Tag Archives: Safer:

Train explosion in Quebec stokes debate about oil transport

by porvluef Posted on July 8, 2013

Train explosion in Quebec stokes debate about oil transport

By John Upton

Reuters/Mathieu BelangerA firefighter walks past a burning train at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

The latest disaster caused by the transport of oil across North America has wrecked the town of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec. A driverless train loaded with crude from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota derailed and exploded early Saturday in the town’s center.

Dozens of buildings were leveled and at least five people were killed, while 40 more were still missing as of Monday morning. The fracked oil was en route to New Brunswick, which is home to the largest oil refinery in Canada. From Reuters:

The train, which did not have an engineer aboard when it derailed, was hauling 72 tanker cars of crude from North Dakota to eastern Canada. It rolled downhill from an overnight parking spot, gathered speed and derailed on a curve in the small town of Lac-Megantic at 1 a.m. on Saturday.

Each car carried 30,000 gallons of crude oil. Four caught fire and exploded in an orange and black fireball that mushroomed hundreds of feet into the air and flattened dozens of buildings, including a popular bar.

“It looks like a war zone here,” said Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The disaster plunged the media into debate: Is it safer to move oil through underground pipelines (à la Mayflower, Kalamazoo, and Keystone XL), or to move it by rail?

Frackers and tar-sands miners are extracting record amounts of oil in America and Canada. Existing pipelines can’t carry the whopping bounty to refineries, so energy companies are seeking to lay lattices of new pipes. Meanwhile, the glut of liquid hydrocarbons is being loaded onto trains, which are being sent vast distances — and are triggering high-profile spills and accidents.

The Toronto Globe and Mail argues in the wake of the Lac-Mégantic disaster that “[p]ipelines are the safest way of transporting oil and natural gas, and we need more of them, without delay.” The New York Times considers the pipeline-vs.-train question more impartially, quoting environmental experts:

Edward Whittingham, the executive director of the Pembina Institute, an environmental group based in Calgary, Alberta, said there was not conclusive research weighing the safety of the two shipment methods.

“The best data I’ve seen indicates,” he said, “depending on your perspective, both are pretty much as safe as each other, or both are equally unsafe. There’s safety and environmental risks inherent in either approach.”

Accidents involving pipelines, Mr. Whittingham said, can be more difficult to detect and can release greater amounts of oil. Rail accidents are more frequent but generally release less oil.

But the comparison obfuscates an obvious reality: The oil can’t be moved safely at all. (Same goes for natural gas.)

After a string of pipeline and rail accidents in recent years, it’s clear that letting the energy industry move incendiary bulk fluids around the continent is like tossing a book of matches into the crib to keep little Johnny happy while his folks stare at the television. And that’s without even considering the climate impacts of the fossil-fuel mining binge, or the many hazards of fracking.

The weekend tragedy is a reminder that the energy industry can’t be trusted to do anything safely, let alone transport oil.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin 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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Texas Lawmakers Too Busy Targeting Abortion Providers to Deal With Exploding Fertilizer Plants

by Aale Thomas Posted on July 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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In the two and a half months since an explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer storage facility left 12 first responders dead and at least 200 people injured, two things have become clear. The disaster could have been avoided if the proper regulations had been in place and enforced—and state and federal agencies don’t appear to be in a hurry to put those regulations in place or enforce them.

Texas, whose lax regulatory climate has come in for scrutiny in the aftermath of the West explosion, went into a special session of its state legislature on Monday to push through an omnibus abortion bill designed to regulate 37 abortion clinics out of existence. But the 2013 session will come to a close without any significant action to impose safeguards on the 74 facilities in the state that contain at least 10,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate.

Lawmakers in Austin have a handy excuse for punting on new fertilizer regulations: That would be intrusive. State Sen. Donna Campbell, the Republican who helped to shut down Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis’ filibuster of the abortion bill on procedural grounds, told the New York Times that lawmakers should be wary of monitoring chemical plants more closely because there’s “a point at which you can overregulate.”

