May Day
So, I’m going green with this one — a good color for May.
Happy Wesak and Beltane — be “mindful” this week … dream big dreams, vision fabulous visions. Keep the bright hope … this whole post is hopeful news, not including the last few on ethanol, but that’s hopeful too, in a fashion; we’re getting the feedback on that before it becomes too all-consuming in public consciousness. If Dubby likes it, you KNOW there’s something wrong — no Kool Aid for us, anymore!
Jude
What Global Warming Split?
Bill Scher, TomPaine
Monday, April 30
The New York Times analyzes its own environmental poll, and concludes, “Public Remains Split on Response to Warming.” But on the poll questions (PDF file) that relate to actual proposals in Congress, the public isn’t split at all. For example:
92 percent favor “requiring car manufacturers to produce cars that are more energy efficient.”
75 percent are “willing … to pay more for electricity if it were generated by renewable sources like solar or wind energy.”
64 percent would “pay higher taxes on gasoline and other fuels if the money was used for research into renewable sources like solar and wind energy.”
69 percent approve of more coal-power plants “if the plants used a new method of burning coal, which would cost more but produce less air pollution.” (Otherwise, support for coal was at 41%.)
Some of these questions misstate what is being proposed. The main push on Capitol Hill is for tax credits for renewable energy, so they won’t cost more than fossil fuels. Yet even with the poll’s conservative framing, renewable energy comes out on top.
Meanwhile, the poll doesn’t even ask about the big issue facing Congress, a cap on carbon emissions, which earned 58 percent support in a recent Center for American Progress poll.
You really can’t call the public split on how to deal with global warming, if your poll doesn’t address how to actually deal with global warming.
A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop
Paul Hawken, Orion Magazine
May 1, 2007, by Alternet
I have given nearly one thousand talks about the environment in the past fifteen years, and after every speech a smaller crowd gathered to talk, ask questions, and exchange business cards. The people offering their cards were working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. They were from the nonprofit and nongovernmental world, also known as civil society. They looked after rivers and bays, educated consumers about sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade policies, worked to green inner cities, or taught children about the environment. Quite simply, they were trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice.
After being on the road for a week or two, I would return with a couple hundred cards stuffed into various pockets. I would lay them out on the table in my kitchen, read the names, look at the logos, envisage the missions, and marvel at what groups do on behalf of others. Later, I would put them into drawers or paper bags, keepsakes of the journey. I couldn’t throw them away.
Over the years the cards mounted into the thousands, and whenever I glanced at the bags in my closet, I kept coming back to one question: did anyone know how many groups there were? At first, this was a matter of curiosity, but it slowly grew into a hunch that something larger was afoot, a significant social movement that was eluding the radar of mainstream culture.
I began to count. I looked at government records for different countries and, using various methods to approximate the number of environmental and social justice groups from tax census data, I initially estimated that there were thirty thousand environmental organizations strung around the globe; when I added social justice and indigenous organizations, the number exceeded one hundred thousand. I then researched past social movements to see if there were any equal in scale and scope, but I couldn’t find anything.
The more I probed, the more I unearthed, and the numbers continued to climb. In trying to pick up a stone, I found the exposed tip of a geological formation. I discovered lists, indexes, and small databases specific to certain sectors or geographic areas, but no set of data came close to describing the movement’s breadth. Extrapolating from the records being accessed, I realized that the initial estimate of a hundred thousand organizations was off by at least a factor of ten. I now believe there are over one million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe two.
By conventional definition, this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with a group. You read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements have followers, but this movement doesn’t work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or doctrine, no authority to check with.
I sought a name for it, but there isn’t one.
Historically, social movements have arisen primarily because of injustice, inequalities, and corruption. Those woes remain legion, but a new condition exists that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease that is marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change. It crossed my mind that perhaps I was seeing something organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in the conventional sense, is it a collective response to threat? Is it splintered for reasons that are innate to its purpose? Or is it simply disorganized? More questions followed. How does it function? How fast is it growing? How is it connected? Why is it largely ignored?
After spending years researching this phenomenon, including creating with my colleagues a global database of these organizations, I have come to these conclusions: this is the largest social movement in all of history, no one knows its scope, and how it functions is more mysterious than what meets the eye.
What does meet the eye is compelling: tens of millions of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.
