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Can fed-up Oregon organic farmers get a GMO ban on the ballot?

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 11, 2013

Can fed-up Oregon organic farmers get a GMO ban on the ballot?

By Susie Cagle

Petitioners in Southern Oregon’s Jackson County are pushing a measure onto the ballot that would outlaw the farming of genetically modified crops in the region.

Recently Jackson County organic farmers found genetically modified sugar beet crops planted by the Swiss corporation Syngenta AG as close as one-eighth of a mile from their farms. Until last year, any GMO crop planted within four miles of an organic farm would’ve been against Department of Agriculture rules. But since then, it’s been a farming free-for-all.

From the Mail Tribune:

Ashland seed farmer Chuck Burr said he has a personal reason to support a proposed ban on genetically modified organisms in Jackson County.

He had to throw away $4,700 in chard seed after learning it might have been contaminated with pollen from nearby GMO fields.

“I’m up against it here,” said Burr, the owner of the 10-acre Restoration Farm on Old Siskiyou Highway. “I have to make a living, and I have an absolutely constitutional right to engage in commerce.

“And if another company comes in from outside the area and prevents me from doing it, then my rights trump theirs.”

The proposal has enough signatures to make it on the May 2014 primary ballot, but those rights will be central to whether citizens will even be allowed to vote on the measure. Oregon’s right-to-farm law states that “farming and forest practices are critical to the economic welfare of this state,” and that it is “in the interest of the continued welfare of the state for farming and forest practices to be protected from legal actions that may be intended to limit [such practices].”

A ban on genetically modified crop farming would definitely be a limit. But then, giving GM crops free rein is sort of limiting to organic farmers, given the way GM crops have of spreading across property lines. Oregon has more than a year to figure this one out, but I’m guessing the fight will get pretty dirty.

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Keystone protesters take the fight to TransCanada offices

by iscciaglewstrone123 Posted on January 8, 2013

Keystone protesters take the fight to TransCanada offices

By Susie Cagle

Not content to protest from the trees, anti-Keystone activists mobilized on Monday at two different offices of pipeline builder TransCanada.

Tar Sands Blockade

Nearly 100 activists took over the lobby of TransCanada’s Houston office to dance, chant, prance with puppets, die-in, and then be kicked out by police.

At one point a blockader dropped to his knees and pleaded with a line of police holding batons: “Help! There are eco-terrorists upstairs! They’re killing me!” Officers arrested two of the activists once they’d been ushered from the lobby.

Police, who were probably having a bad day, also did this:

Just as the action in Houston died down, eight college students and recent grads were chaining and gluing themselves inside TransCanada’s corporate office in Westborough, Mass. They were promptly unchained and arrested, because that’s how much TransCanada cares about your Harvard degrees, kids.

Tar Sands Blockade

These weren’t huge actions nor were they sustained blockades, but they mark another escalation in tactics that protesters are using to fight the Keystone XL pipeline. Activists in the Northeast are gearing up for protests on Jan. 23 and 26 against tar-sands transport through New England. And a Feb. 17 anti-Keystone rally in front of the White House could attract 20,000 people, 350.org says.

Meanwhile, TransCanada twirled its mustache and released this statement Monday afternoon:

TransCanada has the legal authority to construct the Gulf Coast Project, and this is another example of the protestors’ attempt to stop a project that is currently providing thousands of jobs to American workers. This project is also a key component of the ‘all of the above’ strategy to enhance American energy security — especially refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Then executives laughed manically over their tiny model of the Keystone XL pipeline, and wondered if it was broken or something, because it just keeps leaking. Weird.

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Cleantech investment fell off a cliff in 2012

by RubinkJoseph Posted on January 8, 2013

Cleantech investment fell off a cliff in 2012

By Lisa Hymas

Shutterstock

“You could call it the cleantech cliff,” writes the San Jose Mercury News:

Global clean-technology venture investment plunged to $6.46 billion in 2012, down 33 percent from the $9.61 billion invested a year ago, according to San Francisco-based research and consulting firm Cleantech Group.

Why such a big drop-off?

