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How NAFTA infringes on local environmental regulations

Byoliveridley

Dow AgroSciences is considering using the controversial investor-protection provisions of the North American free-trade agreement to seek compensation from the federal government over Quebec's ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides.

The company, a maker of the weed-killer 2,4-D, filed a notice of intent to submit a claim to arbitration under NAFTA in late August. The 27-page legal action was posted yesterday on the Foreign Affairs website, where it is listed as a dispute to which Canada is a party.

via globeandmail.com: Ban on pesticides may face NAFTA test

Here is Sierra Club’s assessment of 2,4-D. It is not as bad as, say, DDT, but not something an average householder would ever need to use. Limiting use and exposure is in everyone’s best interest except Dow’s, which is why they have filed this lawsuit.

I would say it infringes on a province’s right to set strict health and safety standards for its people, but if we accept that corporations have more rights than people, we would expect this kind of lawsuit to happen with more frequency.

Note that a much more egregious actor, lindane, which was deregistered by even the Bush EPA is subject of a similar challenge in Canada, and Bisphenol A is probably next.

Can’t blame the companies for exploiting loopholes (that they no doubt inserted, of course), but it seems that countries should always have the right to enforce stricter standards if they so desire.

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  • Hansen Utters the M word

    Byoliveridley

    Well, I for one am glad that the world’s most famous climate scientist has called for a moratorium on coal fired power plants.
    Top scientist seeks halt on coal plants – Yahoo News

    In prepared remarks to be delivered at the National Press Club Monday afternoon, NASA scientist James Hansen, who has been one of the earliest top researchers to warn the world about global warming, will call for a moratorium on building new coal-fired power plants.

    Hansen’s call dovetails with an edict by the private equity group buying TXU, a massive Texas-based utility. The equity group, led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group, agreed to stop plans to build eight new coal-fired power plants, not to propose new coal-fired plants outside Texas and to support mandatory national caps on emissions linked to global warming.

    Hansen’s presentation to the press club says all coal-fired power plants that do not capture and bury carbon dioxide “must eventually be bulldozed (before mid-century).”

    The director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, who was speaking as a private citizen, said Congress should adopt these coal cuts and if not, “citizens must accomplish this.” He said increased efficiency can make up for the cutbacks in coal.

    Hallelujah!

  • Big Wool and Fast Fashion

    Byoliveridley

    Cute sheep or not, factory farming is always impactful

     

    According to one analysis of wool production in Australia, by far the world’s top exporter, the wool required to make one knit sweater is responsible for 27 times more greenhouse gases than a comparable Australian cotton sweater, and requires 247 times more land.

    Source: Big Wool wants you to believe it’s nice to animals and the environment. It’s not.

    This is an interesting article in Vox on the outsized impacts of large-scale factory farming wool impacts. The article goes into further detail comparing wool to synthetics on impact (Both big, but different), and why plant-based alternatives like Tencel and Hemp and recycling have not taken off. It also discusses the increasing trend of wool blends.

    Widespread cheap synthetics have enabled fast fashion, making it possible for brands to produce stupefying volumes of disposable fabrics. These are now very commonly combined with wool to create hybrid garments. According to the Center for Biodiversity and Collective Fashion Justice’s recent analysis of 13 top clothing brands, more than half of wool items were blended with synthetics, giving them in-demand properties like machine washability

    Of course when you blend a wool and a synthetic, it is now landfill material. The issue with clothing (same as the issue with most scaled up factory production) is scale and economics. Fast fashion makes clothes that fall apart in 6 months and are impossible to fix. So whatever the raw material used, this trend ensures high production, quick profit, large impact and large waste. In addition, factory-scaled animal production is not really compatible with animal welfare.

    Unless the system changes, which will require a massive re-examination and re-jigging of our financial systems and reward/responsibility mechanisms, we will always have this issue.

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    Oak Bay goes electric

    Byoliveridley

    Oak Bay has found the vehicles that fit its green policy and low speed limits — electric cars that top out at a maximum speed of 50 km/h.The municipality is drafting a bylaw that would allow electric cars on its public streets, making it possibly the first municipality in B.C. to take advantage of new provincial legislation that expands where the innovative vehicles can be driven.”I don’t think we’ll see any speed differences in Oak Bay just because we have slower-moving vehicles like electric cars,” Coun. Nils Jensen said yesterday of the impact on traffic movement in the notoriously slower-moving community.

    Oak Bay nears electric-car nirvana

     gv.gifFor those not in the know, Oak Bay is a municipality that is part of the Greater Victoria area. We have 11 separate municipalities, which makes for some serious inefficiencies and redundancy in administration, but does tend to preserve local character. Oak Bay, in my humble opinion, is insufferably British and proper, very wealthy and quite beautiful. And yes, it is a slow moving town, perfect for 50 kmph vehicles.

    But Oak Bay is not an island, it is flanked by Victoria and Saanich, and the boundaries are not always clearly demarcated. What’s going to happen when someone randomly wanders into Saanich?

    Except for the stretch of 17 going up to Sidney and the stretch of 1 going West and North out of the area, 50kmph ought to cover most of the area. I suspect Victoria will follow suit soon.

  • Is Chronic Occupational Pain a Class Issue?

    Byoliveridley

    Americans in households making less than $30,000 a year spend nearly 20% of their lives in moderate to severe pain, compared with less than 8% of people in households earning above $100,000

    Millions of Americans in Chronic Pain – TIME

    Based on a study published in the Lancet (much moolah required to read, funny that the authors of an article on the class/money based nature of pain would publish in a journal that requires all kinds of money to read, heard of PLOS?), one would have to say yes. People in low paying service jobs don’t have the luxury of mid afternoon yoga, or that once a week massage, or being able to take a “mental health” day, or any such luck. Also, the work is physically demanding, long hours of standing, heavy lifting, and repetitive motions the body was not designed for.