As the investigations into the West blast have shown, though, over-regulation is hardly a risk in Texas. The disaster was notable for just how little regulation there actually was and how little it was enforced. Since the April 17 disaster we’ve learned that:

The Texas Department of State Health Services, which tracks the storage of dangerous chemicals, says it is prohibited from regulating those chemicals and that any regulations must come from local officials. Except…
West is in McLennan County, which, like 70 percent of counties in the state, had been statutorily prohibited from adopting its own fire code until 2010, when it reached a high-enough population threshold. It has not adopted one since.
Texas is one of just four states without statewide standards for fire safety and storage at chemical facilities.
Free from the constraints of fire codes, the West Fertilizer Co. stored ammonium nitrate in wooden boxes and didn’t even have a sprinkler system.
A statewide cap on property taxes means that even if they were allowed to have fire codes, most rural Texas fire departments are unable to afford the equipment needed to fight fires at the chemical facilities that are located disproportionately in rural counties.
The company didn’t notify local planners of the presence of dangerous chemicals on site until 2012—at least six years after federal law would have required them to do so—and the town’s volunteer firefighters were never briefed on how to handle a blaze at the facility. One firefighter tried to look up the information on his smartphone en route to the blaze but gave up.
West Fertilizer Co.’s “worst-case release scenario,” according to documents provided to the Environmental Protection Agency, did not allow for the possibility of fire or explosions.
The site hadn’t been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985, when, after finding five “serious violations,” the company was fined $30. (That’s $64.95 in today’s dollars.) The 28-year lag between inspections isn’t so bad, considering OSHA has the manpower to inspect each chemical facility in the US about once every 129 years.
West Fertilizer Co. was insured for just $1 million, the same amount of liability coverage the state requires of bounce house operators. However, this was $1 million more than is required by the state for chemical storage facilities.
The facility was storing an explosive product that doesn’t actually have to be explosive.
It understated the amount of said explosive material it was keeping at the site by 56,000 pounds (or about 50 percent).
The company did not work with the Department of Homeland Security to develop security procedures as required by federal law, nor did DHS ever instruct it to do so. It did provide information on the site’s explosive contents to the Texas Department of Health Services, but that agency did not pass that information along to DHS, nor was it required to.
West Fertilizer Co. had no security guards, alarm system, or perimeter fencing despite the fact that it was a storage facility for the primary ingredient of improvised explosive devices, and had been robbed 11 times (presumably by meth manufacturers) in 12 years.
In that same period, police responded to five different reports of ammonia leaks from the facility.
In the 11 years since the US Chemical Safety Board recommended the EPA regulate ammonium nitrate, the source of the West fire, the agency has made no move to do so. It is not included on the agency’s list of hazardous chemicals, and by extension, it’s not included on Texas’ list either.
The facility was less than 3,000 feet away from two schools and a dense residential area and there are no federal or state laws on the books that would have prevented it from getting closer.

In other words, there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit for Texas lawmakers to tackle to prevent future Wests. And yet, in the wake of the explosion, the state of Texas has taken exactly one concrete step to prevent future disasters from happening: It created a website that allows people to determine if there’s a chemical plant in their neighborhood. That’s information that should certainly be available to the public, but it shouldn’t be confused with a step that’s making those plants safer.

The Texas state fire marshal offered to issue voluntary best-practices recommendations for counties without fire codes, and to inspect chemical facilities—again, voluntarily—if the owners so wished, but the effect of that is hampered by the fact that rural counties, where most chemical facilities are located, are still prohibited under Texas law from enacting fire codes. A bill that would have ended that prohibition, which Gov. Rick Perry declined to throw his support behind, went nowhere this session. It is not being considered at the special session.

Legislators also talked about suggesting that facilities put up some signs to notify people about the presence of potentially hazardous chemicals nearby.

The only public statements on West from the state’s top lawmakers in the last month came when the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned down Texas’ request for $17 million in disaster assistance for the disaster it did nothing to prevent on the grounds that Texas has the money to pay for it. (And it does—Texas’ rainy day fund is set to hit $8 billion by 2015.)

