Category: Environment

While the Bush administration is certainly in its last throes, their officials still have a significant amount of damage left to inflict on our country.

Furthering the Republicans war against science, the Bush administration is near finalizing a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act that will fundamentally change the way threatened plants and animals have been protected in the U.S. since December 1973.

“The Bush administration wants to make it easier for drilling, mining and major construction projects to go ahead without a full scientific assessment,” BBC news reports. The changes will effect any project a federal agency would fund, build, or authorize that might potentially impact an endangered plant or animal.

For nearly 35 years, “the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service have reviewed any federal plans that could potentially protect endangered animals or plants. Under the administration’s proposed rule, these independent scientific reviews would no longer be required if the agency in question determined that its activities would not hurt the imperiled species,” the Washington Post reports.

Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new installment of Manufacturing Monday.  Now I would like to do something a tad different this week. You see today we get two important economic indicators released. So, instead of waiting a whole week for me to reprise them here, I would go ahead and write about then today!  I will still go over last week’s indicators, but figured you deserve to get something more up to date as well.  The numbers get released around 9:30 Eastern, so they will be covered first, then last week’s stuff.

Beyond the Numbers section, this week we’ll be covering Green Manufacturing again.  We haven’t touched this in a while, what with all the GM related business.  Yet there have been some very interesting developments in the green collar world.  So before you, for your pleasure, is some stuff that may or may not put a smile on your face.  Either way, it looks as if, thankfully, we are turning a new leaf (sorry, couldn’t help it) on manufacturing!

This column by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post today is immoral crap. In an effort to defend the indefensible, Larry Summers 1991 writings suggesting we off-source pollution to poor countries, this jerk fully endorses polluting the poor overseas, and implictly, at home.  It is the antithesis of environmental justice.  

If an industrial plant that causes pollution is going to be built somewhere, it ought to be built where life is worth less.

Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy

This diary is not about Larry Summers and whether he should be Treasury Secretary.  It is about this asshat, Michael Kinsley. The smarmy obscenity of his writings reveals a person without conscience.  Karma will get his ass one day.    

More, after the fold.

(also on Dkos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/… )

THE ENVIRONMENTALIST has had an influx of new writers, including the executive director of PCAP (Presidential Climate Action Project charged with the environmental agenda for the new administration’s first 100 days), the International Climate Policy Director from the NRDC and others.  Excerpts and links:

Struggling for Obama’s Soul

by William S. Becker, Executive Director, PCAP

Now that we know Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States, we can turn to the next critical question of national leadership: In this historic moment, how bold will President Obama be?

http://op-ed.the-environmental…

Restoring America’s Leadership in International Global Warming Negotiations

by Jake Schmidt, International Climate Policy Director, NRDC

We now have a new leader in the US that understands global warming and recognizes that it requires leadership both at home and abroad. Addressing this challenge (and opportunity) will be a key task of both President-elect Barack Obama (and his Administration) and Congress.

http://climate.the-environment…

The 100 Day Action Plan to Save the Planet

On January 1st, 2007, the Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP), a project of the University of Colorado, Wirth Chair in Environmental and Community Development Policy, was launched to produce a 100 day action plan on climate change for the next President of the United States.

http://politics.the-environmen…

THE ENVIRONMENTALIST has more new posts.

Ta.

Now that we’ve had a couple days to rest up from the long presidential campaign, it’s time to get busy again.  President-elect Obama is not going to govern from the left, or even that mythological “middle” everyone seems content to obsess over – he’ll govern from the hard right, only subtly, as Bill Clinton did.  Those who thought to use him as a springboard to enacting progressive policy failed to understand that Obama is a user, not someone who lets himself be used.  Let’s begin the work of making that fanciful notion so many of us held a reality.

I’ve done my criticism, and I’ll continue to criticize, because I take Theodore’s admonition regarding presidents to heart.  But this entry is about offering up ideas and starting points; future ones shall be along this line of argument.  We absolutely must organize, unite, and apply pressure before the tiny window of opportunity between now and January closes.  We cannot afford a repeat of the Clinton years.

