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* [2006-03-28] Agent Orange victims gather to seek justice
Reuters

* [2006-03-24] 'No one cause' for Gulf illness
BBC News

* [2006-03-12] Alaska hit by 'massive' oil spill
BBC News

October 31, 2005

Tax preference for paper bags instead of plastic would be counterproductive, etc

...the Scottish parliamentary committee on environment and rural development took evidence on whether a bill to introduce a 10p levy on supermarket carrier bags would be a good thing.

No, it wouldn't, said the plastic bag makers. No surprise and, well they would say that, but my impression was that their vigorous defence of the plastics industry might make some committee members think again.

Much of their evidence was based on independent research published at the end of August. This suggested that, contrary to what we might think looking round any town, plastic bags account for only 1 per cent of litter. They also account for only 0.3 per cent of landfill waste. The research also suggested that plastic bags would simply be replaced by paper ones, which take up much more landfill space.

Their evidence that a tax on plastic carriers would simply increase the amount of individual packaging on, say, fruit, increase the amount of landfill, not reduce litter, and that it hadn't worked in Ireland or Australia was quite persuasive.

They were also insistent about the efficiency of their industry and its commitment to recycling. The relevance of that to farmers, and to some other rural industries, is that Scottish farms produce more than 12,000 tonnes a year of waste plastic.

If they get that to us, John Langlands, chief executive of British Polythene Industries, told the committee, we can handle it. Langlands also pointed out that, of 335,000 tonnes of plastic products his firm produce each year, only about 1,000 tonnes is carrier bags.

Remember, he added, plastic is a by-product of the oil industry and our insatiable desire for fuel. If companies like his weren't making useful products, waste from oil would simply be burnt off. That would do rather more harm to the environment than - my interpretation - a few thousand plastic bags flapping about.

[Source: Fordyce Maxwell, "Right royal debate over tax on plastic bag", Scotsman (United Kingdom), October 31, 2005]

Sept 7, 2005

Worldwide horror of 1-million suicides a year

A suicide is commited somewhere in the world every 40 seconds -- equivalent to a million deaths a year -- according to a report released yesterday by World Health Organization. And a suicide attempt is made every three seconds. Suicide accounts for almost half of all violent deaths in the world. The 6,003 suicides in UK and Ireland in 2003 represented three times the number of road deaths. [Source: London (UK) Daily Express, "Worldwide horror of one million suicides a year", Sept 7, 2005, p. 17]

Childhood asthma

Asthma rates among children have quadrupled since the Seventies, with more than 1.4-million young sufferers across the UK today (Ref: Dec 2004 report from Cardiff U researchers). [Source: London (UK) Daily Express, "25,000 children with asthma warned not to take ibuprofen", Sept 7, 2005, p. 17]

Smokers risk going blind

Smokers are twice as likely to lose their sight in later life compared with non-smokers. The link between the habit and Age-Related Macular Degeneration, a form of blindness, is as strong as that between smoking and lung cancer. Research shows that up to 18,000 people in Britain today have lost their sight because of their habit, while at least 30,000 are suffering serious eye problems. It is thought people who smoke run at least double the risk of contracting the eye condition, which is often untreatable, with heavy smokers the most vulnerable.

Fears about smoking and blindness were first raised 10 years ago, but the research by Manchester U and Bolton Hospital NHS Trust is the first to establish a compelling link by using the same measures that proved smoking and lung cancer were connected.

Smoking starves cells in the retina of oxygen, causing some to die prematurely and central vision to deteriorate.

One in twenty nonsmokers suffers from AMD in their 80s, but the figure rises to one in eight among smokers. About 400,000 people suffer from AMD in the UK -- the biggest cause of sight loss

Today's report highlights that quitting can have major benefits in the long and short term. Research has shown that people who stopped twenty years ago have a similar risk of developing AMD as nonsmokers and the risk starts to decrease after ten years of not smoking.

"The message is simple", said Steve Wingard, the Royal National Institute for the Blind's head of public policy -- "Do not take up smoking, and if you do, stop. People also need to make sure they have regular eye tests to check their eyes are healthy. An eye test can save your sight."

A survey of more than 1,000 people found that only seven per cent know that AMD affected the eyes. But seven out of ten smokers say they would either stop smoking permanently or cut down if they thought their habit could harm their eyesight. Cigarette packets in Australia and New Zealand have recently begun carrying warnings, leading to a big increase in the number of people quitting.

[Source: Adrian Lee, "Smokers Risk Going Blind: New warning as tens of thousands suffer from eye complaints", London (UK) Daily Express, Sept 7, 2005]

February 14, 2005

London's fee for vehicles entering central city has reduced congestion by 30%

Two years ago the city [London, UK] began charging 5 pounds (about $9) per vehicle to enter the city's downtown business core during the daytime. Hunt said the plan resulted in a "massive shift" toward public transportation and a 30 percent decline in congestion.

