Washington, DC -- Earlier this week the Bush administration made clear that they are in full Humpty Dumpty mode for the next 158 days. They propose to nullify the Endangered Species Act by drafting a rule specifying that new roads, pipelines, and other federal projects, which in the real world threaten species habitat, "by definition" do not count as a threat under the Act. This decision serves to remind us that the goal at the heart of their governing -- and at this point their exit strategy -- is to strip language of its meaning.
They're squeezing a lot of environmental destruction from this strategy. Several years ago, Team Bush decided that the word "waters" as in "waters of the United States" under the Clean Water Act meant only some waters. Streams and wetlands that were isolated didn't count. When good Republicans who liked to hunt and fish protested, Bush promised to fix the problem -- but even though Bush stopped short of issuing a formal rule, he told the EPA and the Army Corps not to enforce the Clean Water Act on this 20 percent of the nation's "waterways."
It's been very hard to document just how much damage this linguistic circumlocution -- "that depends on what you mean by water" -- has done. But this week Congressmen James Oberstar and Henry Waxman released information showing that from July 2006 to December 2007, the EPA completely dropped 305 enforcement cases and downgraded another 147. Why? Because the waters that were being polluted were not -- well, "waters." In another 63 cases, defendants simply used the confusion over Clean Water Act jurisdiction to counter the Agency's enforcement efforts.
So what's the bottom line? Any time you read in a media report that the Bush administration says that they are going to "redefine" something -- be very, very disgusted.
San Francisco -- 2008 is only half over and we have already seen multiple examples of the dangers people face from major storms and extreme weather. With unheard-of floods devastating communities throughout the Midwest and hundreds of fires burning in Northern California, we are repeatedly seeing calls for financial and physical rescue from natural disasters. And now hurricane season is upon us. With fresh, visceral images of past Category-5 hurricanes in our minds, many forecasters have predicted another active storm season for the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard regions.
There really can be no surprise. The World Bank Group reports the number of natural disasters is on the rise — from around 200 per year between 1987-1997, to double that between 2000-2006. Floods are occurring more often, and affecting a larger land area than they did 20 years ago. Large scale disasters — like the 2003 heat wave in Europe and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — are also happening with greater frequency. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the internationally recognized authority on global warming, has warned us that the carbon dioxide that's already in the atmosphere will cause the climate to change for the next 40 to 80 years and that more natural disasters are inevitable. Earlier this week, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, a recognized authority on global warming, linked this year's floods in the Midwest and wildfires in the West to global warming.
So what can we do to protect ourselves? Remember that protecting nature protects people. Development decisions directly affect our quality of life, but more than that, where we build and how we build will directly affect our health and safety. More than half the U.S. population lives near the coast. These communities, and others at risk, must prepare for the inevitable consequences of global warming.
This is why Sierra Club has partnered with PLAN!TNOW, the hurricane and storm-related disaster relief organization led by Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman. Together with PLAN!TNOW, the Sierra Club is distributing a series of Public Service Announcements designed to encourage people living in hurricane and severe storm affected areas to act now, before the next big storm hits, to reduce their risks and save lives and property. The PSAs also urge communities to protect and restore their first line of defense — the barrier islands and wetlands that serve as buffers against storm winds and sponges to soak up storm waters.
Protecting the environment can protect people, but only if people get prepared.
San Francisco -- It sometimes seems to take forever, but when the Sierra Club keeps at it, we can make progress against even the stubborn resistance of government and business to take your safety seriously. After years of denial, the EPA finally acceded to pressure from the Sierra Club, twenty-four other citizen organizations and 5,000 citizens and agreed to begin a four-part investigation into the toxic impacts of formaldehyde in our homes, schools, and offices. This is the agency's long-delayed response to the scandal revealed when the Sierra Club's testing programs revealed that a huge percentage of the trailers being used by the federal government to house victims of hurricane Katrina were poisoning them.
In another break for American health, a state judge ordered California to explain why it should not list PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) to the list of chemicals regulated by California's Proposition 65. PFOA is a chemical produced by DuPont and associated with Teflon and related anti-stick products. The Sierra Club, the United Steelworkers, and other organizations had repeatedly asked California to list PFOA under Prop 65 after the EPA indicated that it was a likely human carcinogen. But California stonewalled, refusing to act on PFOA or other, similar chemicals.
PFOA is a pervasive, synthetically produced compound used in consumer and industrial products, including many non-stick surfaces found on cookware and stain-resistant, durable, or all-weather clothing. It is prevalent in industries such as aerospace, automotive, building and construction, chemical processing, and electrical. The use of PFOAs in popular consumer and industrial products has led to near universal exposure to the chemical.