Maybe if pro-choice activists really want to stop Texas from regulating clinics they should just start calling them “fertilizer plants.”

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Texas Lawmakers Too Busy Targeting Abortion Providers to Deal With Exploding Fertilizer Plants

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Running From the Feds? Don’t Go to Hong Kong

by wqds234der Posted on June 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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Ever since Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who went public with details about two government surveillance programs, fled for Hong Kong, many have questioned whether he made the right choice. Why didn’t he go to WikiLeaks’ former base of operations, Iceland, where some information activists are lobbying to grant him asylum? (Here’s why Iceland may not have been a great option.) Why not France, which has an extradition treaty with the United States but, as Slate points out, also has a “history of reluctance to send people into the US criminal justice system”?

Since 2003, 137 countries have extradited or deported 7,066 people to the United States. Mexico, Colombia, and Canada are at the top of the list, according to data from the US Marshals Service. The number of extraditions by country varies widely and likely depends not just on relations with the United States but how many suspects flee there (Mexico and Canada clearly being favorites for fugitives making a run for the border). While Iceland did not send anyone back to the United States during this time, Hong Kong was number 18, with 47 extraditions.

Top 20 Countries that Extradite to the UNITED STATES

  1. Mexico 2,325 extraditions
  2. Colombia 1,272
  3. Canada 867
  4. Dominican Republic 309
  5. United Kingdom 182
  6. Jamaica 142
  7. Costa Rica 132
  8. Spain 124
  9. Germany 113
  10. Netherlands 87
  11. Belize 82
  12. Thailand 62
  13. Panama 60
  14. Israel 58
  15. Poland 54
  16. Philippines 51
  17. France 48
  18. Hong Kong 47
  19. Australia 45
  20. Italy 42

View the full list here.

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Running From the Feds? Don’t Go to Hong Kong

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France looks at America, says non to fracking

by Margherit Posted on June 7, 2013

France looks at America, says non to fracking

By John Upton

Shutterstock

France’s vineyards are safe from frackers.

France’s energy minister looked at the destruction being wrought on America’s environment by hydraulic fracturing and said “non, merci” to the latest push by her country’s business lobby to make fracking legal.

Fracking was banned in France in 2011, and it looks like it’s going to stay banned. From Bloomberg:

France’s ban on hydraulic fracturing should not be eased because the oil and gas drilling technique is causing “considerable” environmental damage in the U.S., according to a government minister.

“We have to have our eyes wide open about what is going on in the U.S.,” Environmental and Energy Minister Delphine Batho said during a radio debate. “The reality is that the cost of producing gas doesn’t take into account considerable environmental damage.”

Earthquakes, aquifer pollution, heavy metal contamination, increased truck traffic and damage to the countryside are consequences of fracking, the minister said. …

“The U.S. has invented environmental dumping,” Batho said today. “Gas prices in the U.S. don’t take into account the cost of environmental damage that future generations will have to pay.”

Exactement.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin 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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Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris partied at Sean Parker’s eco-wrecking wedding

by siteforme Posted on June 7, 2013

Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris partied at Sean Parker’s eco-wrecking wedding

By John Upton

California Coastal Commission

Just your average

Game of Thrones

-style wedding backdrop.

We told you about billionaire Sean Parker’s obnoxious wedding romp in a Big Sur redwood grove. The Napster cofounder and former Facebook president will pay $2.5 million to the California Coastal Commission to help heal damages caused when a temporary wonderland backdrop was illegally built in the forest for his nuptial vows.

Well, it turns out that two of California’s most senior elected officials attended the wedding, living the kind of high life that only comes with an assault on threatened fish species and the trashing of a forest. Those officials were Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Newsom’s attendance at the anti-eco bash was interesting, given that the former San Francisco mayor has spent his political career yapping about how much he loves the environment.

Harris’ was interesting because she is the state’s top law enforcer, and Parker’s penalties stemmed from violations of state law.