Clayton Thomas-Muller speaks to a community gathering of the Cree nation about waste sites on their native land in Northern Alberta, toxic lakes so big you can see them from outer space. Shi Lihong, founder of Wild China Films, makes documentaries with her husband on migrants displaced by construction of large dams. Rosalina Tuyuc Velásquez, a member of the Maya-Kaqchikel people, fights for full accountability for tens of thousands of people killed by death squads in Guatemala. Rodrigo Baggio retrieves discarded computers from New York, London, and Toronto and installs them in the favelas of Brazil, where he and his staff teach computer skills to poor children. Biologist Janine Benyus speaks to twelve hundred executives at a business forum in Queensland about biologically inspired industrial development. Paul Sykes, a volunteer for the National Audubon Society, completes his fifty-second Christmas Bird Count in Little Creek, Virginia, joining fifty thousand other people who tally 70 million birds on one day. Sumita Dasgupta leads students, engineers, journalists, farmers, and Adivasis (tribal people) on a ten-day trek through Gujarat exploring the rebirth of ancient rainwater harvesting and catchment systems that bring life back to drought-prone areas of India. Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor, who exposed links between the genocidal policies of former president Charles Taylor and illegal logging in Liberia, now creates certified, sustainable timber policies.
These eight, who may never meet and know one another, are part of a coalescence comprising hundreds of thousands of organizations with no center, codified beliefs, or charismatic leader. The movement grows and spreads in every city and country. Virtually every tribe, culture, language, and religion is part of it, from Mongolians to Uzbeks to Tamils. It is comprised of families in India, students in Australia, farmers in France, the landless in Brazil, the bananeras of Honduras, the “poors” of Durban, villagers in Irian Jaya, indigenous tribes of Bolivia, and housewives in Japan. Its leaders are farmers, zoologists, shoemakers, and poets.
The movement can’t be divided because it is atomized — small pieces loosely joined. It forms, gathers, and dissipates quickly. Many inside and out dismiss it as powerless, but it has been known to bring down governments, companies, and leaders through witnessing, informing, and massing.
The movement has three basic roots: the environmental and social justice movements, and indigenous cultures’ resistance to globalization — all of which are intertwining. It arises spontaneously from different economic sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts, resulting in a global, classless, diverse, and embedded movement, spreading worldwide without exception. In a world grown too complex for constrictive ideologies, the very word movement may be too small, for it is the largest coming together of citizens in history.
There are research institutes, community development agencies, village- and citizen-based organizations, corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts, and foundations. They defend against corrupt politics and climate change, corporate predation and the death of the oceans, governmental indifference and pandemic poverty, industrial forestry and farming, depletion of soil and water.
Describing the breadth of the movement is like trying to hold the ocean in your hand. It is that large. When a part rises above the waterline, the iceberg beneath usually remains unseen. When Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize, the wire service stories didn’t mention the network of six thousand different women’s groups in Africa planting trees. When we hear about a chemical spill in a river, it is never mentioned that more than four thousand organizations in North America have adopted a river, creek, or stream. We read that organic agriculture is the fastest-growing sector of farming in America, Japan, Mexico, and Europe, but no connection is made to the more than three thousand organizations that educate farmers, customers, and legislators about sustainable agriculture.
This is the first time in history that a large social movement is not bound together by an “ism.” What binds it together is ideas, not ideologies. This unnamed movement’s big contribution is the absence of one big idea; in its stead it offers thousands of practical and useful ideas. In place of isms are processes, concerns, and compassion. The movement demonstrates a pliable, resonant, and generous side of humanity.
And it is impossible to pin down. Generalities are largely inaccurate. It is nonviolent, and grassroots; it has no bombs, armies, or helicopters. A charismatic male vertebrate is not in charge. The movement does not agree on everything nor will it ever, because that would be an ideology. But it shares a basic set of fundamental understandings about the Earth, how it functions, and the necessity of fairness and equity for all people partaking of the planet’s life-giving systems.
The promise of this unnamed movement is to offer solutions to what appear to be insoluble dilemmas: poverty, global climate change, terrorism, ecological degradation, polarization of income, loss of culture. It is not burdened with a syndrome of trying to save the world; it is trying to remake the world.
There is fierceness here. There is no other explanation for the raw courage and heart seen over and again in the people who march, speak, create, resist, and build. It is the fierceness of what it means to know we are human and want to survive.
This movement is relentless and unafraid. It cannot be mollified, pacified, or suppressed. There can be no Berlin Wall moment, no treaty-signing, no morning to awaken when the superpowers agree to stand down. The movement will continue to take myriad forms. It will not rest. There will be no Marx, Alexander, or Kennedy. No book can explain it, no person can represent it, no words can encompass it, because the movement is the breathing, sentient testament of the living world.
