Stories of environmental interest this week:
International and National:
Monsanto appeals judge’s order to uproot genetically modified sugar beets; Obama administration reverses offshore oil-exploration plans; 4200 sq miles reclosed in gulf of Mexico following find of oil tainted shrimp; Walking to stores ‘damages planet more than going by car’; Waste-pickers demand first dibs on rubbish; When life gives you hydrocarbons, make energy, Kyoto CO2 limits not to be extended this year.
California News:
HSU professor scales redwoods for clues to global warming; Kettleman City toxic waste facility fined for violations; Jerry Brown’s Hobson’s choice; new study criticizes high-speed rail effort.
Monsanto appeals judge’s order to uproot genetically modified sugar beets
Monsanto has appealed Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White, in San Francisco to rip out 256 acres of genetically modified sugar beets in Oregon and Arizona. The sugar beets had been be used for the 2012 crop seed production. The planting of sugar beet seedlings, or stecklings, that was authorized in September under permits issued by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).
“With due respect, we believe the court’s action overlooked the factual evidence presented that no harm would be caused by these plantings, and is plainly inconsistent with the established law as recently announced by the U.S. Supreme Court,” said David Snively, general counsel for Monsanto. “We intend to seek an immediate stay of this ruling and appeal to the Court of Appeals.”
Roundup Ready sugar beets have been planted in North America for the past four years. After careful review, USDA issued permits for this additional seed production in accordance with the June, 2010 Supreme Court ruling that clearly authorizes such actions. The District Court’s decision would impose unnecessary costs on the seed producers when there has been no demonstrated harm to plaintiffs or risk to the environment associated with the seed production in the multiple years that the crop has been successfully planted and harvested.
More than 1 million acres of Roundup Ready sugar beet varieties have been planted in 10 U.S. states and in two Canadian provinces. In North America, roughly 95 percent of the 2010 sugar beet acreage was safely planted with Roundup Ready varieties. Sugar beet growers have confirmed that Roundup Ready sugar beets reduce impacts on the environment and make their operations more efficient and productive. Alternative technologies require more applications of pesticides, with greater impacts on the environment and lower productivity on farms.
Using herbicide resistant crops reduces tillage, which reduces soil erosion and nutrient erosion.
Source(s):
- Monsanto Co.: Monsanto to Appeal District Court Ruling on Roundup Ready® Sugar Beets 2012 Seed Production
- Los Angeles Times: Judge orders genetically modified sugar beets pulled
Obama administration reverses offshore oil-exploration plans
Citing the lessons of the BP oil spill, the Obama administration has decided not to allow oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as part of their next five-year drilling plan.
“We are adjusting our strategy in areas where there are no active leases,” the Washington Post quotes Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar as telling reporters in a phone call, adding that the administration has decided “not expand to new areas at this time” and instead “focus and expand our critical resources on areas that are currently active” when it comes to oil and gas drilling.
The Obama Administration had already walked back some of the GW Bush Administration’s oil and gas exploration plans, as explained in this backgrounder.
Source(s):
- Los Angeles Times – Obama administration withdraws offshore drilling plan)
- The Washington Post, Obama administration reimposes offshore oil drilling ban
4200 sq miles reclosed in gulf of Mexico following find of oil tainted shrimp
Citing an “abundance of caution,” federal officials shut down more than 4,213 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters off Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to royal red shrimpingafter a commercial shrimper, having hauled in his catch of the deep water shrimp, discovered tar balls in his net. Fishing for royal red shrimp is conducted by pulling fishing nets across the bottom of the ocean floor. The tar balls found in the catch may have been entrained in the net as it was dragged along the seafloor.
“We are taking this situation seriously. This fishery is the only trawl fishery that operates at the deep depths where the tar balls were found and we have not received reports of any other gear or fishery interactions with tar balls.” said Roy Crabtree, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast region. “Our primary concerns are public safety and ensuring the integrity of the Gulf’s seafood supply.
Other fishing at shallower depths in this area has not turned up any tar balls and is thus not impacted by this closure. The fisherman who reported this catch had trawled for brown shrimp in shallow waters in a different portion of the area to be closed earlier in the day without seeing tar balls.
Source(s):
- The New York Times, Fishing Banned in Stretch of Gulf
- NOAA media release, NOAA Closes 4,200 Square Miles of Gulf Waters to Royal Red Shrimping
Walking to stores ‘damages planet more than going by car’
What will Ed Begley Jr. make of this one? The man bites dog aspect of the story comes from the greater amount of fuel needed to grow our food today. Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, did the math and says “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere. If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.” Mr Goodall is no Chicago school economist; he is a Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon.
Yes! Finally, mathematical proof that being a couch potato is good for the environment.
Source(s):
At climate summit in Cancún, waste-pickers demand first dibs on rubbish
We humans dump more than 2,100,000,000 metric tons of unwanted waste each year. Once dumped, the options of what to do with it are limited; it can be: burned, buried, or reclaimed through recycling or reuse.
Many throughout the world make their livelihoods reclaiming trash. Some trash-gleaners went to climate change summit in Cancún to lobby for priority over burning waste. John Vidal at Britain’s Guardian newspaper said trash-pickers from ten countries unfurled banners near the press area that read, ‘¡Paran la incineration!’ (Stop incineration!). Shouting (in Spanish) “‘If you mess with me, you mess with all of us.’ They accused incinerator companies of wasting energy, destroying millions of jobs around the world, increasing emissions, undermining recycling and causing the death and injury of workers.”