A good first step is in redirecting oil policy away from the industry and more toward independence – alternative, renewable sources of energy, naturally, but in other areas as well.  The September-October issue of Science Illustrated contained a piece on bioplastics, that is, plastics made with chemicals derived from plant-based chemicals instead of petroleum.  I wasn’t able to find a direct link to the magazine article, unfortunately, but I did locate links pertaining to the subject.

http://findarticles.com/p/arti…

http://www.justchromatography….

From the first link:

Scientists are one step closer to replacing crude oil as the main source for plastic, fuels and scores of other industrial and household chemicals with inexpensive, non-polluting renewable plant matter (Science, vol. 316. no. 5831, pp. 1597-1600, June 15, 2007). “What we have done that no one else has been able to do is convert glucose directly in high yields to a primary building block for fuel and polyesters,” says Z. Conrad Zhang, senior author who led the research and a scientist with the PNNL-based Institute for Interfacial Catalysis (UC; iic.pnl.gov). That building block is hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a chemical derived from carbohydrates such as glucose and fructose and that is viewed as a promising surrogate for petroleumbased chemicals.

Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature’s most abundant sugar. “But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging,” says Zhang. “In addition to low yield, until now, we always generated many different byproducts,” including levulinic acid, making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals.

Zhang, lead author and former post doc Haibo Zhao, and colleagues John Holladay and Heather Brown, all from PNNL, were able to coax HMF yields upward of 70% from glucose and nearly 90% from fructose, while leaving only traces of acid impurities. To achieve this, they experimented with a novel nonacidic catalytic system containing metal chloride catalysts in an ionic liquid capable of dissolving cellulose. The ionic liquid, enabled the metal chlorides to convert the sugars to HMF.

What this means is that scientists are making glucose-derived plastics a viable alternative to the petroleum-based variety we commonly use.  As the first step toward moving away from reliance on fossil fuels, funding and regulations could be implemented so as to grow the bioplastics industry.  Glucose can be gotten from straw and saw dust – waste products generated by the agricultural and wood industries – for example, meaning freeing up more farmland for food production.

Combined with passing laws raising fuel efficiency standards, improving public transportation, and creating advertising campaigns to promote carpooling and energy efficiency, pushing bioplastics may be used to start us on the road to energy independence.  With fossil fuels dwindling, and wars to obtain control over sources increasing in frequency and intensity, this is a matter of genuine pragmatism and economic sensibility.  It’s also something to press our elected officials over.  President Obama will not be so stupid as to oppose his own political party if it passes progressive legislation.

I’m not sure of which the two I am more worried about: food shortages or water scarcity. A lack of water to meet daily needs is a reality for many people around the world and has serious health consequences. I have read that it affects 4 out of 10 people in the world as water demand has more than tripled over the last half-century. Signs of water scarcity have become commonplace. As for the food situation this year, once again world grain harvest is projected to fall somewhat short of consumption due to a number of factors and the new bete noire, ethanol. United States department of agriculture (USDA) data said that in 2007, production of food grain in world was 22 million metric tonnes short of consumption. This year is projected to be a better harvest but by how much? Will there be enough to store? The price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%, and this economic crisis could not have come at a worst time for developing countries as foreign aid is rapidly dwindling to a trickle.

Fortunately Obama will be in charge, the current WH idiot will be a distant memory and better agricultural policies will be put in place.

A whole bunch of vital races tend to get lost amidst big media’s obsession with the minutiae of the ‘big’ races, especially in presidential years.  One of those races is mentioned this morning in the Seattle P-I –

The campaign to be the state’s next commissioner of public lands is one of the tightest and most polarized political races this year.

It is also the least understood, though the office determines the management of 5.6 million acres of state timber and aquatic lands, shorelines and agricultural fields for a trust that funds public schools and universities throughout Washington.

Crossposted from La Vida Locavore, more below the fold…

Ralph Nader {center}

October 27, 1969

Ralph Nader set up a consumer organization with young lawyers and researchers {often called “Nader’s Raiders”} who produced systematic exposés of industrial hazards, pollution, unsafe products, and governmental neglect of consumer safety laws.