It's almost certainly in your body. And right now you have no way of knowing when you are inadvertently exposing yourself to more of it. But this ruling almost certainly means that, at least in California, manufacturers will have to warn you. And in past cases, their response has been -- surprise -- not to warn you, but to get the toxic chemical out of their products. It's shameful that a company like DuPont won't tell you on its own; it's shameful that the State of California will ignore the law to shield DuPont from having to tell you. Just as it was shameful that the EPA wouldn't take action on formaldehyde until we intervened.
But you are a little bit safer today, thanks to the power of citizen pressure. Democracy works -- you just have to work at it.
Cleveland, OH -- Not since the Sierra Club's first-ever Presidential endorsement, of Walter Mondale back in 1984, has a Club Presidential endorsement gotten the kind of media attention that our endorsement of Barack Obama received on Friday. Perhaps it was the unusual joint announcement with Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers and Allison Chin, President of the Sierra Club. Perhaps it was the centrality of our message -- that a new energy future is the key to our economy, our environment, and our security -- to this year's Presidential dialogue. Perhaps it was the fact that Senator John McCain, who had been sitting on the fence on environmental issues all year, picked last week to fall off -- firmly inside George Bush's Big Oil corral.
But the audience understood that Obama gets it -- that if Obama were in the White House there wouldn't be any doubt that we would be pushing wind, solar, and a host of new energy technologies to the forefront, instead of extending bloated subsidies to oil and nuclear -- that Obama believes that green jobs are the American future.
Senator Sherrod Brown was there, one of the people in the U.S. Senate who gets it best -- and the Ohio that two years ago sent Brown to the Senate and elected Ted Strickland as Governor, is poised to make Barack Obama our next President, and the first green leader of the 21st century.
Atlanta, GA -- In most states, it's illegal to connect your toilet so that it drains through your tap. But on a larger scale, the Bush EPA is prepared to declare that this is, in effect, allowed under the Clean Water Act. At least that's what the agency told a conference of water managers here will be permitted by a new agency rule.
According to a new agency rule, anyone -- an industry, water agency, municipality -- can take dirty water from any body of water, use it (as long as they don't make it dirtier), and then dump it into a clean body of water -- without applying for a Clean Water Act permit. The industry or agency dumping the water can take as much dirty water as it wants, move it as far as it wants, and dump it wherever it wants -- regardless of the impact on the body of water.
Environmentalists promptly promised to sue. Earth Justice attorney David Guest summed it up: "Obviously, we're very disappointed at this," since it allows dumping "regardless of how dirty the transferred water is and regardless of how clean the receiving water is." Guest added, "That's not what the Clean Water Act is for, and why EPA is exempting these types of water transfers, I don't know."
I'm going to hazard a guess. This issue first arose in Florida in 2005 when the EPA intervened to support the South Florida Water Management District's plans to dump polluted water from suburbs and sugar cane fields into the Everglades. Environmentalists and the Miccosukee Indian tribe had tried to protect the Everglades by blocking the dumping, but the EPA clearly wanted to make life easy for the sugar companies and developers.
I think EPA Administrator Steve Johnson has now decided to take that local favor he did for Big Sugar three years ago and extend it to all polluters as a parting gift before the Administration leaves office. Will the federal courts let him? Stay tuned.
New York -- I am bemused by today's first assignment -- ringing the opening bell for the New York Stock Exchange. After all, environmentalists and capitalism have an uneasy relationship, and for many of the companies listed on the Big Board their most memorable experience with the Sierra Club came in the form of papers served for environmental lawsuits we've brought. But companies are an essential part of the solution if we're going to reshape our economy along sustainable lines, and I'm here this morning along with Donald Knauss, the CEO of Clorox, to open trading on the Monday before Earth Day.
The Sierra Club has partnered with Clorox on a new line of natural, non-petroleum-based cleaning products: Greenworks. We've said for years that sustainability shouldn't be a luxury for only the affluent, and Greenworks is the first line of environmentally friendly cleaning products to be marketed -- and priced -- for the average American. Sustainability is one of the central themes that Knauss --who's been at the helm for only 18 months -- has established for Clorox, and Greenworks is a good beginning -- but the company recognizes it's got miles to go before it can complete its transformation. Still, Greenworks is a category-transforming beginning -- and perhaps this morning's bell may be the first indicator that corporate America -- or its innovators at least -- can move from greenwashing to green chemistry.
Capitalism, incidentally, survived its close encounter with the Sierra Club -- the Dow closed down only .19%.
San Francisco -- In 1972 when Americans discovered that for 40 years the U.S. government had been secretly experimenting with African-American patients in Tuskegee who were allowed to suffer from untreated syphilis, the nation was shamed and shocked. And we vowed: never again.