And I believe it will prevail. I don’t mean defeat, conquer, or cause harm to someone else. And I don’t tender the claim in an oracular sense. I mean the thinking that informs the movement’s goal — to create a just society conducive to life on Earth — will reign. It will soon suffuse and permeate most institutions. But before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destruction.
Inspiration is not garnered from litanies of what is flawed; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. Healing the wounds of the Earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party. It is not a liberal or conservative activity. It is a sacred act.
Paul Hawken is an entrepreneur and social activist living in California. His article in this issue is adapted from Blessed Unrest, to be published by Viking Press and used by permission.
Greenhouse-gas limits gain steam in states
Eric Kelderman, Stateline.org
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The White House and Congress are miles apart over proposals to stop global warming, but the debate is over in many states that are moving aggressively to curb greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.
Nearly half of the states are pursuing at least one of three main strategies to curb the burning of fossil fuels, a chief source of gases linked to global warming: cleaning up smokestacks, reducing auto exhaust or reaping more power from the sun and wind.
Last month, the Washington Legislature passed a measure similar to a landmark 2006 California law to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants and other industries to 1990 levels by 2020. Minnesota and New Hampshire this year set the highest goals for producing environment-friendly electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar energy — 25 percent by 2025. And Maryland just became the 12th state to mandate California’s stringent auto emissions standards.
Governors and state legislators are driven not just by green goals but also by a large dose of pragmatism. What’s good for the environment also can be good for a state’s economy, such as championing alternative energy to create jobs, protecting natural resources that would be harmed by global warming and keeping a lid on rising fuel prices that hit consumers and businesses alike.
“I don’t just want wind farms. I want companies that build turbines. I want hybrid-vehicle companies to consult us on conservation strategies. I want companies that design solar panels,” Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) told the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor and renewable-energy advocates promoting clean power as an economic engine.
Julia Bovey, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council environmental advocacy group, said states clearly are leading the federal government on the issue of global warming. But the scope of the problem requires a national federal policy not a patchwork of varying state laws, she said.
The chief challenge is how to curb carbon dioxide, the same gas exhaled by humans but released into the atmosphere in huge amounts with the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gasoline. Scientists have concluded that steep increases in fossil-fuel burning have warmed the Earth’s atmosphere, in what is called a greenhouse effect, with the potential to change the planet’s climate.
California is at the cutting edge with its requirement to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants and other industrial sources 25 percent over the next 13 years. The California law also has implications beyond its borders because utilities will be required to purchase power from out-of-state plants that meet the emissions goals. Washington state is poised to follow suit with a bill passed in April.
On both coasts, states also are joining in regional “cap-and-trade” agreements that cap the amount of greenhouse gases that power plants can produce and allow polluters to buy and sell credits earned through extra reductions, creating economic incentives to cut emissions.
On the East Coast, Massachusetts and Rhode Island this year joined eight other states in a plan to cut carbon-dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2019.
In February, Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon agreed to join California and Washington state in a “cap-and-trade” system that will develop its emissions goals by August 2007.
Fears of global warming also have rejuvenated interest in renewable energy requirements that states began imposing more a decade ago to cut dependence on imported oil and gas and to reduce polluting coal-plant emissions. Citing global warming, Minnesota and New Hampshire this year joined 20 states in requiring utilities to get a percentage of their electricity from environment-friendly sources such as wind and solar power. Colorado and New Mexico this year have doubled previous requirements of clean electricity to 20 percent by 2020.
Nationwide, the renewable requirements will reduce carbon-dioxide emissions an estimated 108 million metric tons by 2020 — equivalent to removing nearly 18 million cars from the nation’s roads, according to the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit environmental think-tank.
California in 2002 was the first to go after auto emissions to curtail greenhouses gases. Now 11 other states have agreed to copy the Golden State’s requirement that cars curb carbon-dioxide emissions 30 percent by the 2016 model year.
While a group of automakers is challenging California’s standards in three federal district courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on April 3 that the Environmental Protection Agency was wrong to refuse to regulate carbon dioxide as an air pollutant. That decision improves chances that the EPA will approve the law in California, the only state allowed to write stricter car-emission standards than the federal government.
