Tag Archives: california

Invest 30 seconds, sign this and help protect waves

by Myrna Posted on May 14, 2013

Sign this global petition to help protect waves. Visit site: Invest 30 seconds, sign this and help protect waves ; ;Related ArticlesCoke and birds falling from the skyBurying our waves with 200 feet of sand in North County, San DiegoWhat does it mean to protect a wave? ;

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Invest 30 seconds, sign this and help protect waves

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Vermont House approves GMO-labeling law

by trasze2aja Posted on May 13, 2013

Vermont House approves GMO-labeling law

By John Upton

Shutterstock

/ Jonathan FeinsteinMembers of the Vermont House think shoppers should be told which of these products contain GMOs.

A historic but cautious attempt to force food manufacturers to label products containing genetically modified ingredients passed the Vermont House by an overwhelming 107-37 vote last week.

If approved by the state Senate and signed by the governor, the bill, H. 112,  would make Vermont the first state in the nation to require labeling of genetically modified foods.

But the measure likely wouldn’t go into effect for two years, and it would not apply to meat or dairy. That means it would not mandate the labeling of AquaBounty fish, a transgenic Atlantic salmon that could receive U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval this year. And it would not affect Vermont’s celebrated dairy industry.

From Vermont Public Radio:

No representatives on Thursday argued against the concept of more transparent food labeling. The most frequent point of opposition voiced on the floor concerned a likely lawsuit from the biotech or food industries that the Attorney General’s Office estimates could cost the state more than $5 million.

Rep. Tom Koch, R-Barre, reasserted that he thinks the state would lose a lawsuit on constitutional grounds. He said the law runs afoul of the First Amendment by compelling speech, and it could pre-empt federal authority under the constitution’s supremacy clause by enacting a law that the Federal Drug Administration has not.

“Nobody else has passed a similar bill. They all seem to be waiting for Vermont to go first and lead the nation,” he said. “What they mean is they don’t want to risk their taxpayers’ money; they want us to risk Vermonters’ money. That is a $5 million to $10 million risk, and one I am not willing to take.”

A ballot initiative that would have required GMO labels in California was defeated last year after Monsanto and other corporations spent nearly $50 million on ads opposing it. A national GMO-labeling bill was introduced recently in Congress, but it has little to no chance of becoming law.

Most of the corn, soy, and sugar beets grown in the U.S. are genetically modified, and they’re widely used in processed foods. But shoppers who want to avoid them have no good way of doing so. Requiring food manufacturers to label genetically modified foods would allow people to say “no” to such products.

Big Ag and its supporters resist labeling, likening informational labels to warning stickers on cigarettes and liquor, saying such labels could “alarm” shoppers. Because activists fighting for mandatory labeling often oppose genetic engineering altogether, GMO supporters dismiss their arguments. Take a recent post on the Discover magazine website as an example (the contributor has previously ridiculed GMO-labeling campaigns, but in this post describes himself as ambivalent on the issue):

The “Right to Know” people … say they just want to know what’s in their food. This is a specious argument. The truth is they think there is something harmful about GMOs. Why else would they feel so strongly about labeling genetically modified foods? Yes, the Just Label it Campaign is couched as a consumer rights issue, but really it’s based on fear. Everybody knows this, so pretending otherwise is silly.

That would mean there are a lot of silly people in the world. As the Center for Food Safety points out, 64 countries including China, Russia, and all European Union nations currently have GMO-labeling laws in place. Vermonters could be the first Americans to join the trend.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

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Vermont House approves GMO-labeling law

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Vermont House passes GMO-labeling law

by Aaren Smith Posted on May 13, 2013

Vermont House passes GMO-labeling law

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Members of the Vermont House think shoppers should be told which products contain GMOs.

A historic but cautious attempt to force food manufacturers to label products containing genetically modified ingredients passed the Vermont House by an overwhelming 107-37 vote last week.

If approved by the state Senate and signed by the governor, the bill, H. 112,  would make Vermont the first state in the nation to require labeling of genetically modified foods.

