Greener Pastures
Brendan Smith: GE's Dirty Green Jobs
In 2005 General Electric launched their "EcoMagination" campaign, a marketing effort built around selling products that help solve environmental problems and create green jobs.
According to GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt "Our Ecomagination initiative has created tens of thousands of jobs at GE and in our supply chain." And if the U.S. steps up and takes the lead on climate mitigation, Immelt promises to "create 250,000 green jobs in the economy."
So what are GE's new green jobs of the future going to look like? According to one group of GE "green" workers who have filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in Alabama (complaint below), GE's vision for a green future looks more like a nightmare.
The case was brought by sixty-two employees of Lacy Enterprises, a company that leases workers to a subsidiary of GE to clean out baghouses at coal-fired power plants and manufacturing facilities. Mandated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, baghouses are designed to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants with cloth or synthetic filters or "bags" that capture toxic particulates such as lime, coal black, lead, arsenic and mercury. On the front lines of emerging green economy, GE's work team traveled around the country cleaning and replacing the filers at coal and cement plants, steel mills and elsewhere.
According to deposition transcripts and interviews from the case the African American work crews were treated with abuse that represents an affront to human rights and dignity. On a regular basis they were called "boys", "monkeys", "lazy niggers" by their GE supervisor, according to transcripts. They were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, often with only one half-hour break for lunch, and denied bathroom and rest breaks. Workers were even refused requests for water or a chance "to just get some air because the temperature in the bag house was very high -- often over 100 degrees."
Work crews were denied adequate protection from the dangerous chemicals they handled on a daily basis -- including lime, coal black, lead, and arsenic. Their supervisor "resisted giving the crew new face masks because he did not want them to take the time to change them." On one job in Columbia, Georgia the particulates workers' handled "burnt their skin because the Tyvek suits they had on were insufficient to protect their skin from the toxins in the baghouse."
If the crew tried to take breaks when the heat or soot became unbearable they were called "lazy niggers" and told they'd be fired if they didn't get back to work, according to plaintiff testimony. One worker was fired from a job in Texas for merely trying to wash off coal debris that covered him head to toe.
According to the workers, if they got sick on the job they were denied medical treatment. Exposed to extreme cold on a job in Missouri, one worker's skin grafts began to ooze and peel off. When he asked for medical help he was called a "sorry ass chicken shit mother fucker" by his GE supervisor and ordered to get back to work. According to another crew member, while working at high altitude in the winter, he suffered a seizure due to hypothermia and almost fell to his death because his supervisor had denied him a break to warm up. When he was taken down by his crew mates, the supervisor refused to call for medical help. When a plant worked called an ambulance, the GE supervisor said "I don't care what happens to that nigger."
According to the plaintiff's lawyer Daniela Nanau, a senior attorney at the Law Offices of Joshua Friedman in New York:
The racial abuse went way beyond slurs. One of the victims suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized as a result, and has not been able to work since. None of our clients, who worked their whole lives in Monroeville, AL, had ever experienced anything like this before. The most powerful industrial organization on the planet took advantage of their poverty, lack of education and opportunity. When they complained, they were sent home by their GE supervisor. Written complaints to his manager were literally forgotten.
Despite these and other damning claims, GE's fighting hard to block their "green" baghouse workers from having their day in court. This is evidence enough to expose GE's "Ecoimagination" as a mere marketing gimmick to lure us into forgetting that this the same company responsible for creating at least 78 Superfund sites and whose former CEO famously claimed that "PCBs do not pose adverse health risks."
The best thing that could happen to American workers would be the creation of massive employment converting America to a low-carbon economy. There is the potential to create millions of jobs, and they can be designed to be good jobs with security, decent pay, and good working conditions. But the support for the whole green jobs effort will be undermined if corporations are allowed to make it into "EcoMagination" writ large.
The abuses suffered by GE's "green" workers confirm our worst fears that there's little guarantee so far that green jobs are going to be good jobs. What are now touted as green jobs can all too easily instead be minimum wage jobs with poor working conditions without job security or benefits.
Those of us in the labor, environmental and civil rights movements need to come together to demand that, at minimum, green jobs programs have specific requirements for labor rights and standards with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. We need to demand that hard-fought civil rights are respected. We need to demand corporations that are repeated violators of labor rights and standards should be banned from receiving green jobs funding. [For more on turning green jobs into good jobs, click here]
Otherwise, if we leave it up to the GE's of the world, the new green economy is going to be little more that a green-collar sweatshop.
Here's the full complaint from the public record:
First Amended Complaint SDA
According to GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt "Our Ecomagination initiative has created tens of thousands of jobs at GE and in our supply chain." And if the U.S. steps up and takes the lead on climate mitigation, Immelt promises to "create 250,000 green jobs in the economy."
So what are GE's new green jobs of the future going to look like? According to one group of GE "green" workers who have filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in Alabama (complaint below), GE's vision for a green future looks more like a nightmare.
The case was brought by sixty-two employees of Lacy Enterprises, a company that leases workers to a subsidiary of GE to clean out baghouses at coal-fired power plants and manufacturing facilities. Mandated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, baghouses are designed to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants with cloth or synthetic filters or "bags" that capture toxic particulates such as lime, coal black, lead, arsenic and mercury. On the front lines of emerging green economy, GE's work team traveled around the country cleaning and replacing the filers at coal and cement plants, steel mills and elsewhere.
According to deposition transcripts and interviews from the case the African American work crews were treated with abuse that represents an affront to human rights and dignity. On a regular basis they were called "boys", "monkeys", "lazy niggers" by their GE supervisor, according to transcripts. They were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, often with only one half-hour break for lunch, and denied bathroom and rest breaks. Workers were even refused requests for water or a chance "to just get some air because the temperature in the bag house was very high -- often over 100 degrees."
Work crews were denied adequate protection from the dangerous chemicals they handled on a daily basis -- including lime, coal black, lead, and arsenic. Their supervisor "resisted giving the crew new face masks because he did not want them to take the time to change them." On one job in Columbia, Georgia the particulates workers' handled "burnt their skin because the Tyvek suits they had on were insufficient to protect their skin from the toxins in the baghouse."
If the crew tried to take breaks when the heat or soot became unbearable they were called "lazy niggers" and told they'd be fired if they didn't get back to work, according to plaintiff testimony. One worker was fired from a job in Texas for merely trying to wash off coal debris that covered him head to toe.
According to the workers, if they got sick on the job they were denied medical treatment. Exposed to extreme cold on a job in Missouri, one worker's skin grafts began to ooze and peel off. When he asked for medical help he was called a "sorry ass chicken shit mother fucker" by his GE supervisor and ordered to get back to work. According to another crew member, while working at high altitude in the winter, he suffered a seizure due to hypothermia and almost fell to his death because his supervisor had denied him a break to warm up. When he was taken down by his crew mates, the supervisor refused to call for medical help. When a plant worked called an ambulance, the GE supervisor said "I don't care what happens to that nigger."
According to the plaintiff's lawyer Daniela Nanau, a senior attorney at the Law Offices of Joshua Friedman in New York:
The racial abuse went way beyond slurs. One of the victims suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized as a result, and has not been able to work since. None of our clients, who worked their whole lives in Monroeville, AL, had ever experienced anything like this before. The most powerful industrial organization on the planet took advantage of their poverty, lack of education and opportunity. When they complained, they were sent home by their GE supervisor. Written complaints to his manager were literally forgotten.
Despite these and other damning claims, GE's fighting hard to block their "green" baghouse workers from having their day in court. This is evidence enough to expose GE's "Ecoimagination" as a mere marketing gimmick to lure us into forgetting that this the same company responsible for creating at least 78 Superfund sites and whose former CEO famously claimed that "PCBs do not pose adverse health risks."
The best thing that could happen to American workers would be the creation of massive employment converting America to a low-carbon economy. There is the potential to create millions of jobs, and they can be designed to be good jobs with security, decent pay, and good working conditions. But the support for the whole green jobs effort will be undermined if corporations are allowed to make it into "EcoMagination" writ large.
The abuses suffered by GE's "green" workers confirm our worst fears that there's little guarantee so far that green jobs are going to be good jobs. What are now touted as green jobs can all too easily instead be minimum wage jobs with poor working conditions without job security or benefits.
Those of us in the labor, environmental and civil rights movements need to come together to demand that, at minimum, green jobs programs have specific requirements for labor rights and standards with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. We need to demand that hard-fought civil rights are respected. We need to demand corporations that are repeated violators of labor rights and standards should be banned from receiving green jobs funding. [For more on turning green jobs into good jobs, click here]
Otherwise, if we leave it up to the GE's of the world, the new green economy is going to be little more that a green-collar sweatshop.
Here's the full complaint from the public record:
First Amended Complaint SDA
Read more: Environment, Jobs, General Electric, Climate Change, Green Jobs, Corporate Responsibility, Green Politics, Greenwashing Companies, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Brendan Smith: GE's Dirty Green Jobs
In 2005 General Electric launched their "EcoMagination" campaign, a marketing effort built around selling products that help solve environmental problems and create green jobs.
According to GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt "Our Ecomagination initiative has created tens of thousands of jobs at GE and in our supply chain." And if the U.S. steps up and takes the lead on climate mitigation, Immelt promises to "create 250,000 green jobs in the economy."
So what are GE's new green jobs of the future going to look like? According to one group of GE "green" workers who have filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in Alabama (complaint below), GE's vision for a green future looks more like a nightmare.
The case was brought by sixty-two employees of Lacy Enterprises, a company that leases workers to a subsidiary of GE to clean out baghouses at coal-fired power plants and manufacturing facilities. Mandated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, baghouses are designed to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants with cloth or synthetic filters or "bags" that capture toxic particulates such as lime, coal black, lead, arsenic and mercury. On the front lines of emerging green economy, GE's work team traveled around the country cleaning and replacing the filers at coal and cement plants, steel mills and elsewhere.
According to deposition transcripts and interviews from the case the African American work crews were treated with abuse that represents an affront to human rights and dignity. On a regular basis they were called "boys", "monkeys", "lazy niggers" by their GE supervisor, according to transcripts. They were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, often with only one half-hour break for lunch, and denied bathroom and rest breaks. Workers were even refused requests for water or a chance "to just get some air because the temperature in the bag house was very high -- often over 100 degrees."
Work crews were denied adequate protection from the dangerous chemicals they handled on a daily basis -- including lime, coal black, lead, and arsenic. Their supervisor "resisted giving the crew new face masks because he did not want them to take the time to change them." On one job in Columbia, Georgia the particulates workers' handled "burnt their skin because the Tyvek suits they had on were insufficient to protect their skin from the toxins in the baghouse."
If the crew tried to take breaks when the heat or soot became unbearable they were called "lazy niggers" and told they'd be fired if they didn't get back to work, according to plaintiff testimony. One worker was fired from a job in Texas for merely trying to wash off coal debris that covered him head to toe.
According to the workers, if they got sick on the job they were denied medical treatment. Exposed to extreme cold on a job in Missouri, one worker's skin grafts began to ooze and peel off. When he asked for medical help he was called a "sorry ass chicken shit mother fucker" by his GE supervisor and ordered to get back to work. According to another crew member, while working at high altitude in the winter, he suffered a seizure due to hypothermia and almost fell to his death because his supervisor had denied him a break to warm up. When he was taken down by his crew mates, the supervisor refused to call for medical help. When a plant worked called an ambulance, the GE supervisor said "I don't care what happens to that nigger."