(In an email to The Atlantic, Parker denied wrongdoing, saying the party preparations improved previously asphalt-covered campground lands and characterizing the $2.5 million payment as a conservation donation. But the commission’s report [PDF] is littered with accusations of violations, including construction without permits and “development undertaken in violation of the Coastal Act.” It describes at least $1 million that Parker must pay as a “penalty settlement” for the forestland violations.)

From the SF Weekly:

Enabled by a backroom deal that Parker cut with the Ventana Inn — a high-end resort that abuts an ancient forest and a creek teeming with steelhead trout — the wedding included an artificial pond, switchback stairways, fake ruins, and extra foliage that required Parker’s construction team to dig out, bulldoze, and otherwise molest areas of highly sensitive natural forest. …

Thus far, no one has divined whether Newsom’s fingerprints are on this deal. His website says that he rotates with State Controller John Chiang as chair of the three-member State Lands Commission, which oversees leasing of millions of acres of state-owned land and permitting of water channels in California. He also serves as a member to the California Ocean Protection Council. Interestingly, he also campaigned on a rather bullish environmental platform, claiming not only that he would work to conserve California’s precious natural resources, but that he would “work to secure permanent funding solutions for the California Coastal Commission.”

But Parker donated $13,000 to Newsom’s campaign for lieutenant governor, which suggests that the two of them might be (un)comfortably close. We have yet to hear Newsom’s report back from the wedding — calls to his office weren’t returned this morning.

We certainly hope the politicians enjoyed themselves. Otherwise it would be a waste of the scandalous trampling of a natural wonderland.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin 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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Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris partied at Sean Parker’s eco-wrecking wedding

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Oklahoma’s cyclones were all kinds of freaky

by Unique Article Posted on June 6, 2013

Oklahoma’s cyclones were all kinds of freaky

By John Upton

Brian Khoury

A scene from Oklahoma last Friday.

Not only did Friday’s tornado outburst in Oklahoma lead to at least 20 deaths, but analysis by NOAA has revealed that it included the widest tornado ever recorded in the U.S. and one twister that spun the wrong way.

The diameter of the El Rino tornado, which on Friday killed three famous weather chasers, reached a mind-boggling and record-breaking 2.6 miles. Both the El Rino cyclone and the Moore tornado, which struck nearby a week earlier, were rated EF5, the most damaging type of cyclone on the Enhanced Fujita scale. From LiveScience:

“To have two EF5s within less than two weeks in the same general area — that’s highly unusual,” [University Corporation for Atmospheric Research scientist Jeff] Weber told LiveScience. “Off the top of my head, I haven’t heard of it happening before.”

The tornadoes were made possible by “perfect” tornado conditions in the area, which have been intermittent for weeks, Weber said. Specifically, the alignment of the jet stream is bringing dry, cold air down from the north and allowing it to interact with warm, moist air from off the Gulf of Mexico, which sets up a volatile situation.

Like a wedge, the cold air collides with the warm air and causes it to rise, since warm air is less dense, Weber said. This rising warm air has created thunderstorms that have, in turn, spawned tornadoes.

It’s not just the size and power of the tornadoes that was remarkable. NOAA says that one of the tornadoes that struck Friday was a rare anticyclonic tornado:

You might think that an anticyclonic tornado would work in reverse of a typical tornado, replacing house roofs and putting cars back where they were before the normal tornado struck. But in fact, an anticyclonic tornado spins clockwise, whereas most other Northern Hemisphere storms spin counterclockwise.

From The Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang:

Leading tornado researcher Joshua Wurman (of the Center for Severe Weather Research) and his team were in the field monitoring the deadly EF5 twister when they spied another funnel, but spinning backwards, on their two “Doppler on Wheels” mobile radar units.

“At that point we bailed east towards Oklahoma City,” Wurman said. “I’m very happy my team had a radar out there. We only knew about [the anticyclonic tornado] because of the radar; otherwise we may have driven into it.”