But the measure likely wouldn’t go into effect for two years, and it would not affect meat, milk, or eggs from animals that were fed or treated with genetically engineered substances, including GMO corn and the rBGH cattle hormone.*

From Vermont Public Radio:

No representatives on Thursday argued against the concept of more transparent food labeling. The most frequent point of opposition voiced on the floor concerned a likely lawsuit from the biotech or food industries that the Attorney General’s Office estimates could cost the state more than $5 million.

Rep. Tom Koch, R-Barre, reasserted that he thinks the state would lose a lawsuit on constitutional grounds. He said the law runs afoul of the First Amendment by compelling speech, and it could pre-empt federal authority under the constitution’s supremacy clause by enacting a law that the Federal Drug Administration has not.

“Nobody else has passed a similar bill. They all seem to be waiting for Vermont to go first and lead the nation,” he said. “What they mean is they don’t want to risk their taxpayers’ money; they want us to risk Vermonters’ money. That is a $5 million to $10 million risk, and one I am not willing to take.”

A ballot initiative that would have required GMO labels in California was defeated last year after Monsanto and other corporations spent nearly $50 million on ads opposing it. A national GMO-labeling bill was introduced recently in Congress, but it has little to no chance of becoming law.

Most of the corn, soy, and sugar beets grown in the U.S. are genetically modified, and they’re widely used in processed foods. But shoppers who want to avoid them have no good way of doing so. Requiring food manufacturers to label genetically modified foods would allow people to say “no” to such products.

Big Ag and its supporters resist labeling, likening informational labels to warning stickers on cigarettes and liquor, saying such labels could “alarm” shoppers. Because activists fighting for mandatory labeling often oppose genetic engineering altogether, GMO supporters dismiss their arguments. Take a recent post on the Discover magazine website as an example (the contributor has previously ridiculed GMO-labeling campaigns, but in this post describes himself as ambivalent on the issue):

The “Right to Know” people … say they just want to know what’s in their food. This is a specious argument. The truth is they think there is something harmful about GMOs. Why else would they feel so strongly about labeling genetically modified foods? Yes, the Just Label it Campaign is couched as a consumer rights issue, but really it’s based on fear. Everybody knows this, so pretending otherwise is silly.

That would mean there are a lot of silly people in the world. As the Center for Food Safety points out, 64 countries including China, Russia, and all European Union nations currently have GMO-labeling laws in place. Vermonters could be the first Americans to join the trend.

—–

*Correction: Initially this post incorrectly stated that meat and dairy would be exempt from the GMO ban. In fact, the bill would exempt products from animals fed or treated with GMOs, but genetically engineered animals like the AquAdvantage® Salmon would have to be labeled.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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Vermont House passes GMO-labeling law

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Safe Drinking Water Elusive for Many in California

by Myrna Posted on May 10, 2013

Bureaucratic and technical obstacles have slowed the distribution of federal aid in places where water is laced with nitrates and other pollutants. View post:   Safe Drinking Water Elusive for Many in California ; ;Related ArticlesCarbon Dioxide Level Passes Long-Feared MilestonePolitico to Test a Pay Wall With Some Readers of Its SiteRepublicans Block Vote on Nominee to Lead E.P.A. ;

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Safe Drinking Water Elusive for Many in California

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Coal-export plans going off the rails in Pacific Northwest

by t07c6o Posted on May 10, 2013

Coal-export plans going off the rails in Pacific Northwest

By Claire Thompson

Scott Granneman

You shall not pass.

Plans for two Oregon coal-export terminals have gone up in smoke in the last two months. That makes for a total of three scrapped terminals in the Pacific Northwest, after a proposed facility in Grays Harbor, Wash., bit the coal dust last year. Three others in the region remain in the works, but they face many of the same challenges — permitting and zoning issues, stalled negotiations, and delayed environmental reviews, not to mention fierce public opposition.

A spokesperson for Kinder Morgan, which announced Wednesday it was abandoning plans for a coal-export terminal at Oregon’s Port of St. Helens, “blamed site logistics for stopping the project, not the intense controversy over exporting coal from the green Northwest,” reports The Oregonian. He said Kinder Morgan would continue to explore options for a West Coast terminal.

The abrupt announcement came barely a month after the Port of Coos Bay ended negotiations with a California company looking to build a terminal there. There’s a chance the port could consider coal-export options with other companies, but the expensive rail improvements any project would require make a coal deal unlikely, said David Petrie, founder of Coos Waterkeeper.