According to the plaintiff's lawyer Daniela Nanau, a senior attorney at the Law Offices of Joshua Friedman in New York:
The racial abuse went way beyond slurs. One of the victims suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized as a result, and has not been able to work since. None of our clients, who worked their whole lives in Monroeville, AL, had ever experienced anything like this before. The most powerful industrial organization on the planet took advantage of their poverty, lack of education and opportunity. When they complained, they were sent home by their GE supervisor. Written complaints to his manager were literally forgotten.
Despite these and other damning claims, GE's fighting hard to block their "green" baghouse workers from having their day in court. This is evidence enough to expose GE's "Ecoimagination" as a mere marketing gimmick to lure us into forgetting that this the same company responsible for creating at least 78 Superfund sites and whose former CEO famously claimed that "PCBs do not pose adverse health risks."
The best thing that could happen to American workers would be the creation of massive employment converting America to a low-carbon economy. There is the potential to create millions of jobs, and they can be designed to be good jobs with security, decent pay, and good working conditions. But the support for the whole green jobs effort will be undermined if corporations are allowed to make it into "EcoMagination" writ large.
The abuses suffered by GE's "green" workers confirm our worst fears that there's little guarantee so far that green jobs are going to be good jobs. What are now touted as green jobs can all too easily instead be minimum wage jobs with poor working conditions without job security or benefits.
Those of us in the labor, environmental and civil rights movements need to come together to demand that, at minimum, green jobs programs have specific requirements for labor rights and standards with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. We need to demand that hard-fought civil rights are respected. We need to demand corporations that are repeated violators of labor rights and standards should be banned from receiving green jobs funding. [For more on turning green jobs into good jobs, click here]
Otherwise, if we leave it up to the GE's of the world, the new green economy is going to be little more that a green-collar sweatshop.
Here's the full complaint from the public record:
First Amended Complaint SDA
According to GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt "Our Ecomagination initiative has created tens of thousands of jobs at GE and in our supply chain." And if the U.S. steps up and takes the lead on climate mitigation, Immelt promises to "create 250,000 green jobs in the economy."
So what are GE's new green jobs of the future going to look like? According to one group of GE "green" workers who have filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in Alabama (complaint below), GE's vision for a green future looks more like a nightmare.
The case was brought by sixty-two employees of Lacy Enterprises, a company that leases workers to a subsidiary of GE to clean out baghouses at coal-fired power plants and manufacturing facilities. Mandated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, baghouses are designed to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants with cloth or synthetic filters or "bags" that capture toxic particulates such as lime, coal black, lead, arsenic and mercury. On the front lines of emerging green economy, GE's work team traveled around the country cleaning and replacing the filers at coal and cement plants, steel mills and elsewhere.
According to deposition transcripts and interviews from the case the African American work crews were treated with abuse that represents an affront to human rights and dignity. On a regular basis they were called "boys", "monkeys", "lazy niggers" by their GE supervisor, according to transcripts. They were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, often with only one half-hour break for lunch, and denied bathroom and rest breaks. Workers were even refused requests for water or a chance "to just get some air because the temperature in the bag house was very high -- often over 100 degrees."
Work crews were denied adequate protection from the dangerous chemicals they handled on a daily basis -- including lime, coal black, lead, and arsenic. Their supervisor "resisted giving the crew new face masks because he did not want them to take the time to change them." On one job in Columbia, Georgia the particulates workers' handled "burnt their skin because the Tyvek suits they had on were insufficient to protect their skin from the toxins in the baghouse."
If the crew tried to take breaks when the heat or soot became unbearable they were called "lazy niggers" and told they'd be fired if they didn't get back to work, according to plaintiff testimony. One worker was fired from a job in Texas for merely trying to wash off coal debris that covered him head to toe.
According to the workers, if they got sick on the job they were denied medical treatment. Exposed to extreme cold on a job in Missouri, one worker's skin grafts began to ooze and peel off. When he asked for medical help he was called a "sorry ass chicken shit mother fucker" by his GE supervisor and ordered to get back to work. According to another crew member, while working at high altitude in the winter, he suffered a seizure due to hypothermia and almost fell to his death because his supervisor had denied him a break to warm up. When he was taken down by his crew mates, the supervisor refused to call for medical help. When a plant worked called an ambulance, the GE supervisor said "I don't care what happens to that nigger."
According to the plaintiff's lawyer Daniela Nanau, a senior attorney at the Law Offices of Joshua Friedman in New York:
The racial abuse went way beyond slurs. One of the victims suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized as a result, and has not been able to work since. None of our clients, who worked their whole lives in Monroeville, AL, had ever experienced anything like this before. The most powerful industrial organization on the planet took advantage of their poverty, lack of education and opportunity. When they complained, they were sent home by their GE supervisor. Written complaints to his manager were literally forgotten.
Despite these and other damning claims, GE's fighting hard to block their "green" baghouse workers from having their day in court. This is evidence enough to expose GE's "Ecoimagination" as a mere marketing gimmick to lure us into forgetting that this the same company responsible for creating at least 78 Superfund sites and whose former CEO famously claimed that "PCBs do not pose adverse health risks."
The best thing that could happen to American workers would be the creation of massive employment converting America to a low-carbon economy. There is the potential to create millions of jobs, and they can be designed to be good jobs with security, decent pay, and good working conditions. But the support for the whole green jobs effort will be undermined if corporations are allowed to make it into "EcoMagination" writ large.
The abuses suffered by GE's "green" workers confirm our worst fears that there's little guarantee so far that green jobs are going to be good jobs. What are now touted as green jobs can all too easily instead be minimum wage jobs with poor working conditions without job security or benefits.
Those of us in the labor, environmental and civil rights movements need to come together to demand that, at minimum, green jobs programs have specific requirements for labor rights and standards with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. We need to demand that hard-fought civil rights are respected. We need to demand corporations that are repeated violators of labor rights and standards should be banned from receiving green jobs funding. [For more on turning green jobs into good jobs, click here]
Otherwise, if we leave it up to the GE's of the world, the new green economy is going to be little more that a green-collar sweatshop.
Here's the full complaint from the public record:
First Amended Complaint SDA
Read more: Environment, Jobs, General Electric, Climate Change, Green Jobs, Corporate Responsibility, Green Politics, Greenwashing Companies, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Leah Lamb: Step 1: Realize removing 1000 pounds of garbage out of the oceans by hand is...crazy.
So it's begun! Pulling 560 (I mean over 1000 pounds) of garbage out of the ocean. I now realize this is officially a crazy idea. For many reasons. But I'll tell you this, I have come to learn that there is a unique sect of people who I now refer to as "people of the plastic". I had no idea how passionate people were on the topic.
This past week was spent meeting with experts and local divers and getting over the embarrassment I felt when people gave me a slightly horrified expression every time I asked (with glee), "So where's the garbage and how much is there?"
I've spent time answering the deeper questions: why am I doing this and what do I want to accomplish? Graham Hill echoed the thoughts of a few others when he asked, "Why stop at 560 pounds?" (see video). And challenged me to zero out my life time of impact. (So now I need to figure out how old I think I'm going to be when I die. This just went from a magnificent to morbid in one quick turn.)
Meanwhile, I came to the realization that this is a crazy idea.
#1 Reason this is a crazy idea. I'm afraid of the ocean. There. I said it.
I've always been afraid of deep water, never been able to look at the bottom of the pool when I swim in the deep end. Jaymi Heimbuch of Planet Green was kind to cover the project, but there was a phrase in that article that haunted me, the one where she said diving is a passionate hobby. Any normal person would assume that. But the truth is, being a steward for our oceans is my passion; diving is just a way...in. And believe me, when I was out there bobbing in the chilly waters of Monterey, releasing all of the air from my BC so I would sink to the bottom of the ocean, I thought about that point (a lot). I also thought about the crazy rogue wave at the Maverick Surf competition that took out 45 spectators two days before our dive. And I started wondering why I couldn't have picked a project that meant doing an activity I was good at...like...walking.
Luckily, (and lets say that three times together), Enrique Aguirre and Rebecca Jackrel, two talented wildlife photographers who were testing their gear in preparation for their trip to photograph whales, invited me to come along and refresh my skills, and even offered to teach some safety tips. Thank God for this, because it would have been really embarrassing to show up at my first garbage dive meet up and not remember...everything. Rebecca made a fun video of our experience that shows off the amazing marine life that can be found in that area (big thanks Rebecca!).
After being down there for a few moments my fears did surpass, and the sheer awe of being in the belly of our planet took over. There was a moment when I was surrounded by purple fans and coral and couldn't resist thinking this would be a bomb-digity room for a 14 year old girl.
#2 Reason why this is a crazy idea: The plastic/garbage is REALLY small. If you watched the video you probably caught that we retrieved 1 whopping plate shard out of the ocean. Not a surprise given we were in a state park. But I was quickly reminded of the crucial problem of itsy bitsy garbage. I was walking down the beach when I started noticing that all of the kelp washed up on the beach were covered in garbage. So I did what any normal garbage obsessed person would do and grabbed a handful so I could check out the ratio of normal ocean debris to garbage.
In this officially non scientific experiment of grabbing a handful of ocean debris out of a kelp bed washed up after a storm, I ended up with a whopping..I don't know, it looks like it is almost 1/3 garbage, 2/3rd ocean debris. And yes, if you are examining closely, you will notice I didn't get all of the garbage out (ran out of patience with the itsy-bitsy pieces of Styrofoam).
And while I have been reading about the Pacific Gyre Patch for years, and understood it was comprised of small and large plastic particles, it was en entirely different experience to walk down this beach at night, when it was pristine, and then walk down it the very next morning, to find it covered with dead animals and garbage.
Video below has been around for awhile but illustrates the point.
Today's inspiration for why to reclaim the oceans of garbage:
I'm going to claim the experience of walking down a beloved beach that was covered with garbage over night as today's inspiration for why I am doing this project.
Today's action we can all do:
Join the plastic pollution coalition (click the link to get to the pledge card and learn more about the affects of plastics).
Related content:
This past week was spent meeting with experts and local divers and getting over the embarrassment I felt when people gave me a slightly horrified expression every time I asked (with glee), "So where's the garbage and how much is there?"
I've spent time answering the deeper questions: why am I doing this and what do I want to accomplish? Graham Hill echoed the thoughts of a few others when he asked, "Why stop at 560 pounds?" (see video). And challenged me to zero out my life time of impact. (So now I need to figure out how old I think I'm going to be when I die. This just went from a magnificent to morbid in one quick turn.)
Meanwhile, I came to the realization that this is a crazy idea.
#1 Reason this is a crazy idea. I'm afraid of the ocean. There. I said it.
I've always been afraid of deep water, never been able to look at the bottom of the pool when I swim in the deep end. Jaymi Heimbuch of Planet Green was kind to cover the project, but there was a phrase in that article that haunted me, the one where she said diving is a passionate hobby. Any normal person would assume that. But the truth is, being a steward for our oceans is my passion; diving is just a way...in. And believe me, when I was out there bobbing in the chilly waters of Monterey, releasing all of the air from my BC so I would sink to the bottom of the ocean, I thought about that point (a lot). I also thought about the crazy rogue wave at the Maverick Surf competition that took out 45 spectators two days before our dive. And I started wondering why I couldn't have picked a project that meant doing an activity I was good at...like...walking.
Luckily, (and lets say that three times together), Enrique Aguirre and Rebecca Jackrel, two talented wildlife photographers who were testing their gear in preparation for their trip to photograph whales, invited me to come along and refresh my skills, and even offered to teach some safety tips. Thank God for this, because it would have been really embarrassing to show up at my first garbage dive meet up and not remember...everything. Rebecca made a fun video of our experience that shows off the amazing marine life that can be found in that area (big thanks Rebecca!).