Sadly, we have so lost our pride as a nation that we have apparently also lost our ability to feel shame. The Environmental Protection Agency has just been exposed for treating lawns and vacant lots next to schools in poor, black neighborhoods with sewage sludge to find out whether it might bind to lead in the soil from chipped paint and car exhausts and ultimately reduce the risk to the children in these neighborhoods.
The families were assured that the sludge was safe -- something no one knows. And the ingredients that the EPA hoped would bind to the lead were phosphate and iron, both of which could have been applied much more safely as pure ingredients, not by spreading sludge which has lots of other toxic chemicals in it. More fundamentally, apparently EPA knew there was a health risk to these children -- but it used that risk as an excuse for an experiment instead of a cleanup.
That's not only bad ethics, it's bad science. And if the EPA wanted to do this experiment, it could obviously have found a location where children wouldn't be exposed -- perhaps at one of its laboratory sites. It's clear what the real agenda was -- find an excuse to start spreading sludge on the landscape, something the EPA has wanted to do for decades. And the poor kids were just experimental subjects.
Congress is holding hearings on how this happened -- but they need to look deep. The EPA's efforts to find plausible ways to dispose of sewage sludge go back before the Bush Administration, so on this topic there's no guarantee that having a new president will mean restoring the agency's original mission -- environmental and public health protection.
San Francisco -- For the past seven years, whenever ordinary people needed their government to stand up for them, you could be pretty sure the government would stay seated. As I have repeatedly noted, in spite of Karl Rove's claim that the Bush administration sought to reward the people who voted them in, their real allegiance was always to their donors. Main Street Bush voters have been repeatedly betrayed, whether by de-funding rural schools, slashing the safety net for veterans, weakening rural clean-air standards, or destroying the property values of small ranchers.
But now this assault on average Americans is being visibly beaten back. Last week a federal judge handed down one of the largest Clean Water Act fines in history, against Massey Energy, for thousands of Clean Water Act permit violations associated with its mountaintop-removal coal-mining operations. The agreement comes after the federal government found that Massey illegally dumped coal-slurry waste, rubble, wastewater, and other pollutants into Appalachian waterways. Score one for the people of Appalachia!
Then Congresswomen Hilda Solis and Senator Hilary Clinton introduced the Environmental Justice Renewal Act last Wednesday. Decades after the problem was first identified, ethnic communities and low-income populations are still disproportionately impacted by pollution, and this landmark legislation has the potential to ensure safe and healthy communities for everyone. Equally important, this legislation is a vehicle to inject into this year's election campaign the issue of ensuring that, as we develop a cleaner, greener, and more innovative economy, this time all Americans get to share in the benefits.
Meanwhile, as Americans shifted their focus to the economy, green jobs and a clean energy future were getting an unprecedented level of attention. The House version of "Economic Stimulus, Round 1" did not include a green jobs or energy component. But Senator Maria Cantwell and 32 other Senators sent a signal that they wanted a major green-energy component to the Senate version of any stimulus bill. And a Zogby poll done for the U.S. Conference of Mayors showed that Americans now see green energy and jobs as part of the nation's way out of its current economic crisis:
More than half [of the respondents] – 56 percent – believe their local government should "go green" and make environmentally friendly and energy efficient changes throughout their local community, even if they may have to significantly change their lifestyle. Majorities also believe that if their local communities adopt more environmentally friendly policies, there will be a positive impact on the local economy. They think green technology will create new local jobs [and] make their communities better places to live. Nearly half (48 percent) say they would be willing to pay higher taxes if the increase would fund environmentally friendly improvements in their community.
So Americans get it, judges get it, Congress is beginning to get it -- yes, that leaves the White House, but our job now is to make sure the next President gets it too.
Over the North Pacific, Singapore Airlines Flight 15 -- For the next four days, around the clock, the subject will be global warming as the UN Climate Conference in Bali reaches its climax. But while the Bush administration is getting tons of press for its stonewalling in Bali, back home it continues to carry out its quiet assault on the public health under the ever-loyal leadership of EPA Administrator Steve Johnson. This fall, five Nobel Laureates in chemistry and two score other prominent scientists protested Johnson's decision to approve the use of methyl iodide, a highly toxic neurotoxin and carcinogen which causes miscarriages, as a fumigant in strawberry fields. Johnson approved the chemical with the claim that, as long as farmers carefully followed the requirements for buffer zones and protective equipment, and as long as no one enters the fields for five days after application, it was safe.
