Prometheus 6

The destruction of African agriculture
Walden Bello (2008-08-05)

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.

Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets.

African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.

A 'Dead Zone' in The Gulf of Mexico
Scientists Say Area That Cannot Support Some Marine Life Is Near Record Size
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; A02

The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, an area on the seabed with too little oxygen to support fish, shrimp, crabs and other forms of marine life, is nearly the largest on record this year, about 8,000 square miles, researchers said this week.

Only the churning effects of Hurricane Dolly last week, they said, prevented the dead zone from being the largest ever.

The problem of hypoxia -- very low levels of dissolved oxygen -- is a downstream effect of fertilizers used for agriculture in the Mississippi River watershed. Nitrogen is the major culprit, flowing into the Gulf and spurring the growth of algae. Animals called zooplankton eat the algae, excreting pellets that sink to the bottom like tiny stones. This organic matter decays in a process that depletes the water of oxygen.

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet
July 30, 2008 | Issue 44•31

Young Gore sets out for his new home, where the sky is clear, the water is clean, and there are no Republicans.

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail
By FELICITY BARRINGER

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

Poachers kill last four wild northern white rhinos
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

The last four northern white rhinoceros remaining in the wild are feared to have been killed for their horns by poachers and are now believed to be extinct in the wild. Only a few are left in captivity but they are difficult to breed and the number is so low that the species is regarded as biologically unviable.

The outlook for other types of rhino, including the endangered African black rhino, was more optimistic yesterday however. Figures released by the IUCN, the international conservation body that assesses threats to wildlife, showed that the number of wild rhinos had increased to its highest level for decades.

Despite the upward trend, there are still just eight survey countries where majorities now have a favorable view of the United States: Britain, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa, South Korea and Tanzania.

In fact, in one-third of the survey countries, more respondents see the United States more as an enemy than as a partner. This view is especially strong in Turkey, a NATO ally, and in Pakistan, a partner in Washington’s efforts to fight terrorism.

Global Image of U.S. Improves Slightly
By MEG BORTIN

PARIS — There is good news and bad news for President Bush as he pursues his valedictory tour of Europe this week, according to a new worldwide study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The image of the United States has improved slightly in many countries over the past year, the poll results show. But the new optimism appears to be driven largely by the fact that Mr. Bush will soon be leaving office.

Meanwhile, the survey showed that many across the globe blamed the United States at least in part for slumping economies and global warming.

Seriously. Get two truths for the price of one. 

Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

Why Bother?
By MICHAEL POLLAN

Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.

What do you mean, the planet doesn't work that way? 

The rest of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice. Scientists worry that it too may collapse. Larger, more dramatic ice collapses occurred in 2002 and 1995.

Warming Is Blamed for Collapse of Huge Chunk of Antarctic Ice
Wednesday, March 26, 2008; A02

A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even larger portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said yesterday.

Satellite images show a runaway 160-square-mile chunk of ice that broke off the Wilkins Ice Shelf in western Antarctica. The chunk started breaking off on Feb. 28. It had been there for perhaps 1,500 years.

The event is a result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan.

The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.

Not enough? Let's get rid of the evidence.

Under the plan, EPA closed physical access to three regional office libraries in Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas, and to the headquarters library and the Chemical Library in Washington. Operating hours were reduced at libraries in Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Boston.

It's like the environment is a Black woman and Bush is Ward Connerly. 

EPA Closure of Libraries Faulted For Curbing Access to Key Data
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 14, 2008; A15

A plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to close several of its 26 research libraries did not fully account for the impact on government staffers and the public, who rely on the libraries for hard-to-find environmental data, congressional investigators reported yesterday.

The report by the Government Accountability Office found that the EPA effort, begun in 2006 to comply with a $2 million funding cut sought by the White House, may have hurt access to materials and services in the 37-year-old library network.

Pollution Is Called a Byproduct of a ‘Clean’ Fuel
By BRENDA GOODMAN

MOUNDVILLE, Ala. — After residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River, which runs through their backyards, Mark Storey, a retired petroleum plant worker, hopped into his boat to follow it upstream to its source.

It turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama’s first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel.

“I’m all for the plant,” Mr. Storey said. “But I was really amazed that a plant like that would produce anything that could get into the river without taking the necessary precautions.”

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies - which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public - have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

You want to know what cities they tested and which drugs were found...and a list of small municipalities that don't every try to filter out the drugs?

AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water
By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD
Associated Press Writers

A vast array of pharmaceuticals (AP) -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs - and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen - in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

Hope you like pythons: Climate conditions in southern U.S. perfect for invasive constrictors' spread
Ted Alvarez on February 21, 2008 11:47 AM

Back around the turn of the century, some genius with a Burmese python realized his chosen pet was a lot more difficult to manage than a goldfish, so he dumped it in the Everglades. Meanwhile, another genius discovered the same thing and also released his or her Burmese python in the Everglades, and — voila! — by 2003, biologists with the park service confirmed an established breeding population of a 20-foot, 300-lb. snake.

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.

...Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

Tata is the only big firm he'll license to sell the car - and they are limited to India.

Five-seat concept car runs on air
By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News

An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.

The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a fibre-glass body, weighing just 350kg and could cost just over £2,500.

It will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into the chassis.

The tanks can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes - much quicker than a battery car.

Alternatively, it can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an on-board compressor will do the job.

Synthetic fuel concept to steal CO2 from air
By Nancy Ambrosiano
February 14, 2008

Green Freedom™ for carbon-neutral, sulfur-free fuel and chemical production

The Laboratory has developed a low-risk, transformational concept, called Green Freedom™, for large-scale production of carbon-neutral, sulfur-free fuels and organic chemicals from air and water.