After being down there for a few moments my fears did surpass, and the sheer awe of being in the belly of our planet took over. There was a moment when I was surrounded by purple fans and coral and couldn't resist thinking this would be a bomb-digity room for a 14 year old girl.
#2 Reason why this is a crazy idea: The plastic/garbage is REALLY small. If you watched the video you probably caught that we retrieved 1 whopping plate shard out of the ocean. Not a surprise given we were in a state park. But I was quickly reminded of the crucial problem of itsy bitsy garbage. I was walking down the beach when I started noticing that all of the kelp washed up on the beach were covered in garbage. So I did what any normal garbage obsessed person would do and grabbed a handful so I could check out the ratio of normal ocean debris to garbage.In this officially non scientific experiment of grabbing a handful of ocean debris out of a kelp bed washed up after a storm, I ended up with a whopping..I don't know, it looks like it is almost 1/3 garbage, 2/3rd ocean debris. And yes, if you are examining closely, you will notice I didn't get all of the garbage out (ran out of patience with the itsy-bitsy pieces of Styrofoam).
And while I have been reading about the Pacific Gyre Patch for years, and understood it was comprised of small and large plastic particles, it was en entirely different experience to walk down this beach at night, when it was pristine, and then walk down it the very next morning, to find it covered with dead animals and garbage.
Video below has been around for awhile but illustrates the point.
Today's inspiration for why to reclaim the oceans of garbage:
I'm going to claim the experience of walking down a beloved beach that was covered with garbage over night as today's inspiration for why I am doing this project.
Today's action we can all do:
Join the plastic pollution coalition (click the link to get to the pledge card and learn more about the affects of plastics).
Related content:
Read more: Environment, Plastics, Conservation, Pollution, Activism, Ocean, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report -- March 9, 2010 (Audio)
TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
Now available via Stitcher Radio's way cool iPhone app!
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The Arctic is venting; Food poisoning is expensive; Texas is breaking wind (records, that is); Limbaugh and cow farts ... PLUS: The 'greenest' Oscars yet ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...Link:
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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': Shocker: Oil co. exec says U.S. should move slowly on renewables; Air pollution costs California hundreds of millions in health care; Coal-ash sites polluting water; Asia-produced ozone making its way to U.S; Scientists discover why sunshine & Vitamin D is crucial; Challenging conventional wisdom on renewable energy's limits; Using behavioral science to craft smarter energy policy... PLUS: New research: synthetic nitrogen destroys soil carbon, undermines soil health ...
'Green News Report' is heard on many fine radio stations around the country. For additional info on stories we covered today, plus today's 'Green News Extra', please click right here...
Read more: Food Poisoning, Dolphins, Vitamin D, Renewable Energy, Factory Farms, Wind Energy, Salmonella, The Oscars, Fda, Energy Policy, Methane, E. Coli, Arctic, Texas, Water Pollution, Food Inc., The Cove, Pew Research Center, Nitrogen, Oil, Coal Ash, Sustainability, Up the Movie, Food, Climate Change, Usda, Oscars 2010, Air Pollution, Ozone, Global Warming, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Reverend Billy: A Prayer
Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Chief Joseph, Harvey Milk -- teach us! Revolution aint what it used to be.
Emma Goldman, Cesar Chavez, Leonard Peltier, Sojourner Truth -- teach us! The President used the word "change" to stop it. The change we seek couldn't be clearer, but it is mimicked by Presidents and corporate marketing. By the time we shout "justice" we're in a commercial selling underwear, perfume, votes...
Revolution aint got the same song. Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Joe Strummer -- please pull our songs into a new valley, a new union hall. The songs we thought would change everything become Muzak before they get to the elevator speakers. And the words. If we read the words in a library our reading room is privatized before we turn the page. We look down and logos cover our feet like leeches in the 18th century.
Che, Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Judi Bari from Earth First -- teach us! The change we seek is clear to the reactionaries too, and they discovered the disguise of scale. On the one hand they remove mountaintops and change the climate. So our citizenship is a slow state of shock. Then they go tiny, too. The corporations search for the DNA that makes us shop. They want to throw that switch. They look forward to the deletion of any mental dissent.
Walt Whitman, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King -- please prepare us for the strangeness, the mystification of entrenched power. The killers hide in the air that we breathe and lurk in the dreams of our children. Where is the dirty coal executive? Where is the banker? Who do we push against? We swat at the pixels that buzz at our eyes like flies on the eyes of corpses. No, not corpses -- consumers!
Could we be as brave as the heroes from revolutions past? We are facing a different foe. The powers-that-be are shape-shifting constantly. Consumerism and militarism are so ambient, so plastic, so media-become-real. Resistance itself must be re-invented, in the sense that each of these heroes we've prayed to -- each was a creator. Angela Davis' strategy for change was different than that of Bernadette Devlin, or the students in Tiananmen Square, or Toussaint L'ouverture.
Isn't another name in revolution's hall of fame -- the Earth? We can pathologize all of these recent natural disasters as feverish seizures of a delirious planet. Then sometimes the earth seems coolly intelligent, as media-savvy as any video-taped underground movement -- in its response to the poisoning from its human species.
Life on Earth -- teach us! After all the heroes and martyrs and risings-up of the people, we sometimes feel as if we've gotten nowhere. The power of the corporations grows every hour and we don't seem to have a response. You, the Earth where we live, you are responding. We sense that you are making your move, feverishly rising, interrupting, killing some of us and saving us all. Amen.
Emma Goldman, Cesar Chavez, Leonard Peltier, Sojourner Truth -- teach us! The President used the word "change" to stop it. The change we seek couldn't be clearer, but it is mimicked by Presidents and corporate marketing. By the time we shout "justice" we're in a commercial selling underwear, perfume, votes...
Revolution aint got the same song. Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Joe Strummer -- please pull our songs into a new valley, a new union hall. The songs we thought would change everything become Muzak before they get to the elevator speakers. And the words. If we read the words in a library our reading room is privatized before we turn the page. We look down and logos cover our feet like leeches in the 18th century.
Che, Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Judi Bari from Earth First -- teach us! The change we seek is clear to the reactionaries too, and they discovered the disguise of scale. On the one hand they remove mountaintops and change the climate. So our citizenship is a slow state of shock. Then they go tiny, too. The corporations search for the DNA that makes us shop. They want to throw that switch. They look forward to the deletion of any mental dissent.
Walt Whitman, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King -- please prepare us for the strangeness, the mystification of entrenched power. The killers hide in the air that we breathe and lurk in the dreams of our children. Where is the dirty coal executive? Where is the banker? Who do we push against? We swat at the pixels that buzz at our eyes like flies on the eyes of corpses. No, not corpses -- consumers!
Could we be as brave as the heroes from revolutions past? We are facing a different foe. The powers-that-be are shape-shifting constantly. Consumerism and militarism are so ambient, so plastic, so media-become-real. Resistance itself must be re-invented, in the sense that each of these heroes we've prayed to -- each was a creator. Angela Davis' strategy for change was different than that of Bernadette Devlin, or the students in Tiananmen Square, or Toussaint L'ouverture.
Isn't another name in revolution's hall of fame -- the Earth? We can pathologize all of these recent natural disasters as feverish seizures of a delirious planet. Then sometimes the earth seems coolly intelligent, as media-savvy as any video-taped underground movement -- in its response to the poisoning from its human species.
Life on Earth -- teach us! After all the heroes and martyrs and risings-up of the people, we sometimes feel as if we've gotten nowhere. The power of the corporations grows every hour and we don't seem to have a response. You, the Earth where we live, you are responding. We sense that you are making your move, feverishly rising, interrupting, killing some of us and saving us all. Amen.
Read more: Consumerism, Emma Goldman, Aung San Sun Kyi, Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Life on Earth, Leonard Peltier, Mahatma Gandhi, Woody Guthrie, Public Enemy, Che, Joan Baez, Harvey Milk, Nelson Mandella, Cesar Chavez, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sojourner Truth, Chief Joseph, Revolution, Climate Change, Walt Whitman, Joe Strummer, Paul Robeson, Judi Bari, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Rev. Lennox Yearwood: Black Voters Want Green Candidates
When African American voters and particularly young voters of color turned out in record numbers in 2008, their vision for change was historic. Heading into the 2010 mid-terms, there is plenty of speculation about who is not going to turn out to the polls this year, presumably because the economy is still bad, or because we have not seen enough progress from Washington. These naysayers, however, have not been talking with our communities. We were not playing around in 2008, and we are not playing around in 2010.
African American voters, according to a poll released yesterday by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, are eager to stay informed about the upcoming mid-term elections and between seventy-four and eighty percent of African American voters say they are very likely to vote.
Complementing the Joint Center's finding is another poll done by Frank N. Magid Associates in February of this year, which found that out of key progressive base voters - women, millennials (18 - 29 year olds), Generation X-ers, African Americans, and Latinos - African Americans are the most certain that they will be coming out to vote this fall, followed by Latinos.
The Joint Center poll that was released yesterday is titled "Opinion of African Americans on Climate Change and 2010 Midterm Elections: The Results of a Multi-State Poll." It surveyed African American voters in four key states - Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas and South Carolina.
The poll found that African American voters believe climate change is a critical issue and it will impact how they vote in November. In every state, 3 out 4 respondents said that climate change is either very or somewhat important in choosing a US senator. Yesterday's poll follows a national survey by the Joint Center released last fall, which found that fifty-eight percent of African Americans said global warming is a major problem.
The most the most poignant finding from the Joint Center's four-state poll is that large majorities of African Americans in these states believe that everyone including the government and individuals can do something to reduce climate change. Specifically, they want Congress to enact climate change legislation.
I just spent seven days on the road talking with African American communities, mostly young people, in Indiana, Missouri and Arkansas about clean-energy, on the Hip Hop Caucus Clean Energy Now! Tour that we organized with the Alliance for Climate Protection's Repower America campaign and over thirty national coalition partners.
In two of Little Rock's Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Philander Smith College and Arkansas Baptist College - students rallied for clean-energy jobs and a clean-energy future for our planet.
In Columbia, MO football and track athletes from University of Missouri canvassed a low-income neighborhood distributing energy efficiency kits with materials that will help residents save money on their energy bills.
In St. Louis, MO I spoke during the Sunday worship at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, one of the fastest growing African American churches in the city, about fighting poverty and pollution at the same time by moving to a clean-energy economy.
In Indianapolis, IN we toured the Sheet Metal Workers Local 20 training facility, where workers were getting trained for clean-energy jobs, and then I spoke with Amos Brown at the local Radio-One station about the role Black radio is ready to play in the clean-energy movement.
As African Americans we understand, perhaps sometimes better than others, that change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, and that we must be long-suffering in our struggles for justice.
The historic 2008 presidential election was one victory, a very big one, but the Hip Hop Caucus Clean Energy Now! Tour and the Joint Center's Opinion of African Americans on climate change and 2010 Midterm Elections poll, prove that we have not taken our eyes off the ball in 2010. As an energized and organized electorate, who cares deeply about our economy, our communities, and our planet, if we do not see real action on climate change and new green jobs now, we will carry this issue with us to the ballot boxes come fall.
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is the President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus. He is a minister, community activist, and organizer, and one of the most influential people in Hip Hop political life. For more information on the Hip Hop Caucus visit www.hiphopcaucus.org and follow him on Twitter @RevYearwood.
African American voters, according to a poll released yesterday by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, are eager to stay informed about the upcoming mid-term elections and between seventy-four and eighty percent of African American voters say they are very likely to vote.
Complementing the Joint Center's finding is another poll done by Frank N. Magid Associates in February of this year, which found that out of key progressive base voters - women, millennials (18 - 29 year olds), Generation X-ers, African Americans, and Latinos - African Americans are the most certain that they will be coming out to vote this fall, followed by Latinos.
