Here are a couple of interesting posts from the Chemicals and Nanomaterials blog written by Environmental Defense Fund. The first one I’m linking to here describes the process the European Union employs for regulating chemicals of “very high concern.”

Source: “More progress under REACH: 13 more chemicals en route to the Authorization list,” Allison Tracy, chemicals policy fellow, Environmental Defense Fund, June 20, 2011

And here’s what happens in the United States…basically nothing. It’s amazing that there are something like 80,000 chemicals in use in the world today, and the United States sees fit to take industry’s word on their safety.

Source: “Waiting for Godot: 405 days and counting at OMB on EPA’s modest proposal to identify chemicals of concern under TSCA,” Richard Denison, senior scientist, Environmental Defense Fund, June 21, 2011

The European Union is definitely way ahead of the United States in protecting the public from exposure to chemicals.

Bees, bats, birds, and amphibians have been experiencing declines worldwide since the mid-1990s, but the problem has become truly terrible since the early 2000s. Researchers have noticed these species dying from a variety of diseases, but now some think the real problem is that pesticides are compromising the immune systems of animals, causing them, like people with AIDS, to be killed by diseases that creatures with healthy immune systems can defeat.

The public have little knowledge of these widespread crises affecting the environment. In 2011, we now have the situation in the US (and, at present, to a lesser extent in Europe) in which there are widespread declines (and in some places areas of local extinctions) in populations of amphibians, bats, honey bees, butterflies, moths, hoverflies, bumble bees and birds. In several areas of the US whole populations of bats and amphibians have been “wiped out.” As far as we know, the declines are continuing. Many organisations, including the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), have warned of a global crisis in pollinators which is likely to threaten global food security.

The paper in which that quoted appeared, “Widespread Immune Deficiency Disease in Wildlife: A Hypothesis,” was written in April 2011 by retired Welsh scientist Rosemary Mason, MB, ChB, FRCA, and Palle Uhd Jepsen, former Senior Adviser in Nature Conservation and Wildlife to the Danish Forest and Nature Agency. The PDF is available on the website of the Boulder County Beekeepers Association.

I wrote a related article in December 2010, which provides some background information on the neonicotinoids, the class of pesticides held responsible by the paper’s authors.

Thanks to Laura Tyler of Boulder Media Women for this information.

On Saturday I hiked up Spruce Gulch, off Left Hand Canyon Road in Boulder, to see the weed research and eradication projects being conducted there. Tim Seastedt, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, says the landowners asked him and his colleagues to help control weeds without using herbicides. The owners didn’t want chemicals in the water supply.

We parked along a meadow where a student has installed rain-out devices to determine how cheatgrass (a winter annual) responds to different levels of precipitation. Seastedt said these devices keep 50 percent of precipitation off the grasses growing below them. Cheatgrass is classified as a noxious weed in Colorado, but it is on List C, which means the state will help cities and counties more effectively manage cheatgrass, if they wish to do so. In another experiment, the meadow was mowed regularly to 2 inches, which caused cheatgrass to yield to storksbill, another winter annual.

Up around the bend, we stopped to look at this patch of western wheatgrass. Plant ecologist David Buckner pointed out that there was little to no cheatgrass here because invasive species like cheatgrass cannot compete with native perennials. This conclusion has been borne out at other study sites in this area by planting spotted knapweed seedlings along with perennials. Only a few of the seedlings survived.

The chimney and foundation below are all that’s left of a homestead and blacksmith’s forge, destroyed in the Overland fire. Seastedt said his research team was planning on using the homestead as a staging site for their experiments.

Farther up the road, we passed the access for running water at the site, which Seastedt said is most helpful for conducting this kind of research. It is a siphon system, and he described how they had to pour many, many gallon jugs of water into a small hose in order to restart the siphon one year.

Despite the weeds invading this land, many native species still survive, such as these creeping mahonia, pussytoes (with white flowers), and horsetail. Ancient forests of horsetail were one of the sources of coal.

We walked through a fence that marked the boundary of the area where the landowner hand-pulled spotted knapweed. Seastedt and his colleagues also do hand-pulling of spotted knapweed, but they have introduced five different species of insects (biological controls) to make the job easier. The insects do not eradicate the plant—that would eradicate their food supply—but they do discourage it to the point that native plants can compete with spotted knapweed in disturbed areas.