Meanwhile, as options for shipping coal dwindle, the supply side has its own struggles. A deal to give Australian company Ambre Energy full control of a mine in Decker, Mont., has stalled amid reports of Ambre’s financial instability, and after the mine laid off 59 people — a third of its workforce — in December. The Associated Press reports:

Ambre has been seeking to ramp up production from the once-bustling mine, and ship coal to growing Asian markets through a pair of proposed ports along the Columbia River.

But the company faces stiff opposition in Oregon and Washington state, and critics have questioned whether Ambre has the financial wherewithal to see its ambitious plans to fruition.

And speaking of setbacks, the state of Oregon has delayed permits for a transfer station at the Port of Morrow — one of the three still-viable proposed terminals — where Powder River Basin coal would arrive by train, be loaded onto barges, and be shipped down the Columbia River. The state will give Ambre Energy until Sept. 1 to put together more information about the terminal’s potential impacts.

As for the other two proposed coal-export sites in the Northwest? Officials are still deciding what to cover in their environmental review of the Cherry Point terminal in Bellingham, Wash. (prompting one scientist to go rogue with his own crowdfunded investigation). The results won’t be out until 2014 or 2015. And the review process for the final proposed terminal, in Longview, Wash., lags behind by another year.

Meanwhile, China — the supposed market for all this coal — continues to boost renewable energy production and gradually wean itself off coal. If any of these terminals do finally start operating, will China even want our dirty coal anymore?

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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PG&E hit with big penalty for big natural-gas explosion

by Gustavo Stanfield Posted on May 8, 2013

PG&E hit with big penalty for big natural-gas explosion

By John Upton

Thomas Hawk

The aftermath of the San Bruno explosion, photographed 10 days after a pipeline ruptured and ignited.

It looks like Pacific Gas & Electric’s shareholders are going to have to spend $2.25 billion on safety improvements because of a 2010 natural-gas pipeline explosion in the San Francisco exurb of San Bruno.

That was the record-breaking penalty proposed this week by staff of the California Public Utilities Commission. The agency’s five commissioners will have the final say on the proposal, and PG&E will have an opportunity to try to barter down that price tag. The company says it has already spent more than $1 billion on improvements since the fatal accident.

The penalty is being characterized by the agency and media reports as a “fine,” but while fines are typically paid into general government coffers, this $2.25 billion would be invested fully in improving the safety of PG&E’s infrastructure. And the money would need to come out of shareholder profits; it couldn’t be gouged from customers by hiking their bills.

The explosion on Sept. 9, 2010, killed eight people in San Bruno’s Crestmoor neighborhood, destroyed 38 homes, and ignited a fireball that burned for nearly an hour. The investigations that followed laid bare decades of contemptible disregard for safety by PG&E, which enjoys a near monopoly on electricity and residential natural-gas sales in much of Northern California. The gas pipeline had been fabricated in 1956 using substandard materials, and it had not been properly inspected or maintained in the decades since. It tore open along a poorly welded seam and exploded beneath homes in the early evening after pressure levels spiked following a control room power outage.

From a CPUC press release [PDF]:

The Safety and Enforcement Division says that the death toll, physical injuries, and extensive damage to homes by the pipeline blast is unsurpassed in its severity and PG&E’s [record of] failures is long and reprehensible.

“There is no amount of money that will bring back the eight people who tragically lost their lives in the pipeline blast or heal the lasting wounds to the people of San Bruno. All we can do is make sure such a tragedy does not happen again. I listened to legislators and the public and determined that every single dollar available from PG&E should go straight to efforts that will ensure safety,” said [CPUC Safety and Enforcement Division Director Jack] Hagan. “The recommendation is what the Safety and Enforcement Division believes is the maximum financial penalty that can be imposed on PG&E shareholders without compromising safety. This is a penalty far greater than the CPUC, or any other state regulatory body, has ever assessed.”

San Bruno had called on the CPUC to impose a steep fine and channel much of it to mandated safety improvements. From ABC7:

“They blew up our city. Eight people were killed, a whole neighborhood destroyed,” San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane said. The city’s lawyer says the dollar amount was arrived at by calculating safety violations dating back to when the faulty pipe was installed in 1956. Every day the utility was in violation counts.