The low price of natural gas has made it harder for renewable energy to compete on cost. Venture capitalists are shying away from capital-intensive deals after seeing companies like Santa Clara-based Misasolé sold at fire sale prices. And global economic uncertainty took a toll: Several privately backed cleantech companies, including Oakland’s BrightSource Energy, were forced to shelve their IPO plans and raise additional funds from existing investors.

Political uncertainty contributed too, according to Sheeraz Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group. “That said, the entire venture capital industry contracted in 2012, so cleantech is not alone in experiencing this pullback,” he added.

The Mercury News reports that the “one bright spot belonged to SolarCity, a San Mateo-based solar financier and installer that had a successful IPO Dec. 13. SolarCity slashed its share price but ultimately raised $92 million.”

The cleantech sector is already looking brighter in 2013. Last week, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway spent as much as $2.5 billion on a huge solar project, sending solar stocks soaring.

But why leave cleantech investing to the big boys? If you live in California or New York, you can get into the game yourself via just-launched Solar Mosaic, a crowdfunding service for rooftop solar projects. Don’t let Warren Buffett have all the fun.

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Sea-level rise could be way, way worse than we already thought

by greenenergy4 Posted on January 7, 2013

Sea-level rise could be way, way worse than we already thought

By Lisa Hymas

Petrov Stanislav

Could your city look like this in 2100 (assuming it hasn’t

looked like this already

)?

It might be time to buy that dry suit you’ve had your eye on — or start saving up for a submersible.

“Glaciologists fear they may have seriously underestimated the potential for melting ice sheets to contribute to catastrophic sea-level rises in coming decades,” reports The Independent. Here’s more from NBC News:

Melting glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland may push up global sea levels more than 3 feet by the end of this century, according to a scientific poll of experts that brings a degree of clarity to a murky and controversial slice of climate science.

Such a rise in the seas would displace millions of people from low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, swamp atolls in the Pacific Ocean, cause dikes in Holland to fail, and cost coastal mega-cities from New York to Tokyo billions of dollars for construction of sea walls and other infrastructure to combat the tides.

“The consequences are horrible,” Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol and a co-author of the study published Jan. 6 in the journal Nature Climate Change, told NBC News. …

The estimates are higher than the controversial figures in the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of up to 23 inches (59 centimeters) and higher than the unpublished estimates being prepared for the next IPCC report, said Bamber, who is a review editor for that document and has seen the estimates.

Add this to the growing pile of sobering sea-level studies, along with recent ones about how western Antarctica is warming three times faster than the rest of the world and polar ice sheets are melting three times faster than during the ’90s.

Oh, and that one about how historic sea-level rises have been linked to volcanic eruptions.

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Richmond, Calif., fights back against Chevron’s choke hold

by ghd12australia Posted on January 3, 2013

Richmond, Calif., fights back against Chevron’s choke hold

By Susie Cagle

Chevron has dominated the town of Richmond, Calif., for 110 years, but that dominance is finally being called into question. Tensions have been escalating for decades, but came to a head after a fire in August 2012 at the oil giant’s Richmond refinery belched toxic smoke all over the Bay Area.

When Chevron sought city permits to rebuild the refinery, the Richmond mayor and City Council called for stronger pollution and safety controls. But in December, the city Planning Department approved permits that will allow the company to bring the refinery back to full production with only very minor improvements in emissions.

Last month, Chevron agreed to pay $145,600 to settle 28 different air-quality violations that had taken place at the refinery before the fire. That works out to $5,200 for each screwup, which ranged from not filing reports on hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide pollution incidents to the fact that the the oil giant didn’t check part of the refinery for leaks for two years.

For most of its 110 years in Richmond, Chevron — the town’s biggest employer and a big donor to local political campaigns — has put out fires and paid fines and not looked back, while local residents suffered from sustained health problems. Now, The New York Times reports, the winds are shifting:

“They went through a period of time when they took a very hard-line, confrontational position with the City of Richmond, and I don’t think it was working for them very well,” said Tom Butt, a councilman who has been critical of Chevron and who won re-election in November, despite the oil company’s support for three other candidates. “They were facing a situation where the majority of the City Council were not their friends, and so they decided to try a different position.”