Insects have also proven effective in reducing the spread of dalmation toadflax in Spruce Gulch. I asked Seastedt if the team studied the insects to ensure they didn’t spread to other plants. He said they had tried to force the weevils to eat penstemon, a close relative of toadflax, and the weevils didn’t like it.

As we hiked up to the ridge, we could see how the 1988, 2003, and 2011 fires had affected the area. Buckner said that studies of burned areas that have been “restored” show less diversity of plants than areas left to recover on their own.

Restoration is an ever-evolving science, as that conversation showed, and I for one hope that future “management” of ecosystems will use the lightest touch possible. We can’t avoid management in the future because we have altered ecosystems around the world so drastically, but we can point those ecosystems in a direction that will allow them to recover on their own.

California nonprofit 5 Gyres Institute will conduct a study of the plastic pollution in the South Pacific Gyre, sailing a boat from Valdivia, Chile, to Easter Island. The group has already sailed through the other four ocean gyres: North Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean.

Why should I care?

Here’s a quote from the press release about 5 Gyres’s voyage to the South Pacific gyre:

Most ocean plastic pollution takes the form of tiny plastic bits resulting from degraded fishing gear or plastic waste flowing out to sea from land. Sea turtles, marine mammals, birds and fish ingest these plastic particles, potentially causing internal blockages and an increased accumulation of synthetic chemicals in their bodies. The debris may also kill seabirds and marine animals that can die of starvation, their bellies full of plastic mistaken for food. 5 Gyres is also studying whether humans are being harmed by eating fish that have ingested debris contaminated with PCBs, DDT, and other toxins.

…

While the plastic marine debris problem is typically described as a well defined “garbage patch,” plastic pollution at sea takes the form of a thin, diffuse soup. Either way, it cannot be cleaned up by any practical means, so society must stop the problem at its source, the researchers stress. They advocate improving the recyclability of plastics, legislation requiring companies to take responsibility for recovery and reuse of their products, and curbs on single-use disposable products.

How is this restoration?

Before we can restore any ecosystem, we must understand the state of that ecosystem. That is 5 Gyres’s purpose: to educate people about marine debris and the “plastic soup” that has developed in areas of the Earth’s oceans.

I take issue with the idea that this problem cannot be cleaned up “by any practical means.” We may not be able to strain out all the tiny plastic particles, but we can go pick up some of the trash in these gyres. We can also pick up trash on land.

I want to go on one of these expeditions someday.

Here’s an example of how to deal with plastic pollution: make plastic waste into a surfboard! All the lighters that went into the surfboard were regurgitated by birds. (Isn’t that gross?)

The main thing that concerns me about the United States right now is its political and military culture, how we seem to be pressing full steam ahead with what I think are dangerous projects (DP).

The first DP is the US use of drones, which we started about 7 or 8 years ago in the war in Afghanistan. It’s not clear to me if we use drones in Iraq, though I think we do.

Now the New York Times reports we are sending drones across the border into Mexico to spy on the drug gangs. A good way of getting information? Maybe, even probably. A violation of Mexico’s sovereignty? Perhaps.

In addition to wariness by Mr. Calderón’s government about how the American intervention might be perceived at home, the Mexican Constitution prohibits foreign military and law enforcement agents from operating in Mexico except under extremely limited conditions, Mexican officials said, so the legal foundation for such activity may be shaky.

Obama and Mexican president Calderon have agreed to continue the drone surveys for now. A bad idea in the long run? Yes.

We cannot solve Mexico’s drug dealer problem. Even if a miracle were to occur and US citizens suddenly stopped using all drugs, thus depriving Mexican drug dealers of their major market, that would not solve the problem. No, Mexicans have to solve the problem, and it is a difficult one that requires reforming government at all levels.

In addition, it is an extension of the paternalistic US approach to the Western Hemisphere. “We’re Big Daddy, and we’ll find your evil drug lords for you.”