“The potential penalties in this case, if you took all of the violations over the half century, we’re talking about, it’s roughly on the order of several hundred billion dollars,” lawyer Steven Meyers said. “We’re only asking for $2.25 billion.”

“The company has already paid a very heavy price and I think numbers like you mentioned are just unrealistic,” [PG&E CEO Tony Earley] said Monday. In a rare chat with local media, the PG&E Chairman and CEO said shareholders have already paid more than $1.5 billion in gas safety improvements and if the penalties are as high as San Bruno wants, it will be bad for business and bad for ongoing safety investments.

“I don’t have that money sitting in the bank. I’ve got to go out and raise that money from shareholders who’re willing to invest in the company and future,” he said. “I don’t write them a letter and say, ‘Please shareholders, send me $1,000 each.’”

Oh, heavens no, Tony. Why should shareholders be on the hook for a company’s deadly profiteering?

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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PG&E hit with big penalty for big natural-gas explosion

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Burying our waves with 200 feet of sand in North County, San Diego

by Myrna Posted on May 7, 2013

If you live in Southern California, might want to read about this project. Link to article:  Burying our waves with 200 feet of sand in North County, San Diego ; ;Related ArticlesWhat does it mean to protect a wave?Surfers are canaries in the coal mine regarding dirty waterGlobal Wave Conference this weekend in Baja, Mexico ;

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Burying our waves with 200 feet of sand in North County, San Diego

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What does it mean to protect a wave?

by Myrna Posted on May 7, 2013

“Protecting a wave” can mean a lot of things. Continue at source –  What does it mean to protect a wave? ; ;Related ArticlesSurfers are canaries in the coal mine regarding dirty waterGlobal Wave Conference this weekend in Baja, MexicoScientist at Work Blog: Empty Nets on the Mekong ;

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What does it mean to protect a wave?

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Surfers are canaries in the coal mine regarding dirty water

by Myrna Posted on May 6, 2013

Whose responsibility is it to inform the public of safety issues? From:   Surfers are canaries in the coal mine regarding dirty water ; ;Related ArticlesGlobal Wave Conference this weekend in Baja, MexicoThe other 364 daysSaving Trestles… again ;

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Surfers are canaries in the coal mine regarding dirty water

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Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers.

by Roger Frost Posted on May 1, 2013

Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers.

By John Upton

Shutterstock /

Donya Nedomam

Women in the developing world, many of whom work in agriculture, are vulnerable to climate change.

Apparently the idea of girls being sold off into early marriage and women being pushed into prostitution is fucking hilarious.

Or so thinks the right-wing media machine, confronted this week with warnings about the negative ways climate change could affect women around the world.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and 11 other House Democrats, both men and women, introduced a resolution that aims to raise awareness about the vulnerability of women and girls to global warming.

From the resolution [PDF], via The Hill:

Whereas climate change exacerbates issues of scarcity and lack of accessibility to primary natural resources, forest resources, and arable land for food production, thereby contributing to increased conflict and instability, as well as the workload and stresses on women farmers, who are estimated to produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in most developing countries; …

Whereas food insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health; …

The resolution lists many other threats and goes on to encourage the president to “integrate a gender approach in all policies and programs in the United States that are globally related to climate change” and to “ensure that those policies and programs support women globally to prepare for, build resilience for, and adapt to climate change.”

Heavy stuff, right? And it’s heavy stuff that’s not often talked about. The resolution got some people in politics and the media to consider these issues for the first time.

But conservative commentators decided against spending too much time thinking about it. They jumped right to snickering about the sex references. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the resolution in a mocking piece with the headline, “Baby, It’s Warm Outside,” and the subhed, “The climate is changing. Lock up your daughters.” The first paragraph:

Is “climate change” corrupting the morals of women around the world? That’s a question nobody is asking if ever there was one, yet a dozen left-wing congressmen, led by Rep. Barbara Lee of California, are answering in the affirmative.

The Daily Caller followed right up with “Democrats: Global warming means more hookers.”

Needless to say, Lee has been unimpressed by some of the coverage, particularly by the near singular focus on sex work. She told the Los Angeles Times that “it’s unfortunate that this resolution has been misrepresented as to its goals.”

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

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Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers.

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