Sean Comey, a Chevron spokesman, said the company felt the need to adopt a new strategy toward Richmond, though he did not go as far as to acknowledge that it was a direct response to the city’s changing politics.

“Probably about four, five years ago, we sat down to really reassess what the state of our relationship was with the community where we had been for more than 100 years — and it wasn’t where we wanted it to be,” Mr. Comey said.

So Chevron built some community gardens and threw some holiday parties and tried to appear really excited about civic goings-on.

“Richmond kind of gets into your blood,” said Andrea Bailey, Chevron’s manager of community engagement in Richmond. “There’s so much going on, and there’s this precipice of greatness. It’s exciting.”

And then the company was like, “But they still hate us? Whyyyy?”

Maybe because Chevron is also trying to buy the city council. In last year’s race, it spent $1.2 million and succeeded in getting two of its three preferred candidates elected.

Still, Chevron says its polling shows “favorability with over 50 percent of residents,” even after August’s fire. I wonder if Chevron is also following the #FuckChevron hashtag that’s become popular on Twitter with Bay Area residents. Best get the community engagement manager on top of that one.

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Cash for Clunkers program drove right into a brick wall of waste

by kowalski099 Posted on January 3, 2013

Cash for Clunkers program drove right into a brick wall of waste

By Susie Cagle

Hey, remember back in 2009 when President Obama was saving the American car industry by whatever means necessary, including offering cash incentives for trading in old cars for newer, more efficient ones? And remember how a lot of people used that incentive to buy cars that were only marginally more efficient than their junked clunkers?

cynthia_leigh

Billed as stimulus both for automakers and the environment, the Car Allowance Rebates System, better known as Cash for Clunkers, turned out to be clunker itself. Besides fueling more unsustainable new-car-buying consumerism, the program also destroyed thousands of older, functional vehicles — vehicles that, according to the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), were almost 100 percent recyclable. Through Cash for Clunkers, about 690,000 vehicles had their engines destroyed and many were sent to junkyards, bypassing recycling companies altogether.

E Magazine reports:

The ARA issued a report when the CARS program was announced saying that a much more efficient program would have been to encourage recycled parts usage. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration explained at the time that the engines must be destroyed to prevent the vehicles from being resold and taking the road again. For any dealer that did not follow that law, there was a hefty $15,000 fine per infraction against them.

CARS claims to have had a positive environmental impact by taking these old vehicles off the road, yet it required destroying the traded-in vehicle’s drive train and engine. The engines were destroyed with a sodium silicate solution, also known as liquid glass. The silicate causes the engine’s parts to freeze and ensures it never runs again … Many of the clunkers ended up at auctions where parts dealers bid on them. By the time all reusable parts are salvaged, the material left is the car’s frame. CARS mandated that the clunkers be crushed or shredded within 180 days, regardless of whether all the usable parts were salvaged or not. …

The Department of Transportation reported that Cash for Clunkers was an environmental success. The clunkers averaged 15.8 mpg, compared with the 25.4 mph for new vehicles being purchased, for an average fuel-economy increase of 61%. In general, drivers traded in inefficient SUVs and trucks for more efficient passenger cars. However, it’s quite easy to negate this small difference in gas mileage purely by the fact that people will be more likely to drive a vehicle that takes less money to fill up with gas. It’s an efficiency paradox: as we get more efficient at using energy, the overall cost of energy goes down, but we respond by using more of it.

So, H&M, about that clothes recycling program …

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Fiscal-cliff deal ups tax benefit for transit riders

by johnsmithwindows Posted on January 3, 2013

Fiscal-cliff deal ups tax benefit for transit riders

By Susie Cagle

FISCAL CLIFF TRIGGER WARNING! Obviously there’s a lot to be annoyed about in this deal, but there are a few bright spots that aren’t getting much attention. Renewed tax credits for wind energy are cool, and even more people will benefit from a near-doubling of a tax benefit for transit riders.

