Tag Archives: blue marble

Wildfires Cause Nearly a Fifth of Manmade Carbon Emissions

by CarmenWhitson Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Wildfires are raging around the western United States: As of yesterday, more than 10,000 firefighters were battling 20 fires in Oregon and California. Another fire in Washington state recently grew to cover more than 8,000 acres. While the immediate consequences of the blazes are obvious—scorched earth, destroyed homes, millions of dollars in damages—the longer-term consequences for the climate have, until now, been poorly understood.

In a study published at the end of July in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University engineer, says the burning of biomass like trees, plants, and grass—either by accident or deliberately (often to create room for agriculture)—creates 18 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions. Worse yet, that pollution kills people: Around the world, Jacobson writes, biomass burning may account for 5-10 percent of all air pollution deaths worldwide, or about 250,000 people annually.

Lightning strikes and lava flows can burn down forests just as effectively as campfires, cigarettes, and slash and burn agriculture. But worldwide, Jacobson notes, the proportion of wildfires that are caused by nature could be as low as 3.6 percent. The rest are started by humans.

Possibly the worst news of all: Wildfires are part of a vicious circle. Emissions from fires cause climate change, which leads to drier conditions—which make it easier for humans and nature to start fires and for those fires to spread.

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Wildfires Cause Nearly a Fifth of Manmade Carbon Emissions

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Study Finds Kids Prefer Healthier Lunches. School Food Lobby Refuses to Believe It.

by CarltonLenehan Posted on July 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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From all of the commotion around the new federal school lunch standards, you’d think they were really Draconian. Republican legislators have railed against them. Districts have threatened to opt out. The School Nutrition Association (SNA), the industry group that represents the nation’s 55,000 school food employees, has officially opposed some of them—and doubled its lobbying in the months leading up to July 1, when some of the new rules took effect.

Here’s who doesn’t mind the new standards: kids. For a study just published in the peer-reviewed journal Childhood Obesity, researchers asked administrators and food service staff at 537 public elementary schools how their students were liking the meals that conformed to the new standards. Half of those surveyed said that the students “complained about the meals at first,” but 70 percent said that the students now like the new lunches. Rural districts were the least enthusiastic about the new meals—there, some respondents reported that purchasing was down and that students were eating less of their meals. But respondents from schools with a high percentage of poor students—those with at least two-thirds eligible for free or reduced-price meals—were especially positive about the new standards: They found that “more students were buying lunch and that students were eating more of the meal than in the previous year.”

“Kids who really need good nutrition most at school are getting it,” says Lindsey Turner, the Childhood Obesity study’s lead author and a research scientist at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “That’s really good news.”

SNA’s response? To issue a statement declaring that “these reported perceptions about school meals do not reflect reality.” The group cites USDA data that participation in school meals has declined by 1.4 million since the new rules went into effect in 2012. But Turner, the Childhood Obesity study’s lead author, notes that this is only about a 3 percent drop. She also points to a Government Accountability Office study that found that most of the drop-off was among students who pay full price for lunch.

What makes SNA’s stance on the new rules even stranger is that they actually are not all that strict. For example: Foods served must be whole grain rich, but as I learned from my trip to SNA’s annual conference last week, that includes whole-grain Pop Tarts, Cheetos, and Rice Krispies Treats. Students are required to take a half cup of a fruit or vegetable—but Italian ice—in flavors like Hip Hoppin’ Jelly Bean—are fair game.

Not all members of SNA consider the task of tempting kids with healthy foods onerous. As I reported last week, Jessica Shelly, food director of Cincinnati’s diverse public schools, has shown that all it takes is a little creativity.

HT The Lunch Tray.

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Study Finds Kids Prefer Healthier Lunches. School Food Lobby Refuses to Believe It.

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One of the Biggest Opponents of GMO Labeling Is Offering More Non-GMO Products

by LynetteCjr Posted on July 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Cargill, a giant privately held food manufacturer, is one of the biggest enemies of laws requiring companies to label products that contain genetically modified ingredients. But even as it fights GMO-labeling laws in state legislatures and courthouses around the country, Cargill is introducing more GMO-free products.

Last week, Cargill announced its newest non-GMO crop, soybean oil, which will join corn and beans on Cargill’s list of unmodified products.