Most important, drones used today to spy on drug lords or to assassinate alleged terrorists can be used to spy on US citizens tomorrow. Why worry about getting permission to listen in on someone’s land line or cell phone when you can send a hummingbird drone down the chimney? (Do I know of any such practices? No, though I did read about one city considering the use of drones for surveillance. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which city.)

How could we begin to solve this problem?

1. Stop using drones to meddle in other countries’ business.

2. Focus on cleaning up corruption among Mexican law enforcement and strengthening them in their fight against drug cartels.

How is this restoration?

With regard to Mexico, it’s minding our own business. I guess you could call it a restoration of sovereignty to Mexico, if we have compromised it.

With regard to US military culture, I think ending our use of drones in warfare would restore some of the ethics that have been lost since 9/11. We shouldn’t use a weapon just because we can. We should use it because it’s right.

Source: “US Drones Fight Mexican Drug Trade,” Ginger Thompson, New York Times, March 15, 2011

***

The second DP is the ongoing attempt to limit or just plain remove abortion rights in the United States.

I just finished the Winter 2011 edition of Ms. magazine. One article, “Abortion Rights on the Line” by Jeanne K. C. Clark, discussed the downside and upside of the shift to the right in the November 2010 election. It mentioned a survey that found lots of support for abortion, depending on how the questions were asked. But it was this paragraph that really made an impression on me.

For decades, the strategy of anti-abortion forces has been to make women invisible in the abortion fight, and much of the time they have succeeded. Our failure to claim the moral high ground and make women and the reality of our lives the center of the debate—instead relying on legalistic language and abstract choice terminology—has played right into our opponents’ hands. That must stop.

I don’t believe pro-choicers have the moral high ground. I think there is morality on both sides of the abortion debate.

Here is my morality about abortion: Whenever I see the “Respect Life” license plate, created in Colorado after the shooting at Columbine High School, I think, “I respect the lives of women and girls.” All of us need to pay more attention to the realities of female experience. It is at least as important as the realities of the unborn child.

How could we begin to solve this problem?

1. If you’re feeling gutsy and you’ve had an abortion, talk about it. You can post a description of your abortion on the site I’m Not Sorry.

2. Reorient discussions of abortion to focus on women’s needs, on how women are not free unless they have the ability to obtain an abortion.

How is this restoration?

Talking more about women’s experiences would help balance the debate on abortion. Balancing the debate on abortion would make it easier to talk about the issue, thus restoring some civility to our “culture wars.”

Source: The article is not yet available on the Ms. website. I think it will be available after the spring issue comes out.

Obama has ordered CIA employees to kill many more suspected terrorists using drones than Bush ever did. Bush ordered about 42 drone strikes; Obama has ordered at least 180.

Why? Because they’re “clean.” Yes, targeting a man for execution and blowing him up in front of his family is what amounts to “clean” in the war on terror.

And also because this way, there won’t be more people at Guantanamo, giving the lie to his promise to close it.

I got the information I’m presenting here from an article posted on the Daily Beast: “Inside the Predator Drone Killing Machine,” by Tara McKelvey, Daily Beast, February 16, 2011. The article was published in Newsweek in February and republished, I guess, on the Daily Beast. I found a version of the article on the Newsweek site, and the two articles seem to match; Daily Beast added a few bullet points at the beginning in boldface type.

I can barely express how wrong I think this program is.

We are blowing up suspected terrorists. We are not capturing them and bringing them in for trial to see if we can prove they are terrorists. Yes, I know that would be much more difficult and risky to American lives. But since when is convenience an argument for what is right?

A related question: Who provides the information that condemns these people? If it’s too hard to get close enough to them to capture them, then how can we truly know what they are doing? Are we basing executions on hearsay? On some guy who is mad at his neighbor or wants to get rid of his rivals?

The article doesn’t say where the CIA lawyers who order “lethal operations” get their information. It talks about the procedure. It talks a lot about John Rizzo, former acting CIA general counsel, who seems terribly impressed with the fact that he has ordered people to be killed. That is not a good trait for a person to exhibit.

This same John Rizzo was the man who asked which methods could legally be used to interrogate suspects. In response,

Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo wrote the infamous “torture memo” of August 2002 because Rizzo had asked for clarification about techniques that could be used on detainees.