The benefit is basically a tiny tax shelter for the dollars you’re spending on public transportation, available if your employer participates in a federal program. On Dec. 31, 2011, that shelter was shrunk from $230 a month to $125, while the benefit for people who drive to work and pay for parking was increased from $230 to $240 — meaning the government was incentivizing people to drive instead of take public transit. Now, thanks to the fiscal-cliff deal, tax benefits for transit takers and car parkers will be equalized — both will get a benefit of up to $240 a month.

From Transportation Nation:

Transit advocates hailed the legislation. “We’ve been pushing for transit equity for months,” said Rob Healy, vice president of the American Public Transportation Association. “From our perspective, we felt it was very, very important that the federal tax code not bias one mode versus another.” He added: “You shouldn’t be making your choices based on a tax code which treats parking better than it does transit.”

This should take a bit of the sting out of new fare hikes going into effect for transit systems (at least if you have a job …). That is, it’ll take the sting out for 2013. Because here’s the bad news, transportation lovers: This is only a one-year extension, set to expire on Dec. 31 unless it’s renewed.

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The hottest race of 2013: House climate hawk Markey is gunning for Kerry’s Senate seat

by olikellopas Posted on December 31, 2012

The hottest race of 2013: House climate hawk Markey is gunning for Kerry’s Senate seat

By Lisa Hymas

Martha Coakley

Could Ed Markey be the Senate’s newest climate hawk?

The Senate will lose an advocate for climate action when John Kerry becomes secretary of state (assuming he gets confirmed, which seems pretty darn safe to assume). But it could gain another senator who’s just as climate-hawkish if Ed Markey wins the race for Kerry’s soon-to-be-vacated seat.

Rep. Markey (D-Mass.) announced last week that he intends to run in the special election next spring or summer to fill Kerry’s spot. He’s not the only Democrat who’s talking about a run, but he’s the most senior and high-profile, so the establishment swiftly got behind him, hoping to avert a primary fight.

Kerry didn’t outright endorse Markey, but he praised him effusively, calling him “the House’s leading, ardent, and thoughtful protector of the environment.” Kerry continued: “He’s passionate about the issues that Ted Kennedy and I worked on as a team for decades, whether it’s health care or the environment and energy or education.”

Markey is arguably the most passionate, outspoken climate advocate in the House. You might remember him from such legislation as the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, which was passed by the House in 2009 and then died a slow and painful death in the Senate. Markey was the one and only chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming during its existence from 2007 to 2010. Though Republicans killed the committee when they took control of the House two years ago, that hasn’t stopped Markey from pushing energy and climate issues into the spotlight — and writing about his efforts on Grist.

In announcing his candidacy for the Senate, Markey made clear that he plans to keep focusing on energy: “I will not sit back and allow oil and coal industry lobbyists to thwart our clean energy future,” he said. Scott Nathan, chair of the League of Conservation Voters, told The Boston Globe that he was thrilled to back Markey, describing the congressmember as “a champion fighting for the clean-energy economy.”

Now the big, looming question is whether Scott Brown will run for Kerry’s spot from the Republican side. Brown lost his Senate seat to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in November after a bruising campaign. The two clashed over climate change and energy issues, and environmental groups came out in full force against Brown and for Warren. Here’s what I wrote about Brown during that race:

Scott Brown is one of the more centrist Republicans in the Senate, yet he’s getting a lot of hate from the green community. Brown has bucked his party on wind power, calling for extension of a key wind tax credit that Mitt Romney opposes. But he’s buddied up with Big Oil and the Koch brothers (he’s gotten about $333,000 in campaign cash from the oil and gas industry). He voted to push through the Keystone XL pipeline and maintain oil-industry subsidies (even while claiming said subsidies don’t exist). And he’s been wishy–washy on climate science and has opposed EPA’s efforts to regulate CO2.

Brown has been mum on his intentions so far, but many pols and pundits think he’s likely to run. If he does, he’ll be a serious contender. In a mid-December poll of registered Massachusetts voters, 58 percent had a favorable view of him. Markey, by contrast, got just 24 percent favorability, with 27 percent of respondents undecided about him and 33 percent never having heard of him. In a head-to-head matchup, 48 percent of voters preferred Brown compared to 30 percent for Markey.