Amazingly, Wurman’s encounter was not El Reno’s first with cyclonic and anticyclonic tornado pairings. On April 24, 2006, such a duo touched down in the area.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin 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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Arctic summers could be nearly ice-free in seven years

by s4o840t Posted on June 6, 2013

Arctic summers could be nearly ice-free in seven years

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Say goodbye to this stuff.

Everybody get ready to grab your swimsuit and head north. The latest melting projections by government scientists suggest that the Arctic could be nearly ice-free during summer in seven years — or maybe even sooner.

But before you get all excited about the novelty of taking a dive into waters that once harbored year-round ice, we should warn you that the seven-year thing is a worst-case scenario. But even the best-case scenario published in a recent scientific paper projects that the summer ice will virtually disappear during the first half of this century.

(Also, we should warn you that the water will still be pretty damned cold, if not quite as cold as before. Also, you might get run over by a container ship. Or coated by an oil spill.)

There is substantial conjecture — and concern — over when the Arctic will finally lose its summertime coating of ice to the effects of climate change. Some scientists have previously suggested that it could happen by 2016.

So NOAA scientists recently used three common techniques for predicting when the summertime ice would disappear from everywhere in the Arctic, with the exception of Greenland and a spot just north of the Canadian Archipelago, and compared the results. Their methods: They extrapolated sea ice volume data; they assumed rapid melting events such as occurred last summer and in 2007 would occur again; and they used climate models.

“At present,” the scientists wrote in a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, “it is not possible to completely choose one approach over another.” More from the paper:

The large observed shifts in the current Arctic environment represent major indicators of regional and global climate change. Whether a nearly sea ice-free Arctic occurs in the first or second half of the 21st century is of great economic, social, and wildlife management interest. There is a gap, however, in understanding how to reconcile what is currently happening with sea ice in the Arctic and climate model projections of Arctic sea ice loss.

The use of these different techniques resulted in forecasts of nearly ice-free summers sometime around 2020, or around 2030, or around 2040. Massive pool party y’all!

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin 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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Warming oceans are killing baby puffins

by Ameliankak Posted on June 4, 2013

Warming oceans are killing baby puffins

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Atlantic puffins — sometimes called the clowns of the sea because of their squat bodies and odd waddles — are finding themselves in a particularly unfunny predicament.

Scientists think warming ocean temperatures are driving the puffins’ normal meals of herring away from the coastlines; they’re being replaced with other fish that are too large for puffin fledglings to swallow.

We told you in May that record-breaking Atlantic coastal water temperatures were driving some fish away. And on Friday we quoted Oceana scientist Matthew Huelsenbeck warning that the warming of the oceans is “causing significant changes to marine ecosystems.”

Well, what could be a more dramatic poster child for these impacts than the vision of adorable pufflings starving to death? From the Associated Press:

Steve Kress, director of the National Audubon Society’s seabird restoration program, has worked to restore and maintain the puffin population off the Maine coast for the past 40 years. Puffins spend most of their lives at sea, coming ashore only to breed each spring before returning to the ocean in August. The chicks swim to sea about 40 days after hatching and typically return to the islands after two years.

More than 2,000 of the birds are now in Maine, the vast majority on three islands. But the chick survival rates on the two largest colonies took a dive last summer, possibly because of a lack of herring, their primary food source, Kress said.

On Seal Island, a national wildlife refuge 20 miles offshore that’s home to about 1,000 puffins, only 31 per cent of the laid eggs produced fledglings, down from the five-year average of 77 per cent. Similar numbers were experienced at Matinicus Rock, a nearby island with more than 800 birds.

Instead of feeding their young primarily herring, puffin parents were giving them large numbers of butterfish, a more southerly fish that’s becoming more abundant in the Gulf [of Maine] or perhaps more accessible to seabirds because they’ve moved higher up in the water column. But the chicks ended up starving to death because the butterfish were too big and round for them to swallow, Kress said. Piles of uneaten butterfish were found next to some of the dead birds.

