BEAT's Blog

A recent story on an environmental page has me concerned.  The story on “Climate Progress” was making the point that small hydro generating stations could be viable if it weren’t for all the red tape imposed by regulatory agencies.  Most of the regulatory agencies cited were state and federal environmental regulatory agencies. I’ve heard the same arguments made for industrial wind power and biomass plants.

I think we need to be careful here.  After all, these are the same arguments made by conservatives who favor offshore drilling and drilling in the arctic.  It seems to me, that if a technology is not economically viable unless environmental regulations are waived, then it’s just not economically viable.  Let’s not put ourselves in a position whereby our strongest allies are the oil industry advocates.

Last October, DuPont, the same chemical company that invented chlorofluorocarbons, began marketing a new, “environmentally friendly” lawn chemical called Imprelis.  You may not have heard of it because only licensed professionals can apply it to your lawn.  Hooray!  An environmentally friendly herbicide!  Well, that’s how it was marketed anyway.

In late May, the reports started coming in.  Trees were dying where Imprelis was applied.  And not on a small scale either.  Imprelis was snapped up by landscapers and lawn chemical companies in amazing quantities.  For instance, The Columbus Dispatch reports that “Industry sources estimate that 75 percent of central Ohio landscapers and golf courses switched to Imprelis this year.”

From Iowa to the east coast and as far south as Georgia, trees are dying, and the “environmentally friendly” herbicide Imprelis is the chief suspect.  After spraying  Imprelis on hundreds of lawns in Michigan, Matt Coats of Underwood Nursery says his company began receiving angry calls.  “The customers are calling: ‘My trees are dying, what’s up?’  Underwood said. “We’ve never experienced anything like this.”

Property owner and Underwood client Teddy Peace complained that 8 of his 50 trees have been damaged.  He’s holding the Underwood Nursery financially responsible.  The nursery is insured, but $500 deductible per incident means that reparations have already cost Underwood $150,000.

Matt Coats told the New York Times, “We’ve made 1,000 applications and had 350 complaints of dead trees, and it’s climbing. I’ve done nothing for the last three weeks but deal with angry customers.”  One lawn-care worker called this the Katrina of the landscaping industry, and it’s just beginning. Read more…

As I’m writing this, my country is dangerously close to defaulting on its debts for the first time in its history.  Standard and Poor says that if this happens, it will lower the country’s credit rating from AAA to D.  We’re in hard economic times and we have to make some tough decisions.  Legislators have decided that one program we can afford to cut is the Environmental Protection Agency. They say EPA’s regulations are costing money and slowing the economy.  The fact that these regulations save lives and protect our health doesn’t often come up in their arguments. If we really do need to cut a federal program, I have a better one to target – General Electric. Read more…

In yesterday’s blog I warned of the dangers of corporate influence in government. This issue is strongly affecting environmental issues. If you doubt this, ask yourself why it is that we have to fight so hard to get GE to clean PCBs from the Housatonic River. If you or I dumped a million pounds of a pollutant in a river, would we be in any trouble? Would there be consequences? Recently the Supreme Court of the United States, in Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission, decided that we didn’t have quite enough corporate influence in government. Here’s MSNBC’s Rachel Madow putting this decision in perspective.

Corporate influence in government has gotten out of hand. Now you might say, “BEAT is an environmental organization. You focus on environmental issues. Why do you care about corporate influence in government?” Two reasons: regulation and enforcement. Regulation provides the rules that protect the environment. Enforcement ensures that the rules are followed.

We’ve notice a trend lately. Legislators are doing their best to limit the powers of regulators, and the regulators are showing less and less interest in enforcing regulations. This trend is evident at federal, state, and local levels of government. Is this trend related to corporate influence in government? Absolutely. Read more…

In 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists published an article called Smoke, Mirrors, and Hot Air: How Exxon Mobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics To Manufacture Uncertainty On Climate Science. In this article, the scientists point to strategies used by tobacco companies in an attempt to convince people that the science linking tobacco use with cancer and other diseases was inconclusive. The authors make a strong case that oil companies have adopted these strategies to create doubt in the public’s mind about climate-change science. I would like to suggest that GE has now adopted these strategies in fighting any attempt to make that corporation clean their PCBs from the Housatonic River. Read more…

I’ve said it before.  There is no climate-change debate.