Gregory Page, the chairman of Cargill’s board, sits on the executive board for the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the big-food lobbying group that recently sued Vermont for passing a bill requiring food manufacturers to label genetically modified foods. The company warns on its website that mandatory labeling can be “misleading” to consumers who might believe genetic modification and bioengineering in food is dangerous. A GMO label does not provide any meaningful information about the food, Cargill argues, because GMO foods are “substantially equivalent” to non-GMO foods.

But despite this, Cargill seems to see the benefit in offering consumers the option of eating unmodified foods. “Despite the many merits of biotechnology, consumer interest in food and beverage products made from non-GM ingredients is growing, creating opportunities and challenges for food manufacturers and food service operators,” Ethan Theis, a spokesman for the company, told the Toronto-based Digital Journal last week. Even the fiercest opponents of GMO labeling are willing to offer non-GMO products when consumers’ cash is on the line.

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One of the Biggest Opponents of GMO Labeling Is Offering More Non-GMO Products

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"Make It a Quickie," "Get Paid for Doing It," and Other Advice From San Francisco’s Water Agency

by UQEEmiliojhttek Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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In response to California’s ongoing drought, San Francisco’s water agency has come out with a hilariously creepy ad campaign to make saving water sexy. In addition to the commercial above, featuring a water-efficient showerhead being stroked and a seductive male voice telling you to “screw them on,” ads encourage water users to “Make it a quickie” and “Get paid for doing it” (“it” referring to your shower and the replacement of your old toilet, respectively).

Unfortunately, new data from the state’s Water Resources Control Board shows that Californians need to be “doing it” a lot more. Gov. Jerry Brown requested that Californians voluntarily reduce their water usage by 20 percent in January, when he declared the drought to have reached a state of emergency. But the Control Board found that, as of April, Californians had reduced their water usage by only 5 percent, and Bay Area residents had reduced by only 2 percent. The state has yet to enforce mandatory water restrictions, though a handful of cities have. Listen to KQED’s deep dive on water reduction here.

And, in the name of water reduction, here are a few more ads:

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"Make It a Quickie," "Get Paid for Doing It," and Other Advice From San Francisco’s Water Agency

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How the Sweetener Industry Sugar-Coats Science

by GMPStanton Posted on June 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Food companies have spent billions of dollars to cover up the link between sugar consumption and health problems. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

From “Added Sugar, Subtracted Science”

The industry’s tactics—similar to those used by Big Tobacco in downplaying the adverse health effects of smoking—were explored by Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens in the 2012 Mother Jones investigation “Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies.” But this latest report draws on some newly released documents submitted as evidence in a recent federal court case involving the two biggest players in the sweetener industry: the Sugar Association and the Corn Refiners Association (the trade group for manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup).


Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies


A Timeline of Sugar Spin


How a Former Dentist Drilled Big Sugar


WATCH: Q&A With Author Gary Taubes


Secret Sugar Documents Revealed


10 Classic Sugar Ads


Charts: How Our Sodas Got So Huge

The report details companies’ plans to bury data and to convince consumers that sugar is “fine in moderation.” It also shows how trade groups hired independent scientists to cast doubt on studies that show the adverse affects of sugar consumption—and strategized to intimidate scientists and organizations who didn’t tow the industry line.

For example: The researchers cite a 2003 letter, first obtained by Mother Jones, from the president and CEO of the Sugar Association to the director general of the World Health Organization. In the letter, the Sugar Association intimates that it will deny funding to the WHO and the Food & Agriculture Organization if the groups don’t pull a report that shows that added sugars “threaten the nutritional quality of diets.” Another internal document claimed the action worked:

“We have been successful in getting the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) to oppose the WHO Diet and Nutrition Report 916 calling for 10% consumption of sugar, we have been successful in getting the U.S. WHO representative Dr. Steiger to express major concerns with Report 916 and call for edits to the initial draft of the WHO Global Strategy recommending to limit sugar intake.”

Sure enough, when The World Health Assembly (the WHO’s decision-making body) released its global health strategy on diet and health in 2005, the study in question wasn’t referenced once.

From “Added Sugar, Subtracted Science”

The report’s authors hope that the new findings will influence the ongoing battle over school lunches eaten by 32 million children each day. In 2013, both General Mills and the Sugar Association weighed in on proposed lunch standards, dismissing the connection between sugar and health problems. According to the report, “the USDA adopted a weaker rule than it first proposed, limiting kids’ sugar intake at school by weight rather than by calorie as public health experts had recommended.” If the current agriculture appropriations bill is approved in an upcoming congressional vote, schools will be allowed to opt out of new USDA rules that require cafeterias to provide more fruits and vegetables in students’ lunches.