Now, if there is one thing we know it is that while most farmers try to observe such requirements, some are always careless. What's more, unexpected gusts of wind, unusual rain events, and equipment failure can be counted on to happen. Currently, methyl iodide's use is limited to research laboratories, and it was the scientists who use the chemical in these very controlled circumstances who were most upset by the decision to okay it for widespread use. A strawberry field is not a laboratory, after all, and it shouldn't be used as one. In many parts of California houses abut fields, and, as any parent knows, young children are not deterred from taking a short cut to school by a sign reading, "Do not enter."
This isn't an isolated case. A few weeks ago, another EPA decision that put the public at risk had to be challenged in court by California and 11 other states. In this instance, the agency removed the requirement that those who use "small" but still potentially deadly quantities of highly toxic chemicals provide the surrounding community with information about their potential exposure. This weakening of the Right-to-Know regulations is being proposed because it will save industry money. How much money? According to EPA, the figure amounts to $6 million a year. Some 6700 chemical facilities will be effected, so, if you do the arithmetic, each facility will save less than $1,000. My guess is that writing and litigating this proposed loophole is likely to cost EPA and the taxpayers more than it saves the chemical industry, but Johnson is once again following the signals he gets from the White House to get rid of the environmental safety net.
And to remind us all that it wasn't supposed to be this way, in a recent issue of Science, editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy, who used to head the FDA, reported that toxicologist, mountaineer, and Sierra Club author, Arlene Blum has discovered that Tris, a fire retardant she managed to get banned from children's pajamas back in the 1970's because it was a mutagen, has cropped up again, this time as the second most widely used fire retardant in furniture foam, whence it can easily migrate into the bodies of children (and adults) who sit on furniture containing the substance.
Now, under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TOSCA), passed thirty years ago, EPA was supposed to test and remove from commerce such dangerous chemicals as Tris, but, instead, Johnson is putting his agency's resources into helping chemical plants conceal their use of toxic chemicals, and putting a new and obviously very dangerous fumigant into residential neighborhoods. Kennedy makes the point this way: "Congress should ... turn to the real task of reforming TOSCA by introducing a real proof-of-safety provision. That would stop the chemical industry from continuing to make consumer protection look like a game of whack-a-mole."
Note: The entry posted on Friday, December 7th contained a broken link, and it was an important one, as it asked readers to urge their Senators to support the energy legislation which passed last week in the House of Representatives. Your voice is still needed to help propel this crucial bill forward. We apologize for the error. Here is the correct link. Please don't hesitate to contact your Senators today.
Santa Barbara, CA - The smoke from the fires to the south made it hazy here, and folks with asthma were having a hard time breathing. But by this morning the weather had cooled, the Santa Anna winds were petering out, and mail service had been resumed in San Diego.
There are some pretty clear lessons:
First, we still don't get preparedness. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff conducted a faux press conference with his own staff as reporters, in which he attributed the federal government's improved performance to two and a half years of preparation since Katrina. To be fair, the federal response here was much better than after Katrina, but that doesn't mean our leaders have been doing their jobs. By not having a real press event Chertoff avoided some potentially awkward questions, dealing with such topics as these:
San Diego County has refused to create a true fire department -- because for its leaders, the ideology of small government trumps the reality of millions of people living in a chaparral-brush ecosystem which will unavoidably go through periodic high-intensity fires.
California state experts had recommended that the state buy 104 new fire trucks. Actual number ordered? 19.
The US Forest Service has once again been steadily shifting its budget from fire prevention investments to subsidizing timber sales. Since the 2001 fiscal year, federal funding for state and local community fire protection programs declined from over $148 million to $85 million proposed in fiscal 2008. (For comparison, back in 2001, the Sierra Club calculated that what was really needed was $2 billion a year!)
Second, we need to rethink our urban forms; that is, how we live on the land. Unlike, say, the pine forests of Lake Tahoe, which properly managed would have low-intensity, manageable fires, Southern California's brushlands are designed by nature to burn, and to burn hot. For the chaparral, conflagration is destiny. Yet our current practice is to build houses the livability of which depends on using that very chaparral to shield us the from our neighbors, along narrow winding roads where fire trucks can't maneuver and evacuation is perilous, across as much fire-destined landscape as we can.
Third, all of the estimates of the costs of runaway global warming, with the possible exception of the Stern Report, simply fail to take into account non-linear costs like those associated with increasingly severe fires. This week was a multi-billion dollar event. We can confidently predict that such events will occur in different parts of Southern California almost every year, but we can't predict where, or when, which makes it very expensive both to prepare for and respond to. Furthermore, parts of the country which historically haven't faced catastrophic wildfires will begin to as the climate heats up and soils and forests dry out. So we need to get serious about prevention -- about implementing the solutions we have to global warming -- faster, harder, more boldly.
It's not that we can't afford to; rather, we can't afford NOT to. Inaction will carry a heavy price: just look at this week's bills.