More than a thousand of the top climate scientists in the world were pulled together by the United Nations and asked to research the issue of climate change. This group, the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), submitted their findings to about 100 of their peers who were not members of the thousand, and to UN member nations. The document was revised based on input and sent out again to the same reviewers. The final draft was then made public. In it, the scientists said clearly that climate is changing, we as a species are responsible, there are effective actions we can take to remediate the problem, and the consequences of inaction would be dire. In the face of this wall of unity, Exxon-Mobil almost single-handedly created the climate-skeptic debate. In addition to funding junk science, the oil industry has created the idea that there is a debate going on within the scientific community and that the media should always make sure that they present both sides of the issue. This furthers the perception that there is in fact a debate going on within the climate-scientist community and that “the jury is still out”. Needless to say, this leaves the vast majority of climate scientists very frustrated.(1)

Now, while the rest of the world works feverishly to deal with climate change, our government has apparently decided that chemistry and physics don’t apply here. Congress, led by representatives from oil industry dependent states, have been working hard at rescinding EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And just in case that doesn’t work, congress has drastically cut EPA’s budget. The plan agreed upon to avert a government shutdown hit EPA harder than any other agency. They lost $1.6 billion dollars. That’s about one third the tax credit the government gave to GE this year.  Read more…

This amendment affirms that constitutional rights extend only to human persons. Corporations, partnerships, and other organizational entities are not human persons and, therefore, are not entitled to constitutional protections.

This is the current wording of a proposed 28^th amendment to the US Constitution. It simply says that corporations aren’t people. That sounds kind of obvious, doesn’t it? Here’s the problem. In a recent case, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations should be allowed to donate as much money as they choose to political election campaigns because corporations have the same rights as people and giving money to an election campaign is an exercise of free speech.  Of course corporations had an inordinate amount of power in government even before this court ruling, but now, what they used to have to do under the cover of darkness, they can do in broad daylight.

Recently, in the middle of a public debate on how best to approach the cleanup of the Housatonic River, GE chose to exercise its right of free speech by giving $300,000 to 1Berkshires – a group that then publicly advocated for the same kind of minimalist cleanup that GE advocated. Because GE saw this whole debate as a public relations campaign, not as a discussion aimed at reaching the best solution, GE chose to make the donation secretly. For the same reason, 1Berkshires chose to hide the gift. As a matter of fact, they denied receiving it when asked. Right away we see one of the problems with corporations. By law, they are required to do what’s best for their profits and for their shareholders. Truth be damned. We can expect nothing more from corporations. We as a society wrote the rules. If you’re a corporation, profits come first – and second and third. Read more…

The recent and on-going battle with GE over how best to clean their toxic PCBs from our river is very frustrating for environmental groups such as ours. It’s difficult to get a message out when you’re out-spent by a corporation as large as GE. Their slick propaganda video which contained very few truths and more than a few lies was widely distributed. Their $300,000 payment to local economic groups who portrayed themselves as environmentalists in order to get their benefactor off the hook was a subversion and perversion of what should have been an open and productive discussion. The political pressure wielded by GE is second to none in the corporate world.

At BEAT, we recognize that to overpower this corporate beast and others who are causing equal and greater environmental harm we have to strike at the heart of the problem. As an introduction to the problem to which I’m alluding, please watch this video. I’ll be presenting my views on this topic and on some closely related topics, and some examples of how this issue plays out locally in this blog soon. Thanks for your time.
Bruce

EPA recently provided an opportunity for government agencies, organizations, and citizens to submit comments regarding the cleanup of the Housatonic River south of the confluence of the West Branch and the East Branch in Pittsfield. The comment period has ended, and EPA has compiled the comments in one long document and posted that document on their website. Here’s a very brief summary of the comments, and a few comments on the comments. Please understand that I am probably not an objective observer in this matter, so I encourage you to read the full text of comments on EPA’s website. Read more…