Tag Archives: francisco

Put Down that Styrofoam Cup!

by FanniePulsford Posted on September 25, 2016

The iconic whitecoffeecupand clamshell take-out containers weall know so well are not REALLY Styrofoam, so lets make thatclear from the beginning. That doesnt make the items Im talkingabout any less dangerous, as youll see below, but its importantto clarify what we are talking about.

Thereal Styrofoamwas invented in 1941, is made by DowChemical, and is used exclusively in building insulation, to floatdocks, and in some molds for floral arrangements With very fewexceptions its colored light blue.

The white plastic items we incorrectly refer to as Styrofoam arevery similar yet different. Heres the difference:

The trademarked product called Styrofoam is produced usinga closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam.
The white disposablecoffeecups, coolers, takeoutcontainers, and packing peanuts refers to expanded (notextruded) polystyrene foam, which is sometimes referred toas EPS.

Now that we have cleared that up, heres why the disposablepolystyrene products we can find everywhere arehazardous tohuman and environmental health.

What Is Polystyrene?

Polystyrene is a petroleum-based lightweight plastic made fromstyrene, a synthetic chemical classified as apossible humancarcinogenby the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and theInternational Agency for Research on Cancer; andbenzene, aknown human carcinogen according to the EPA. It is about 95percent air and commonly used to make disposable beveragecontainers, coolers, meat and fish trays in supermarkets,packaging materials, and take-out food containers. You may seethe number 6 surrounded by arecycling symbolor the lettersPS on products made of polystyrene.

6 Reasons to Avoid Use of Polystyrene

The good news is that a slowly growing number of cities aroundthe world are phasing out or banning polystyrene. So far, morethan 100 cities have some type of ban on foam products. Thelatest city on the list isSan Francisco,whose ban affectingpacking peanuts, ice chests, to-gocoffeecups, meat and fishtrays, and dock floats goes into effect January 1, 2017. The cityalready had a ban on take-out containers since 2007.

Why all the fuss about these lightweight products? If your cityhasnt banned Styrofoam yet, you may want to initiate theprocess after reading this list.

1. Puts toxins in your food.Would you like some toxins withyour coffee, soup, or beer? Trace amounts of styrene aswell as various chemical additives in polystyrene migrateinto food, which increases significantly in hot liquids,according toOlga Naidenko, PhD, a senior scientist at theEnvironmental Working Group. Although each individualdose may be very low, think about the cumulative effect!How many cups of coffee or microwaved noodles inpolystyrene cups have you consumed?

Foods and beverages in polystyrene that are more likely toleach toxic substancesinclude those that are hot (e.g.,coffee, tea, soup, chili, reheated leftovers), oily (e.g., Frenchfries, burgers, pizza, salad dressings), and/or contain acid(e.g., tomatoes, citrus) or alcohol (e.g., beer, wine). Thepictures above say it all. I personally took it a couple ofweeks ago when my mother asked me for a cup of tea at anaffair we were at. You can see from the picture how the cupstarted breaking down in the hot liquid. I showed it to thepeople in the room and they couldnt believe it.

Along with being a possible carcinogen, styrene is also aneurotoxin and accumulates in fatty tissue. The adversehealth effects associated with exposure to styrene includefatigue, reduced ability to concentrate, increase in abnormalpulmonary function, disrupted hormone function (includingthyroid), headache, and irritation of the eyes and nose.Check out the Worker exposure bullet for more about theimpact of exposure to styrene.

2. Puts workers in danger.Tens of thousands of workers areexposed to styrene in the manufacture of rubber, plastics,and resins. Chronic exposure is associated with centralnervous system symptoms, including headache, fatigue,weakness, impaired hearing, and depression as well aseffects on kidney function. A newstudy(2016) reportedexcess numbers of deaths associated with lung cancer,ovarian cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) among such workers.

3. Lasts (almost) forever.It takes about 500 years forpolystyrene to decompose in the environment. Since thevast majority of polystyrene is not recycled (see What youcan do), our landfills are harboring a significant amount ofpolystyrene: by volume,25 to 30 percentof landfillmaterials are plastics, including Styrofoam.

