Part Three of the “Your Personal Chemical Marinade Series.”

The strikingly ineffective chemical regulatory framework of the status quo– that of the TSCA discussed in Part Two– has no doubt given rise to some larger systemic issues.  Most problematic are “the three gaps”: the chemical data gap, the safety gap and the technology gap (Wilson 2006). Although deeply interconnected and reinforcing, each deserves individual attention. The chemical data gap refers to the deficient availability of comprehensive and standardized toxicity information concerning the vast majority of the over 81,000 environmental chemicals in production and use. Absent such information, the chemicals market simply cannot produce an optimal outcome: the “deterrent function” of product liability is diminished and worker’s protection and compensation structures are stifled (Welker-Hood et al 2007: 9).

The safety gap, fueled by limited test data on the human and eco-toxicity of most environmental chemicals, refers to the harmful level of human and ecological exposure to persistent bioaccumulative toxicants (PBTs).[1] At its core is an EPA that has been handcuffed from taking action by the unreasonable evidentiary burdens placed on it by the TSCA. In the absence of sufficient information, government agencies are simply incapable of identifying and prioritizing chemical hazards.

Although it is beyond the scope of this series to provide an exhaustive account of the scientific linkages between public health and environmental chemicals – those exist elsewhere in the literature — it isn’t sufficient to proceed without providing a general overview. For starters, it is critical to establish the public health context within which much of the current research on environmental chemicals is being commissioned, mandated, or catalyzed. Indisputably, the 20^th century saw a dramatic increase in the incidence of chronic disease. Caroline Baier-Anderson et al., in their important work entitled The Health Case for Reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act, provide some alarming evidence:

• —A woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is now one in eight, up from one in ten in 1973.

• —  The cancer incidence among children overall has risen significantly over the previous two decades, particularly the incidence of childhood leukemia and brain cancer.

• —  Asthma approximately doubled in prevalence between 1980 and 1995, rising from approximately 4 percent to 8 percent.

• —  Autism diagnosis has increased more than 10 times in the last 15 years.

• —  Birth defect resulting in undescended testes has increased 200% between 1970 and 1993 (2010).

Much like the case with asthma, these increases led to a surge in research regarding the suspected linkages between environmental chemicals and various forms of health problems and chronic disease. Among the most notable and well-established findings of this emerging research concerns the acute impact that carcinogens, development and reproductive toxicants, mutagens and neurotoxics have on children (Commission for Environmental Cooperation 2006). Landrigan et al. have been able to approximate that the prevalence of certain chemicals in air, food, water and communities contributes to 100 percent of lead poisoning, 10 to 35 percent of asthma, 2 to 10 percent of particular cancers and 5 to 20 percent of neurobehavioral disorders in children (2002).[2] Further, specific examples of often-used chemicals with known human and ecological risks include naphthalene, royal demolition explosive (also referred to as RDX or hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitrotriazine), formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene and dioxin (Stephenson 2008).

Finally, the technology gap pertains to the depressed motivation of chemical manufacturers to invest in regenerated, green (environmentally safe), chemistry technologies. This is the unfortunate outcome of the coupling of limited toxicity data with a sluggish chemical regulatory system. Magnifying this dearth of market incentives is highly unsubstantial government investment in research and development of green chemistry, biotechnology and advanced materials,  and in the education of scientists in this field.

These respective gaps, of course, don’t occur within a vacuum. Their impact is felt throughout many sectors and in a wide diversity of contexts. First, the chemical safety gap further strains our already broken health care system. It is estimated, for example, that the state of California alone could save $700 million per year by reducing human exposure to many known chemical hazards. This savings estimate is even somewhat conservative as it is based on an analysis that projects savings from merely reducing the incidence of chemical diseases by .1 percent. Savings increase to $5 billion a year when considering the U.S. as a whole(Baier-Anderson et al. 2010; CHANGE 2010). Further, the technology gap has contributed to U.S. businesses falling behind those in places like Germany in terms of developing safer chemicals and materials (Scott 2010).

A final, more recent, problem regarding our current chemical regulatory framework is that it doesn’t comply with new international regulatory regimes, such as the  European Union’s (E.U.’s) new REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances) policy.[3] This, effectively, closes off from U.S. chemical manufacturers the world’s most lucrative market. According to Angela Logomasini of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: “The U.S. exports more than $20 billion in chemical products and invests more than $4 billion in the E.U. chemical and related industry sectors annually. In addition, U.S. firms export more than $400 billion in products containing chemicals, some of which may fall under the scope of REACH regulations” (2006).