Governors are aiming to improve the business climate in their states as well as the earth’s atmosphere, said Michael Fedor, a spokesman for an alliance of wind and solar advocates as well as ranching, farming and forestry associations. Fedor’s organization, the “25 X 25″ group, is promoting the goal that 25 percent of the nation’s energy needs will be met by renewable energy by 2025.
In fact, there are big bucks to be made in the new energy economy. Wind energy companies spent $4 billion in 2006 as the nation’s installed wind-generation capacity grew 27 percent, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Next year, wind energy is expected to grow 26 percent, according to the association.
State actions now are building pressure on the new Democratic majority in Congress to take action against global warming. At least six bills for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions have been introduced in the U.S. Senate this year, and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D) of Michigan, has held a dozen hearings on the prospect of climate-change legislation.
While President Bush has acknowledged the “serious problem of global-climate change,” he has questioned how much human activity has contributed to the earth’s rising temperature and so far has rejected government mandates to cut carbon dioxide.
Several governors, on the other hand, including some of Bush’s fellow Republicans, not only acknowledge the potential catastrophic effects of global warming but also are leading advocates for government intervention. At least 16 governors this year proposed efforts to stanch climate change in their state of the state addresses, according to the National Governors Association.
That includes California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who banked his successful 2006 re-election in part on his actions to curb carbon-dioxide emissions. Even South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), a Southern conservative, launched a task force in February to determine not whether global warming exists, but how it how will impact the state and what steps could be taken to mitigate the problem. More than a dozen other states, from Alaska to Florida, have similar advisory groups.
Ethanol vehicles pose a significant risk to human health
Medical Research News
Friday, 20-Apr-2007
Ethanol is widely touted as an eco-friendly, clean-burning fuel.
But if every vehicle in the United States ran on fuel made primarily from ethanol instead of pure gasoline, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations would likely increase, according to a new study by Stanford University atmospheric scientist Mark Z. Jacobson. His findings are published in the April 18 online edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T).
”Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution,” said Jacobson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. ”But our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage.”
Gasoline vs. ethanol
For the study, Jacobson used a sophisticated computer model to simulate air quality in the year 2020, when ethanol-fueled vehicles are expected to be widely available in the United States.
”The chemicals that come out of a tailpipe are affected by a variety of factors, including chemical reactions, temperatures, sunlight, clouds, wind and precipitation,” he explained. ”In addition, overall health effects depend on exposure to these airborne chemicals, which varies from region to region. Ours is the first ethanol study that takes into account population distribution and the complex environmental interactions.”
In the experiment, Jacobson ran a series of computer tests simulating atmospheric conditions throughout the United States in 2020, with a special focus on Los Angeles.
”Since Los Angeles has historically been the most polluted airshed in the U.S., the testbed for nearly all U.S. air pollution regulation and home to about 6 percent of the U.S. population, it is also ideal for a more detailed study,” he wrote.
Jacobson programmed the computer to run air quality simulations comparing two future scenarios:
A vehicle fleet (that is, all cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc., in the United States) fueled by gasoline, versus
A fleet powered by E85, a popular blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.
Deaths and hospitalizations
The results of the computer simulations were striking.
”We found that E85 vehicles reduce atmospheric levels of two carcinogens, benzene and butadiene, but increase two others-formaldehyde and acetaldehyde,” Jacobson said. ”As a result, cancer rates for E85 are likely to be similar to those for gasoline. However, in some parts of the country, E85 significantly increased ozone, a prime ingredient of smog.”
Inhaling ozone-even at low levels-can decrease lung capacity, inflame lung tissue, worsen asthma and impair the body’s immune system, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The World Health Organization estimates that 800,000 people die each year from ozone and other chemicals in smog.
”In our study, E85 increased ozone-related mortalities in the United States by about 200 deaths per year compared to gasoline, with about 120 of those deaths occurring in Los Angeles,” Jacobson said. ”These mortality rates represent an increase of about 4 percent in the U.S. and 9 percent in Los Angeles above the projected ozone-related death rates for gasoline-fueled vehicles in 2020.”
The study showed that ozone increases in Los Angeles and the northeastern United States will be partially offset by decreases in the southeast. ”However, we found that nationwide, E85 is likely to increase the annual number of asthma-related emergency room visits by 770 and the number of respiratory-related hospitalizations by 990,” Jacobson said. ”Los Angeles can expect 650 more hospitalizations in 2020, along with 1,200 additional asthma-related emergency visits.”