4. Contributes to air pollution and climate change.Ifpolystyrene is burned or incinerated, it releases toxic carbonmonoxide into the air. If you burn trash or have a fireplace,never ever burn polystyrene.

The manufacturing process for polystyrene foam alsoreleases harmful hydrocarbons, which combine with nitrogenoxides in the presence of sunlight and form a dangerous airpollutant at ground level called tropospheric ozone, which isassociated with health effects such as wheezing, shortnessof breath, nausea,asthma, and bronchitis.

5. Comes from a non-sustainable source.Polystyrene ismade from petroleum, a non-sustainable product. ThisStyrofoam-like product is an environmental hazard fromstart to finish!

6. Harms wildlife.Polystyrene often makes its way into theenvironment, especially waterways. As it breaks down, thepieces are frequently consumed by both land and marineanimals, causing blockage of their digestive system,choking, and death.

What You Can Do

Recycle/repurpose!Polystyrene can be recycled in someareas. You can locate suchrecycling opportunitiesnear youby going toEarth911or checking with your local recyclingcompanies or city/county recycling directory. Once you finda location or two, you may want to call ahead to make sureexactly what they accept. The packing polystyrene blocksare accepted by some facilities for repurposing into buildingmaterials.

If you work for a company that handles a significant amountof polystyrene, you might look for a facility that will acceptlarge volumes of the material. In all cases, remove anylabels, tape, and other items from the polystyrene that couldcontaminate the recycling process.

Reuse.If you receive packages that contain the polystyrenepacking peanuts, you can reuse them for your own packingor donate them to a local UPS or shipping store. Blocks ofpolystyrene also can be reused for personal or businesspurposes.

Pick it up.If you are out walkingand you see polystyrenecups or other debris, pick it up and dispose of it (unless itsa form you can recycle). At least you reduce the chances ofthe plastic being consumed by wildlife, ending up inwaterways, or clogging sewer lines.

Say no to polystyrene.Choose not to buy any type ofpolystyrene products (e.g., cups, dishes, containers) oritems that are packaged in this plastic. When I eat out, I askfor an alternative to polystyrene for leftovers, and when Iorder take out I bring my own glass containers when I can.You can also bring your own stainless steel or ceramic coffeemug when visiting a coffee shop or any establishment thatserves coffee in polystyrene.

Be a maverick.If you work or volunteer in a facility wherepolystyrene cups are used in the break room, introduce theidea of switching to ceramic mugs. Remind the powers thatbe that this switch will save money! Everyone has a mug ortwo at home they can part with for the cause. Yes, the mugswill need to be rinsed, but were all adults now, right?

Reheat safely.Never reheat food or beverages inpolystyrene containers. Use ceramic, stoneware, or glass.


Image viaSam Johnson

Sources
Bottom Line.Styrofoam really is bad for your health
Earth 911.Recycling mystery: expanded polystyrene
Earth Resource Foundation.Polystyrene foam report
Environmental Protection Agency.Benzene
Environmental Protection Agency.Advancing sustainable material management: 2013 factsheet
Ruder AM et al. Mortality among styrene-exposed workers in the reinforced plasticboatbuilding industry.Occupational and Environmental Medicine2016 Feb; 73(2): 97-102
San Francisco Chronicle.San Francisco bans Styrofoam and other cities should follow
Washington Post.You have never actually used a Styrofoam cup, plate, or takeout box

Written by Andrea Donsky. Reposted with permission fromNaturally Savvy.

Photo Credit: Sam Johnson/Flickr

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Visit site: 

Put Down that Styrofoam Cup!

Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Put Down that Styrofoam Cup!

What the Heck Is Up With California’s Recycling Program?

by BetteKershaw Posted on August 28, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Few states have a greener rep than California, and for good reason. The state has a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions, solar-energy production exceeding that of all other states combined, and, at the behest of Gov. Jerry Brown, it’s now mulling new targets that would slash greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2030. The state has proved itself a national leader in environmental policy.