As Rizzo points out somewhat bitterly, most of those detainees survived. The people he has targeted more recently are not always as lucky.

The article mentions the Church Committee of the 1970s that was convened after the CIA tried to assassinate too many foreign leaders (such as the elected leaders of Chile and Iran). Now we’re sending machines after alleged terrorists. Have we learned anything except how to kill people more efficiently?

Problems That Require Restoration: Legality

Administration officials insist that the targeted killings rest on a solid legal foundation, but many scholars disagree. Georgetown University’s Gary Solis, the author of The Law of Armed Conflict, says people at the CIA who pilot unmanned aerial vehicles are civilians directly engaged in hostilities, an act that makes them “unlawful combatants” and possibly subject to prosecution.

We need to stop fighting the terrorists this way. We need to bring people to trial in our country when there is real evidence to do so, and show the world how our justice system works. That would impress the rest of the world far more than blowing up people because some other people claim they are involved with Al Qaeda.

Please go read the article. And then check out this UK blog about drone strikes.

Problems That Require Restoration: Drones

Drones are the new toy for the military and for corporations. See this article about a request for proposals for a “nano drone” in the United Kingdom.

I recently read about a U.S. city that is considering buying drones to do aerial surveillance. I don’t want to live in a world that has tiny drones flying around. How are we supposed to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights in these circumstances?

I don’t know what suggestion to offer about drones. When nano technology was the new hot thing, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) worked with corporations with create standards for developing the technology. But who is going the limit the uses to which drones can be put?

On January 27, 2011, the US Department of Agriculture pretty much gave a green light for Monsanto to sell seeds for its genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets. (Monsanta has been selling seeds for GMO corn and soybeans for years.) Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, is said to have close ties to Monsanto.

Opponents say that planting this alfalfa, which is genetically engineered to withstand direct application of Roundup (if you buy Roundup at Home Depot, in contrast, the directions will tell you to spray it only on the weeds), will increase the use of that herbicide and will lead to cross-pollination with non-GMO alfalfa, contaminating other farmers’ crops. And because alfalfa is used as fodder for cows, the genes from Monsanto’s crops could end up in the beef we eat.

I am not a fan of GMO crops, and I don’t know why farmers would buy them, since they’re not allowed to save seeds from year to year. It’s a sweet deal for Monsanto, which gets to sell new seeds every year, but how is it good for farmers?

But what angers me most about the current situation is the lack of labeling of GMO ingredients in our foods. That labeling is required in Europe, and GMO foods don’t sell there. If labeling of GMO ingredients were required in the United States, those foods would not sell here either. And that’s why they’re not labeled—because Monsanto and all the other companies that benefit from GMO foods know their profits would go down.

The Christian Science Monitor ran an article yesterday about why GMO seeds are undemocratic. The author’s argument is that Monsanto is all about controlling the food supply.

Anyone doubting Monsanto’s obsession with control can just ask the thousands of farmers who have been sued and spied upon for alleged “seed piracy”—at least 2,391 farmers in 19 states through 2006, according to Monsanto website documents obtained by the Washington, DC-based Center for Food Safety (CFS). A report by CFS, using company records, found that “Monsanto has an annual budget of $10 million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers.”

…

The GM threats to biodiversity and democracy are closely related. When you pair proprietary technology that’s designed to retain company control of seeds (the very lifeblood of our food supply) along with highly concentrated market control, you get a hazardous blend of ecological, economic, and political centralization.

Here’s a quote from a sheet entitled “No to GE Alfalfa!” that I got at Vitamin Cottage, a Colorado-based natural foods and supplements chain:

We have an absolute right to know and choose what we eat, but with the decision to allow widespread cultivation of GE crops, government has taken these freedoms from the American people.

Amen to that. If you want to fight this decision, you could join the Organic Consumers Association Millions Against Monsanto campaign. Or Food Democracy Now‘s campaign, which offers this interesting assertion:

…alfalfa—a perennial legume—does not suffer from the same weed pressures as other crops, such as corn, soybeans, cotton and canola and that is why ninety-three percent of the alfalfa hay in the U.S. does not use any herbicides.

