do you like clean water? then, you better pay attention…

The Colorado River is the water (and power) source for millions of people; it provides power to 3 million homes, waters 15% of our agriculture in the West, and gives one in 12 people something to drink. That is why many are concerned about its sustainability and longevity as a provider. In fact, many do not know this, but one environmental group has called listed it as the “most endangered” waterway.

The reason: the region could contain more oil than Alaska’s Arctic Wildlife Refuge and people want to get at it. And, now.

Rulings under the Bush Administration have not helped, either.

In the eight years George W. Bush has been in office, the Colorado River watershed has seen more oil and gas drilling than at any time in the past 25 years. Uranium claims have reached a 10-year high. Last week the departing administration auctioned off an additional 359,000 acres of federal land for gas drilling projects outside Moab, Utah.

As still more land is leased for drilling and a last-minute change in federal rules has paved the way for water-intensive oil shale mining, politicians and water managers are now being forced to ask which is more valuable: energy or water.

 

“The decisions we are making today will be dictating how we will be living the rest of our lives,” said Jim Pokrandt, a spokesman with the Colorado River Conservation District, a state-run policy agency. “We may have reached mutually exclusive demands on our water supply.”

It is estimated that if all the oil and natural gas drilling that has been requested to be done, were in fact, done, the annual demand would be the equivalent of shutting off the water to all of Southern California for five days. Oil shale drilling is the equivalent of 79 days.

And then there is a question of contamination. The major mining companies claim that they adhere to the EPA guidelines, but those guidelines are getting less strict every day. Add on top of that, Uranium mining, and there is the potential of radioactive material infecting our water supply.

Scientists say some degree of pollution is inevitable, because mining sometimes uses toxic chemicals like cyanide. It also exposes naturally toxic metals that would otherwise remain deep underground.

Drilling for uranium creates pathways where raw, radioactive material can migrate into underground aquifers that drain into the river. Surface water can seep into the drill holes and mine shafts, picking up traces of uranium and then percolating into underground water sources. The milling process itself creates six pounds of radioactive and toxic waste — including ammonia, arsenic, lead and mercury — for every ounce of uranium production.

So, this has become a question of competition: food and water for the citizenry or lack of dependency on foreign oil. Not to put too much pressure on the Obama Adminsistration, but many are looking to them to undo the leniency allowed by his predecessor and to come up with a happy medium between the two.

The full article can be found at ProPublica.

i think i beg to differ

In an exit interview with Fox News, President Bush said that he “didn’t compromise his soul” during his administration. I know that this is going to ruffle some feathers, but I ask, what kind of person has a soul that has no issues with destroying nature and the people he is supposed to ‘lead’?

In the next month we are going to see countless examples as midnight rulings take affect under this administration. Of the 50 or so rulings expected, 36 of them directly affect the well being of our citizenry, either in aiding the destruction of our planet or in the allowance of toxins into our environment, affecting our health.

In another move that solidifies the Bush policy into the American public, it seems the EPA is undergoing a reorganization.

According to an employee of the ORD (EPA’s, Office of Research and Development) — who asked to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals — a department-wide staff meeting on 18 December reiterated plans mooted in recent months, including abandoning many small projects led by a single principal investigator (PI) in favour of broad, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary projects. It is not yet clear when these changes will take place.

The move is seen by many scientists not as sensible streamlining, but rather as an attempt to push through Bush administration objectives before the keys to the White House are passed to Obama.

ORD labs are in 13 locations around the United States and employ 1,900 people, including support staff. Much of their research focuses on the environment, human health and risk of exposure to pollutants.

I will leave it to you to make your own opinions about the move. Maybe, we should trust the EPA when they say that this is just a standard re-organization. Maybe we should look at the type of people who will lose their jobs in January 20th when Obama takes over and wonder what their motives may be. I do think it is very interesting timing.

The whole article is HERE.

recession… good?

Over the last few weeks, there has been report after report on how the recession is going to be bad for the “green” movement. Slate magazine begs to disagree.

The Green House: The recession is the best thing that could have happened to Barack Obama.

The feeling amongst many is that Obama believes that the “green” movement and setting the economy back on track go hand in hand. By tackling things like the infrastructure and energy, there is a double benefit of saving money due to efficiency, while also creating “green jobs” and getting people employed, again.

Newly Nobel-ed economist Paul Krugman has taken the lead in arguing that “the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply.” Normally, if you wanted to retrofit a building or weatherize a home, you’d have to get the money from somewhere. The usual way is to increase revenues or reduce spending. No longer. With the economy in freefall and interest rates as low as they can go, the only hope for recovery is to spend—and to err on the side of spending too much.