The Joint Center poll that was released yesterday is titled "Opinion of African Americans on Climate Change and 2010 Midterm Elections: The Results of a Multi-State Poll." It surveyed African American voters in four key states - Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas and South Carolina.
The poll found that African American voters believe climate change is a critical issue and it will impact how they vote in November. In every state, 3 out 4 respondents said that climate change is either very or somewhat important in choosing a US senator. Yesterday's poll follows a national survey by the Joint Center released last fall, which found that fifty-eight percent of African Americans said global warming is a major problem.
The most the most poignant finding from the Joint Center's four-state poll is that large majorities of African Americans in these states believe that everyone including the government and individuals can do something to reduce climate change. Specifically, they want Congress to enact climate change legislation.
I just spent seven days on the road talking with African American communities, mostly young people, in Indiana, Missouri and Arkansas about clean-energy, on the Hip Hop Caucus Clean Energy Now! Tour that we organized with the Alliance for Climate Protection's Repower America campaign and over thirty national coalition partners.
In two of Little Rock's Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Philander Smith College and Arkansas Baptist College - students rallied for clean-energy jobs and a clean-energy future for our planet.
In Columbia, MO football and track athletes from University of Missouri canvassed a low-income neighborhood distributing energy efficiency kits with materials that will help residents save money on their energy bills.
In St. Louis, MO I spoke during the Sunday worship at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, one of the fastest growing African American churches in the city, about fighting poverty and pollution at the same time by moving to a clean-energy economy.
In Indianapolis, IN we toured the Sheet Metal Workers Local 20 training facility, where workers were getting trained for clean-energy jobs, and then I spoke with Amos Brown at the local Radio-One station about the role Black radio is ready to play in the clean-energy movement.
As African Americans we understand, perhaps sometimes better than others, that change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, and that we must be long-suffering in our struggles for justice.
The historic 2008 presidential election was one victory, a very big one, but the Hip Hop Caucus Clean Energy Now! Tour and the Joint Center's Opinion of African Americans on climate change and 2010 Midterm Elections poll, prove that we have not taken our eyes off the ball in 2010. As an energized and organized electorate, who cares deeply about our economy, our communities, and our planet, if we do not see real action on climate change and new green jobs now, we will carry this issue with us to the ballot boxes come fall.
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is the President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus. He is a minister, community activist, and organizer, and one of the most influential people in Hip Hop political life. For more information on the Hip Hop Caucus visit www.hiphopcaucus.org and follow him on Twitter @RevYearwood.
Read more: Hip Hop Caucus, Green Jobs, Hip Hop, Black Voters, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Hip-Hop, African Americans, Climate Bill, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Where to Land Your Green Dream Home In LA
if you're in the market for a new home, one that's already been greened to order, look no further than some recent developments in Los Angeles.
Here's a list of new green home options in our fine city.
Here's a list of new green home options in our fine city.
Read more: Green Homes Los Angeles, Los Angeles Green Homes, Green Living, Green Homes, Los Angeles News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Avital Binshtock: Mixed Reviews: Our Trail Mix Taste Test Proves To Be Divisive
No one knows exactly when humans first paired nuts with dried fruit
and thought, "Gorp! I must have this as I journey forth afoot." We do
know, however, that the salty-sweet concoction now called trail mix
became commercially available in the 1960s and that makers have been
refining recipes ever since.
We recruited 15 hungry Sierra Club
staffers to blind-taste and rate several varieties, the stipulation being that all the brands we tasted had to be Earth-conscious in some way (and therefore turned out to be more expensive than your average trail mix). The
results were all over the map, so much so that we found only four worth
recommending. More than one mixture received the lowest score of 1
from some tasters and the highest score of 10 from others
-- proving that
one hiker's bird feed can be another's nectar. Here are Sierra magazine's top four brands.
GrandyOats: High Antioxidant Trail Mix
Score: 7.7 | $10 for 16 oz.
"Good if you like it simple and hearty" was the general impression
of this "crunchy," "mellow," "very wholesome" blend of "plump and
juicy" raisins, snappy almonds, huge walnut pieces, and mulberries. The
GrandyOats Summit Blend scored well too. Both mixes are certified
organic, and the company works with the American Hiking Society and other groups to maintain trails.
SunRidge Farms: Organic Hit the Trail Mix
Score: 7.2 | $4.59 for 8 oz.
"This made me feel like I was out hiking," one person said about
this "rustic" blend. Others noted its "perfect combination of flavors,"
"old-school trail mix" taste, "many types of crunch," and "nice
fruit-to-nut ratio." A few naysayers described it as "boring." The
family-owned SunRidge's Wild Ginger Harvest Mix also received high
marks. SunRidge is 70 percent solar-powered, uses biodiesel-fueled
delivery trucks, and recycles.
Global Gardens: Global Peace Snackmix
Score: 6.3 | $11 for 8 oz.
"This is genius. It gives a whole new meaning to trail mix," one
taster said about this "exotic," "bold" concoction. "Indian spices plus
chocolate plus coconut = delish!" But not everyone was a fan: More than
one called it "bizarre," and some complained about its "dirty
appearance." A good summary: "Looks like dog chow, tastes like
dessert." Global Gardens uses organic ingredients, sources locally, and
recycles extensively.
Navitas Naturals Trail Power: 3 Berries, Cacao Nibs, Cashews
Score: 5.2 | $6 for 4 oz.
People either loved or hated this one. Lovers: "Yes! Fruit, fruit,
and more fruit. It's a party in my mouth," and "Sexy and delicious!
Makes me feel wild and free." Haters: "It looks like what I was told
not to eat as a child," "last-resort food," "mushy texture," and
"missing nuts." Navitas Naturals is a certified-organic company that
gets ingredients directly from indigenous farmers around the world.
Read more: Hiking, Green Living, Outdoors, Sierra Magazine, Flavor, Gorp, Taste Test, Organic Food, Fruit, Nuts, Backpacking, Trail Mix, Environment, Food, Snacks, Ingredients, Sierra Club, Brands, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Avital Binshtock: Mixed Reviews: Our Trail Mix Taste Test Proves To Be Divisive
No one knows exactly when humans first paired nuts with dried fruit
and thought, "Gorp! I must have this as I journey forth afoot." We do
know, however, that the salty-sweet concoction now called trail mix
became commercially available in the 1960s and that makers have been
refining recipes ever since.
We recruited 15 hungry Sierra Club
staffers to blind-taste and rate several varieties, the stipulation being that all the brands we tasted had to be Earth-conscious in some way (and therefore turned out to be more expensive than your average trail mix). The
results were all over the map, so much so that we found only four worth
recommending. More than one mixture received the lowest score of 1
from some tasters and the highest score of 10 from others
-- proving that
one hiker's bird feed can be another's nectar. Here are Sierra magazine's top four brands.
GrandyOats: High Antioxidant Trail Mix
Score: 7.7 | $10 for 16 oz.
"Good if you like it simple and hearty" was the general impression
of this "crunchy," "mellow," "very wholesome" blend of "plump and
juicy" raisins, snappy almonds, huge walnut pieces, and mulberries. The
GrandyOats Summit Blend scored well too. Both mixes are certified
organic, and the company works with the American Hiking Society and other groups to maintain trails.
SunRidge Farms: Organic Hit the Trail Mix
Score: 7.2 | $4.59 for 8 oz.
"This made me feel like I was out hiking," one person said about
this "rustic" blend. Others noted its "perfect combination of flavors,"
"old-school trail mix" taste, "many types of crunch," and "nice
fruit-to-nut ratio." A few naysayers described it as "boring." The
family-owned SunRidge's Wild Ginger Harvest Mix also received high
marks. SunRidge is 70 percent solar-powered, uses biodiesel-fueled
delivery trucks, and recycles.
Global Gardens: Global Peace Snackmix
Score: 6.3 | $11 for 8 oz.
"This is genius. It gives a whole new meaning to trail mix," one
taster said about this "exotic," "bold" concoction. "Indian spices plus
chocolate plus coconut = delish!" But not everyone was a fan: More than
one called it "bizarre," and some complained about its "dirty
appearance." A good summary: "Looks like dog chow, tastes like
dessert." Global Gardens uses organic ingredients, sources locally, and
recycles extensively.
Navitas Naturals Trail Power: 3 Berries, Cacao Nibs, Cashews
Score: 5.2 | $6 for 4 oz.
People either loved or hated this one. Lovers: "Yes! Fruit, fruit,
and more fruit. It's a party in my mouth," and "Sexy and delicious!
Makes me feel wild and free." Haters: "It looks like what I was told
not to eat as a child," "last-resort food," "mushy texture," and
"missing nuts." Navitas Naturals is a certified-organic company that
gets ingredients directly from indigenous farmers around the world.
Read more: Hiking, Green Living, Outdoors, Sierra Magazine, Flavor, Gorp, Taste Test, Organic Food, Fruit, Nuts, Backpacking, Trail Mix, Environment, Food, Snacks, Ingredients, Sierra Club, Brands, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Kirsten Dirksen: Snow in Barcelona: Weather vs. Climate (VIDEO)
It took snow in my Mediterranean port city to force me to examine the difference between climate and weather.
Yesterday it snowed in Barcelona. This is a city where the average low temperature for the month is 9 degrees Celcius (48 °F). Not only did it snow, but the snow stuck to the ground and right at sea level (not just in the surrounding mountains).
I witnessed someone making a snow angel at the seaport and my daughter made her first snowball. The very unusual snowstorm threw the city into a bit of chaos: buses stopped running, schools shut down and some neighborhoods lost electricity.
El Niño probably played a hand in this. After all, it is the year for this phenomenon, a climate pattern that occurs every 3-7 years when fluctuations in Pacific-Ocean surface temperatures cause changes in worldwide weather. But despite being the year for a bit of craziness, it's still a very strange thing to see snow at sea level in Barcelona.
At first, I wanted to blame it on climate change; after all, scientists have predicted that more extreme weather events (droughts, hurricanes, snowstorms) will be the side effects of global warming. But crazy weather is not climate change. Weather is what happens today in my city and climate is what happens worldwide over a decade or a century.
Still, for most of this decade, I've seen mostly hot and dry weather. During the European heat wave of 2003 (in France there were over 14,000 heat-related deaths), I sweltered in Sevilla where a digital street sign read 45 °C (113 °F). Two years ago, Barcelona, during its worst drought in recorded history, actually began to import water by boat from France.
So while one day of snow in this Mediterranean city doesn't mean anything on a grand scale, it did force me to differentiate wacky weather from a changing climate.
In this video, I took out my camera in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, panning to the seaside and onto the terrace of faircompanies headquarters and home to document our day -- and my 3-year-old's first glimpse of snow. My husband, Barcelona native and faircompanies founder Nicolás Boullosa, muses on what it all means.
Read more: Drought, El NiñO, Green News, Climate, Heat Wave, Barcelona, Climate Change, Spain, Weather, Global Warming, Snowstorm, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Lori Pottinger: World Bank Gives South Africa Lumps of Coal
In case you didn't catch it, the World Bank's top official for Africa just thumbed her nose at the dozens of renewable energy companies lining up to build clean energy in Africa's dirtiest economy.
Obiageli Ezekwesili, the Bank's Vice President for Africa, defended a controversial $3.75-billion loan to build a massive coal plant in South Africa with this head-in-the-sand statement: "There is no viable alternative to safeguard South Africa's energy security at this particular time."
The quote came in an article titled (without irony) "Africa Ready for Energy Transformation." With that kind of transformation, the continent can look forward to many more decades of playing catch-up with the rest of the world.