[2] Directly from Baier-Anderson et al. (which cites peer-reviewed science extensively), further chemical linkages to the incidence of chronic disease in humans: (1) “clinicians found that a history of toxic exposure was associated with cognitive decline [particularly Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s] at significantly younger ages” (2010: 10). (2) “Prenatal exposure to phthalates found in personal care products and in items made from vinyl has been linked to birth defects of the male reproductive system and feminized behaviors in boys” (2010: 13).

[3] REACH (EC 1907/2006) entered into legal force on June 1, 2007.

Part Two of the “Your Personal Chemical Marinade” Series:

Before further advocating for its reform, lets take a closer look at the current chemicals regulatory framework: the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976.

In a sense, the TSCA was always a bit behind the game – it was constructed as an inherently reactive rather than proactive policy. The primary reason for this is obvious: tens of thousands of environmental chemicals had already been on the market, in their various forms, prior to it even entering its nascent stages. Largely as a result, members of Congress only found it feasible to establish some sort of general public oversight over the daunting number of chemicals in commerce (Wilson 2006: 15). In formulating TSCA, Congress had three primary policy goals:

• (1) To encourage chemical manufacturers to develop sufficient data regarding “respect to the effect of chemical substances and mixtures on health and the environment.”
• (2) To give the government adequate authority to regulate environmental chemicals that exhibit “an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, and to take action with respect to chemical substances and mixtures which are imminent hazards.”
• (3) To ensure that this expanded government authority over chemical substances only be wielded “in such a manner so as not to impede unduly or create unnecessary economic barriers to technological innovation” (Goldman 2002).

Indeed, the TSCA represented a decisive move in the right direction. Among other things, for the first time it created a government inventory of chemicals in commercial circulation. According to most analysts, however, even these more modest goals are not being fulfilled by the current iteration of TSCA. As early as 1984, the National Academy of Sciences determined that TSCA had “fallen short of its objectives and has not provided an effective vehicle for the public, industry or government to assess the hazards of chemicals in commerce or control those of greatest concern” (Wilson 2006: 16). Since then, a similar conclusion has been reached by the U.S. General Accounting Office (1994), the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the NGO Environmental Defense (1997), the EPA (1998), the U.S. Government Accountability Office (2005), and various researchers and former EPA officials (Wilson 2006: 16).

The TSCA’s fundamental weakness primarily stems from two sources: (1) its placement of a nearly-impossible burden of proof on the EPA, and (2) its rigid and unbalanced use of a strict economic criteria, rather than public health and environmental criteria. The first source, the nearly-impossible burden of proof the EPA must satisfy before taking regulatory action, results directly from the TSCA’s language. The TSCA only empowers the EPA to act if it has proven that a certain chemical exhibits an “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.” If the EPA can do this, then, it must then only formulate regulations that are the “least onerous to industry” (Welker-Hood et al. 2007: 9; Wilson 2006: 16). Unfortunately, the EPA’s record at satisfying the evidentiary burden that the phrasing “unreasonable risk” requires is so poor that we cannot even comment in any meaningful way on its success at crafting regulations that that would hold up in federal court as the “least onerous.”

A single anecdote sufficiently illuminates just how irrelevant the TSCA’s language has rendered the EPA when it comes to the regulation of environmental chemicals. Equipped with both a decade-long, $10 million cost-benefit analysis and a well-developed 100,000 page administrative record, in 1989 the EPA attempted to ban asbestos – an environmental chemical that is amongst the most well-understood in terms of its negative impact on human health. In 1991, however, less than two years after the ban had been in place, a federal court overturned it. The ruling was that the TSCA necessitates that the EPA not only prove that a chemical is harmful to human health, but additionally that the regulatory response be the “least burdensome alternative” for mitigating “an unreasonable risk.” In the aftermath of that ruling, the EPA has not yet since attempted to ban an environmental chemical under the auspices of its TSCA authority (Baier-Anderson et al. 2010: p. 7).

Stay tuned for Part Three of the Series.

- Matt

In what was seemingly his former life, Florida Governor Charlie Crist instructively warned that “the conditions of weather and rising water levels will have the most profound impact on [his] state than any other” (Swartz 2007). Being a low-elevation peninsula, surrounded by both the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Gulf of Mexico to the west, sea level rise undoubtedly represents the state’s biggest threat. Figure 1 (below) painfully illustrates the areas that would likely be covered with just a 70 cm (about 2.3 feet) or greater rise in sea level.