Perhaps the puffins could raid area homes and steal fish knives.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin 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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Lautenberg Leaves Legacy on Chemical Reform

by bukaroso Posted on June 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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Frank Lautenberg, a five-term senator from New Jersey, died Monday at age 89. All over the internet, obituaries for the long-serving progressive note the issues he took up during his tenure, but one that often goes unnoticed is his work to overhaul chemical safety rules. For years, Lautenberg was the leading voice in the effort to reform the Toxic Substance Control Act, or TSCA, a 37-year-old law governing tens of thousands of chemicals.

Less than two weeks ago, Lautenberg unveiled a bipartisan reform bill that would have made some significant changes to the outdated—and many would say, dangerous—chemical rules. The bill was criticized by many in the environmental group as being too weak, especially as compared to bills that Lautenberg had introduced independently in the past. Still, chemical reform will be a legacy issue for Lautenberg.

“He was the person who really started the national conversation on reforming our chemical policies,” said Andy Igrejas, executive director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition public health, environment, business and labor groups working on TSCA reform. “He’s been a real stalwart, a champion.” Despite being in poor health, Lautenberg had continued working on the bill he released in May. “Even as late as last week he was down in DC pushing it forward, crafting it, trying to get bipartisan support,” said Igrejas.

“He wasn’t someone who scared easily,” Igrejas continued. “A lot of politicians want to do the right thing, but in the face of a major lobbying effort by big money interests, they fold. He had the courage to really stick with big issues.”

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, also lauded his past work on chemicals: “Perhaps his most enduring achievement was to help inform and protect the public from the harm of toxic chemicals, including creating the nation’s toxic right-to-know law, establishing the US Chemical Safety Board and pushing for greater security at chemical plants.”

Lautenberg is also remember for his work on other public health issues, such as alcohol and tobacco.

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Lautenberg Leaves Legacy on Chemical Reform

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Japan and other nations say no to U.S. wheat, worried about GMOs

by Grover Nusom Posted on May 31, 2013

Japan and other nations say no to U.S. wheat, worried about GMOs

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Japan wants to make sure its noodles remain untainted by GMOs.

Japan cancelled a bid on 27,500 tons of Pacific Northwest wheat on Thursday — the first bite taken out of America’s wheat export market after a rogue genetically engineered strain was discovered growing like a weed on an Oregon farm.

Other international buyers also reacted negatively to the news, with South Korea suspending its tenders to import U.S. wheat and European Union countries being urged to step up genetic testing of American imports. Taiwan said it may seek assurances that all imported wheat from the U.S. is GMO-free, the Wall Street Journal‘s MarketWatch reports.

From Agence France-Presse:

“As long as the situation remains unchanged, we have no choice but to avoid bidding for the product,” [a Japanese government] official said …

“We are asking US authorities to disclose information related to the incident as quickly as possible,” the official said. …

Japan imports around five million tonnes of wheat a year, 60 percent of which is from the US, making it one of the largest importers of the crop. …

In Brussels, the European Commission said Thursday it has asked EU member states to check imports of wheat from the United States which may be tainted with the genetically modified strain.

The budding global backlash is a reminder that while America is a friendly place for most GMO crops, other countries consider transgenic foods to be abhorrent. GMO wheat has not been authorized to be grown or sold anywhere in the world. Monsanto ceased efforts to market the transgenic wheat in 2005 when it became clear that America’s export-dominated market would not tolerate it.

America is the world’s biggest wheat exporter, shipping $8 billion worth around the world every year. Australia is No. 2. While many wheat buyers may now look to Australia to boost its exports, experts told Reuters that it was unlikely the country’s growers could meet a spike in demand.

This is not the first time that transgenic crops have popped up where they were not wanted. From Reuters:

The latest finding revives memories of farmers unwittingly planting genetically modified rapeseed in Europe in 2000, while in 2006 a large part of the U.S. long-grain rice crop was contaminated by an experimental strain from Bayer CropScience , prompting import bans in Europe and Japan.

The company agreed in court in 2011 to pay $750 million to growers as compensation.

Monsanto should prepare to face the ire of the world. And it was already very unpopular. Just last weekend saw rallies held around the globe in opposition to the company’s genetically modified products and business practices.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin 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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