Maybe Ms. Ezekwesili missed the news that South Africa could get 10-20% of its electricity from wind power in the short term (and up to 70% over time), by harvesting some of its 50,000 MW of potential (it currently has just one 5MW commercial wind farm in place). Or that the sunny nation also has huge potential for solar (one study shows 547 gigawatts in potential for grid-based concentrating solar plants, not to mention equally impressive potential for solar water heating and solar PV).
Writes a local columnist, "Research shows that in conjunction with energy efficiency measures, 75% our electricity could be generated by exploiting renewable energy sources by 2050, slashing our CO2 emissions by 54% below 1990 levels and making massive strides towards avoiding catastrophic climate change." But the national utility, Eskom, has been despairingly slow to move away from coal to embrace a green energy future.
Says South African professor Patrick Bond: "South Africa's five-fold increase in CO2 emissions since 1950 and 20% increase during the 1990s, can largely be blamed upon the attempt by state electricity company Eskom, the mining houses (led by Anglo American) and huge metals smelters (especially BHP Billiton) to brag of the world's cheapest electricity. Emitting 20 times the carbon tonnage per unit of economic output per person than even the United States, South African capital's reliance upon fossil fuels is scandalous."
Says extractive-industries activist Bobby Peek, of the South African group groundWork: "The South African government cannot continue to give away electricity below cost, to fire smelters which have little linkage to the South African economy. If the World Bank loan goes through, poor South Africans will have to bear the burden of Eskom's debt, and climate change will intensify." It's not just activists who are up in arms: the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce is calling for a national investigation into Eskom's "sweetheart deals" for big industrial energy users at the expense of everyone else.
The World Bank, whose job is to fund poverty alleviation, not cheap power for aluminum smelters, talks of Africa's energy sector "transforming" itself the way the telecoms industry did - a truly transformative sector-wide change that brought affordable mobile phone service across the continent. But the energy sector cannot transform itself if it looks only to megaprojects for salvation. The telecoms industry was a bottom-up transformation, one that bypassed big bureaucracies to create decentralized service one could buy in small packages, as needed. As long as Eskom and other African utilities are focusing more on mega-industries' needs, and giving them subsidized rates to keep them happy, there will be no transformation, nor a significant change in the ranks of the unconnected. Africa definitely needs an energy revolution, but it needs to focus on people power first.
Meanwhile, renewable energy developers are waiting in the wings for Eskom to show them the money in the form of power purchase agreements. Wind power developer Eddie O'Connor told Engineering News that South Africa was "pregnant with potential".
I guess the World Bank won't be the one to deliver that baby.
Obiageli Ezekwesili, the Bank's Vice President for Africa, defended a controversial $3.75-billion loan to build a massive coal plant in South Africa with this head-in-the-sand statement: "There is no viable alternative to safeguard South Africa's energy security at this particular time."
The quote came in an article titled (without irony) "Africa Ready for Energy Transformation." With that kind of transformation, the continent can look forward to many more decades of playing catch-up with the rest of the world.
Maybe Ms. Ezekwesili missed the news that South Africa could get 10-20% of its electricity from wind power in the short term (and up to 70% over time), by harvesting some of its 50,000 MW of potential (it currently has just one 5MW commercial wind farm in place). Or that the sunny nation also has huge potential for solar (one study shows 547 gigawatts in potential for grid-based concentrating solar plants, not to mention equally impressive potential for solar water heating and solar PV).
Writes a local columnist, "Research shows that in conjunction with energy efficiency measures, 75% our electricity could be generated by exploiting renewable energy sources by 2050, slashing our CO2 emissions by 54% below 1990 levels and making massive strides towards avoiding catastrophic climate change." But the national utility, Eskom, has been despairingly slow to move away from coal to embrace a green energy future.
Says South African professor Patrick Bond: "South Africa's five-fold increase in CO2 emissions since 1950 and 20% increase during the 1990s, can largely be blamed upon the attempt by state electricity company Eskom, the mining houses (led by Anglo American) and huge metals smelters (especially BHP Billiton) to brag of the world's cheapest electricity. Emitting 20 times the carbon tonnage per unit of economic output per person than even the United States, South African capital's reliance upon fossil fuels is scandalous."
Says extractive-industries activist Bobby Peek, of the South African group groundWork: "The South African government cannot continue to give away electricity below cost, to fire smelters which have little linkage to the South African economy. If the World Bank loan goes through, poor South Africans will have to bear the burden of Eskom's debt, and climate change will intensify." It's not just activists who are up in arms: the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce is calling for a national investigation into Eskom's "sweetheart deals" for big industrial energy users at the expense of everyone else.
The World Bank, whose job is to fund poverty alleviation, not cheap power for aluminum smelters, talks of Africa's energy sector "transforming" itself the way the telecoms industry did - a truly transformative sector-wide change that brought affordable mobile phone service across the continent. But the energy sector cannot transform itself if it looks only to megaprojects for salvation. The telecoms industry was a bottom-up transformation, one that bypassed big bureaucracies to create decentralized service one could buy in small packages, as needed. As long as Eskom and other African utilities are focusing more on mega-industries' needs, and giving them subsidized rates to keep them happy, there will be no transformation, nor a significant change in the ranks of the unconnected. Africa definitely needs an energy revolution, but it needs to focus on people power first.
Meanwhile, renewable energy developers are waiting in the wings for Eskom to show them the money in the form of power purchase agreements. Wind power developer Eddie O'Connor told Engineering News that South Africa was "pregnant with potential".
I guess the World Bank won't be the one to deliver that baby.
Read more: Renewable Energy, Extractive-Industry, International Rivers, World Bank, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
How toxic is dry cleaning?
I live around the corner from a dry cleaner, but there's also a "green" dry cleaner on the other side of town. Am I total jerk if I keep going to my regular spot?
[more ...]
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Categories: Greener Pastures
Gloria Reuben: Women Around the World Want a Clean Energy Future
I consider myself to be an international woman. Even though my history may not be an exotic one (I was born in Canada) I do think that makes me somewhat international. It's been 21 years since I've moved to the U.S. and it was just last year when I took the oath in front of the Star Spangled Banner and proclaimed my citizenship in this grand country.
Some may wonder why I waited so long. I wonder the same thing. But as that old cliché goes, everything in its time. And it was time.
I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it. Denial, fear, and miseducation were running rampant throughout communities and I had to do what I could, to help raise the level of awareness once again, years after I portrayed an HIV+ health care worker on ER.
These same elements -- denial, fear, miseducation -- are the underlying elements of the climate change issue. So, through my work with Waterkeeper Alliance (especially on the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining) and now my participation with the Alliance for Climate Protection, I find myself being an advocate for the necessity and urgency of passing comprehensive climate legislation.
Most recently I helped "book end" the Hip Hop Caucus/Alliance for Climate Protection Clean Energy Now! bus tour. Our mission was to increase the awareness of the climate crisis primarily in communities of color and young people. Not only did we help educate them on the issue, but we also let them know that this crisis is solvable! The first step in this urgent matter is to pass comprehensive climate legislation. We launched the tour in New Orleans at Dillard University, and it completed its six state tour in Washington D.C. It was a very exciting day!
Most recently I participated in the Global Creative Forum, a day of panels, meetings and discussions lead by the Secretary-General that opened up the conversation between the UN and leaders of the entertainment community. The goal was for collaboration between the two worlds -- how the real life drama of UN workers on the ground would offer compelling story lines for TV shows and films. The running theme was empowering women.
During the opening ceremony between Ban Ki-moon and Michael Douglas, the Secretary General was asked what two global issues he would like to see more of in TV and film. His reply was "HIV and climate change."
Perfect fit. During my panel discussion, I linked the storyline of "Jeanie Boulet" with my current activism on HIV. But mostly I talked about how it is the issue of climate change that will have the most impact on everything that was discussed that day, whether it be malaria, poverty, gender inequality, HIV, human trafficking, or the countless other life threatening issues that impact women around the globe. For you see, the ramifications of climate change exacerbate many of these challenges.
For instance, if a woman or her daughter has to walk 4 hours each way to gather clean drinking water, because of drought or flooding then the mother is less apt to get educated and the daughter is more likely to be married off even younger than what may be an expected marrying age in her community.
Or, if a family, village or community must move to a different area because the natural resources can no longer sustain them due to the impacts of climate change, and they have to move to a region or country that is already volatile because of political, ethnic, financial or religious strife, then those women are more susceptible to rape, or contracting HIV, or abduction.
So, it is my belief that climate change is the overlying issue that must be tackled first, if we are to handle the rest of it. There are women all across the globe that are taking this on, full force even amidst intense cultural and political resistance. And there certainly are women right here in America that are fierce in their commitment to break through the political ideologies and make effective change that will be a sign to the world that the United States is not denying the facts. We are not afraid of the truth. We are committed to taking the first step towards slowing down the climate crisis by passing comprehensive climate legislation.
The Alliance for Climate Protection has taken on a vital leadership role in this country, through our Repower America campaign. We are reaching out to all Americans...young, old, black, white, brown, male, female, Christian, Buddhist -- everyone! It's time to get educated about, and to take action for comprehensive climate legislation. All of us.
We are so close.
Often times the last lap is the hardest. You can see the finish line in the distance yet every step can feel like you're in one of those dreams, where the hallway gets longer and longer the faster you run towards the door at the end.
But this is no dream. This is the real world. Comprehensive climate legislation must be passed so that we can ensure a world where this and future generations can experience the bliss of breathing clean crisp air, while fishing in the Adirondacks... and being able to eat the fish afterwards. So that we can witness the awe and majesty of glaciers. So that we can experience the heights of spirituality while cresting a mountain and seeing colors and hearing sounds that man cannot replicate. These are the things that feed our souls and inspire us.
So, as your fellow American, and as an international woman, I ask you to please help me to honor the gifts we have been given. Do all that you can to let your Senators know that you want comprehensive climate legislation passed. And you want it now.
Gloria Reuben is a nationally known advocate for climate protection and a special advisor to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Some may wonder why I waited so long. I wonder the same thing. But as that old cliché goes, everything in its time. And it was time.
I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it. Denial, fear, and miseducation were running rampant throughout communities and I had to do what I could, to help raise the level of awareness once again, years after I portrayed an HIV+ health care worker on ER.
These same elements -- denial, fear, miseducation -- are the underlying elements of the climate change issue. So, through my work with Waterkeeper Alliance (especially on the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining) and now my participation with the Alliance for Climate Protection, I find myself being an advocate for the necessity and urgency of passing comprehensive climate legislation.
Most recently I helped "book end" the Hip Hop Caucus/Alliance for Climate Protection Clean Energy Now! bus tour. Our mission was to increase the awareness of the climate crisis primarily in communities of color and young people. Not only did we help educate them on the issue, but we also let them know that this crisis is solvable! The first step in this urgent matter is to pass comprehensive climate legislation. We launched the tour in New Orleans at Dillard University, and it completed its six state tour in Washington D.C. It was a very exciting day!
Most recently I participated in the Global Creative Forum, a day of panels, meetings and discussions lead by the Secretary-General that opened up the conversation between the UN and leaders of the entertainment community. The goal was for collaboration between the two worlds -- how the real life drama of UN workers on the ground would offer compelling story lines for TV shows and films. The running theme was empowering women.
During the opening ceremony between Ban Ki-moon and Michael Douglas, the Secretary General was asked what two global issues he would like to see more of in TV and film. His reply was "HIV and climate change."