The authors also hope to hasten change on food labels. The FDA is currently evaluating proposed revisions that would require manufacturers to list added sugars separately from those that occur naturally. A public hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Washington D.C. Six trade groups, including the Corn Refiners Association, the American Frozen Foods Institute, and the National Confectioners Association, have already pushed on the FDA to postpone while they complete “consumer perception research,” on the proposed changes. Representatives from the Center for Science and Democracy plan to present the results of the study to encourage officials to move forward with the new labels.

You can read the full report here.

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How the Sweetener Industry Sugar-Coats Science

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Is Your Cereal Giving You a Vitamin Overdose?

by EzekielMontoya Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Those bran flakes with “original antioxidants” or “extra vitamin A”? You might be better off without the added nutrients. A report released on Tuesday by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that cereals and snack bars that have been fortified with extra vitamins and minerals to appear healthy may actually be harmful—particularly for kids.

The report, How Much is Too Much?, explains that there are some nutrients that most Americans don’t get enough of, like calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin E. But it turns out that kids are eating too much of other nutrients, and overconsuming certain vitamins and minerals for a long period of time can have negative health implications in the long run.

EWG focused on three nutrients that are regularly consumed in excess: vitamin A, zinc, and niacin. Only six percent of 2- to 8- year olds are deficient in vitamin A, and less than one percent are deficient in zinc and niacin. But, according to the report, an estimated 28 million children between the ages of two and eight are overexposed to these nutrients from food and supplements.

Studies have shown a host of illnesses associated with excessive intake of these nutrients. Here are the effects of overconsumption, according to the EWG:

Vitamin A: Liver damage, brittle nails, hair loss, skeletal abnormalities, osteoporosis and hip fracture (in older adults), and developmental abnormalities (of the fetus)
Zinc: Impaired copper absorption, anemia, changes in red and white blood cells, impaired immune function
Niacin: Skin reactions (flushing, rash), nausea, liver toxicity

Renée Sharp, the EWG’s director of toxics research, explained that the associated health risks are “more chronic than acute”: If a child eats too much of a given nutrient over a long period of time, he or she might experience the associated illnesses down the line. The tricky part is that it’s nearly impossible to link a specific case of an illness to overconsumption of fortified food, so there isn’t a hard and fast set of rules on what to eat and what to avoid. But, according to the report, several studies have shown that “cumulative exposures from fortified food and supplements could put children at risk for potential adverse effects.” Put more simply by Sharp: “if your kid is eating highly fortified cereal, and that kid is also eating snack bars and other fortified foods and you’re giving your kid a vitamin pill, that adds up. And there’s no reason to put your kid at that risk.”

Part of the reason for childrens’ overconsumption of certain nutrients is marketing: If products are marketed as healthy, people are more likely to buy them. According to NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle, “Plenty of research demonstrates that nutrients sell food products. Any health or health-like claim on a food product—vitamins added, no trans fats, organic—makes people believe that the product has fewer calories and is a health food…Added vitamins are about marketing, not health.”

Adding to the confusion among shoppers is nutrition labels. Young kids have significantly lower recommended daily intakes of nutrients than adults, but nutrition labels, even on brands marketed towards kids, almost always show the recommended values for adults. Furthermore, the EWG contends that the intake recommendations, which were calculated by the FDA in 1968, are themselves out of date: “Those values were set at a time when people were worried about nutrient deficiencies,” explained Sharp. “Scientists just hadn’t done as much research on the potential pitfalls of over-consuming nutrients. Things have changed.”

Zinc perfectly exemplifies this double whammy. The FDA currently recommends that adults consume 15 milligrams of zinc per day, and that children less than five years old consume 8 milligrams per day. But food packaging, which shows recommended intake levels calculated in ’60s, still says that adults should consume 20 milligrams per day. “If you think about it, every single food sitting in the grocery store has a nutrition fact panel right now that is largely irrelevant for young children,” says Valerie Tarasuk, a University of Toronto nutritional scientist.