Currently, the principal market for the Green Freedom production concept is fuel for vehicles and aircraft.

Why was it a bad idea?

An annual dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico has appeared earlier this year than in the past, suggesting it might be larger this summer.

The dead zone is created by spring runoff, which carries fertilizer and other nutrients into the Gulf. Phytoplankton blooms around river mouths spread. When the creatures die and sink to the bottom, their decomposition strips oxygen from the water, creating inhospitable conditions for other marine life.

The lack of oxygen is called hypoxia. 

Commercial Ocean Fertilization Project Halted
By Andrew C. Revkin

Planktos, the California company trying to turn a profit by fertilizing the ocean with iron dust, pulled the plug on planned field tests on Wednesday, citing a lack of funds. At the company’s Web site, planktos.com, a simple notice blamed the shutdown on a “highly effective disinformation campaign waged by anti-offset crusaders.”

The business plan had been to sell “carbon offset” credits earned by triggering blooms of phytoplankton that, in theory, would absorb a predictable amount of the climate-warming gas carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then sink to the seabed. The credits would be sold to companies or individuals trying to compensate for unavoidable emissions of carbon dioxide (from driving, flying, and the like).

David G. Hawkins, an energy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the new approach would have been a good move four years ago. “But to tout FutureGen for five years and then in the president’s last year pull the plug is just bait and switch,” he said.

A ‘Bold’ Step to Capture an Elusive Gas Falters
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

CAPTURING heat-trapping emissions from coal-fire power plants is on nearly every climate expert’s menu for a planet whose inhabitants all want a plugged-in lifestyle.

So there was much enthusiasm five years ago when the Bush administration said it would pursue “one of the boldest steps our nation has taken toward a pollution-free energy future” by building a commercial-scale coal-fire plant that would emit no carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas that makes those plants major contributors to global warming.

That bold step forward stumbled last week. With the budget of the so-called FutureGen project having nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion, and the government responsible for more than 70 percent of the eventual bill, the administration completely revamped the project.

Gasification and bacterial conversion are common methods of producing ethanol, but biofuel experts said Coskata is the first to combine them. Doing so, they said, merges the feedstock flexibility of gasification with the relatively low cost of bacterial conversion.

Tobey said Coskata's method generates more ethanol per ton of feedstock than corn-based ethanol and requires far less water, heat and pressure. Those cost savings allow it to turn, say, two bales of hay into five gallons of ethanol for less than $1 a gallon, the company said. Corn-based ethanol costs $1.40 a gallon to produce, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. 

Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn
By Chuck Squatriglia
01.24.08 | 1:00 PM

A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn't interfere with food supplies, company officials said.

Coskata, which is backed by General Motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol.

"It's not five years away, it's not 10 years away. It's affordable, and it's now," said Wes Bolsen, the company's vice president of business development.

E.P.A. Ignored Own Advice, Senator Says
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

The Environmental Protection Agency ignored the advice of its employees in rejecting California’s request to set rules on automotive carbon dioxide emissions, a senator says. “It’s clear that E.P.A.’s own experts told Administrator Stephen Johnson that California’s case for the waiver is solid,” Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, said Monday. Her committee has scheduled a hearing on Thursday on the agency’s decision last month denying California’s request to set emissions rules tougher than federal standards. Mr. Johnson said an energy bill signed by President Bush would achieve reductions in greenhouse gases through fuel-efficiency standards.

We use oil to make an astounding number of things...gasoline was a waste product that we switched to from ethanol because it was essentially free.

"Cost competitive, energy responsible cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass or from forestry waste like sawdust and wood chips requires a more complex refining process but it's worth the investment," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said at the Range Fuels facility groundbreaking in November. "Cellulosic ethanol contains more net energy and emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases than ethanol made from corn."

Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does
Midwestern farms prove switchgrass could be the right crop for producing ethanol to replace gasoline
By David Biello

Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas brought the U.S. closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass—a native North American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) that often grows on the borders of cropland naturally—and proving that it can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it.

With the rapid growth of green programs like carbon offsets, "there's a heightened potential for deception," said Deborah Platt Majoras, chairwoman of the commission.

FTC asks if carbon-offset money is well spent
By Louise Story
Story last modified Wed Jan 09 10:31:35 PST 2008

Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet.

But where exactly is that money going?

The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising claims, raised the question Tuesday in its first hearing in a series on green marketing, this one focusing on carbon offsets.

Wombats are wise. Listen to them.

I have to admit, the headline startled me until I remembered what's going on in Bali.

The Bush Adminstration is very, very good at obstruction. In fact, I can't think of anything it tried to obstruct that hasn't been at least severely slowed down (except premarital sex).

U.S. Strategy Succeeds in Bali
Climate Talks Turn to Efforts Other Than Emissions Targets
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 13, 2007; A24

BALI, Indonesia, Dec. 13 -- U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conceded Wednesday that the United States had succeeded in achieving one of its key objectives at the climate conference here, blocking a proposal that called on industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.

Hard Choices on Climate Can Wait for Next President, Aides Indicate
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 12, 2007; 5:33 AM

BALI, Indonesia, Dec. 11 -- U.S. officials at U.N. climate negotiations here said Tuesday that they would not embrace any overall binding goals for cutting global greenhouse gas emissions before President Bush leaves office, essentially putting off specific U.S. commitments until a new administration assumes power in 2009, according to several participants.

In closed-door meetings, senior U.S. climate negotiator Harlan L. Watson said the administration considers several aspects of a draft resolution circulated by U.N. officials unacceptable, according to an administration official and other negotiators. Watson specifically objected to language calling for a halt in the growth of worldwide emissions within 10 to 15 years, to be followed by measures that by 2050 would drive emissions down to less than half the 2000 levels.