To many in the scientific community, though, any estimation of sea level rise that amounts to less than a meter (about 3.3 feet) is clearly conservative. This is especially true considering the empirical data of just the past few years which suggests an “anomalous” acceleration of global sea level rise (Mitchum, Merrifield and Merrifield 2009). During the period between 1962 and 1990, the average global rise in sea levels was 1.5 +/- 0.5 mm per year. In sharp contrast, and quite alarmingly, this average global rise in sea levels has accelerated to 3.2 +/- 0.4 mm per year (Mitchum, Merrifield and Merrifield 2009).[1] For no state is this worse news than Florida.

Even assuming the better case scenario of 70 cm sea level rise, the impact on Florida would still be near catastrophic. Looking back to Figure 1, sea level rise below 1.5 meters –which according to the EPA is likely to happen within the next 120 years –  will cover the Florida Keys, the Florida Everglades, Florida’s very southern tip, and parts of Miami with water (assuming, of course, no $100 billion adaptation projects are undertaken – projects which would likely turn Florida’s coast line into a giant sea wall and destroy the state’s massive tourism industry).

I don’t have to explain what the loss of these areas would mean, but I will highlight a couple key points. For starters, in the year 2000, the Miami Urbanized Area was ranked fifth overall in the U.S. in terms of population (4,919,036). It is the home to the largest cruise-ship port in the world, the nation’s second-largest concentration of international banks, the nation’s third most impressive skyline (according to the Almanac of Architecture and Design), and a $17.1 billion annual tourism industry (Ortiz 2008). The loss of the Everglades, and its vast web of biodiversity and habitats, would be an equally troubling blow to our state – a fact that becomes even more elucidated when considering the co-dependency of many of Florida’s other unique and valuable ecosystems on the wetlands, particularly the coral reefs. In short, floods from rising sea levels critically threaten both Florida’s economic and natural capital.

Unfortunately, the destructive forces of rising sea levels extend further. Recreational and commercial fisheries will be particularly vulnerable, especially in light of the fact that many fishery species are already facing severe stress from overfishing , habitat destruction, and water quality degradation. Most significantly, climate change is expected to fundamentally alter many of the biological processes involved in fishery production. The seagrasses and mangroves that provide an essential nursery for many of Florida’s fish species will likely be forced to rapidly move inland in response to the altered depth of their current locations. Seagrasses, which are particularly sensitive to changes in light penetration, water depth and precipitation-induced turbidity are likely to experience a precipitous decline as a result. Mangroves, by contrast, have a better chance of moving inland, but they will take the place of freshwater fishery habitats and, thus, pose an entirely new set of ecological challenges (Shenker 2009).

After fisheries, sea level rise poses problems in a number of other areas as well. These include, but are certainly not limited to, beach erosion, saltwater intrusion into critical water supplies and increased coastal property vulnerability to erosion and flooding (Parkinson 2009). With regard to the latter point on coastal properties, it is important to highlight the fact that most coastal areas in Florida are currently managed under the assumption that sea level rise won’t be a problem. Parkinson describes this impending dilemma quite well: “With a design life of 30 yrs to 75 yrs or more, many of these [coastal] investments are on a collision course with rising sea level and the resulting impacts will be significant” (2009). Not to number drop or anything, but the current valuation of Florida coastal property is currently estimated at $2 trillion (AIR Worldwide Corporation 2005).

Let’s stop this next environmental catastrophe before it reaches our shores. Ask your Senators to vote for the Kerry-Boxer Climate Bill.

Water is a lost issue in the contemporary environmental debate. The issues that dominate are climate disruption, biodiversity loss and destruction of the ozone layer. These are all often thought of global issues and global problems. Society as a whole has a moral obligation to stop them. Water, on the other hand, is a local issue, right? Why should someone in one of the most water-rich nations on the planet in the United States care about the plight of someone in the Kalahari Desert, or the Thar, thousands of miles away? It won’t effect us and there’s nothing we can do, right? Wrong. Building water infrastructure in many of these countries requires international cooperation in order to increase human development. Foreign capital investment is sometimes necessary as well.

