Happy Reading!

I have not had much time to blog lately. But, while I think up something amazing to blog about I wanted to post some interesting reading material for our followers.
Here is an article about a career EPA man who doesn't believe in climate change and is quite vocal about it. He has stirred up quite a controversy with his opinions.
Anyone who has ever heard Mayor Bloomberg speak at a food related event knows he has quite the affinity for Cheez-Its. It is his vice. Apparently though he has some other food vices as well. This article chronicles the diet of the Mayor and it's not as healthy as you think.
Shai Agassi was a guest this week on The Colbert Report. Watch the video here. Shai Agassi is an Israeli entrepreneur who is trying to create a network of affordable electric cars. (Maybe he will be the one to finally do it!)

Live Every Week Like It's Climate Week!

Tracy Jordan, he of 30 Rock fame, imparted this wisdom to Kenneth the page- Live every week like it's Shark Week! Now, I do love shark week but shark week has already passed for this year. I think Tracy's advice can translate very well to Climate Week. Climate week is already halfway done but that doesn't mean that you can't still find some interesting events to attend. Climate week is a week full of events related to climate issues while all the world's leaders are in town for the UN Climate Change conference. So go and learn all you can so that all 52 weeks are climate week.
P.S. How many times does the word "climate" appear in this post- geez!

Death of a Food Innovator

Last week the world lost one of its greatest innovators, Norman Borlaug. I am sure to most that name is unfamiliar but to billions of people he is an unsung hero. He is the unofficial father of the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution is not the modern day movement to go green but rather a scientific breakthrough in the 1940's. Many of the world's nations including Mexico and India were starving. Their crops were not sturdy and were not producing enough yield to feed their people. Borlaug, a plant pathologist, engineered dwarf wheat that was disease resistant. It was dwarf wheat so that the stalk wouldn't fall over from the weight of the plant. The Rockefeller Foundation commissioned Borlaug to work in Mexico and engineer sturdier wheat. The Revolution began with wheat but then expanded to rice and corn.

Borlaug's work undoubtedly changed the world's agricultural system. However, his work is very controversial. On the one hand he has supporters who thank him for quite literally feeding the world and saving lives. On the other hand he has critics who claim that his innovations led to overpopulation, increased use of pesticides, a shift away from family farms, explosion of monocultures (which lead to the need for pesticides), and the popularization of industrial agriculture.

I am usually a critic of anyone who promotes monocultures and anything that enhances factory farming (both of grains and animals). However, in this case I think Norman Borlaug was a hero. He responded to the naysayers by saying "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger." The people of Mexico and India were starving and it wasn't really the place or time to experiment with alternative farming methods. They needed food as fast as possible and they needed to become self sufficient. The Green Revolution taught the world to feed themselves. Sometimes, a non-ideal situation calls for non-ideal solutions.
Here is an obituary from the New York Times, that is more like a tribute.

Right to Know?

If you work in an industry in which there exists the possibility that you will be exposed to hazardous chemical materials in your workplace, your employer is required by law to make information available to you regarding the nature of those hazards. If you are a generator of hazardous wastes or a proprietor of a business that manufactures, stores or processes hazardous materials, you are required by law to inform the community in which your business resides of the type, quantity and hazards of the chemicals in your facility. Why then, should companies which pump hazardous materials into the ground (!) to extract hydrocarbons be exempt from such requirements when it comes to revealing the nature of those materials???

This is exactly the question debated in an excellent recent article in the industry magazine Chemical and Engineering News (8/17/09). The text of the article is only accessible to paid subscribers, but the regulatory debate is intense, particularly in areas where the practice is common, or likely to become common, as in the Marcellus Shale region of upstate New York and Pennsylvania.

Hydraulic fracturing, as the method is known, essentially involves the injection of huge volumes of chemical slurry mixtures into solid rock formations containing natural gas. The slurry displaces the gas, which is then recovered for energy generation. This method is especially useful in areas where most of the easy to retrieve gas has already been recovered, or where the gas is inherently difficult to reach, like the Marcellus Shale. Exactly what is in these chemical/water/sand slurries is largely unknown, however. And since it is not difficult to imagine that the process of injecting chemicals into the ground could potentially pose a hazard to nearby groundwater, communities in areas where the practice is used are understandably concerned.