Moreover, he said, it has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 19 percent, and public support for the plan - originally scant - is now about 70 percent. London is even considering expanding the zone, he said.

[Source: Lord Julian Hunt (prof- climate modeling, University College, London; and a member of UK government's House of Lords) quoted by Eric Berger, "2 cities, 2 reactions to climate change; Few can imagine London's method used in Houston", Houston Chronicle, February 14, 2005]

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June 5, 2004

U.S. not as much of a pariah amongst renewable energy conferees as before

The timing of this week's renewable energy conference in Bonn could not have been more propitious. Crude oil prices surged to highs this week after a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, while ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries held an emergency meeting to lift production quotas.

The United States kept a low profile, sending an assistant energy secretary, while most countries sent ministers. It promised research money to make solar and geothermal energy more cost-efficient.

If the United States is not a favored guest at such gatherings, however, it is also no longer a pariah. Most delegates avoided criticizing the Bush administration -- at least outside of hallway chatter -- and German officials said the American delegation played a "constructive role."

[Source: Mark Landler (NYT Business/Financial Desk), "China Pledges to Increase Use Of Alternative Energy Sources", The New York Times, June 5, 2004, p. C3]

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January 19, 2004

Zion - proposed sewage-sludge burning: is it worth less than 2 pounds of mercury air pollution/yr

The North Shore Sanitary District provides water treatment for more than 300,000 customers in towns north of Chicago. The District has been burying sludge -- a byproduct of sewage treatment -- in a landfill near Zion. For years, the District has been trying to build a "sludge-burning" plant which uses a drying and heating process to convert sludge into a glasslike byproduct used in road construction. "We believe this is the future for solid waste disposal," said Brian Jensen, the sanitary district's general manager. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is expected to decide by April whether to issue a permit for the proposed $40 million plant. The district already has invested millions of dollars in the plant and bought equipment. AP reports that Zion officials want the plant built. They say it would help a new industrial complex that could generate millions of dollars in property-tax revenue and help the area recover from the closure of the ComEd nuclear plant in 1998. "This could help us clean up an entire area that could be used for a light manufacturing complex," Zion Mayor Lane Harrison said.

However, there is the matter of air pollution, including mercury emissions. State EPA rules would permit 92 pounds of mercury to be emitted each year. Officials from the sanitary district say the plant would emit less than 2 pounds of mercury annually. Opponents of the plant are concerned with even the two pounds per year, but also note that the process has not been used much in the US yet. "Our air already is polluted, and this only adds to it - and with some fairly nasty things," said Lake County Conservation Alliance board member Susan Zingle. Environmentalists have vowed to keep fighting even if the state EPA issues the permit.

[Source: Associated Press, "Environmentalists fight sludge-burning plant in Zion", January 19, 2004 11:05 am ET]

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FEDERAL ACID RAIN PROGRAM HAS BEEN A HUGE SUCCESS

... [T]he Environmental Protection Agency's "acid rain" control program... runs on market principles with notable success. It has reduced power plant sulfur emissions by two-thirds since it began operating, at a cost one-third of industry estimates and half of government estimates, while relying on a government administrative staff of twenty.

Traditional regulatory programs have often expanded beyond their original boundaries through the invisible "mission creep" of many small decisions. Market-based programs have not. They specify up front the costs they will impose; the legislature and all affected parties see what is being authorized. And since they operate through a small set of clearly defined rules, it is hard to expand their scope surreptitiously. The EPA has not materially changed the framework of the acid rain control program since Congress defined it in 1990, though the Bush administration is now asking Congress to expand it.

[Source: William F. Pedersen (lawyer, DC), "Inside the Bush Greenhouse: There's a contradiction at the heart of the administration's global warming policy -- but it's fixable", The Weekly Standard, v9 n7, October 27, 2003, published October 21, 2003]

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Congress has twice allowed the PTC to expire. First, Congress allowed it to expire in July 1999 and failed to reinstate it until December 1999. As a result, wind energy investments plummeted from 661 megawatts installed in 1999 to only 53 megawatts in 2000. Inexplicably, the Congress let the PTC expire a second time--at the end of 2001--and did not reinstate the credit until March of the following year. This failure contributed to another major drop in wind investments dropping from 1696 megawatts installed in 2001 to just 410 megawatts in 2002. Today, wind energy industry officials tell me that if we do not extend the production tax credit by mid-year, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity would be lost. And this shouldn't come as a surprise to my Senate colleagues. For many years, wind energy developers have told us that one of the major stumbling blocks to greater deployment of new wind technologies is the continued uncertainty surrounding the availability of the wind energy production tax credit.