Nader is widely recognized as the founder of the consumer rights movement. He played a key role in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Freedom of Information Act, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

This very brief essay that might be about hypocrisy. Or it might be that that McPalin campaign is giving you and me and all the other people who care about Global Warming a raised middle digit.  You decide.

These are polar bears:

In May, 2008, before she was a VP candidate, the Great Huntress decided that polar bears shouldn’t be on the endangered species list, where Bushco had put them.  The Anchorage Daily News wrote:

The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.

The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing petition.

“She’s either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Alaska deserves better.”

Put simply, Palin is a hard-core global warming denier:

Q: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A: A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

But you already knew all of that.  You’ve already ranted and banged on the table about this and cursed a blue streak at the screens on your television and monitor.  This is nothing new.

Then, last night, on Keith, I thought I saw Sarah Palin wearing on her right lapel a polar bear pin.  Just like this:

I was paying special attention, because I wanted to see whether she was still wearing the RNC purchased and soon to be donated to charity designer threads.  Normally, I don’t pay much attention.  Last night I was paying attention because I wanted to see if she had gotten, well, more frumpy.  That didn’t happen. To put it mildly, I was surprised by the pin.  Maybe I’m easily surprised.

There is no really satisfactory explanation for this.  Are they hypocrites of the first degree? Is the McPalin campaign that clueless? Maybe after the last eight years, they think cluelessness, for which they have voted 90% of the time, is a qualification for running the nation.  But then I had a darker thought.  Maybe she’s wearing the pin to “energize the base,” and it’s a gigantic FU to anyone who cares about the environment.

You choose.  Either way, I wish McPalin would be gone.

Bush has used a Machiavellian strategy to destroy our Endangered Species Act (ESA), leaving President Obama with another mess to clean up. Similar to the wars, global warming, Guantánamo and economic crisis, unscrupulous deception and political expediency were used to pump up corporate profits.  This is no surprise. Bush had a track record before assuming office of baseball teams and businesses that he ruined and then passed off to others to fix his messes.

The maddening part is the failure of Congress to hold the culprits even a little bit accountable for their messes. Impeachment is taken off the table and the likelihood of criminal prosecutions is slim. But, what about just good ole financial restitution? The government insiders and corporations that profited should be required to return those monies over to the government to pay for fixing this mess.  

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

A Beluga Whale

Some great news, and a slap in the face to Sarah Palin.  The New York Times reports:

The federal government on Friday placed beluga whales that live in Alaska’s Cook Inlet on the endangered species list, rejecting efforts by Gov. Sarah Palin to keep the whales from coming under the increased protections.

The relatively small, whitish whales, sometimes visible from downtown Anchorage in the inlet’s silvery water, declined by almost 50 percent during the late 1990’s, and federal scientists say they have not rebounded despite protections that included limiting subsistence hunting by Native Alaskans. About 375 whales have been counted in Cook Inlet each of the last two years, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” James Balsiger, an acting assistant administrator in charge of the agency’s fisheries programs, said in a written statement announcing that the whales were in danger of extinction.

The announcement, whose timing was tied to a predetermined schedule under the Endangered Species Act, drew attention once again to Ms. Palin’s positions on environmental issues. The governor, the Republican nominee for vice president, has come under scrutiny for her ambiguous statements about climate change and her administration’s effort to prevent another species, the polar bear, from being declared a threatened species.

And why is Governor Palin opposed to Belugas?  Wanna guess?

As with the polar bear, Ms. Palin’s administration had fought the beluga listing because of its potential to restrict coastal and offshore oil and gas development. The beluga listing also could affect a proposed bridge over Knik Arm that would connect Anchorage to the Matanuska-Valley and Ms. Palin’s hometown of Wasilla.

Arrgh.

And here’s an appropriate way to celebrate, with a song from Raffi my kids used to love back in the day:

There has been some debate over the impact of this financial crisis on President Obama’s ability to address global warming. Well, UN leaders and top economists are not buying the can-not-do meme. Instead, they are drafting a “Green New Deal” to “create millions of jobs, revive the world economy, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster, as the financial markets plunge into their deepest crisis since the Great Depression.”