Perfect fit. During my panel discussion, I linked the storyline of "Jeanie Boulet" with my current activism on HIV. But mostly I talked about how it is the issue of climate change that will have the most impact on everything that was discussed that day, whether it be malaria, poverty, gender inequality, HIV, human trafficking, or the countless other life threatening issues that impact women around the globe. For you see, the ramifications of climate change exacerbate many of these challenges.
For instance, if a woman or her daughter has to walk 4 hours each way to gather clean drinking water, because of drought or flooding then the mother is less apt to get educated and the daughter is more likely to be married off even younger than what may be an expected marrying age in her community.
Or, if a family, village or community must move to a different area because the natural resources can no longer sustain them due to the impacts of climate change, and they have to move to a region or country that is already volatile because of political, ethnic, financial or religious strife, then those women are more susceptible to rape, or contracting HIV, or abduction.
So, it is my belief that climate change is the overlying issue that must be tackled first, if we are to handle the rest of it. There are women all across the globe that are taking this on, full force even amidst intense cultural and political resistance. And there certainly are women right here in America that are fierce in their commitment to break through the political ideologies and make effective change that will be a sign to the world that the United States is not denying the facts. We are not afraid of the truth. We are committed to taking the first step towards slowing down the climate crisis by passing comprehensive climate legislation.
The Alliance for Climate Protection has taken on a vital leadership role in this country, through our Repower America campaign. We are reaching out to all Americans...young, old, black, white, brown, male, female, Christian, Buddhist -- everyone! It's time to get educated about, and to take action for comprehensive climate legislation. All of us.
We are so close.
Often times the last lap is the hardest. You can see the finish line in the distance yet every step can feel like you're in one of those dreams, where the hallway gets longer and longer the faster you run towards the door at the end.
But this is no dream. This is the real world. Comprehensive climate legislation must be passed so that we can ensure a world where this and future generations can experience the bliss of breathing clean crisp air, while fishing in the Adirondacks... and being able to eat the fish afterwards. So that we can witness the awe and majesty of glaciers. So that we can experience the heights of spirituality while cresting a mountain and seeing colors and hearing sounds that man cannot replicate. These are the things that feed our souls and inspire us.
So, as your fellow American, and as an international woman, I ask you to please help me to honor the gifts we have been given. Do all that you can to let your Senators know that you want comprehensive climate legislation passed. And you want it now.
Gloria Reuben is a nationally known advocate for climate protection and a special advisor to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Read more: Hip Hop Caucus, Clean Energy, International Womens Day, Alliance for Climate Protection, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Jeff Biggers: My Dream for Tom Friedman: No More Columns on "More Than 100 Percent Clean Coal"
You can't but help admire Tom Friedman's enthusiasm for technological innovations. The NY Times columnist and mega-bestselling author has probably interviewed more scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs about high tech clean energy ideas than anyone in the last few years.
But instead of interviewing only corporate CEO's and clean tech innovators, it's time for Friedman to come down to the dusty soil and interview coal miners, afflicted residents and farmers and children in the coalfields, and the millions of people who are paying the price for many of these so-called "clean energy" alternatives.
Friedman's latest column, "Dreaming the Possible Dream," is a startling reminder that in his haste to promote high tech solutions to dirty energy problems, he casually overlooks some of the darker consequences--especially when it comes to Big Coal.
Three years ago, Friedman celebrated his favorite green lump, in a hair-raising tour of Montana's brutal coal country with Gov. Brian Schweitzer. If only Friedman had toured with brilliant author Rick Bass, who gives a real tour of the nightmare of coal in Montana in his latest piece, High Plains Poison.
In this week's column, Friedman highlights the experiments of a clean energy start-up to convert CO2 (possibly from coal-fired plants) into calcium carbonate. Great idea, for sure. But then Friedman glibly quotes (and doesn't challenge) a "son of New Delhi' and a soon-to-be-bankrolled-by-Peabody Energy (largest coal company in the world) source about the innovation:
A source says the huge Peabody coal company will announce an investment in Calera next week. "If this works," said Khosla, "coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean. Not only would it not emit any CO2, but by producing clean water and cement as a byproduct it would also be taking all of the CO2 that goes into making those products out of the atmosphere."
Read that again: Coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean.
More than 100 percent clean?
Does Friedman realize how wrong, how offensive, and ultimately, how dangerous this kind of rhetoric can be in the clean energy debate?
Doesn't Friedman know that even New Dehli has declared its intent to become coal free?
How can Friedman celebrate any technology that would increase coal production, not decrease it--especially within the context of peak coal concerns, devastating underground longwall mining operations, devastating strip-mining and toxic coal processing discharges in watersheds in over 20 states, toxic coal ash, entrenched coalfield poverty, black lung disease and the myriad nightmare of "sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (Pm), nitrogen oxides, mercury, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health."
Perhaps Friedman and his Peabody-funded clean tech innovators missed the Physicians for Social Responsibility's recent study, "Coal's Assault on Human Health," that found:
Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the u.s.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. this conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle--mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes--impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the u.s. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.
Perhaps Friedman needs to interview one of the three coal miners who die daily from black lung disease--which is still on the rise in 2010!
In some ways, strangely enough, Thomas Friedman reminds me of Thomas Jefferson.
In 1786, while visiting England, Jefferson was astonished by the technological prowess of England's coal industry. He had often times witnessed England's great coal-fired navy that controlled the waterways. Author Daniel Defoe, a half century before Jefferson's first arrival in London, had written about the "wonder" of the "prodigious fleets of ships which come constantly in with coal."
But on this particular trip, Jefferson was the first American to make note of what historian James Parton hailed in his Life of Thomas Jefferson as the "most important piece of mechanical intelligence that pen ever recorded--the success of the Watt steam engine, by means of which 'a peck and a half of coal performs as much works as a horse in a day.' He [Jefferson] conversed at Paris with English industrialist Matthew Boulton, who was Watt's partner in the manufacture of the engines, and learned from his lips this astounding fact."
Coal could not only provide fire, but accelerated an energy-efficient power. It would fuel the industrial revolution and a nation.
Back in the States, Jefferson was soon investigating the dynamics of coal importation versus the quality of American coal. Although the steam engine and other technological advances were another generation away from taking hold in the United States, Jefferson forever shaped his frontier American policies with an eye perennially cast back across the water.
There were just a couple of problems with Jefferson's innovators--it required widespread slavery and Indian removal. Putting aside his stated belief that "money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations," Jefferson helped to launch a coal industry on the backs of African and African American slaves for a century of horrific accidents and disasters, and began the removal of Native Americans on coal-rich lands.
Instead of continuing the staggering human and environmental costs of coal for another century, you would think Tom Friedman--and our nation--would pursue truly clean energy alternatives today.
But instead of interviewing only corporate CEO's and clean tech innovators, it's time for Friedman to come down to the dusty soil and interview coal miners, afflicted residents and farmers and children in the coalfields, and the millions of people who are paying the price for many of these so-called "clean energy" alternatives.
Friedman's latest column, "Dreaming the Possible Dream," is a startling reminder that in his haste to promote high tech solutions to dirty energy problems, he casually overlooks some of the darker consequences--especially when it comes to Big Coal.
Three years ago, Friedman celebrated his favorite green lump, in a hair-raising tour of Montana's brutal coal country with Gov. Brian Schweitzer. If only Friedman had toured with brilliant author Rick Bass, who gives a real tour of the nightmare of coal in Montana in his latest piece, High Plains Poison.
In this week's column, Friedman highlights the experiments of a clean energy start-up to convert CO2 (possibly from coal-fired plants) into calcium carbonate. Great idea, for sure. But then Friedman glibly quotes (and doesn't challenge) a "son of New Delhi' and a soon-to-be-bankrolled-by-Peabody Energy (largest coal company in the world) source about the innovation:
A source says the huge Peabody coal company will announce an investment in Calera next week. "If this works," said Khosla, "coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean. Not only would it not emit any CO2, but by producing clean water and cement as a byproduct it would also be taking all of the CO2 that goes into making those products out of the atmosphere."
Read that again: Coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean.
More than 100 percent clean?
Does Friedman realize how wrong, how offensive, and ultimately, how dangerous this kind of rhetoric can be in the clean energy debate?
Doesn't Friedman know that even New Dehli has declared its intent to become coal free?
How can Friedman celebrate any technology that would increase coal production, not decrease it--especially within the context of peak coal concerns, devastating underground longwall mining operations, devastating strip-mining and toxic coal processing discharges in watersheds in over 20 states, toxic coal ash, entrenched coalfield poverty, black lung disease and the myriad nightmare of "sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (Pm), nitrogen oxides, mercury, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health."
Perhaps Friedman and his Peabody-funded clean tech innovators missed the Physicians for Social Responsibility's recent study, "Coal's Assault on Human Health," that found:
Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the u.s.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. this conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle--mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes--impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the u.s. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.
Perhaps Friedman needs to interview one of the three coal miners who die daily from black lung disease--which is still on the rise in 2010!
In some ways, strangely enough, Thomas Friedman reminds me of Thomas Jefferson.
In 1786, while visiting England, Jefferson was astonished by the technological prowess of England's coal industry. He had often times witnessed England's great coal-fired navy that controlled the waterways. Author Daniel Defoe, a half century before Jefferson's first arrival in London, had written about the "wonder" of the "prodigious fleets of ships which come constantly in with coal."
But on this particular trip, Jefferson was the first American to make note of what historian James Parton hailed in his Life of Thomas Jefferson as the "most important piece of mechanical intelligence that pen ever recorded--the success of the Watt steam engine, by means of which 'a peck and a half of coal performs as much works as a horse in a day.' He [Jefferson] conversed at Paris with English industrialist Matthew Boulton, who was Watt's partner in the manufacture of the engines, and learned from his lips this astounding fact."
Coal could not only provide fire, but accelerated an energy-efficient power. It would fuel the industrial revolution and a nation.
Back in the States, Jefferson was soon investigating the dynamics of coal importation versus the quality of American coal. Although the steam engine and other technological advances were another generation away from taking hold in the United States, Jefferson forever shaped his frontier American policies with an eye perennially cast back across the water.
There were just a couple of problems with Jefferson's innovators--it required widespread slavery and Indian removal. Putting aside his stated belief that "money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations," Jefferson helped to launch a coal industry on the backs of African and African American slaves for a century of horrific accidents and disasters, and began the removal of Native Americans on coal-rich lands.
Instead of continuing the staggering human and environmental costs of coal for another century, you would think Tom Friedman--and our nation--would pursue truly clean energy alternatives today.
Read more: India, Carbon Storage, Dirty Coal, Tom Friedman, Climate Change, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Clean Energy, Co2, Green Energy, Coal, Global Warming, California, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Jeff Biggers: My Dream for Tom Friedman: No More Columns on "More Than 100 Percent Clean Coal"
You can't but help admire Tom Friedman's enthusiasm for technological innovations. The NY Times columnist and mega-bestselling author has probably interviewed more scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs about high tech clean energy ideas than anyone in the last few years.
But instead of interviewing only corporate CEO's and clean tech innovators, it's time for Friedman to come down to the dusty soil and interview coal miners, afflicted residents and farmers and children in the coalfields, and the millions of people who are paying the price for many of these so-called "clean energy" alternatives.
Friedman's latest column, "Dreaming the Possible Dream," is a startling reminder that in his haste to promote high tech solutions to dirty energy problems, he casually overlooks some of the darker consequences--especially when it comes to Big Coal.
Three years ago, Friedman celebrated his favorite green lump, in a hair-raising tour of Montana's brutal coal country with Gov. Brian Schweitzer. If only Friedman had toured with brilliant author Rick Bass, who gives a real tour of the nightmare of coal in Montana in his latest piece, High Plains Poison.