[Source: Mr. DORGAN, comments about S. 488, Congressional Record, February 27, 2003, p. S2974]

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Over 2,000 megawatts of new wind energy capacity has been added to the nation's electricity grid in just the last 2 years. This new wind generation has pumped over $2 billion into the struggling economy.

[Source: Mr. DORGAN, comments about S. 488, Congressional Record, February 27, 2003, p. S2974]

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Since passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 the nation's gross domestic product has increased 160 percent, energy consumption has increased 45 percent, and population has increased 38 percent. At the same time we've reduced emissions by 29 percent.

[Source: Mr. INHOFE, comments about the Clear Skies Initiative, S. 485, Congressional Record, February 27, 2003, p. S2943]

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Mercury is a dangerous toxin present in coal, which is burned to produce 65 percent of the nation's electricity, other fossil fuels, and various household and industrial products.

[Source: Ms. SNOWE, comments about Omnibus Mercury Reduction Act of 2003, S. 484, Congressional Record, February 27, 2003, p. S2943]

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When mercury is burned, fine particles are released and carried by precipitation back to earth, contaminating water bodies, fish, and wildlife, and ultimately posing a threat to humans. Nationwide, 39 States have issued warnings about eating certain fish in more than 50,000 bodies of water, up from 27 States in 1993.

While Maine ranks 49th among the least-polluting States in terms of mercury emissions, nearly all of its lakes are under health advisories due to airborne mercury pollution transported in air currents from other States.

[Source: Ms. SNOWE, comments about Omnibus Mercury Reduction Act of 2003, S. 484, Congressional Record, February 27, 2003, p. S2943]

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According to the EPA, an estimated 30 tons of mercury emissions per year come from municipal waste combustors because of the presence of mercury-containing items such as fluorescent lamps, fever thermometers, thermostats, and switches.

... The most effective way to reduce mercury emissions from incinerators is to reduce the volume of mercury- containing items before they reach the incinerator.

[Source: Ms. SNOWE, comments about Omnibus Mercury Reduction Act of 2003, S. 484, Congressional Record, February 27, 2003, p. S2943]

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...[F]ossil fuel-fired electric generating facilities, consisting of facilities fueled by coal, fuel oil, and natural gas, produce nearly 2/3 of the electricity generated in the United States...

[Source: proposed text of Clean Air Planning Act of 2003 (S. 843), introduced by Mr. CARPER, Congressional Record, April 9, 2003, p. S5077]

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...[F]ossil fuel-fired electric generating facilities produce approximately 2/3 of the total sulfur dioxide emissions, 1/3 of the total nitrogen oxides emissions, 1/3 of the total carbon dioxide emissions, and 1/3 of the total mercury emissions, in the United States...

[Source: proposed text of Clean Air Planning Act of 2003 (S. 843), introduced by Mr. CARPER, Congressional Record, April 9, 2003, p. S5077]

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Today, compared with 1990 when the last Clean Air Act amendments were enacted, sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired powerplants are down 35 percent, nitrogen oxide emissions are down 26 percent, and particulate emissions are down 28 percent. Over this same period, coal-fired powerplants increased their generation of electricity by almost 20 percent. In other words, over the past decade coal-fired powerplants have steadily increased their electricity output while steadily reducing pollution.

[Souce: Marianne Lamont Horinko (acting EPA administrator), keynote speech at American Bar Association/Environment Section meeting, October 9, 2003 -- http://yosemite.epa.gov/administrator/speeches.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972852562e7004dc686/667cab307bd5ce8f85256dbf0060d1db?OpenDocument

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... Bush has already made substantial positive improvements in several environmental categories and has only been bashed as his thanks... [In] phony pessimism..., ...Democrats and environmentalists [have been] relentlessly exaggerating the case against Bush's environmental policies... [These] Bush-bashers [ought to] drop the phony pretense that everything is getting worse.

[Source: Gregg Easterbrook (senior editor at New Republic and visiting fellow at Brookings Institution), "Bush and the environment: a bum rap; The president gets bashed, when his record is actually fairly good and pollution is dropping", Newsday, October 19, 2003, p. A30]

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... all forms of air pollution except greenhouse gases have been declining for decades. Overall, air pollution is down 48 percent since 1970, although the American population has risen substantially during that period. Acid rain is down 41 percent since 1980. Nitrogen oxide emissions, which contribute to smog, are down 33 percent since 1990. All forms of air pollution except greenhouse gases declined under President Bill Clinton and continue to decline under Bush.

Commentators are outraged about changes that Bush made in the "new source rule" that governs aging power plants in the Midwest. They don't add that emissions from those very facilities have been declining steadily - a 40-percent reduction since 1980, even as electricity production in the Midwest has increased. The worst-case analysis is that Bush's changes only will slow the rate of decline.