Source(s):
- The Economist, The rubbish mountains grow
- guardian.co.uk, Cancún climate change summit: the Zapatistas are coming
When life gives you hydrocarbons, make energy
A pair of Ugandan men collect trash, including plastic bags, and turn it into fuel for those needing cheap gas. “Fred Kyagulanyi and James Sendikwanawa used to get up in the dark to dump bags of rubbish in Kampala‘s suburbs,” says the story in Britain’s Guardian. The two friends, have “honed a technique to produce what Kyagulanyi calls ‘non-fossil fuel,’ made from refuse such as plastic bottles, polythene bags and organic waste…’We use all types of waste from plants, plastic bottles, shoe soles and all different types of organic waste,’ Kyagulanyi says. ‘We use all that waste to make fuel that runs petrol engines,’ adds Sendikwanawa, who is known as ‘engineer’ in Ndegye Township due to his day job: fixing biogas digesters on pit latrines.”
Source(s):
Guardian, Ugandans turn Kampala’s uncollected garbage into versatile fuel
Kyoto CO2 limits not to be extended this year
The United Nations envoy leading climate talks ruled out extending greenhouse gas limits in the Kyoto Protocol this year, leaving in place doubts about the future of a $2.7 billion a year part of the carbon market.
Source(s):
News from the California Republic
HSU professor scales redwoods for clues to global warming
Professor of Forestry at Humboldt State University, Stephen Sillett wants to learn the affects of global warming on redwoods. And, he climbs the giant to find out. To begin getting answers on how redwoods react to changing conditions, scientists are carefully measuring and implanting hundreds of high-tech sensors among coast redwoods at 16 sites ranging from Jedediah Smith State Park northeast of Crescent City to the Sierras to Big Sur. The research project is funded by Save the Redwoods, a San Francisco-based conservation group founded in 1918, with support from Ken Fisher, a billionaire money manager and redwoods advocate who graduated from Humboldt State University.
Source(s):
- Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, Study: How tall trees could fare in climate change
- San Francisco Chronicle, Scientists look to redwoods for answers on warming
EPA fines Kettleman City toxic waste facility $302,000 for violations
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency levied a $302,100 fine Tuesday against Chemical Waste Management Inc., whichoperates a toxic waste dump near a Central California farming community beset by unexplained birth defects, saying the company failed to properly manage carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. EPA tests at the landfill showed PCB concentrations of 440 parts per million, nearly nine times the level allowed under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Source(s):
- Los Angeles Times, Kettleman City toxic waste facility fined for violations
Arsenic: It’s what’s for dinner
Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.
“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”
Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.
“We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new — building parts of itself out of arsenic,” said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team’s lead scientist. “If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”
The team chose to explore Mono Lake because of its unusual chemistry, especially its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic. This chemistry is in part a result of Mono Lake’s isolation from its sources of fresh water for 50 years.
The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth’s evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research. These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.
Source(s):
The little high-speed engine that couldn’t
This week, as the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) was approving the first segment for construction near Fresno – and receiving more criticism from advocates of other regions – it was also being hammered by a “peer review group” of transportation experts.
The ad hoc group of experts, organized by the Legislature and headed by Will Kempton, the former state director of transportation, said in a report that the project needs “a thorough reassessment of a number of critical engineering, financial, economic and managerial issues.”
No wonder says Tim Cavanaugh at Reason.com, “The California High Speed Rail Authority is committed to breaking ground on a leg of the train that will serve passengers between the unincorporated town of Borden and the half-incarcerated town of Corcoran.
“Whether you call it the train from nowhere or the train to nowhere, nobody will be riding it even when it’s done. That’s not libertarian cant: The actual plan for the $4.15 billion leg is that upon completion it will sit idle until other sections of track are completed.”
It gets worse Cavanaugh points out, “Geography buffs are invited to try and make any sense out of the CHSRA’s proposed alignment. Not only does the authority plan to incur all the financial and public relations costs of driving a 150-mph train down the heavily populated and extremely wealthy San Francisco-to-San Jose corridor; but it then plans to sacrifice the only goal that could possibly make that trouble worthwhile:” a direct San Francisco to Los Angeles run.
Source(s):
- Sacramento Bee, New study sharply criticizes high-speed rail project
- Reason.com, High Speed Rail Goes Loco
In other golden-state green-jobs news
Governor-elect Jerry Brown campaigned on new investments in solar and wind power. The Los Angeles Times story said Brown envisions, “building large-scale power plants that run on renewable resources and placing solar panels on parking-lot roofs, school buildings and along the banks of state highways. Although advocates of renewable energy tout the long-term savings of going green, billions of dollars would be required to reach the governor-elect’s green-energy goals.
“Nobody knows if the program would produce the ‘more than half a million green jobs’ Brown promised during the campaign, but many experts agree that it could lead to sharply higher utility rates.”
“Staff at the commission, which regulates Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and a handful of smaller utilities and sets rates for most Californians, estimates the cost of the plan at roughly $60 billion over the next decade. That is more than state taxpayers will spend on the University of California and California State University systems combined over the same period.”
Source(s):
- Los Angeles Times, Brown may find it’s not easy being green
Nullius in Verba 
Electric cars are definitely the way to get around in the future and even now, with zero point of use emissions and high performance.