undermine the economy," Harper said to a crowd of business leaders. "By undermining the economy and by re-centralizing money and power in Ottawa, it can only undermine the progress we have been making on national unity."

CBC.ca – Canada Votes – Dion’s Green Shift threatens national unity: Harper.
Mr. Harper is calling for disaster if there’s any kind of serious carbon dioxide mitigation plan. His party’s plan, as I mentioned a few days back, is pretty toothless, and his attitude does not bode well for climate change mitigation policy in Canada.

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  • Bill to exempt factory farms from pollution laws

    Byoliveridley

    pigSmell manure?

    FEED – May 2006

    Congress may exempt factory farms from pollution laws Large agribusiness companies are pushing their friends in Congress to exempt factory farms from the pollution reporting and cleanup provisions in key pollution laws. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, also known as Superfund) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) provide an essential safety net for protecting water supplies from livestock pollution and for providing warnings of toxic air emissions from factory farms. Over 140 representatives are supporting a bill, H.R. 4341, that would give this sweetheart deal to factory farms. The bill may soon be attached to a “must-pass” spending bill in an effort to speed this ill-conceived measure through Congress. Please call your representative and urge him or her to oppose this dangerous legislation. To learn more, read the Sierra Club’s fact sheet (pdf) on this issue.

    Factory farms tend to be located in rural areas next to communities that do not have the power to stop them/mobilize against them. This provision will further stack the deck against these communities. Anyone who thinks manure, pesticide runoff, ammonia, etc are not hazardous to the ecosystem and to human health needs to live next to one of these “farms”. I am hazarding a really wild guess that Congressman Hall (the sponsor) does not have to deal with issues such as these.

  • | |

    Organic agriculture can feed the world

    Byoliveridley

    That’s the conclusion reached by the authors of this study based on 293 examples in the developing and developed world.The authors also conclude that yields in the developing world are higher for organic agriculture than for conventional agriculture. Why? Well, since the paper is not open access, I can’t read it, or critique it, I’ll have to wait to get to the library before I can download it. But, maybe it’s because organic agriculture tends to be more labor intensive than conventional agriculture as practised by the developed world, and in the developing world, labor is cheap!

    Anyway, this is a good news study and should be examined a little more thoroughly.

    CJO – Abstract – Organic agriculture and the global food supply

    The principal objections to the proposition that organic agriculture can contribute significantly to the global food supply are low yields and insufficient quantities of organically acceptable fertilizers. We evaluated the universality of both claims. For the first claim, we compared yields of organic versus conventional or low-intensive food production for a global dataset of 293 examples and estimated the average yield ratio (organic:non-organic) of different food categories for the developed and the developing world. For most food categories, the average yield ratio was slightly 1.0 for studies in the developing world. With the average yield ratios, we modeled the global food supply that could be grown organically on the current agricultural land base. Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base. We also evaluated the amount of nitrogen potentially available from fixation by leguminous cover crops used as fertilizer. Data from temperate and tropical agroecosystems suggest that leguminous cover crops could fix enough nitrogen to replace the amount of synthetic fertilizer currently in use. These results indicate that organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply, while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. Evaluation and review of this paper have raised important issues about crop rotations under organic versus conventional agriculture and the reliability of grey-literature sources. An ongoing dialogue on these subjects can be found in the Forum editorial of this issue.

  • |

    Killer nets reinstated

    Byoliveridley

    Council Decisions: March 2006

    Drift Gillnet Management

    The Council adopted a recommendation to NMFS to authorize an exempted fishing permit (EFP) that would allow drift gillnet fishing in the current August 15-November 15 closed area. The EFP fishery would be governed by several requirements for all vessels, including, to carry an observer; to limit total fishing effort in the EFP fishery to 300 sets; to immediately cease the EFP fishery if, and when, two leatherback sea turtles were encountered by the fishing gear; and to immediately cease the EFP fishery if one mortality or serious injury occurred to any of the following marine mammals: short-finned pilot whale, sperm whale, fin whale, gray whale, humpback whale, or minke whale.

    And, with that, starts the rather egregious practice of drift gillnet fishing. The restrictions seem fairly tight, an observer on every boat, and end to the fishery after two incidences of capture. There is definitely more than meets the eye here, I don’t know what. Drift gillnet fishing is well documented to cause turtle catch, this from the 1998 Fishery Bulletin for 1990-1995

    In the drift gillnet fishery, seven out of 387 mammals observed entangled were released alive. In the set gillnet fishery, five out of 1,263 mammals observed entangled were released alive. Estimates of incidental kill are presented along with estimates of entanglement for species that were observed to be released alive. For the period under consideration, the estimated mortality for the drift gillnet fishery was over 450 marine mammals each year. A total of 20 turtles and 3 seabirds were observed entangled during the entire period. The most frequently entangled species in this fishery were common dolphins, Delphinus spp., and northern elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris. Estimated cetacean mortality in the driftnet fishery decreased from 650 in 1991 to 417 in 1995; pinniped mortality decreased from 173 in 1991 to 116 in 1995. Estimated cetacean mortality in the set gillnet fishery ranged from a high of 38 in 1991 to a low 14 in 1993; pinniped mortality rose to a high of 4,777 in 1992 and then decreased to 1,016 in 1995. We postulate that there has been a decline in the number of pinnipeds and cetaceans in the setnet fishery owing to area closure. No similar proposal can be made for the driftnet fishery. The most frequently entangled mammals in the setnet fishery were California sea lions, Zalophus californianus, and harbor seals, Phoca vitulina. Six turtles and 1,018 seabirds were estimated entangled in this fishery during the NMFS Observer Program from July 1990 to December 1995.