A partial explanation of why framing water scarcity as one of the most threatening international dilemmas of our time is that it is difficult to draw a comprehensive global picture. Water availability, use, and quality quite obviously varies based on the geographic region. But there are also  seasonal, annual and other time scales that make simple global generalizations about quality and supply issues impossible to make. Models based on population growth and changes in output have proven inadequate as well, partly because they are so complex and the inputs are so hard to project, as are the determinants of water supply and demand.

Despite this, we MUST recognize water as one of the greatest challenges of this century. More than a billion people around the world lack clean drinking water. Two billion lack adequate sanitation services. Think about that for a second. You use water for cooking, cleaning clothes, your house, your car, for bathing, for brushing your teeth, for disposing of human waste, for washing your hands, watering your plants, and maybe even for your pets to drink. Yet nearly one in six people in the world do not even have enough that is safe to drink. Any meaningful notion of sustainability cannot be based on limiting our inputs of carbon alone. Alongside this ideal needs to be providing an adequate supply of water for meeting basic human needs while safeguarding, conserving and maximizing what we have.

Human manipulation of nature has only made the situation more dire, and the future does not look bright. We manipulate our water, intervening in the water cycle, by building dams, channels, canals, and other forms of river manipulation that has trapped it from flowing as it naturally would, and devastated freshwater fish species. In fact, forty percent of the world’s known fish species live in freshwater habitats although these bodies of water occupy less than one percent of the earth’s surface. Furthermore, climate disruption affects water as well. Deserts are expanding inside, rainfall is tougher to predict, and many places on earth are on their way to becoming inhospitable.

According to my good friend Rand Paul, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was an accident and accidents happen.

Let’s get one thing straight. This was no accident. The Wall Street Journal, a right-leaning newspaper mind you, has been doing some fantastic investigative journalism. BP did not make one or two mistakes that led to this disaster. They made too many to count. Making matters worse, we now know quite well that a heated argument occurred hours before the disaster and the victors assured their own demise. When the situation went from bad to worse, the rig was completely unprepared for disaster.

BP has gone above and beyond what we could ask for in trying to brand themselves as a green company with their “Beyond Petroleum” campaign. Yet we all know now that this BP campaign was a load of BS. Actually, people were calling them out on this point back in 2002. But that’s another story.

The point is this is the worst environmental disaster in United States history. Worse than Exxon Valdez. We want to show our populist rage. Rightfully so, Americans are ready to be angry. Who doesn’t want someone to blame?

Should we blame BP. Yes. Clearly, they messed up. Big time. On the other hand, what can we possibly do to adequately punish them? Take them to some big fancy trial and sue them for billions of dollars? Look at it from their point of view. Sure they should have installed some half-million dollar valve that might have prevented all this, and bought double-lined tubing, etc. Yet remember what they are: a corporation. The purpose of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders, and as the seventh largest in the world, BP is quite good at that. Sure they’ve invested a great deal of money into solar power, but they didn’t make $160 billion last year on it. Most of their revenue comes from oil and natural gas. They’ve been exploiting those resources, digging deeper than they should and cutting costs, to fulfill their purpose. Really, how much can we blame them?

So let’s turn to the regulators. Since corporations will never do something unless there’s financial incentive, it’s the government’s job to minimize negative externalities. First, I’d like to point out they can only do so much when Deepwater Horizon has a flag of convenience. In other words, while BP has no connection to the Marshall Islands, that’s the flag the rig flies. This means they can use the lax regulations of that country, tell US Coast Guard inspectors to back off and BP can hire it’s own inspectors. It’s a sham. At the same, look at the financial industry, the regulations exist. There’s just no enforcement of them. The politicians and bureaucrats that would are just waiting for jobs in the oil industry down the road where they can make some money off of black gold, so of course, why would they?

So does this mean we turn the blame to President Obama? Is this Barack Obama’s Katrina? Not really. Sure, the gulf coast is getting pummeled again and the response has been less than adequate, but they’re not one in the same. By all indications, the President has been doing everything he can and only 45% of Americans disapprove of his handling, while 70% disapprove of BP. The cocktail of agencies sent down have been disorganized, uncoordinated and don’t really know what to do. That’s not really Barack’s fault. People want him to be angry and get upset, but that’s not his style. He gets his cred from being calm and appearing to be in control. As much as I hate to say it, there are a lot of Americans who would still react extremely poorly to an angry black man, and combatting the Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson stereotype has been a key to Obama’s success. The cleanup is still going on, and it will be for years, but at the moment I think the administration has been doing a solid job, not great, but good enough, which is the antithesis of what FEMA did in response to Hurricane Katrina.