All of which makes California’s latest waste and recycling report, issued yearly by state Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), so bewildering. It reveals that landfill waste in the state jumped to 33.2 million tons in 2015, a one-year increase of 2 million tons, contributing to last year’s release of 200,000 extra metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Per capita, each Californian now tosses 4.7 pounds of stuff into the landfill.

The state’s rate of recycling also dropped to 47 percent in 2015. That’s the lowest rate since 2010, and the first time since the state began measuring that the number has gone below 50 percent—not the greatest news, given California’s 2020 goal of recycling 75 percent of all consumer waste.

CalRecycle spokesman Mark Oldfield points to a recovering economy as a primary contributor to the setback. Economic growth boosts consumption and construction, which necessarily results in more waste, he says: “All of a sudden people are buying new stuff and getting rid of the old.”

There are other elements at work, too. The low price of oil, combined with other plummeting commodity prices, has largely eliminated financial incentives for companies to use recycled materials. Thanks to cheap crude, points out Californians Against Waste, a Sacramento-based advocacy group, producers are using more petroleum-based plastics than before, and less (easily recycled) aluminum.

A four-year decline in the prices manufacturers are willing to pay for recycled materials has proved deadly for many for-profit recycling centers. In part, that’s because it’s a subsidized business. CalRecycle pays up to half of the centers’ operating expenses, depending on the amount of materials they collect, to encourage recycling centers to accept plastic containers alongside the more lucrative aluminum cans. The deposits consumers pay on beverage containers provide an incentive for individuals and companies that do curbside pickup to bring cans and bottles to the centers (and pocket the deposits). But CalRecycle’s payments to the centers are based on scrap prices over the previous 12 months, with a three-month time lag. Which means, when prices are in decline, the payments come up short, and the centers struggle to stay profitable. Statewide, the bulk recyclers have faced a cumulative shortfall of more than $50 million.

Susan Collins, president of the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), says this has led to a rash of closures. Per her group’s estimates, more than 800 recycling centers have shut down in the past 16 months, unable to compete thanks to the low prices and insufficient subsidies. All told, nearly one-third of California’s recycling centers have gone out of business.

The setbacks are costing the state in additional ways: Recycling typically generates $8 million to $9 million in tax revenues annually and results in at least 3,000 full-time jobs. And income from collecting and redeeming recycled materials helps keep scores of desperate people off public assistance. Cities such as San Francisco have been hit particularly hard by the recycling-center closures; the city now has just six active recycling centers, down from 35, for 900,000 people. The vast majority of the city is now an “unserved zone.”

CalRecycle’s Oldfield preaches patience. “I don’t think we thought it was going to be easy to begin with,” he says of the 2020 goal to recycle 75 percent of all consumer waste. “I don’t think we mind running the risk of criticism if we fall short of a number on a time scale.” He points to AB 939, California’s Integrated Waste Management Act. The 1989 legislation mandated that 50 percent of solid waste be diverted from landfills via recycling, composting, and incineration by 2000. That goal wasn’t achieved until 2006, but it now stands at 63 percent.

As for the 75 percent number, which is not a mandate, CalRecycle is looking at new technologies it hopes will increase recycling rates for construction materials and organic matter, although there is no deadline for these developments.

Mark Murray, executive director at Californians Against Waste, bristles at the notion that the goal needn’t be met on time. Murray was disturbed by the startling dip in the recycling rate, and that the state remains so far from 75 percent: “I don’t want to make excuses in 2016 when there’s still four years to go.”

If the state is serious about reaching its goal, there is plenty of precedent. “We know exactly what needs to happen, it just isn’t happening,” Murray says. In the past, the state has set minimum standards for the amount of recycled content certain goods must contain. Newsprint must be 50 percent post-consumer materials; for glass containers, it’s 35 percent. Such standards also exist in California for electronics and paint.