In this week's column, Friedman highlights the experiments of a clean energy start-up to convert CO2 (possibly from coal-fired plants) into calcium carbonate. Great idea, for sure. But then Friedman glibly quotes (and doesn't challenge) a "son of New Delhi' and a soon-to-be-bankrolled-by-Peabody Energy (largest coal company in the world) source about the innovation:
A source says the huge Peabody coal company will announce an investment in Calera next week. "If this works," said Khosla, "coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean. Not only would it not emit any CO2, but by producing clean water and cement as a byproduct it would also be taking all of the CO2 that goes into making those products out of the atmosphere."
Read that again: Coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean.
More than 100 percent clean?
Does Friedman realize how wrong, how offensive, and ultimately, how dangerous this kind of rhetoric can be in the clean energy debate?
Doesn't Friedman know that even New Dehli has declared its intent to become coal free?
How can Friedman celebrate any technology that would increase coal production, not decrease it--especially within the context of peak coal concerns, devastating underground longwall mining operations, devastating strip-mining and toxic coal processing discharges in watersheds in over 20 states, toxic coal ash, entrenched coalfield poverty, black lung disease and the myriad nightmare of "sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (Pm), nitrogen oxides, mercury, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health."
Perhaps Friedman and his Peabody-funded clean tech innovators missed the Physicians for Social Responsibility's recent study, "Coal's Assault on Human Health," that found:
Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the u.s.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. this conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle--mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes--impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the u.s. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.
Perhaps Friedman needs to interview one of the three coal miners who die daily from black lung disease--which is still on the rise in 2010!
In some ways, strangely enough, Thomas Friedman reminds me of Thomas Jefferson.
In 1786, while visiting England, Jefferson was astonished by the technological prowess of England's coal industry. He had often times witnessed England's great coal-fired navy that controlled the waterways. Author Daniel Defoe, a half century before Jefferson's first arrival in London, had written about the "wonder" of the "prodigious fleets of ships which come constantly in with coal."
But on this particular trip, Jefferson was the first American to make note of what historian James Parton hailed in his Life of Thomas Jefferson as the "most important piece of mechanical intelligence that pen ever recorded--the success of the Watt steam engine, by means of which 'a peck and a half of coal performs as much works as a horse in a day.' He [Jefferson] conversed at Paris with English industrialist Matthew Boulton, who was Watt's partner in the manufacture of the engines, and learned from his lips this astounding fact."
Coal could not only provide fire, but accelerated an energy-efficient power. It would fuel the industrial revolution and a nation.
Back in the States, Jefferson was soon investigating the dynamics of coal importation versus the quality of American coal. Although the steam engine and other technological advances were another generation away from taking hold in the United States, Jefferson forever shaped his frontier American policies with an eye perennially cast back across the water.
There were just a couple of problems with Jefferson's innovators--it required widespread slavery and Indian removal. Putting aside his stated belief that "money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations," Jefferson helped to launch a coal industry on the backs of African and African American slaves for a century of horrific accidents and disasters, and began the removal of Native Americans on coal-rich lands.
Instead of continuing the staggering human and environmental costs of coal for another century, you would think Tom Friedman--and our nation--would pursue truly clean energy alternatives today.
But instead of interviewing only corporate CEO's and clean tech innovators, it's time for Friedman to come down to the dusty soil and interview coal miners, afflicted residents and farmers and children in the coalfields, and the millions of people who are paying the price for many of these so-called "clean energy" alternatives.
Friedman's latest column, "Dreaming the Possible Dream," is a startling reminder that in his haste to promote high tech solutions to dirty energy problems, he casually overlooks some of the darker consequences--especially when it comes to Big Coal.
Three years ago, Friedman celebrated his favorite green lump, in a hair-raising tour of Montana's brutal coal country with Gov. Brian Schweitzer. If only Friedman had toured with brilliant author Rick Bass, who gives a real tour of the nightmare of coal in Montana in his latest piece, High Plains Poison.
In this week's column, Friedman highlights the experiments of a clean energy start-up to convert CO2 (possibly from coal-fired plants) into calcium carbonate. Great idea, for sure. But then Friedman glibly quotes (and doesn't challenge) a "son of New Delhi' and a soon-to-be-bankrolled-by-Peabody Energy (largest coal company in the world) source about the innovation:
A source says the huge Peabody coal company will announce an investment in Calera next week. "If this works," said Khosla, "coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean. Not only would it not emit any CO2, but by producing clean water and cement as a byproduct it would also be taking all of the CO2 that goes into making those products out of the atmosphere."
Read that again: Coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean.
More than 100 percent clean?
Does Friedman realize how wrong, how offensive, and ultimately, how dangerous this kind of rhetoric can be in the clean energy debate?
Doesn't Friedman know that even New Dehli has declared its intent to become coal free?
How can Friedman celebrate any technology that would increase coal production, not decrease it--especially within the context of peak coal concerns, devastating underground longwall mining operations, devastating strip-mining and toxic coal processing discharges in watersheds in over 20 states, toxic coal ash, entrenched coalfield poverty, black lung disease and the myriad nightmare of "sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (Pm), nitrogen oxides, mercury, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health."
Perhaps Friedman and his Peabody-funded clean tech innovators missed the Physicians for Social Responsibility's recent study, "Coal's Assault on Human Health," that found:
Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the u.s.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. this conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle--mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes--impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the u.s. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.
Perhaps Friedman needs to interview one of the three coal miners who die daily from black lung disease--which is still on the rise in 2010!
In some ways, strangely enough, Thomas Friedman reminds me of Thomas Jefferson.
In 1786, while visiting England, Jefferson was astonished by the technological prowess of England's coal industry. He had often times witnessed England's great coal-fired navy that controlled the waterways. Author Daniel Defoe, a half century before Jefferson's first arrival in London, had written about the "wonder" of the "prodigious fleets of ships which come constantly in with coal."
But on this particular trip, Jefferson was the first American to make note of what historian James Parton hailed in his Life of Thomas Jefferson as the "most important piece of mechanical intelligence that pen ever recorded--the success of the Watt steam engine, by means of which 'a peck and a half of coal performs as much works as a horse in a day.' He [Jefferson] conversed at Paris with English industrialist Matthew Boulton, who was Watt's partner in the manufacture of the engines, and learned from his lips this astounding fact."
Coal could not only provide fire, but accelerated an energy-efficient power. It would fuel the industrial revolution and a nation.
Back in the States, Jefferson was soon investigating the dynamics of coal importation versus the quality of American coal. Although the steam engine and other technological advances were another generation away from taking hold in the United States, Jefferson forever shaped his frontier American policies with an eye perennially cast back across the water.
There were just a couple of problems with Jefferson's innovators--it required widespread slavery and Indian removal. Putting aside his stated belief that "money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations," Jefferson helped to launch a coal industry on the backs of African and African American slaves for a century of horrific accidents and disasters, and began the removal of Native Americans on coal-rich lands.
Instead of continuing the staggering human and environmental costs of coal for another century, you would think Tom Friedman--and our nation--would pursue truly clean energy alternatives today.
Read more: India, Carbon Storage, Dirty Coal, Tom Friedman, Climate Change, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Clean Energy, Co2, Green Energy, Coal, Global Warming, California, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
James Boyce: Lindsay Graham Is Absolutely Right.
Last month, the nationwide unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent. This is the most severe recession since WWII, and there is much discussion in Washington (not to mention just about every state capital in America) about what should be done to get the economy moving again. I personally believe the situation is even worse than it appears (consider the real unemployment rate and the draconian measures states like California are going to have to take to balancer their budgets and you have serious issues ahead.)
Those who have read my previous posts will be surprised to see me write that at least in this instance: we need to listen to Republican Senator Lindsay Graham (at least this quote)
"At the end of the day we need a comprehensive approach that would allow this country to jump start its economy and lead the world to a cleaner environment. Every day we wait in this nation China is going to eat our lunch."
The dominant albeit inaccurate media narrative is that the business community does not support legislation that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage clean, sustainable energy. This impression is understandable if you get your information on the opinion of the business community from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
As the Chamber of Commerce takes increasingly extreme stances on issues like the climate change, their claim to represent the business community in the United States is becoming less credible and the claim of their critics that they only represent the interest of large fossil fuel and legacy companies that pad their bank accounts more believable. The fact that the Chamber spent well over $100,000,000 lobbying last year proves to me, that the business of the Chamber at least, is pretty damm profitable.
As the Chamber buries its head in the sand and mimics the messaging of big oil and coal companies like a very well-compensated parrot (if they are spending $100 million+ on lobbying, imagine how much they are keeping) a large and growing number of businesses are seeking other associations to represent their views.
One great example, American Businesses for Clean Energy (ABCE), is a broad group of both large and small businesses whose membership recently 2,500 members. In only four months. Without, I might add, $100 million behind it.
The companies range from large to small from all industries, for example, a recent new member is Warner Music Group.
Businesses who join ABCE declare support for legislation that will lead America to a prosperous, clean energy future. These businesses represent what is really in America's best interest not only in the long term, but the immidiate term as well.
It is already clear that what little growth there is in the economy is coming from clean energy. Just Wednesday, the benefits of California's landmark climate bill, AB32, were on full display as the Governor Schwarzenegger welcomed a major new solar panel factory to the state.
An America that isn't dependent on foreign oil from unstable reigions and unfriendly nations is what we want to be. Where we not only compete but also lead in the next wave of the global economy - a wave based on clean technologies made in the USA, applied in the USA, and exported to other countries -- this is the vision we need to make a reality. The comprehensive climate and clean energy bill the U.S. Senate is an important next step in our economic recovery and it must be passed without delay.
If you are a business owner, I'd like to invite you to join ABCE. Stand and be counted as a business that supports a stronger America through smart legislation to reduce pollution and ignite investments in clean energy and secure job creation at home.
Congress needs to know that businesses in America want to transition to cleaner, more sustainable domestic sources of energy to help our economy, our national security, and yes, our environment. Join American Businesses for Clean Energy today.
Those who have read my previous posts will be surprised to see me write that at least in this instance: we need to listen to Republican Senator Lindsay Graham (at least this quote)
"At the end of the day we need a comprehensive approach that would allow this country to jump start its economy and lead the world to a cleaner environment. Every day we wait in this nation China is going to eat our lunch."
The dominant albeit inaccurate media narrative is that the business community does not support legislation that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage clean, sustainable energy. This impression is understandable if you get your information on the opinion of the business community from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
As the Chamber of Commerce takes increasingly extreme stances on issues like the climate change, their claim to represent the business community in the United States is becoming less credible and the claim of their critics that they only represent the interest of large fossil fuel and legacy companies that pad their bank accounts more believable. The fact that the Chamber spent well over $100,000,000 lobbying last year proves to me, that the business of the Chamber at least, is pretty damm profitable.
As the Chamber buries its head in the sand and mimics the messaging of big oil and coal companies like a very well-compensated parrot (if they are spending $100 million+ on lobbying, imagine how much they are keeping) a large and growing number of businesses are seeking other associations to represent their views.
One great example, American Businesses for Clean Energy (ABCE), is a broad group of both large and small businesses whose membership recently 2,500 members. In only four months. Without, I might add, $100 million behind it.
The companies range from large to small from all industries, for example, a recent new member is Warner Music Group.
Businesses who join ABCE declare support for legislation that will lead America to a prosperous, clean energy future. These businesses represent what is really in America's best interest not only in the long term, but the immidiate term as well.
It is already clear that what little growth there is in the economy is coming from clean energy. Just Wednesday, the benefits of California's landmark climate bill, AB32, were on full display as the Governor Schwarzenegger welcomed a major new solar panel factory to the state.