On the other hand, Katrina was a natural disaster and there was nothing really we could do to prevent it. This was not. This President has called for more offshore drilling. This President has not held his regulatory agencies accountable. For that, he should be blamed. The cleanup is still being carried out and will be for a long time. But just as an oil spill that was a fraction of the size of this one caused Earth Day to be created and the Clean Air Act to be strengthened, the President needs to stand up and call for sweeping reform of our energy policy (and by that I don’t mean the highly flawed Kerry-Lieberman bill). He hasn’t done that either and until he shows that we have learned from this disaster and will never let anything like it happen again, he should be blamed. Not like Bush was for Katrina. This is different. Obama doesn’t deflect blame, he seems to enjoy it. Nevertheless, while Katrina comparisons are ridiculous the magnitude of the decisions the President must make are just as great. His legacy is at stake. Act swiftly and boldly, Mr. President. You must.

• Albert Einstein

Imagine that the next time you have an illness your doctor prescribes a heavy dose of antibiotics for which no pharmaceutical company, lab or other party knows anything about. Nobody knows of the potential side-effects; nobody knows the proper dosage, and nobody knows if prolonged use will cause any complications. Thankfully, this is a situation that rarely transpires during one’s typical doctor visit – for the vast majority of Americans it can stay in the realm of imagination since federal regulations safeguard the public from dangerous and ineffective pharmaceuticals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires both the stringent pre-market testing and oversight of pharmaceuticals, the complete disclosure of pre-market testing results, and the unambiguous labeling and notification of side-effects, interactions and efficacy. The USFDA has even set up a system for reporting the unforeseen side-effects for pharmaceuticals and has developed an official recall procedure (Welker-Hood 2007: 3).

Alarming as it may sound, however, when it comes to the vast majority of the over 81,000 chemicals we can encounter in our daily lives – in both sickness and in health – not only do chemical manufacturers know almost nothing about their associated human and environmental hazards, but federal regulations require almost nothing in terms of pre-marketing test data, labeling, or even the full public disclosure of ingredients (Sattler 2007). These unregulated chemicals include anything ranging from phthalate esters like BBZP used in vinyl flooring to aromatics like dichlorobenzene used in bathroom deodorizers (Baier-Anderson et al. 2010: 15). Similarly, and as a direct result, the sum of current public awareness regarding the problem of environmental chemicals is also equivalent to almost nothing. The threatening implications of this awareness and data gap, are not only severe but, absent a significant policy response, will continue to grow. In 2006, a major report prepared for the California Senate Environmental Quality Committee on the issue warned that “the scale of chemical production is immense and will continue to expand globally.” They estimate that every day 42 billion pounds of chemicals are either produced in or imported to the U.S. alone, and that, globally, chemical production will approximately double every 25 years. Already, at current chemical production levels, the U.S. EPA has found that 700 or more chemicals are accumulating in human tissues. Further, a large proportion of these chemicals are being introduced to the nascent organ systems of fetuses and infants via their mother’s bloodstream and breast milk (Wilson 2006: xii).

Perhaps even more distressing than what we do not know, however, are the inferences we can make from what medical researchers have been able to confirm. For the very few environmental chemicals that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been able to require rigorous test data on, just 200 out of more than 80,000, a growing body of evidence is beginning to establish convincing linkages between chemical exposure and certain chronic diseases (US Department of Health and Human Services 2008; Baier-Anderson 2010; Caldwell & Keshaya 2006). The linkages connecting Asthma, now the most common chronic disease afflicting our nation’s children, to environmental chemicals are amongst the most well established by medical research community. Unexplainable by genetics, between 1980 and 1995 the number of people in the U.S. with asthma doubled (Woodruff et al. 2004). This doubling led to a flurry of research on the specific linkages between residential chemical emissions and various respiratory health problems in children. In a 2007 review of 21 of the most significant studies that emerged, Mark J. Mendell found the evidence to be overwhelming: children who were exposed to higher levels of certain chemical pollutants such as phthalate DEHP were significantly more likely to have a diagnosed case of asthma (Bornehag et al. 2004; Baier-Anderson 2010: 15).