Regulating plastic packaging the same way could have a big impact, Murray says, and would help reverse this troubling course. Legislation requiring producers to buy recycled content could also help. By Murray’s estimation, packaging accounts for 35 percent of the overall waste stream, and companies need to be called to task for their wasteful packaging. Collins, of the CRI, agrees that the state needs urgent, binding legislation, but given the scale of the closures, she’s worried it’s too late to flip the script quickly: “This is a devastating loss to the recycling infrastructure in California.”

Continue reading: 

What the Heck Is Up With California’s Recycling Program?

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What the Heck Is Up With California’s Recycling Program?

Soda tax might be working better than expected

by EarnestineGable Posted on August 23, 2016

coke zero, berkeley 1

Soda tax might be working better than expected

By on Aug 23, 2016Share

Can soda taxes actually get people to cut back on an unhealthy habit, or do they just keep on drinking while handing money over to the government? The answer matters to the handful of cities that have or are considering a soda tax. A new study on Berkeley’s tax on sugary beverages is good news for supporters of the strategy: Researchers found a 21 percent decline in soda drinking in low-income neighborhoods.

That’s huge. A similar tax in Mexico led to a 12 percent decline, and another in France reduced consumption by 7 percent.

Why is Berkeley’s soda tax, which started in March 2015, so different? Residents could be more sensitive to price increases, or influenced by the anti-soda campaign. As this was based on pre- and post-tax interviews, it’s also possible that people fudged their answers to sound healthier. Anyone who has ever been to the dentist knows the powerful urge to lie about flossing habits.

But the researchers also interviewed people in the nearby cities of Oakland and San Fransisco and those residents said they were drinking more soda. The Berkeley residents also reported drinking more water, suggesting a healthy substitution of beverages.

Sugary beverages (SSBs) and water consumption in Berkeley and comparison cities (Oakland and San Francisco).

It would be great if someone could back this survey with hard data showing a decline in sales. Still, this is the best evidence yet on soda tax efficacy in a U.S. city.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

Visit site: 

Soda tax might be working better than expected

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Soda tax might be working better than expected

The Value and Gaps in a Big San Francisco Clean-Energy Conclave

by Myrna Posted on June 1, 2016

Can an international gathering in San Francisco take big greenhouse-gas emitters from ambitious clean-energy pledges to real-world action? Follow this link:  The Value and Gaps in a Big San Francisco Clean-Energy Conclave ; ; ;

Link:

The Value and Gaps in a Big San Francisco Clean-Energy Conclave

Posted in alternative energy, eco-friendly, FF, For Dummies, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, oven, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Value and Gaps in a Big San Francisco Clean-Energy Conclave

Welcome to the New Mother Jones

by HeleneAldridge5 Posted on May 16, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Forty years ago, operating out of a dingy office above a McDonald’s on San Francisco’s Market Street, a group of writers and editors inspired by Watergate decided to launch the equivalent of a crowd-funded media startup—a spiffy-looking new magazine, devoted to investigative journalism and supported by its readers. From the very first day, Mother Jones has emphasized making in-depth journalism look good, because powerful storytelling shouldn’t feel like homework.

In keeping with that spirit, we’ve decided to celebrate our 40th anniversary with a new design. These days when a magazine overhauls its look, the process normally works something like this: A new editor or creative director walks in, decides whatever came before was crap, hires an outside design firm or three, commissions a custom typeface or maybe 10, gets a team of web designers and app developers to translate that vision to the digital space, and lines up some celebrity buzz, and many, many months later, voilà! A redesign is born.

We did pretty much the opposite. First, except for the inspirational input of Luke Shuman, who helped our brilliant creative director, Ivylise Simones, design our new logo, we did this all in-house. We did it with the resources at hand. We did it in a few all-too-short months, amid our already awesomely hectic jobs. And, though we are over the moon about the new look for both the magazine and the site you are now on, we reverse-engineered the typical process, beginning with article pages on our mobile site and working back up the food chain, as it were, to the home page of MotherJones.com and then on to the print magazine. We did it that way, in part, because for far too long these three “products” looked nothing like each other; they’d each grown uniquely fusty. And we did it that way because every month 9 million people read our journalism—multiple new stories each day—via their desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones.