Source: “Control over Your Food: Why Monsanto’s GM Seeds Are Undemocratic,” Christopher D. Cook, Christian Science Monitor, February 23, 2011; plus double-sided sheet available at Vitamin Cottage in Lafayette and Food Democracy Now page linked to above

Just spent 15 minutes or so dealing with recycling.

No, it doesn’t take me that long to find the recycling bin. I had to rinse out a small plastic bag so that I could recycle it; plastic bags are made into Trex decking, and apparently they need to be super-clean and dry. Then I took the 3 bottles of pop we were never going to drink and poured them on the compost pile (here’s hoping it will do something interesting to the compost), rinsed them out, and threw them in the bin. Then I hand-washed a baggie that I thought I might be able to reuse if I could just get the chili-grease off it, and after that I stuck it in the dishwasher using the Bag-E Wash.

Whew! Are you tired yet? I know I am.

No wonder people don’t want to recycle. This stuff is a pain in the ass!

Not only do Americans need companies to step up to the plate and design products for recycling, but we need places like Big City Burritos to stop wrapping burritos in foil and then plastic. And that’s only one issue I had with all the plastic at that place. I’m going to write to them about it.

We also need to cut ourselves some slack and avoid going to places that set off our plastic warning alarms. I don’t mind eating a meal out of a plastic basket lined with paper, but using plastic forks and trying to get guacamole out of a little plastic tub just begins to get on my nerves, especially when I’m staring at 100% recycled napkins. Sorry, Big City Burritos, your eco-friendly napkins are offset by all the plastic crap you use to serve your food.

Which is too bad, because your chicken mole burrito was pretty good.

I heard of Rodale’s Plastic-Free Challenge on the blog My Plastic Free Life.

Like Zero Waste, Plastic-Free is an aspiration, not a reality. For example, I posted something on Facebook about the plastic-free challenge this morning while wearing my plastic retainers. Am I going to give up my retainers and let my teeth go crooked again after spending thousands of dollars on them? No.

Plastic-Free Challenge Rules

1. Don’t acquire more plastic (and that includes packaging).

2. Don’t cook food in plastic or store food in plastic. (The first one seems pretty easy, unless Teflon contains plastic—all you have to do is remember to take your food now stored in plastic and microwave it on a plate or in a china bowl. The second is a little more difficult, but you can store your food in Pyrex and cover it with foil. I have Pyrex microwave-safe storage dishes with plastic lids. I’m going to use those because they are cool!)

3. Minimize other plastic use. (So what, I’m not supposed to type on my laptop?)

You see the problem here. Plastic is so pervasive in our lives that the best we can do right now is pay attention to how much plastic we use and start to remove it from our lives.

Beth’s Tips for Minimizing Plastic in Your Life and in Your Food

1. Consider whether buying frozen vegetables in plastic bags (a few brands come in paper bags, but they may be lined with plastic) is better than buying canned veggies. The cans are lined with plastic, and that lining will leach chemicals into the veggies. It’s possible that plastic bags can leach chemicals into the frozen veggies, but it seems less likely to me.

2. Buy condiments in glass jars.

3. Buy cosmetics in glass jars. Yes, I know they’re hard to find, but there are a few. Also, try buy Aveda’s makeup brushes. For a while there, they were selling some with handles made of renewable materials. Aveda also used to sell metal eyeshadow and blush containers made from recycled metal.

4. If you need to buy something plastic (say, a spray bottle), ask if the store sells any made of recycled plastic. These goods are a lot more common than they used to be.

5. If the item you need comes in plastic, buy it in bulk (less packaging).

6. Buy items based on their packaging. For example, do those socks you want to buy hang from a plastic hanger or a cardboard hanger?

Did you know there are about 4,000 oil and natural gas drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico? And that those platforms service nearly 6,000 active wells?

It’s amazing that a spill like BP’s Deepwater Horizon didn’t occur before April 2010.

And I wonder, with thousands of wells in the Gulf, how there hasn’t been a lot of subsidence. Or maybe there has and no one has noticed yet.

Source: “Windfall,” Mike Tidwell, Audubon, September-October 2010