Simply put, this multi-faceted problem is one that directly stems from the ills of inadequate policy. The current chemicals regulatory framework – established over three decades ago with the passage of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) – has grown exceptionally weak and strikingly outdated. Remarkable as it is, not only was Gerald Ford President the last time Congress found the strength to update our chemical regulatory framework, smoking was commonplace in airplanes and hospitals, seatbelt use was not mandated by law and lead was still frequently used in gasoline. Since that time, Americans and their elected representatives in Congress have moved to address all of those Issues and, as a direct result, we have witnessed significant improvements in public health – the greater good of society has been served. Similar movement on environmental chemicals has yet to see the light of day. Instead, regulators and manufacturers have, for many years now, knowingly allowed hundreds of human and ecologically hazardous chemicals to proliferate freely in our homes, workplaces and beyond.

Now, however, at the dawn of the second decade of the 21^st century, we have an opportunity to act to reverse this legislative stagnation. In recent weeks and months, the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works has held hearings on the issue of chemical regulatory reform, and the EPA has moved to require chemical manufacturers to provide more information on the human hazards of the chemicals used in their products. Equipped with persisting Democratic majorities in both chambers of congress, and with strong leadership at the EPA, a bold and sensible resolution to this pressing problem is well within reach.

This is the first post in a series that will aim to identify the cost of inaction and the promise of chemical regulatory reform.

Enjoy the marinade,

- Matt

 

Matthew and I, as concerned members of our community at Grinnell College coordinated with a group of students to produce a document featuring recommendations for codifying the college’s committment to sustainable building practices. For our institution, this is a crucial moment in its history, as a new president is about to take office. While individual decisions, are where the change must begin if we are to reduce our impact on our environment, a residential institution for higher education can make a world of difference. Functioning essentially as small cities, they can reduce the per capita emissions of hundreds if not thousands of people. Further, their example can drive the entire construction industry to change its practices from top to bottom based on the power that they hold as large scale builders. The same is true for large corporations. Does your school, company or organization have an adequate sustainable building policy? If not, use your voice to pressure them to implement one!

————————————————

Dear President Raynard S. Kington,

Welcome to Grinnell College! Although your tenure as President of this great institution is just beginning, we hope this is a time when you are contemplating the direction in which you hope to lead us. What lasting mark you will imprint on Grinnell’s continually evolving history?

As you may know, Grinnell is currently in the process of casting the next iteration of its “campus plan.”  This is the first of many instances in which your vision of what Grinnell can become will be firmly felt. The document that directly follows contains ideas for greening this next stage of Grinnell’s physical development – a stage that depends to your leadership. It is the result of a project completed by students in Professor Jonathan Andelson’s Environmental Studies 295.01 course entitled “International Perspectives on Sustainability.”

Among other things, it suggests that the following steps be taken:

• 1. The Grinnell College President and Board of Trustees should adopt a policy that “all future construction and major renovations on campus must be designed and constructed in conformance with at least the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver standard.”
  2. The Grinnell College President and Board of Trustees should strengthen their greenhouse gas emissions reduction pledge. Towards this goal, The Grinnell College President should add his name to the American College and University’s Presidents’ Climate Commitment.
  3. The Grinnell College President and Board of Trustees should establish a policy pledging to maintain the current proportion of green space in all future building plans.

Leadership can start at the bottom, but eventually it needs to trickle to the top.  From the organizers of Free the Planet to those dedicated individuals serving on the Ecocampus Committee, Grinnell has long had a tradition of remarkable student leaders who have been fighting tirelessly to make Grinnell a more ecologically sustainable place. Now we hope under your tenure as Grinnell College’s President that we will have an active ally in this movement.

Thank you for your time and we look forward to your response.

Greening The Campus Plan: Ideas for Sustainability at Grinnell

With no end in sight, the worst oil spill in United States history continues. It may very well rank as our worst environmental disaster when all is said and done. Over 5,000 barrels are gushing from two large leaks every single day. Unless these are closet, that number could rise as high as 60,000 barrels per day. That’s a pretty staggering number. Consider that this particular rig is forty miles from the coast of Louisiana. This region on the gulf coast provides twenty-five percent of the nation’s seafood and approximately half of our oysters and shrimp, both of which are about to come into season. Fears that this industry could be decimated are completely justified, not to mention the possibility that the oil will reach up into the Mississippi. Already, birds and other animals are turning up on the shore covered in oil. This is seriously terrible and catastrophic.