The best part: Even though we have to borrow money, eventually the government can pay itself back by printing more. Yes, that would devalue the currency and therefore would not be, to use a technical economic term, free. But the way Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research sees it, we have to spend the money now, anyway, to stimulate the economy: “It’s like what Keynes said: Even if we pay people to dig holes and fill them up again, it’s still good.” And if we’re going to spend, we might as well spend on something that’s going to save us—both economically and environmentally—in the long term.

The argument against all of this… spending more and deflating the value of the dollar may lead the way to the Amero and there is always the backlash of a growing economy hurting the green movement.

You can read the article from Slate Magazine, HERE

getting away with murder

New information alleges that Bush Administration officials broke the law. Shocker.

Bush’s Interior Department Interfered With Scientific Work To Limit Endangered Species Protection, via Huffington Post:

A high-ranking Interior Department official tainted nearly every decision made on the protection of endangered species over five years, a new inspector general report finds, concluding she exerted improper political interference on many more rulings than previously thought.

Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service, did pervasive harm to the department’s morale and integrity and may have risked the well-being of species with her agenda, Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney said in his report out Monday.

The Interior Department last year reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection, after an investigation found that MacDonald had applied political pressure in those cases. The new report looked at nearly two dozen other endangered species decisions not examined in the earlier report. It found MacDonald directly interfered with at least 13 decisions and indirectly affected at least two more.

It should be noted, she is NOT on the EPA’s Most Wanted list.

Bush Administration Covered Up 500+ Blocked Water Pollution Cases, via Environmental News Service:

The results of a Congressional investigation released today detail the collapse of the Clean Water Act enforcement program in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that clouded the question of whether rivers, streams and wetlands remain protected from pollution and development.

“One of the legacies of the Bush Administration is its failure to protect the safety and health of the nation’s waters,” said Chairman Waxman. “Our investigation reveals that the clean water program has been decimated as hundreds of enforcement cases have been dropped, downgraded, delayed, or never brought in the first place. We need to work with the new Administration to restore the effectiveness and integrity to this vital program.”

midnight ruling, 12/16/08

This is a good one….

Rule OK’s chemical tankers through cities, via the Christian Science Monitor.

The Bush administration has finalized a controversial regulation that will allow railroads to continue to ship dangerous chemicals through major cities.

Federal security officials have long considered railroad tankers full of such chemicals as chlorine or anhydrous ammonia to be potential weapons of mass destruction. If attacked by a terrorist or disturbed individual in the middle of a city they could cause thousands of deaths.

In this instance, the regulation leaves the decision of which route to take with deadly chemicals primarily in the hands of the railroads. Critics contend that this leaves too many communities vulnerable to a serious security threat and that state, local, and federal officials should have more input to ensure the chemicals are transported along the shortest, safest, and most secure routes.

I don’t think more needs to be said…. read the article

un climate summit

It has been difficult to report on what has been going on with the UN Climate Summit, primarily because it has been a negotiation, with no decisions, and many people looking to the U.S. to lead the way… and, we know how that would go with a Bush Administration representative.

That is why I was so pleased today when Bill McKibben posted an essay on Grist.org. I am a big fan of this man, which you know if you have followed this blog for a while. I admire his work, I think he is extremely well spoken, slightly provocative in his ideas, and definitely innovative.

Please take the time to read the article, which can be found HERE. Below are some excerpts:

In writing about the Ptolemaic Universe:

The Greek astronomers invented all sorts of flourishes to make the orbital calculations work: deferents and epicycles, equants and eccentrics, little wheels within wheels that preserved the theory for a very long time, more than a thousand years — till finally Copernicus came along with some new data and blew the whole thing up….In somewhat the same way, we’ve all agreed to suspend disbelief for a long time and keep pretending that the process to do something about global warming is working.

about the negotiations:

The language of these negotiations is numbers, and so the less obvious but more pragmatically powerful way to state it is: These interminable talks are designed to build a machine that would halt the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 to 550 parts per million. They’re so loaded with loopholes, and the timetables are so slow, that they probably wouldn’t accomplish even that, but that’s the goal. The theory is that the world we need is a 450 world, based on the science from five and 10 and 15 years ago.

and then… the truth:

And then, on the last day of the talks, Al Gore gave his speech, which drew everyone into the main conference hall. It was a good talk, but by far the longest and loudest applause came when he formally announced the new reality. “Even a goal of 450 parts per million, which seems so difficult today, is inadequate,” he said, adding that we “need to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million.” People erupted — probably not the Chinese and American delegations, and definitely not the Saudis and the Russians, but all the people who’d spent the last few years struggling with the idea that their work was getting increasingly off-the-point. It was a way of saying: We’ve been engaged in saving the treaty, not saving the world — and we’d rather save the world

and the conclusion:

They’ve said the world circles the sun. Now we have to proceed on that understanding. It won’t be easy — “political reality” says it’s impossible. But political reality is easier to change than scientific reality. Since we can’t change the laws of physics, we’re going to have to try and change the laws of man.

the not so good news

Today saw the release of many reports with data indicating that we are in a much worse predicament than expected. There is so much to write on, I thought it best to simply highlight the various articles.