In the years since the FDA calculated its recommended Daily Values, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, have developed “Tolerable Upper Intake Levels” for these three nutrients (referenced in the graph above). Often, they’re considerably lower than the FDA’s recommended daily allowances. An FDA proposal to revise nutrition labels is currently open for public comment. Though the FDA proposed similar changes in 2003, the Daily Values for nutrients have remained consistent since the 1960s. An FDA spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

In EWG’s review of fortified foods, the top source of excessive intake of the three studied nutrients was cereal. Cereals made up 43 percent of all sources of preformed vitamin A, 52 percent of added niacin, and 97 percent of added zinc.

But not all cereals are fortified equally. The EWG’s analysis of the nutrition labels for 1,556 cereal brands found that 114 cereals were fortified with 30 percent or more of the FDA’s daily intake values (for adults) of Vitamin A, zinc, or niacin. The full list of those cereals is here, but here are a few brands you might recognize:

Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Crunch
Food Lion Whole Grain 100 Cereal
General Mills Fiber One, Honey Clusters
General Mills Wheaties
General Mills Total Raisin Bran
Kashi U 7 Whole Grain Flakes & Granola with Black Currants & Walnuts
Kellogg’s Crispix Cereal
Kellogg’s Smart Start, Original Antioxidants
Kellogg’s Special K
Kroger Frosted Flakes of Corn
Malt-O-Meal Corn Bursts
Safeway Kitchens Bran Flakes
Stop & Shop/Giant Source 100 Crispy Whole Grain Wheat & Brown Rice Flakes
Trader Joe’s Bran Flakes

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Is Your Cereal Giving You a Vitamin Overdose?

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Watch Live: Can China Survive a Fracking Revolution? The United States Sure Hopes So.

by JacelynSUN Posted on June 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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China is on the brink of an energy revolution: fracking. And it’s enlisting American energy companies to help implement the technology that blasts shale rock formations deep underground to unlock natural gas. For this event at the Asia Society in New York City, my colleague Jaeah Lee and I are debuting field reporting from a month’s worth of exhilarating, exhausting travels deep into Sichuan province, to see China’s first fracking wells for ourselves.

Watch the livestream of the event above to catch Jaeah and me discussing the big business of fracking in China—and its potential health and environmental costs. The other panelists are Orville Schell, the great chronicler of modern Chinese politics and society; Josh Fox, the director of the anti-fracking documentary Gasland; and Ella Chou, an energy analyst who is trying to work out how China can break its deadly addiction to coal.

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Watch Live: Can China Survive a Fracking Revolution? The United States Sure Hopes So.

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Has This Chilean Architect Figured Out How To Fix Slums?

by NovellaSvm Posted on June 11, 2014

Mother Jones

In the United States, we tend to think of the suburbs as the historic domain of the middle class. It’s where the boomers went after fleeing the cities to accommodate their growing families (although the demographics of the suburbs are now changing).

But in Latin America, urban peripheries are less commonly populated by leafy suburbs for the rich than by slums for the poor. These shantytowns typically lack basic infrastructure like paved roads, sewers, and tap water. Living far from the city, residents are often forced to make long and expensive commutes.

But in the medium-sized Chilean port city of Iquique, one architect, Alejandro Aravena, had a solution: partial houses, located at the center of town, equipped with only the barest necessities—and space for residents to build on, bit by bit, as they can afford it.

When they were first built fourteen years ago for about 100 families, Aravena’s flagship projects, called the Quinta Monroy Houses, came with all the core necessities—a roof, a bathroom, a kitchen. With a little more than 300 square feet in floor space to start with, the houses were 25 percent smaller than the average public housing unit in Chile, but with an extra-wide foundation, residents had plenty of room to expand.

In his new book, Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture, journalist Justin McGuirk writes that when Aravena first launched the project through his firm, Elemental, a number of critics were appalled. They argued that the government should provide complete houses, since incomplete houses require the occupant to perform manual labor. But where some saw a failure in the making, others welcomed change. In the 1970’s, under Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende, the government prioritized building completed public housing, even enlisting a Soviet-made pre-fabricated house factory for the job. But despite the initial gusto, the government quickly ran out of the resources to continue. In three years, the slum population rose more than 130 percent.

Since the Allende period, the government has shifted to a hybrid market-government approach, giving subsidies to the poor to buy houses and land. At the time Aravena built Quinta Monroy, the government offered $7,500 per family—usually too little to buy a complete house, but just enough to make Aravena’s stripped-down models affordable.