We wanted to give those 9 million people a better experience; one that was clean, easier on the eyes. We ditched a lot of clutter. Buttons for bygone social networks and services were banished from the page. So were an overwhelming number of links on the home page. We even cut down on the number of ad units per page.

We also wanted to make it easier for you to find our one-of-a-kind coverage about food politics and science and our signature investigative deep-dives. Both now appear on our navigation bar at the top of each page.

A new home page feature, called Exposure, will give you a dose of our commitment to photojournalism (the stunning pictures in our feature on Flint’s toxic water crisis are an excellent example). And for signature stories, we’ll deploy a photographically lush wide format, which will look eye-popping on your laptop and your cellphone.

We are also obsessed with our new favorite color, orange. We’ve used it to make links and other text easier for you to spot. And we are thrilled to be using a new display font called Mallory, from the Frere-Jones Type studio, that, in the words of the designers, “was built to be a reliable tool, readily pairing with other typefaces to organize complex data and fine-tune visual identities.” Our body font is Calluna.

Okay, now back to the “investigative journalism” part. Like most in our trade, we do a lot of things these days. But at the core of what we do, and why you read Mother Jones, is the promise that we’ll rake the muck, that we’ll afflict the comfortable and, as our namesake put it, “fight like hell for the living.” Our dedication to investigative journalism ripped the lid off the Ford Pinto cover-up soon after the magazine launched in 1976, and we exposed Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks during the last election—a story that, though it arguably altered the course of history, notably never took a spin through print.

Today, when a Pandora’s box full of vulgarity, obstructionism, and authoritarianism has been let loose upon the political landscape, when spin has tucked tail in the face of bald-faced lies, when people from every walk of life and every political persuasion feel like the deck has been stacked against them and the dealer is cutting cards to boot, the fight for justice is more important than ever.

We have your back and we hope you have ours. This publication—which might more properly be dubbed a nonprofit, digital-first news organization with a magazine’s secret sauce, if that weren’t such a mouthful—has always relied on reader support. It was readers who pitched in eight years ago when we wanted to expand past a six-times-a-year collection of freelance pieces to become what the PEN American Center recently called “an internationally recognized powerhouse” that often puts “more well-known and deep-pocketed news divisions to shame.” You built this.

We’ve tripled the size of the newsroom and grown our audience twenty­fold, but we’re not done yet. In the coming months we’ll unveil some truly blockbuster investigations as well as our ambitions to be far bigger and better still. We’ll be asking for your help and your input on how to get there. You can read why you should consider joining our community of sustainers here. Let’s fight the good fight, together.

Follow this link:

Welcome to the New Mother Jones

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Welcome to the New Mother Jones

A Very Brief Timeline of the Bathroom Wars

by ValentinBunbury Posted on May 14, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A very brief Twitter conversation yesterday got me curious about the timeline of transgender bathroom hysteria. Where and when did it start? I’m not interested in going back to the beginning of time and regaling you with the history of Jim Crow bathroom laws and the origin of sex-segregated bathrooms in 18th-century Paris and Victorian Britain. I just want to know the recent history. As best I can piece it together, it goes something like this:

March 2016: The North Carolina legislature meets to discuss the now-infamous HB2, which requires people to use the bathroom of their birth gender. It was passed and signed into law the same day it was introduced. It was a response to:

February 2016: A new law in the city of Charlotte that effectively allowed transgender people to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. Charlotte was following the lead of San Francisco, which in turn was part of a wave of trans-friendly bathroom bills:

2015: In December, Washington State had clarified that existing law allowed transgender people to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. In September Philadelphia adopted rules that would require gender-neutral signage on single-occupancy bathrooms. “It’s a sign change,” said the mayor’s director of LGBT affairs. “We’re labeling restrooms as what they are: restrooms, not gender-monitored spaces.” In July the Justice Department took the side of Gavin Grimm, a Virginia high-school student who argued that he should be allowed to use school bathrooms that match his gender identity. In April President Obama opened the first gender-neutral bathroom in the White House. These actions were largely a response to transphobic laws that had been proposed in red states all over the country:

Late 2014 and early 2015: Texas and several other states introduce “bathroom surveillance” bills that would require transgender people to use bathrooms that match their birth gender. The communications director at the National Center for Transgender Equality says the wave of new legislation seemed to be a backlash to “the gains we have seen in state and local non-discrimination policies that protect transgender people.” For example:

August 2014: Austin approves a law that requires gender-neutral signage on single-occupancy bathrooms. Among others, they join Portland (one of the first a year earlier) and Washington DC, and are soon joined by West Hollywood, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. These cities were largely been inspired by:

2012-13: A growing movement to install gender-neutral bathrooms at university campuses. During this period, 150 university campuses installed gender-neutral bathrooms, along with a growing number of high schools. The movement for gender-inclusive bathrooms in public facilities started at least as early as 2009 in the state of Vermont.

Ancient history: For our purposes this is anything more than five or six years old. A few random examples include the Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, a 2010 collection of papers about (among other things) nongendered bathrooms. In 2005, U of Chicago law professor Mary Anne Case gave a presentation called “On Not Having the Opportunity to Introduce Myself to John Kerry in the Men’s Room.” She has been performing surveys of mens and womens bathroom facilities for years. And of course, there’s the ur-hysteria of recent decades, when Phyllis Schlafly led a campaign against the Equal Right Amendment throughout the 70s out of fear that it would lead to gay marriage, women in combat, taxpayer-funded abortions, and, of course, unisex bathrooms. We never got the ERA, but as it turned out, Schlafly was pretty much right, wasn’t she?

This timeline was surprisingly hard to put together, and it may not be 100 percent accurate. But it gives you the general shape of the river. There are two points I want make about all this. First, there’s a lot of griping about the hypersensitivity of university students these days. You know: safe spaces, microaggressions, trigger warnings, and so forth. And, sure, maybe some of this stuff is dumb. History will judge that eventually. But I’ve always found it hard to get too exercised about this stuff. These kids are 19 years old. They want to change the world. They’re idealistic and maybe ??. So were you and I at that age. Frankly, if they didn’t go a little overboard about social justice, I’d be worried about them.

But guess what? The first concrete movement toward gender-neutral bathrooms started at universities. Now it’s becoming mainstream. Good work, idealistic college kids! This is why we should think of universities as petri dishes, not a sign of some future hellscape to come. They’re well-contained areas for trying stuff out. Some of this stuff dies a deserved death. Some of it takes over the world if the rest of us think it makes sense. Stop worrying so much about it.

Second: “Who started this fight?” Yes, that’s a crude way of putting it. But if we contain ourselves to the last decade or so, the answer is: liberals. Before then, the status quo was simple: men used one bathroom and women used another. It was liberals who started pressing for change, and the conservative response was a response to that.

As I’ve said before, we should be proud of this. Most of the right-wing culture war is a backlash against changes to the status quo pushed by liberals. And good for us for doing this. The culture war is one of our grandest achievements of the past half century. It’s helped blacks, gays, women, immigrants, trans people, the disabled, and millions more. Sure, conservatives have fought it all, but that’s only natural: they’re conservatives. What do you expect?

So own the culture war, liberals! Why are we always blaming such a terrific thing on conservatives?

Continue reading:

A Very Brief Timeline of the Bathroom Wars

Posted in alo, Brita, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Very Brief Timeline of the Bathroom Wars

The Bay Area could get a whole new kind of climate tax

by KyleWhetsel Posted on May 11, 2016

The Bay Area could get a whole new kind of climate tax

By on May 11, 2016Share

Residents of the Bay Area will soon have a chance to vote on a new tax to fight the effects of climate change. But while many environmentalists support the tax, critics say it unfairly disadvantages the poor.

Measure AA would impose a property tax of $12 a year on homeowners to address forthcoming problems associated with climate change. The fund — which would raise an estimated half billion over the next 20 years — would be used to restore tidal marshes to help mitigate flooding from rising sea levels.