    So what’s the deal, this thing caught 20 turtles in 5 years, so it is going to catch turtles, no doubt about it. Anyone who does not get what the death of one adult sea turtle means read this. Sea turtles are wonderfully fragile animals given their size, they take long to mature sexually, they do not breed all that much and less than 1% of turtle hatchlings survive to adulthood. Leatherbacks are highly endangered.

    I have a feeling that this is the first part of a one-two punch intended to reinstate the famed turtle killer long line swordfish nets on the pacific coast. The “proof” that these nets do not catch turtles will be used to lobby for longline swordfishing in, oh say three months?

  • |

    Health Canada report ties asbestos to lung cancer

    Byoliveridley

    Health Canada sat for more than a year on a report by a panel of international experts that concludes there is a “strong relationship” between lung cancer and chrysotile asbestos mined in Canada.

    Health Canada received the report in March 2008, resisting calls from the panel chairman to release the findings despite his plea last fall that the delay was “an annoying piece of needless government secrecy.”

    Canwest News Service obtained the report under Access to Information legislation, but the request took more than 10 months to process.

    Vancouver Sun

    Yes, dog bites man anywhere else except Canada, which has a hard time accepting that it routinely exports products that kill people. The “annoying piece of needless government secrecy” is neither needless or annoying. It protects a dying industry with a few, powerful stakeholders in Quebec, an important swing political province, so there’s need for it! Annoying – your seat “buddy” on the bus yammering on their cellphone, cancer, well, I don’t know, you tell me!

    Expect little to change from this report. It does mention that there is little danger from “Canadian exposure levels”, conveniently forgetting that 90% of the export is to developing countries where there are fewer safeguards. This feeds into the Canadian government line that “chrysotile” is safe if used correctly. If you think this line of reasoning is familiar, it is. The tobacco industry used it routinely till recently.

    Shame.
    n

  • Pesticide makes rat grandsons unattractive.

    Byoliveridley

    Yes, strained headline!

    A Toxic Hand-Me-Down — Balter 2007 (327): 1 — ScienceNOW

    Environmental contamination can cause cancer and birth defects. Of particular concern are a group of toxic chemicals called endocrine-disrupters, which interfere with reproductive hormones and may cause sterility. A new study, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that these chemicals can change reproductive behavior as well, and that these behavioral changes can be passed on from parents to offspring. If correct, these changes could alter the course of evolution by giving natural selection new targets to act on.

    In 2005, a team led by reproductive biologist Michael Skinner of Washington State University in Pullman reported in Science that the fungicide vinclozolin, an endocrine-disrupter used to spray vineyards and other crops, causes fertility defects in the male offspring of female rats treated with the chemical. These defects are, in turn, passed down to the males of subsequent generations. The toxin did not appear to be altering gene sequences; instead, Skinner and colleagues found, vinclozolin was somehow causing other chemical groups to latch onto certain genes, changing their expression (Science, 3 June 2005, p. 1391). The phenomenon is known as epigenetic inheritance. Last year, Skinner’s group identified 15 epigenetically altered DNA sequences in the sperm of the vinclozolin-treated rats

    More signs of intergenerational effects of low levels of endocrine disruptors. I had blogged recently about Bisphenol A having intergenerational effects (where exposure to a chemical agent causes consequences for offspring and off off spring, etc).

    It’s still early, but remember Children of Men (good movie, see it).

  • |

    Smoking bans in North Carolina?

    Byoliveridley

    After this morning’s post about Tennessee, I got curious and wanted to see what we were doing in North Carolina on smoking bans. So, I looked up my very own NC General assembly homepage and used their full text bill search function (key word smoking!). Here’s what I found.

    In the State Senate

    Great! Senate Bill S635 will ban smoking in all public places indoors except in tobacco shops, designated smoking rooms in hotels and for “research”. Follow the progress of this bill using the bill’s very own rss feed!

    In the House

    Not so good, House bill H259 has been referred to committee. But it has giant loopholes for all bars and “private clubs”. It has its very own rss feed too.

    Observations

    1. It is good to see that my representatives Kinnaird (we share a yoga class on Monday nights!) and Insko are co-sponsors on the bills. But I live in that bastion of progressivism (in the South, anyways!) Chapel Hill/Carrboro, so this is pretty unsurprising!
    2. My question to the House is this: Why are bartenders, employees of bars and private clubs, and patrons of such establishments considered not worthy of protection from second hand smoke? As someone who goes out drinking often, this is where all my exposure to second hand smoke occurs.
    3. Kudos to North Carolina for designing an accessible and easily searchable bill repository complete with rss feeds, way to go!

    Once I hear back from Sen. Kinnaird on the prospects of legislation this session, I’ll be sure to post about it.

    Update: See this. The House and Senate bills have gotten a lot closer, and most of the loopholes are gone.

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  1. Pingback: What’s the matter with Canada? « The Olive Ridley Crawl

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