As residents expanded their houses, their value grew. One study (PDF), sponsored by the Finnish government, found that in its first two years, Quinta Monroy’s 100 families had made an average of $750 in improvements per unit, doubling the size of their homes and raising the houses’ value to an estimated $20,000 each. One six-year resident McGuirk speaks with says that after the subsidy, he spent just $400 of his own money to buy a basic Quinta Monroy house. But after saving up and adding four bedrooms and an extra bathroom, he estimates he has increased the value of his home to $50,000.

The Quinta Monroy houses before residents doubled their size with their own improvements Cristóbal Palma/Verso Books

It’s hard to see a plan like this taking off in the United States, given our long permitting processes and strict building codes. And even in Iquique, some of the half-houses look similar to the shantytowns they were designed to replace: While some residents have transformed their homes into elegant structures with balconies and trim, “other add-ons look like slum shacks wedged between concrete houses,” McGuirk says.

Still, other countries see promise in Aravena’s idea. Already, Elemental has built and sold hundreds of half-houses in Chile, and it’s testing the idea in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru. “These are places where Aravena can still make a difference,” McGuirk says.

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Has This Chilean Architect Figured Out How To Fix Slums?

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How Much Cleaner Will Obama’s Climate Rules Make Your State?

by OMNSherita Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate strategy—a plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s power plants. The main takeaway was that by 2030 the regulations will cut these emissions, the biggest single driver of global warming, by 30 percent compared to 2005 levels. But under the hood, things get a little more complex.

Rather than a consistent national standard, the proposed rule sets a different standard for every state, based on the EPA’s assessment of what each state can realistically achieve using existing technology at a reasonable cost. The goal applies to a state’s carbon intensity, the measure of how much carbon pollution comes from each unit of electricity produced in that state, rather than total carbon emissions. States like Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, rely heavily on coal power and have a higher carbon intensity than states like California that are more energy-efficient and have more renewable energy. By 2030, each state will be required to meet a carbon intensity target lower than where it is today; how much lower, exactly, depends on what the EPA thinks the state can pull off.

States will have broad leeway to devise individual plans to meet their targets, which could include installing air-scrubbing technology on plants themselves, adopting more robust energy efficiency standards, or switching from coal to cleaner sources like natural gas or renewables.

Here’s a ranking of which states will have to shrink their carbon footprint the most:

Tim McDonnell

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How Much Cleaner Will Obama’s Climate Rules Make Your State?

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Cops and Firefighters Could Soon Be Charged for Disclosing Fracking Chemicals in North Carolina

by ZeldaCarney Posted on June 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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North Carolina lawmakers have softened a controversial bill that would have made it a felony to disclose the chemicals used in fracking. Under the version of the law that passed the state legislature on Thursday, the offense has been knocked down to a misdemeanor. But legal experts say the language may still allow companies to press criminal charges against individuals who disclose what they learn about fracking chemicals—including doctors or fire chiefs.

Known as the “Energy Modernization Act,” the legislation is partly meant to establish protocols for firefighters and health care providers to access information about chemicals during emergencies. However, it also gives oil and gas companies the right to require emergency responders to sign confidentiality agreements. The previous version of the bill, which was introduced on May 15 by three Republican state senators—â&#128;&#139;including a member of North Carolian GOP leadership—called for fines and prison time as punishment for disclosing proprietary chemical formulas.

Following widespread public outcry, lawmakers have reduced the penalty to community service. But they failed to clarify confusing language from an earlier draft that might subject fire chiefs and health care providers to criminal charges. This provision could prevent emergency responders from speaking about their experiences with chemical accidents to colleagues—even when the information is relevant to emergency planning or patient care.

How much the public is entitled to know about chemicals injected into the ground during the fracking process to break up natural gas-rich shale formations is one of the hottest issues surrounding fracking. Most energy companies maintain that the information should be proprietary. Public health advocates counter that they can’t monitor the environmental and health impacts without knowing what chemicals are involved.

Many North Carolina officials have come down hard on the side of industry. As Mother Jones has reported, the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission, which is writing fracking regulations to complement the Energy Modernization Act, put off approving a near-final chemical disclosure rule because Haliburton—a major player in the fracking industryâ&#128;&#139;—complained that the proposal was too strict.

The current version of the act sailed through the North Carolina legislature with no debate. Following the bill’s passage last Thursday, Gov. Pat McCrory told reporters that he “absolutely” supports the legislation. This week, he’s expected to sign the measure into law.

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Cops and Firefighters Could Soon Be Charged for Disclosing Fracking Chemicals in North Carolina

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