The deleterious health effects of E85 will be the same, whether the ethanol is made from corn, switchgrass or other plant products, Jacobson noted. ”Today, there is a lot of investment in ethanol,” he said. ”But we found that using E85 will cause at least as much health damage as gasoline, which already causes about 10,000 U.S. premature deaths annually from ozone and particulate matter. The question is, if we’re not getting any health benefits, then why continue to promote ethanol and other biofuels?
”There are alternatives, such as battery-electric, plug-in-hybrid and hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles, whose energy can be derived from wind or solar power,” he added. ”These vehicles produce virtually no toxic emissions or greenhouse gases and cause very little disruption to the land-unlike ethanol made from corn or switchgrass, which will require millions of acres of farmland to mass-produce. It would seem prudent, therefore, to address climate, health and energy with technologies that have known benefits. ”
Ethanol Hangovers
Frank O’Donnell, TomPaine
April 19, 2007
An Environmental Protection Agency news brief last week about ethanol seemed so innocuous that it escaped the notice of the dozing major media, with the exception of the astute St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
But the EPA maneuver—a rule that weakened air pollution standards for ethanol refineries—could undermine the alleged environmental rationale for the fuel. Perhaps it is a warning that we ought to take a deep breath before we plunge ahead with the sort of dramatic scale-up in “alternative” fuels sought by President Bush and some in Congress.
Ethanol, of course, has become a minefield when it comes to serious discussion. No politician today wants to stand in the way of something invariably described by its proponents as “clean.”
In fact, perhaps the last politician who spoke skeptically about ethanol was a fictitious character: presidential aspirant Arnold Vinick (played by Alan Alda) in an episode of “The West Wing” titled “King Corn.”
Many environmentalists have made nice noises about ethanol in recent years because “biofuels” could be one piece of a larger mosaic to deal with global warming. In theory, ethanol can produce fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline. But that depends on how the ethanol is made, and how it is used.
Ideally, the ethanol is produced not from corn, but from plant residue or other so-called cellulosic sources. Renewable fuel rather than coal should be used to power the ethanol refinery. And the ethanol itself should be deployed in vehicles specially designed to handle ethanol fuel (so-called E-85) rather than adding more ethanol to regular gasoline, which can increase smog-forming pollution. (EPA quietly acknowledged the pollution problem last week when it issued rules required under the 2005 Energy Policy Act to increase the amount of ethanol used in gasoline.)
Unfortunately, neither the Bush policy nor pending legislation in Congress—the latter sharply panned by my friends with the Natural Resources Defense Council —has been shaped by environmental idealists. In fact, it’s become a classic special-interest scrum. (If we were really interested in displacing oil, why do we still have a stiff tariff on ethanol imports? Why to keep corn prices high, of course.) And we may be racing down a path with many unwanted consequences.
“It’s a classic case of ready, fire, aim,” notes Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies about the rush to quintuple the amount of ethanol required by the 2005 energy act.
The new ethanol refinery rule is a great example. Ostensibly designed to make ethanol production more efficient, the rule would not only permit more air pollution in nearby communities, but would also encourage coal burning to create ethanol—something that EPA concedes (on page 83) in the fine print of the rule.
Burning coal to convert corn would negate the often-touted greenhouse gas advantages of ethanol, according to the California Energy Commission. [See chart on page 9 of this document]
Little wonder that corn refiners have allied themselves with the coal industry and other special-interest polluters to fight against more health-protective national EPA standards for smog.
Astonishingly, not a single member of the Senate or House of Representatives appears to have said a critical word about the EPA rollback, which was instigated by Senator John Thune, R-SD, a former ethanol industry lobbyist, who also recently boasted of helping steer $80 million in federal funding to his former client and continuing campaign contributor, the Broin Companies.
And now corn-crusader Thune has a new project in mind that is causing consternation at the EPA. He wants to double the ethanol content of regular gasoline, now limited to 10 percent because of the potential corrosive impact of ethanol on engine systems.
“We are going to come under extreme political pressure to permit this,” one EPA expert told me, adding that the agency hasn’t conducted any tests to see how such a change could affect cars or other engines.
There are some warning signals, however. When Thune-style fuel was tested on cars in Australia several years ago , it polluted at much higher levels over time when the added ethanol poisoned catalytic converters.Concerns are also being raised about the possible negative impact of more ethanol on other lawnmower, boat and other engines.
And new questions are also being raised this week about the possible negative impacts of ethanol on breathers.
Shouldn’t we do more study of these issues before Thune brings home even more bacon?
Frank O’Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization aimed at educating the public about clean air and the need for an effective Clean Air Act.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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