An America that isn't dependent on foreign oil from unstable reigions and unfriendly nations is what we want to be. Where we not only compete but also lead in the next wave of the global economy - a wave based on clean technologies made in the USA, applied in the USA, and exported to other countries -- this is the vision we need to make a reality. The comprehensive climate and clean energy bill the U.S. Senate is an important next step in our economic recovery and it must be passed without delay.
If you are a business owner, I'd like to invite you to join ABCE. Stand and be counted as a business that supports a stronger America through smart legislation to reduce pollution and ignite investments in clean energy and secure job creation at home.
Congress needs to know that businesses in America want to transition to cleaner, more sustainable domestic sources of energy to help our economy, our national security, and yes, our environment. Join American Businesses for Clean Energy today.
Read more: Clean Energy, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
China, India Join Copenhagen Accord, Last Major Emitters To Sign On
Read more: India, India China Copenhagen Accord, Climate Change, Copenhagen 2009, Copenhagen Accord, China, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Suzanne Ehlers: The U.N. Men's Club
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced an important new climate change financing group yesterday but, out of the 19 people named, no women were included. This is unfortunate because women will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change and are key to any mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The group is tasked with investigating potential sources of revenue to support developing countries in their efforts to cope with the impacts of climate change and shift to low-carbon development pathways. The Copenhagen negotiations in December called for $30 billion in climate financing for 2010-2012, ramping up to $100 billion annually by 2020.
The Secretary General's choices for the advisory group will bring intellectual energy and political gravitas. The group is chaired by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. It includes two additional heads of state, ministers of finance, and leaders of central banks. Taking part are financier and philanthropist George Soros and economist Sir Nicholas Stern. It includes equal representation between industrialized countries and developing countries. But what it does not include, is women.
The decision to leave women out is unfortunate and reflects a persistent bias in climate change decision-making roles. It is also unwise given the ultimate objective of the advisory group. This elite club will frame and shape climate change financial flows to the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. We know that women are disproportionately represented among both of these groups. We also know that women are frequently the decision-makers about household consumption, and represent an increasing share of wealth around the world. By leaving their voices out of the critical tasks before this advisory group, the Secretary General is closing out opportunities to explore the widest possible range of creative and innovative sources of revenue on the scale that is needed to address climate change.
The Secretary General himself has noted the need to include women in all aspects of decision-making on climate change. In a speech last September, he called on member states "to foster an environment where women are key decision-makers on climate change, and play an equally central role in carrying out these decisions.... We must do more to give greater say to women in addressing the climate challenge." So, why have they been ignored yet again?
The Secretary General and the co-chairs of the advisory group can correct this by expanding the membership of the group to include meaningful representation of female officials before the group's first meeting in London at the end of the month.
It is impossible to believe that the Secretary General couldn't find any women with expertise to participate. We hope the Secretary General reconsiders the membership of this important group.
*Cross-posted on Grist
The group is tasked with investigating potential sources of revenue to support developing countries in their efforts to cope with the impacts of climate change and shift to low-carbon development pathways. The Copenhagen negotiations in December called for $30 billion in climate financing for 2010-2012, ramping up to $100 billion annually by 2020.
The Secretary General's choices for the advisory group will bring intellectual energy and political gravitas. The group is chaired by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. It includes two additional heads of state, ministers of finance, and leaders of central banks. Taking part are financier and philanthropist George Soros and economist Sir Nicholas Stern. It includes equal representation between industrialized countries and developing countries. But what it does not include, is women.
The decision to leave women out is unfortunate and reflects a persistent bias in climate change decision-making roles. It is also unwise given the ultimate objective of the advisory group. This elite club will frame and shape climate change financial flows to the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. We know that women are disproportionately represented among both of these groups. We also know that women are frequently the decision-makers about household consumption, and represent an increasing share of wealth around the world. By leaving their voices out of the critical tasks before this advisory group, the Secretary General is closing out opportunities to explore the widest possible range of creative and innovative sources of revenue on the scale that is needed to address climate change.
The Secretary General himself has noted the need to include women in all aspects of decision-making on climate change. In a speech last September, he called on member states "to foster an environment where women are key decision-makers on climate change, and play an equally central role in carrying out these decisions.... We must do more to give greater say to women in addressing the climate challenge." So, why have they been ignored yet again?
The Secretary General and the co-chairs of the advisory group can correct this by expanding the membership of the group to include meaningful representation of female officials before the group's first meeting in London at the end of the month.
It is impossible to believe that the Secretary General couldn't find any women with expertise to participate. We hope the Secretary General reconsiders the membership of this important group.
*Cross-posted on Grist
Read more: Women, Climate Change, Copenhagen, Ban Ki-Moon, U.N., Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
'Doomsday' Seed Vault Holds World's Most Diverse Stock Of Food Crop Seed
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault officially opened Feb. 26, 2008, when it received its first shipment of 100 million seeds, originating from more than 100 different nations. In March 2010, its collection will top 500,000, and it will become the most diverse collection of food crop seeds anywhere on Earth.
Read more: Global Seed Vault, Seed Crop Cimate Change, Food Crop, Svalbard Norway, Doomsday Seed Vault, Climate Change, Food, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Svalbard Seed Vault, Food Crop Seeds, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
Annie Leonard: The Story of Stuff: Externalized Costs and the $4.99 Radio
Walking to work one day I wanted to listen to the news, so I popped into Radio Shack. I found a cute little green radio for $4.99. Pleased with my bargain, I stood in line to pay, but then started wondering: how could $4.99 cover the cost of extracting the raw materials, manufacturing the parts, assembling the radio, and getting it into my hands?
Whenever I go to buy something I get sidetracked, thinking of how it got here. It's an occupational hazard. I spent a decade traveling around the world, visiting the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where it goes when we don't want it any more. What I learned makes it impossible for me to look at anything and not see the journey it made through the global take-make-waste system.
The metal in that $4.99 radio was probably mined in Africa. The petroleum that went into the plastic probably was pumped from Iraq, and the plastic itself produced in China. The packaging came from forests in Brazil or Canada. Maybe the parts were then shipped across the ocean to Mexico, where some 15-year-old in a maquiladora assembled the radio. There it was put on a truck or a train and shipped to a distribution center in Southern California, then 500 miles north to my local store.
Four-ninety-nine? That wouldn't pay for the shelf space it took up until I came along, let alone the salary for the guy who helped me pick it out.
That's when I realized: I didn't pay for the radio. So who did?
A study currently underway for the United Nations is calculating the cost of pollution and other environmental damage caused by the 3,000 largest publicly held corporations in the world. The study, which will be published this summer, has found that the cost of environmental damage by these companies is $2.2 trillion, or more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable. This includes greenhouse gas emissions, other pollution, and water degradation. The final amount is likely to increase once additional costs -- like toxic waste -- are incorporated.
The Guardian newspaper wrote: "The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils." Economists call that externalizing costs, and it's how corporations hide the true cost of making and selling cheap stuff -- costs that are never recorded on the balance sheets and consumers never see. As David Korten writes in When Corporations Rule the World, "Externalized costs don't go away -- they are simply ignored by those who benefit from making the decisions that result in others incurring them."
What the UN report means is that a big chunk of the profits these big companies are making is due not paying the full cost of extraction, production, distribution and disposal. They are shoving a whole range of costs -- from pollution to climate change to water depletion -- onto us. Communities around the world are bearing the costs with degraded health, soil, water and climate change. That's just not fair.
Which takes us back to the original question: Who paid for that $4.99 radio? Some people paid with the loss of their natural resources. Some paid with the loss of clean air, with increased asthma and cancer rates. Some workers paid by having to cover their own health insurance. Kids in Africa paid with their future: a third of the school-age children in parts of the Congo now drop out to mine metals for electronics. All along the way, people pitched in, or were forced to, so I could buy a radio for $4.99 -- so cheap that if it broke I could just throw it away.
The UN report is a good first step at showing the global scale of externalized costs. If we're going to get our economy and environment back in order, a top priority must be forcing companies to pay the full costs of production. In economist-speak, this means internalizing externalities. That would be a strong motivator to get companies to invest in the cleaner, less polluting approaches and encourage all of us to avoid superfluous consumption.
If the true cost of that cotton t-shirt or iPod was included in the price tag, we might think twice before throwing it out and replacing it before we really need to. Think about that next time you look at those insanely low prices on so much consumer stuff -- who is really paying the full cost of producing all this? Not the companies that sell it.
Annie Leonard is author of The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession With Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities and Our Health - and a Vision for Change, just published by Free Press, please see www.storyofstuff.org for more information.
Whenever I go to buy something I get sidetracked, thinking of how it got here. It's an occupational hazard. I spent a decade traveling around the world, visiting the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where it goes when we don't want it any more. What I learned makes it impossible for me to look at anything and not see the journey it made through the global take-make-waste system.
The metal in that $4.99 radio was probably mined in Africa. The petroleum that went into the plastic probably was pumped from Iraq, and the plastic itself produced in China. The packaging came from forests in Brazil or Canada. Maybe the parts were then shipped across the ocean to Mexico, where some 15-year-old in a maquiladora assembled the radio. There it was put on a truck or a train and shipped to a distribution center in Southern California, then 500 miles north to my local store.
Four-ninety-nine? That wouldn't pay for the shelf space it took up until I came along, let alone the salary for the guy who helped me pick it out.
That's when I realized: I didn't pay for the radio. So who did?
A study currently underway for the United Nations is calculating the cost of pollution and other environmental damage caused by the 3,000 largest publicly held corporations in the world. The study, which will be published this summer, has found that the cost of environmental damage by these companies is $2.2 trillion, or more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable. This includes greenhouse gas emissions, other pollution, and water degradation. The final amount is likely to increase once additional costs -- like toxic waste -- are incorporated.
The Guardian newspaper wrote: "The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils." Economists call that externalizing costs, and it's how corporations hide the true cost of making and selling cheap stuff -- costs that are never recorded on the balance sheets and consumers never see. As David Korten writes in When Corporations Rule the World, "Externalized costs don't go away -- they are simply ignored by those who benefit from making the decisions that result in others incurring them."
What the UN report means is that a big chunk of the profits these big companies are making is due not paying the full cost of extraction, production, distribution and disposal. They are shoving a whole range of costs -- from pollution to climate change to water depletion -- onto us. Communities around the world are bearing the costs with degraded health, soil, water and climate change. That's just not fair.
Which takes us back to the original question: Who paid for that $4.99 radio? Some people paid with the loss of their natural resources. Some paid with the loss of clean air, with increased asthma and cancer rates. Some workers paid by having to cover their own health insurance. Kids in Africa paid with their future: a third of the school-age children in parts of the Congo now drop out to mine metals for electronics. All along the way, people pitched in, or were forced to, so I could buy a radio for $4.99 -- so cheap that if it broke I could just throw it away.
The UN report is a good first step at showing the global scale of externalized costs. If we're going to get our economy and environment back in order, a top priority must be forcing companies to pay the full costs of production. In economist-speak, this means internalizing externalities. That would be a strong motivator to get companies to invest in the cleaner, less polluting approaches and encourage all of us to avoid superfluous consumption.
If the true cost of that cotton t-shirt or iPod was included in the price tag, we might think twice before throwing it out and replacing it before we really need to. Think about that next time you look at those insanely low prices on so much consumer stuff -- who is really paying the full cost of producing all this? Not the companies that sell it.
Annie Leonard is author of The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession With Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities and Our Health - and a Vision for Change, just published by Free Press, please see www.storyofstuff.org for more information.
Read more: External-Costs, Manufacturing, Climate Change, Pollution, Global Warming, The Story of Stuff, Green News
Categories: Greener Pastures
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