So you’re probably wondering, why did these leaks occur in the first place and why is it taking us so long to close them. The rig is actually fairly new and technologically advanced; it was designed to make such a spill a mathematical impossibility. The issue is that the rig is designed for ultra-deep water. At five thousand feet down, where the tubing on this particular rig reaches the sea bed, only robots can repair the damage. It’s too deep for humans. The oil itself is located another four miles below the ocean floor. While the technology of the rigs themselves has substantially improved, our ability to stop the damage is extremely limited. This is problematic when the future of domestic oil supply depends on the expansion of these deep sea rigs.

The primary issue here isn’t that we’re using old technology in the rigs or to stop the proverbial bleeding in such a catastrophe. What is central to this debate is that we’re continuing to invest money into oil, a rather old and outdated technology. Certainly, I’m as staunch of an advocate as anyone for creating energy security for the United States and utilizing out domestic sources of energy to avoid fighting expensive wars around the world, being held at the whim of the OPEC oil cartel and funding petrol-dictators. Offshore drilling seems like a rational tactic while next generation technologies are being developed, but this crisis is a wake up call that it is not. Besides, if we were to begin a new rig now, the process from start to finish would take six or seven years – if everything goes smoothly – before it goes online. An already existing technology such as a wind farm takes a mere two years to build from start to finish.

You can see where I’m going with this. Any rational thinker would say that this is exactly the kind of focusing event needed to rally support around the Senate’s climate bill. Afterall, the original Earth Day was created in response to a 1969 bill and landmark Clean Air Act Amendments were mobilized by Exxon Valdez.

Yet as we all know, today’s Washington defies logic. Seeing the wealth Sarah Palin returned to her constituents in Alaska from oil profits, others wanted a piece of the pie. This concession was considered the key to getting moderate Republicans and Democrats on board. Now, it would be not only insensitive to form a compromise bill around increased drilling, but the emboldened left wing of the Democratic party will surely put their foot down. Making matters worse, Harry Reid, now arguably in legacy mode, saw the opportunity to get a slam dunk on immigration reform, a divisive issue for Republicans, while tabling an issue that splits his own party. The one Republican taking heat from his party and genuinely working with Democrats on a bill that he was to co-sponsor, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, has become upset and withdrew his support.

Given the deaths of eleven workers in this rig and twenty-nine in the recent coal mine collapse, we need to realize that “all of the above” is a comprehensive solution but maybe not a wise one. Neither of these events are isolated. Isn’t it time we switched to a base load of geothermal and nuclear energy, supplemented by wind and eventually solar? As November 2010 inches closer, it seems that incumbents in both parties are running scared, doing whatever it may take for them to cling to power. This is the time for someone to step forward, rise above, and show some leadership. Will anyone actually do it?

For more, read:

Spill Brings Opportunity – The Hill

No Fooling Mother Nature – Thomas Friedman

The Need to Beat Our Oil Addiction – John Podesta and Joseph Romm

So I’d guess that you’re probably wondering how I was able become involved in such an endeavor. Well, it’s no secret that I care very deeply about international development and also global environmental issues. Despite this interest, I’ve never had an opportunity to see with my own eyes what the situation looks like on the ground. Certainly as a Westerner raised in a middle-class family (by our standards), I am privileged and I am cognizant of this. Yet I’m not sure if I can ever fully grasp what life is like on one or two dollars a day through what I read in books and see on the internet. So when I heard that my college, Grinnell, was taking three students to Rajasthan, India, I jumped at the opportunity and was lucky enough to be selected to go.

The purpose of the trip is for myself and my two peers from Grinnell, as well as seven students from Northwestern University, our partner in this project, to design independent research projects, gather information while in Rajasthan, and analyze our results upon returning to the states. As a second component, we are working with the highly regarded Jal Bhagirathi Foundation, an NGO that deals with water scarcity issues in the region. The first few days will be devoted to working with the Foundation’s scholars and hearing their perspective on the problem. Much of the Indian state of Rajasthan is located in the Thar Desert. In fact, it is the most populous desert region in the world and not coincidentally the second poorest state in all of India. In such a water rich nation as the United States, it is hard to grasp the extent of the water crisis that is going on around the world. Farmers in Rajasthan have rioted because they lack the necessary water to irrigate their crops. Further, the quality is extremely low, as the water they do have is often brackish, saline and has unsafe concentrations of substances such as fluorine that make it unsafe to drink. The state and federal governments in India have been at a loss in finding a solution, despite the fact that up until fairly recently, these people lived on this same land sustainably and successfully for over a millennium. Research suggests a large part of the reason these people might be so poor and undeveloped compared to surrounding states is their lack of access to resources such as water. In the coming years, climate disruption due to increased carbon in the atmosphere will only make the situation worse. Droughts will become more frequent as the monsoons continually fail. Aside from Africa, South Asia will be hit harder by climate change than any other place in the world (although things look pretty bad in Australia too).