Drilling companies claim that the evidence of groundwater contamination resulting from hydraulic fracturing is anecdotal. Right-to-know regulation is unnecessary, they argue, because hydraulic fracturing is not new and has been practiced safely for years, and that the depths to which the chemicals are injected are sufficiently deep to prevent groundwater contamination. Furthermore, the industry claims that national regulation of this practice would result in a burdensome additional layer of bureaucracy that would require them to obtain drilling permits at both the state and federal levels. And oh by the way, their slurry mixtures are proprietary, and they might not want to let everyone know exactly what they contain.

A number of politicians are not buying it, and are insisting that the drilling firms be held to the same disclosure standards as other industries. Charles Schumer, the Democratic Senator from NY, has introduced legislation that would require such disclosure. Seems to me that if these firms want a piece of the bonanza-waiting-to-happen that is the Marcellus Shale and other under-exploited reserves, they should also be willing to file a bit more paperwork. If I were a neighbor to one of these operations, I would certainly hope I had a right to know.

Happy Anniversary Cholera!

You know that Google Newsfeed bar at the top of your gmail that reads your email and tells you links to sites that might interest you? Today, I got the most interesting link and I am really not sure what email Google was reading that generated it. Here is the link. Apparently on this day 155 years ago John Snow convinced the London authorities to remove the pump handle on a water pump in Soho. For those not in the know, you might say big deal, that doesn't sound too eventful. However, for public health specialists this is comparable to our day of Creation. John Snow proved that the removal of the handle stopped the spread of the cholera epidemic in its tracks and he then went on to map out the entire city and its incidences of cholera- thus he begat Epidemiology.

Snow was the first to promote the idea that cholera (or as our Swiss professor pronounces it Koh-Lair-Ah) was spread by drinking water contaminated with raw sewage. The main theory of the day was that it was dirty air that caused the epidemic. It took some convincing but Snow was able to change minds about cholera and change the way it was controlled. Now only if John Snow was around to work on this pesky swine flu "epidemic."

The Top 10 List You Don't Want To Be On

The Blacksmith Institute, an organization dedicated to cleaning up the world's most polluted areas has a top 10 list of most polluted sites around the world. You can still nominate a site for the 2009 list. On the 2007 list is La Oroya, Peru. This is a very interesting site because there are many issues at hand. The owner of the smelters in La Oroya is the Doe Run Corporation owned by Ira Rennert, a major US businessman and philanthropist. La Oroya is often profiled because of the stark juxtaposition between the living conditions of the Peruvian townspeople and Ira Rennert.
Here is what La Oroya looks like:

Here is Ira Rennert's Hamptons home:


Here is a 10 minute video profiling Herculaneum, Missouri, La Oroya and Ira Rennert.



99% of the children in La Oroya have blood lead levels that greatly exceed any acceptable limits. Even newborn babies have extremely high lead levels that were passed from their mothers in the womb. High lead levels can greatly affect mental development. The Doe Run Corporation has promised to clean up the site but in 2004 they asked for an extension to come up with an environmental management plan. There is external pressure to shut down the smelters because of the widespread illnesses. However, even though their families are sick many of the smelter employees are opposed to shutting down the plants. This is their job and their only source of income. They have nowhere else to go and their lives would be completely disrupted and uprooted if they had to move and find new employment.
On a positive note, a team led by the Blacksmith Institute visited La Oroya in May 2008 and found that Doe Run's efforts to curb emissions and improve health have been somewhat effective. However, these are the opinions of the Blacksmith Institute and have been refuted by other organizations. Click here to read a critique of the findings.

The Year of Living Sustainably

There is a lot of information out there on how to live sustainably. It can be very hard to wade through all the information and figure out what works best for you. A new blog is quite comprehensive and impressive, so much so that it is now a book.
Check out No Impact Man
The blogger decided to try living for a year without creating environmental impacts. The most interesting fact is that he tried to do this in New York City, not the most conducive setting for this experiment. Check out his blog or buy the book and get living more sustainably.