... Meanwhile, Bush has implemented three major environmental reforms for which he has received zero credit. He ordered that diesel fuel be reformulated to reduce its inherent pollution content - over the howls of his natural constituency, Big Oil. He ordered that new diesel trucks and buses meet significantly stricter emissions standards - over the howls of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, in whose Illinois district sits an enormous diesel-engine factory. Third, he imposed new emissions standards on a range of previously unregulated machines - construction vehicles, outboard motors, all-terrain vehicles and others.

Taken together, Bush's three dramatic anti-pollution decisions should lead to the biggest pollution reduction since the 1991 Clean Air Act amendments.

Why is the Bush environmental record so relentlessly distorted? Because it could ruin the instant-doomsday script. Democrats are bashing the president for political reasons, just as Republicans bashed Clinton for political reasons. Environmental lobbies raise money better in an atmosphere of panic, and so they are exaggerating the case against Bush.

The media haven't helped. The New York Times, for example, has had the "new source rule" on its front page a half-dozen times, endlessly and inaccurately implying that pollution from Midwestern power plants is rising. The Los Angeles Times, too, spins most environmental news negatively. A recent Los Angeles Times story, for instance, decried in its first paragraph "the highest levels of smog in Southern California in six years" - even though that's just a blip against a baseline of steady, spectacular decline. From 1999 to this summer, Los Angeles recorded just one Stage One ozone alert; 20 years ago, from 1979 to summer 1983, Los Angeles had 467 Stage One alerts.

[Source: Gregg Easterbrook (senior editor at New Republic and visiting fellow at Brookings Institution), "Bush and the environment: a bum rap; The president gets bashed, when his record is actually fairly good and pollution is dropping", Newsday, October 19, 2003, p. A30]

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... all forms of water pollution have been declining for decades. In 1970, one-third of lakes and rivers met the Clean Water Act definition of "safe for fishing and swimming"; today almost two-thirds do.

[Source: Gregg Easterbrook (senior editor at New Republic and visiting fellow at Brookings Institution), "Bush and the environment: a bum rap; The president gets bashed, when his record is actually fairly good and pollution is dropping", Newsday, October 19, 2003, p. A30]

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Toxic emissions from industry have declined 50 percent since the mid-1980s.

[Source: Gregg Easterbrook (senior editor at New Republic and visiting fellow at Brookings Institution), "Bush and the environment: a bum rap; The president gets bashed, when his record is actually fairly good and pollution is dropping", Newsday, October 19, 2003, p. A30]

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The forested acreage of the United States has been expanding, not contracting, for more than a decade, and continues to expand under Bush.

... But hasn't the president imposed an evil new forest policy designed to encourage logging? First, it's not so clear that logging is a bad idea; it's one of the few endlessly sustainable industries. Also, Bush's new forest policy leaves most important decisions to local managers from the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Although they may abuse their new discretion, it's also possible they will use it wisely. For that reason the effect of Bush's forest policy is hard to project - but regardless, something had to be done to reduce the wildfires plaguing the West.

[Source: Gregg Easterbrook (senior editor at New Republic and visiting fellow at Brookings Institution), "Bush and the environment: a bum rap; The president gets bashed, when his record is actually fairly good and pollution is dropping", Newsday, October 19, 2003, p. A30]

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No U.S. animal species has fallen extinct since full implementation of the Endangered Species Act in the late 1970s, while population trend figures for several important imperiled species are positive.

[Source: Gregg Easterbrook (senior editor at New Republic and visiting fellow at Brookings Institution), "Bush and the environment: a bum rap; The president gets bashed, when his record is actually fairly good and pollution is dropping", Newsday, October 19, 2003, p. A30]

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GLASS RECYCLING - PULVERIZE FOR USE AS SAND IN BEACH RESTORATION

Amber Bethel, "Interview with new director of Office of Environmental Affairs for New Orleans", New Orleans CityBusiness, October 13, 2003

Yarrow Etheredge, ... [a] 32-year-old environmental attorney is [the] new ... director of the Office of Environmental Affairs for New Orleans. Etheredge formerly served as the Environmental Protection Agency's Brownfields assistant for the city...

Etheredge is ... researching a bottle-pulverizing program that could assist in coastal restoration ... Explain the bottle-pulverizing idea you've been researching.

I've done a lot of research on bottle-pulverizing technology that can take these bottles, grind them down and fulfill our needs for sand. This would be a city-owned business using waste where we'd be able to save some money and make some money.

Has this technology been used in other places?

Similar technology is used already but in a less advanced way - the current technology uses only clear glass and we're looking at using all glass. In Hawaii they're doing it for beach restoration. In Madagascar, they use all the bottles from the cruise ships. In Atlanta it's used for roadbeds - that's where our glass is going now. We want to keep glass here instead of shipping it to Atlanta.