    Krueger notes that the type of pain people reported typically fell on either side of the rich-poor divide. “Those with higher incomes welcome pain almost by choice, usually through exercise,” he says. “At lower incomes, pain comes as the result of work.” Indeed, Krueger and Stone found that blue-collar workers felt more pain, from physical labor or repetitive motion, while on the job

    It is very sad, but a lot of this pain is avoidable. Next time you go to the grocery store, notice that the people at the check out counter stand all the time. Why? What about their job requires continuous standing? I’ve been to other countries, Germany for instance, where they are provided with high chairs that help them move the items from the conveyor through the scanner to the bagging area with much less effort. How many chairs have you seen in a grocery store lately?

    Why can’t this very simple system be implemented? It would provide much relief. Three major issues:

    1. Lack of bargaining power: Unions are a dirty word. Last I heard, the unionization rate in the states was 12%. No one speaks for the cashier. It is considered a low paying, low skill occupation where people can be replaced easily and without “pain”. So, you’re on your own, ask for a chair, and you’ll be seated in one very soon (at home, your ass fired and tired).
    2. Money: And this is linked to point 1. Implementation of any programs designed to make workers’ lives a little easier costs money up front. Since workers are expendable and have no voice, it’s easiest to steal from them and deny them basic comforts.
    3. The American notion of individualism: You deserve what you get based on how hard you work and how intelligent you are. Grocery store cashiers must be lazy and dumb to be where they are. they “deserve it”

    I don’t see it changing at all. But next time you walk into a grocery store and find a rather sullen clerk, it’s not that she’s lazy or has a bad attitude, she may just be in a lot of pain.

    Happy Sunday!

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    Turtles, Arribadas, Science, Policy and Implementation

    Byoliveridley

    turtle Read stuff like this (hat tip to my mom for telling me about this report she’d seen on TV in Madras), and you begin to doubt your utility as a scientist.
    IBNLive : Orissa turtles neck-deep in danger

    Nearly 3,000 Olive Ridley turtles have died off the Orissa coast this season. Beaches have become turtle graveyards.

    Orissa is one of the three places in the world where the Olive Ridleys come for their annual mass nesting.

    Mechanised trawlers are the biggest culprits for this slaughter. When the trawlers go to the sea, turtles are trapped in their fishing nets. The turtles are unable to disentangle themselves and suffocate to death.

    See the video report too. In her own breathlessly indignant style, the reporter explains the science behind turtle excluder devices (well known and established), the regulation expressely forbidding shrimp trawling close to the coast, especially during the arribada, the money set aside in the budget to purchase a few speed boats for the coast guard, who are well aware of the problem, so wot’s, uh, the deal?

    The investigative reports contradict each other, the first one linked said there was no patrolling, the second one gushingly praises the coast guard for vigorous enforcement and patrolling, so which is it? I need to find out, call on some old friends… But clearly, there are issues if net catch mortality is on the rise.

    The three pillars of any regulatory action are the science, the policy, and the implementation. The science here is very clear (though the US administration seems to not think so any more?), shrimp nets with turtle excluder devices cause decrease in mortality. The policy is clear, use these nets when shrimp fishing, and completely ban fishing activity during the arribada (the number of turtles in an arribada, 50000 in a night and perhaps 300000-400000 over the course of a week is staggeringly large, so, shrimp net or not, you’ll kill a lot of turtles just by being there).

    So, like anything else in India, where is the implementation? The people running the trawlers know they are illegal anyway, so they don’t bother with the TEDs. The owners of the trawling boats never face the consequences, only the poor hapless fishermen running the boats. No attempt is made to coopt the people being regulated, it is a top down “we tell you what to do” kind of situation where the law is selectively enforced, no explanations are given, the regulation may just be an excuse to get some kickbacks. The fishermen see the excluder device as an inconvenience as they are not shown how to use it. Some low level bureaucrat in charge of buying high speed boats for the state’s forest service either does not realize the importance of getting this policy on the road, or is on the take. You can pick any, or all of these reasons and you’ll see why just like most other things in India, the road to hell is paved with good intentions 🙁

    Why be a scientist and come up with cool new techniques to do things when you don’t pay equal attention to the implementation of techniques invented 20 years back? As a responsible scientist, I must look at policy and implentation with as much interest and passion as I look at the science – New career paths?

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    A Company that Specializes in Profiting from Harm

    Byoliveridley

    The LA Times has an interesting investigation on the activities of Amvac.

    Pesticide maker sees profit when others see risks – Los Angeles Times

    Amvac is a leading maker of organophosphates, a class of older, highly toxic pesticides that has been under regulatory scrutiny since the late 1980s. As larger firms have stopped manufacturing some of their organophosphates, Amvac has bought the rights to make or sell 10 of them since 1989, according to company records and interviews. One of them, mevinphos, was banned in the U.S. in 1994 after a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that it was responsible for poisoning more field workers in California than any other agricultural chemical. Amvac continues selling the product overseas, according to company officials. Amvac is by no means the largest producer of pesticides that have attracted regulatory scrutiny, but the company stands out for its willingness to embrace chemicals that other firms have abandoned.

    Amvac Slogan

    Love that slogan, don’t ya’! There are so many loopholes in pesticide regulation that a company like Amvac can post impressive profits by using these loopholes, having a significant say in the writing of the regulation, and effortlessly denying and delaying action. It’s a well researched piece, read in full.