And the threat is significant. Eighty percent of tidal marshes in the area have already been lost to development, reports KQED. Scientists predict that the sea level could rise as much as 4.5 feet by 210o, which stands to wreak havoc on the low-lying areas of San Francisco. One study estimated there’s $62 billion worth of property at risk from climate change in Bay Area.

This includes property owned by some very wealthy businesses in the area, like Facebook, whose new Menlo Park headquarters is directly on San Francisco Bay. And that’s what critics are taking issue with: The tax, the first of it’s kind, hits everyone at the same level instead of tying the tax to property values.

“Whether it is a struggling farm worker family in a very modest bungalow in Gilroy, or the Apple campus there in Silicon Valley [the tax is the same],” Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a group that lobbies against property taxes, told KQED. “So obviously there are equity issues.”

Despite critics’ concerns, the measure, which will also help protect wildlife and reduce pollution in the area, has been endorsed by environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Nature Conservancy.

Regardless, it has a high bar to pass: The measure requires approval by two-thirds of voters, who will cast their ballots June 7th.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

See more here – 

The Bay Area could get a whole new kind of climate tax

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Oster, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Bay Area could get a whole new kind of climate tax

President Obama’s Plan to Make America Smarter About Guns

by GBRKarma138 Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Friday, President Barack Obama released a plan for the federal government to promote the development of smart-gun technology. The guns, also known as “personalized firearms,” employ biometric or other sensor technologies to prevent them from being fired by anyone other than their owners.

“Today, many gun injuries and deaths are the result of legal guns that were stolen, misused, or discharged accidentally,” Obama said in a Facebook post. “As long as we’ve got the technology to prevent a criminal from stealing and using your smartphone, then we should be able to prevent the wrong person from pulling a trigger on a gun.”

Obama began advocating smart guns in January, as part of his latest push to confront America’s costly gun violence crisis. He ordered the departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security to develop a strategy to promote the technologies and expedite government procurement of the weapons. The report released Friday details the following initiatives:

By October, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security will establish requirements that smart-gun manufacturers need to meet in order for their guns to be purchased by law enforcement agencies. They will also identify agencies willing to participate in a smart-gun pilot program.
The Department of Defense will help manufacturers test smart-gun technologies at the US Army Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland. Manufacturers will be eligible to win cash prizes for successful designs.
The Department of Justice has authorized agencies to apply certain federal grants to the purchase of smart guns.

Gun companies first pursued smart guns in the 1990s, in part at the urging of the Clinton administration. Colt, Smith & Wesson, and O.F. Mossberg & Sons developed prototypes. The products were shelved, however, when market research showed consumers didn’t trust the weapons—and after the National Rifle Association and other gun rights activists denounced the companies for a product they claimed was a Trojan horse for gun control.

The recent rise in mass shootings has helped renew interest in smart guns, including among investors in Silicon Valley. The Smart Tech Challenges Foundation, created by angel investor Ron Conway after the 2012 Newtown massacre, has handed out about $1 million in funding to gun safety startups. One grant recipient was Jonathan Mossberg, a former Mossberg & Sons VP and the developer of the iGun, a shotgun that will only fire if the shooter is wearing a special ring. Mossberg, who is working on miniaturizing his technology for handguns, told me by phone on Friday that Obama’s efforts could “raise a whole lot of interest and give people a sense of this market.”

By one estimate, smart guns may be a $1 billion slice of the industry. The White House initiative could help create more opportunity in the major market for supplying law enforcement agencies. Mossberg and a handful of other smart-gun developers have long been trying to get police departments interested in their weapons; an estimated 5 to 10 percent of police deaths occur when officers’ own firearms are used against them. Some law enforcement leaders have shown support for adopting the technology, including San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr.

But strong opposition continues: The NRA remains sharply critical of Obama’s policy, which suggests the gun industry is likely to follow suit and ignore efforts on the technology. The Fraternal Order of Police, a national interest group representing the rank and file, is also signaling skepticism. “Police officers in general, federal officers in particular, shouldn’t be asked to be guinea pigs in evaluating a firearm nobody’s even seen yet,” FOP Director James Pasco told Politico. “We have some very, very serious questions.” (Politico failed to note that a charity run by the FOP has received at least $125,000 since 2010 from another conservative gun lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.)