Markey could close that gap if he runs a strong campaign, but he’s been in a safe seat for decades, so he’s out of practice. Boston Globe columnist Joanna Weiss argues that Markey will need to “find his inner celebrity” if he wants to win. “[A] statewide race, particularly one that’s condensed into a few months, will require Markey to be much flashier than he’s had to be within the halls of Congress.” Markey may be wonky, but he’s been known to pull out the spark and flash. Expect to see a lot more of that in the coming months.

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The $400 million plan to unsink a giant cruise ship

by olikellopas Posted on December 27, 2012

The $400 million plan to unsink a giant cruise ship

By Susie Cagle

Nearly a year after it crashed into a very picturesque rock on the coast of Giglio Island in the Mediterranean, the Costa Concordia cruise ship is still lying on its side in the middle of a marine wildlife preserve. The island’s mayor called the ship “an ecological timebomb,” but while it’s not (currently!) leaking oil into the sea, the Concordia is basically a massive amount of pollution still waiting to happen.

Roberto Vongher

There are only two things to do: Chop it up, sink it, and say sorry, or spend $400 million towing the failed monstrosity away from nature.

The latter it is!

Business Insider calls the plan, “the riskiest, most complicated, and most expensive salvage plan ever undertaken,” and no one is entirely sure it will actually work.

The process consists of stabilizing the ship with massive cables (almost complete); drilling an underwater platform into the sea floor; attaching massive floaties to each side of the ship, tipping it upright, and (hopefully!) towing it away from the protected coastline still mostly intact.

Workers had to take a four-day rock climbing course before beginning the work, which will take months.

The (many) companies undertaking this plan say, “it best fulfills the main objectives of the operation: removal of the wreck in one piece, minimal risk, minimal environmental impact, protection of Giglio’s economy and tourism industry, and maximum safety of the work.”

When the only other option is to sink the ship and walk away, it doesn’t really matter if the salvage plan is serious about preserving the Mediterranean ecosystem or just desperate to salvage the tourist dollars on which Giglio’s economy relies. But just think of all the wonderful things we could do with that $400 million if we weren’t building these big dumb toys and crashing them into islands.

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EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has left the building

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 27, 2012

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has left the building

By Scott Rosenberg

We knew this one was coming, but now it’s official: Lisa Jackson, President Obama’s long-embattled administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is leaving her post.

Jackson served for four years as lead environmental regulator for the Obama administration, taking innumerable volleys of criticism from all directions. Serious environmentalists felt she caved too regularly to White House-driven compromises, allowing the climate to become a footnote and essential initiatives to be watered down. Meanwhile, the Tea Party right set her up as a job-killing bogeyperson and marshal of a “war on coal.” (Green types only wished that war was real.)

As the first African American EPA administrator, Jackson brought a more inclusive approach to her environmental work — moving both her agency and the national public far beyond old green stereotypes. The achievements of Jackson’s tenure were real: major improvements in automobile emissions standards, important new controls on mercury in power-plant fumes, and the first-ever federal ruling that greenhouse gases should be classed as pollutants.

And yet no one who is conscious of the climate crisis can fail to see the last four years as, fundamentally, a failure where it most counts — a critical, fleeting, now-missed chance to jam open a closing window of opportunity and alter our global-warming course. Early in Obama’s first term, the White House and a then-Democratic Congress took one futile run at a watered-down cap-and-trade measure, then played dead on the issue. Obama barely mentioned the climate during his reelection campaign. Prospects for stronger action remain dim.

When Grist interviewed Jackson last summer, we asked her what headline she’d write over her administration’s record on climate issues. She joked about not being good at keeping her language short and sweet, then came out with:

“In accordance with the law, we moved forward with sensible, cost effective steps at the federal level on climate, using the Clean Air Act.” And I would have a second sentence — see, I can’t write headlines! But it would be something like, “The progress at state and local levels, combined with the federal level, does not obviate the need” — you can’t use obviate, it’s above fifth-grade level! — “does not obviate the need for federal legislation to address this incredibly important challenge for this and future generations.”

And here’s Jackson’s July 2012, appearance on The Colbert Report:

Source

E.P.A. Chief to Step Down, With Climate Still Low Priority, New York Times

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