Coral Reef Loss Suggests Global Extinction Event

The latest global coral reef assessment estimates that 19 percent of the world’s coral reefs are dead. Their major threats include warming sea-surface temperatures and expanding seawater acidification.

Zooxanthellae, the tiny organisms that give coral reefs their vibrant colors, are emigrating from their hosts in massive numbers as oceans heat up, killing themselves and the coral they leave behind – a process known as coral bleaching.

The demise of coral reefs, however, affects the entire ocean ecosystem – a quarter of all marine fish species reside in the reefs, according to The Nature Conservancy. In addition, IUCN estimates that 500 million people depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods.

Obama’s Global Warming Challenge: It’s A Ticking Time Bomb

“We’re out of time,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. “Things are going extinct.”

U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists’ worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.

The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.

Complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a Washington energy specialist and spokesman who represents coal-fired utilities and refineries, sees the poor economy as “a huge factor” that could stop everything. That’s because global warming efforts are aimed at restricting coal power, which is cheap. That would likely mean higher utility bills and more damage to ailing economies that depend on coal production, he said.

CLIMATE CHANGE: “Things Happen Much Faster in the Arctic”

In just a few summers from now, the Arctic Ocean will lose its protective cover of ice for the first time in a million years, according to some experts attending the International Arctic Change conference here.

A summer ice-free Arctic wasn’t due for another 50 to 70 years under the worst-case climate change scenarios examined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Such a “dramatic and serious loss of sea ice will affect everyone on the planet,” Barber told IPS.

i HATE this

World Famous Wildlife Sanctuary in Zimbabwe Faces Closure

It’s not just closure. Closure implies being closed for business. Due to lack of donations to keep the sanctuary running, and lack of food, in part because of the political climate of the country… the animals are starving. There is not enough food.

The wildlife orphanage, which has been featured in several documentaries promoting tourism in Zimbabwe, relies on donations to provide sanctuary to the 300 animals from different species that have been orphaned, abandoned, injured, born in captivity or brought up unsuccessfully as pets.

Chipangali is home to lions, leopards, baboons, snakes, owls, and crocodiles, among other animal species.

you can go to PlanetSave to get more information.

i don’t need to explain

The Bush administration on Thursday eliminated one step in the effort to protect endangered species, as it will now allow federal agencies to bypass consultation with government scientists about whether new rules will harm threatened wildlife.

The U.S. Interior Department issued a rule that allows agencies to avoid consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service if Interior concludes that any actions they fund would not harm an endangered species.

science is back!

News leaked late this evening that President-elect Obama picked his energy and environment staff and will be announcing the information at a press conference tomorrow.

Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Chu will be the head the Department of Energy, Lisa Jackson will be the head of the EPA, Carol Browner has been picked as the energy “czar” and Nancy Sutley will lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

• Chu was one of three scientists who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997 for work in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. He’s a professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004, where he has pushed for research into alternative energy as a way to combat global warming.

It is the oldest of the Energy Department’s national laboratories, doing only unclassified work, and in recent years under Chu has been at the center of research into biofuels and solar technologies.

• Jackson, who will be the first black person to lead the EPA, is a former New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner who worked at the federal agency for 16 years, including under Browner when she was Clinton’s EPA chief. Jackson is a co-chairman of Obama’s EPA transition team, and currently serves as chief of staff to New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

A New Orleans native, she grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward, the area stricken by Hurricane Katrina. She holds chemical engineering degrees from Tulane University and Princeton University.

• Browner, who served as EPA chief for eight years under Clinton, will become Obama’s go-to person in the White House overseeing energy issues, an area expected to include the environment and climate matters. Now chair of the National Audubon Society and on the boards of several other environmental groups, Browner has been leading the Obama transition’s working group on energy and environment.

• Sutley, the deputy mayor for energy and environment in Los Angeles and the mayor’s representative on the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, is the first prominent member of the gay and lesbian community to earn a senior role in Obama’s new administration.

She was an EPA official during the Clinton administration, including being a special assistant to the EPA administrator in Washington. She also previously served on the California State Water Resources Control Board and was an energy adviser to former Gov. Gray Davis.

Obama continues to impress with his appointments. In this move, a clear statement has been made to American public that science is back in the White House.

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