Obama on Friday also announced several other gun safety initiatives, including a proposed rule requiring the Social Security Administration to better report mental-illness information to the federal background check system, and a gun violence prevention conference to be hosted by the White House in May.

See the article here: 

President Obama’s Plan to Make America Smarter About Guns

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Safer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on President Obama’s Plan to Make America Smarter About Guns

The Top US Cities for Urban Farming

by LuellaCorin476 Posted on April 18, 2016

There is so much to love about growing your own food its cheap, its lack of travel requirements and packaging make it sustainable, you know what was used in its creation, and then of course, its literally as fresh as it can be. There is simply nothing like plucking a tomato off the stem and eating its still-sun-warmed self from a hand scented with tomato-leaves smell. And all of that is not lost to legions of urban farmers who have taken over scruffy back plots and rooftops and vacant lots, giving them new life with gardens, greenhouses, coops and even hives. Little House on the Prairie has given way to little house on the subway line.

Every city has different regulations in terms of what urban harvesters can and cannot do, but what cities are doing the most in terms of urban farming? Researchers sifted through thousands of listings in the database of real estate brokerage Redfin and collected data on keywords like greenhouse, garden and chicken to see which cities (with populations greater than 300,000) have the most of these features per capita. Granted this list is based on homes for sale not homes in total, but it nonetheless gives an indication of where people have invested in agricultural accouterments. And maybe better yet, where the best place to buy a home with a chicken coop might be!

Holding the number one spot is Eugene, Oregon. Its not uncommon for homeowners in Oregon to have chickens or honey bees, said Matthew Brennan, a Redfin agent in Portland. The city of Portland allows homeowners to keep up to three animals, including chickens, ducks, doves, pigeons, pygmy goats and rabbits, without permits. Oregonians have a hankering for that sustainable lifestyle and Eugene is more affordable and has more space than Portland.

Below is a summary of the findings, visitRedfinfor more on each city.

Redfin

1. Eugene, Oregon
Listings with Chicken: 1.4%
Listings with Garden: 17.8%
Listings with Greenhouse: 1.29%
Median Sale Price: $256,000

2. Burlington, Vermont
Listings with Chicken: 0.9%
Listings with Garden: 16.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 1.25%
Median Sale Price: $243,000

3. Santa Rosa, California
Listings with Chicken: 0.7%
Listings with Garden: 15.0%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.5%
Median Sale Price: $475,000

4. Greenville, South Carolina
Listings with Chicken: 0.5%
Listings with Garden: 15.5%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.15%
Median Sale Price: $159,000

5. Orlando, Florida
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 14.9%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.12%
Median Sale Price: $178,000

6. San Francisco, California
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 14.4%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.22%
Median Sale Price: $1,150,000

7. Albuquerque, New Mexico
Listings with Chicken: 0.4%
Listings with Garden: 13.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.28%
Median Sale Price: $219,000

8. Columbia, South Carolina
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 13.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.20%
Median Sale Price: $125,000

9. Tampa, Florida
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 13%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.06%
Median Sale Price: $176,000

10. Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
Listings with Chicken: 0.2%
Listings with Garden: 12.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.11%
Median Sale Price: $223,000

Written by Melissa Breyer. Reposted with permission from TreeHugger.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

See original article here:

The Top US Cities for Urban Farming

Posted in alo, Anker, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Top US Cities for Urban Farming

How a North Pole Chat with Readers Led to an Online Sustainability Quest

by Myrna Posted on April 11, 2016

How a reader Q&A during a reporting trip to the North Pole sea ice started a journalist’s journey into online inquiry on climate change and other “wicked” problems. Read the article –  How a North Pole Chat with Readers Led to an Online Sustainability Quest ; ; ;

Read the article:  

How a North Pole Chat with Readers Led to an Online Sustainability Quest

Posted in alternative energy, Casio, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How a North Pole Chat with Readers Led to an Online Sustainability Quest