So my task, and that of the other students, is to come up with a solution to this problem. It’s pretty hard to believe that this is what they actually expect of us. Finding even a partial solution might prove elusive. Knowing comparatively little about the region and the problem, it’s pretty arrogant to expect us Westerners to come in and make a positive difference. I view the purpose of my trip as a chance to listen. My project deals with determining the effectiveness of NGOs focus on water education or teaching self-help principles. A great deal of my research will be based on interviews and quantitative metrics I record while talking to people living in rural desert villages (with the help of a translator) and also through the NGOs themselves. The general idea is that I will analyze the two and find out whether what these organizations are doing meets the needs of the people. I will explain this in further detail as time goes on. As Rajasthan was heavily influenced by British colonization, the second part of my study will be looking at what I can draw from interactions with Native Americans, Westerners and similar NGOs in the American Southwest and also in Australia with the Aborigines. With some luck, I will come up with an epiphany that might provide useful insights based on the information I gathered and as a relatively unbiased outsider.

This should be exciting. I am also stopping in Delhi twice (on the front and back end), which will be just another view of the great country of India and I hope to write about that as well. Please do offer feedback along the way. I’d really like to hear your perspective as well.

Here’s an insider’s point of view: Last winter, I was not only living in London, I was walking the halls of Westminster Palace – the so called “corridors of power” of the UK government – as an assistant to a Member of Parliament (MP). Channeling my inner Sherlock Holmes – my flat was only a few doorsdown from his fictional address – I spent much of this time in an inquisitive mood. I knew my MP was a little different from many politicians back home, but I desperately wanted to distill some of the reasons why.

To my great surprise, it was in the task of scheduling my MP’s daily meetings that provided a vital clue. When not casting votes or chairing committee hearings, my MP spent her work day representing real people: organizing a press conference to shed light on the unjust treatment of a constituent, meeting with taxi drivers from her district, and fighting to ensure strict environmental standards were placed on adding a third runway to Heathrow Airport. Campaign contributions, corporate lobbyists, and fundraisers did not play significantly into her daily life.

It turned out my initial inclination was wrong. My MP wasn’t a little different from politicians back home, she was worlds apart. She didn’t need millions of dollars to get re-elected. In the UK elections cycles are short and people don’t just sell their votes to the highest bidder. Here’s some astonishing numbers:  according to USA Today the average candidate for the US House ofRepresentatives needs to raise more than $1 million to be competitive, while the average candidate for the Senate needs to raise more than $7 million. In the UK?  Campaign spending is limited to approximately $50,000 per seat.

So let’s contrast the average work day of my MP – who needs to raise $50,000 to get reelected– with average work day of, say, Senator Grassley – who needs $7 million to get reelected. Throughout the summer Grassley was seen hobnobbing with health care lobbyists and dining at fundraisers hosted by the same health insurance CEOS  whom he’s received $1.3 million from over the past 6 years.

After the health industry, Grassley kicks back with the folks from the coal industry and Big Ag  – the group which from which he receives the second most cash. Perhaps that explains why he has a 10 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters and proposed gutting the Conservation Reserve Program  –  the USDA’s most effective conservation effort.

Now Grassley wants to kill the climate change bill being debated in congress – the same bill that would invest millions of dollars into wind energy in Iowa and create thousands of jobs. Rather than advocating for cleaner, emissions-free energy, Grassley is instead trying to negotiate exemptions and payouts for coal companies and corporate farmers. If only the renewable energy industry of the future had the army of lobbyists and truckload of campaign cash that the dirty energy companies of today have. Maybe then they too could get Grassley’s ear.

I admit my characterization of British Politics is a bit idealized and doesn’t account for a wide array of other differences between our respective systems, but it proves useful in illustrating that one our Founding Fathers’ biggest fears has now become a harrowing reality: politics in America has been reduced to system of legalized bribery. Perhaps, now more than ever, it’s time to revisit the ideal of Thomas Jefferson when he wrote that “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of monied corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Cheers,

Matt