Fracking....Continued

I told you I would follow the fracking debate and this weekend as I was reading about White House crashers (seriously?) I was distracted by an article about the split in an upstate community over fracking. Many families in upstate New York own a nice chunk of land. Most were approached by energy companies with a proposition of drilling on their land. Some were outraged and convinced that the negative health effects were not worth the money being offered. Others were lured by the money to be earned and a chance to "rebuild" their community and convince their children to stay in the area. The drilling would be jobs to a community in great need of an economic boost. Some people are being offered $5,000-$6,000 an acre for five years with royalties of 20% for gas that is found. As an unemployed recent grad school grad I can totally understand the lure of money. However, if someone told me they would give me $250,000, but there was a good chance there would be benzene in my drinking water, I am pretty sure I would turn it down. I remember few things from Organic Chemistry but I will never forget the benzene ring. It has 6 carbons and 3 alternating double bonds.

Benzene is an especially pernicious toxic substance. Benzene is a known carcinogen which can have effects from both short term and long term exposure. There is no dispute that benzene causes leukemia. In my opinion this is the main reason the DEC cannot allow drilling in the Marcellus Shale. Millions of people depend on that water and we cannot risk benzene contamination!
Another major issue raised in this article is that of "compulsory integration". This allows gas companies to drill on land they do not have consent for as long as they have most of the leases in the surrounding areas! What???? How can this be legal? You can threaten my drinking water after I explicitly said no. This does not make sense to me. This just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Who will monitor the water? Will it be given a clean bill of health only to find an entire community and possibly New York City residents sick with leukemia in 20 years...? I understand there are always trade offs, but in my book, risk to human health should never be traded.

Farm Fresh Food Stamps

New York City has been leading the way in local, sustainable eating and farming. A new greenmarket pops up all the time. For the last few years I have been listening with half an ear to the voices that have been pushing for more acceptance of food stamps at these greenmarkets. Now that I am more informed I am listening with both ears. Lower income people are usually the ones most plagued by obesity and diabetes and would benefit the most from the fresh seasonal produce offered at the markets. The Department of Health has been working tirelessly to change the eating habits of low income communities in numerous ways. This summer they began offering $2 vouchers for every $5 spent at greenmarkets. This has resulted in a major increase in food stamps used at the markets. In 2008, only $100,000 in food stamps were spent. This year it more than doubled to $226,000. This is due in large part to the installation of Electronic Benefit Transfer stations that allow easy scanning of food stamp cards. It ain't our grandparents paper stamps anymore. Lack of education isn't always the culprit in these situations. Most of the time it is access- access to fresh, healthy food.

Recap of the Net Impact Conference Part II

Here is the 2nd part of the weekend- recapped. There were a few keynote panels that got progressively interesting and entertaining as the weekend went on. The first one was a “fireside chat” with Cornell President David Skorton and Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. (Because I watch too much TV I could not stop picturing Alec Baldwin up on stage as Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming) He used a lot of business jargon that I am not familiar with. The most interesting part was when he admitted that he was a lifelong Republican. I am pretty sure at our school that you would not admit to such things but I admire his frankness. Even though he is a Republican, President Obama employs his clean energy expertise. Now that’s what I call reaching across the aisle.

The final keynote panel was the most interesting. Joe Sibilia, CEO of Meadowbrook Lane Capital and CSRwire.com moderated it. The panelists were Jeff Furman, Board Member of Ben and Jerry’s, Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO (hardy har) of Honest Tea and Lisa Lorimer, Founder of Vermont Bread Company. The title of the talk was Selling Up or Selling Out: Maintaining a Social Mission While Growing to Scale. The main focus was the social initiatives that each company dedicates themselves to. Did you know that Greyston Bakery in Yonkers made the brownies in all Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? This bakery employs disadvantaged people who have had trouble finding employment in the past. Honest Tea’s distribution division was recently bought by Coca Cola. An audience member posed an excellent question to Mr. Goldman, who provided an excellent answer. She asked him how could he, knowing what he knows about companies like Coca Cola and their involvement in privatization of water, do business with them? He responded by saying that he does not represent Coca Cola and that since they started doing business together nothing about his dedication and efforts to social action has changed. He is still running his business exactly how he wants; Coca Cola is just delivering his product. I have mixed feelings about these small companies doing business with these huge corporate monsters, but I think his answer was honest and fair.

I used to think when it came to environmentalism that peoples’ intentions needed to be pure. Now, I don’t care what your motivations are as long as you are doing the right thing and putting up the money. And don’t forget to hire us scientists!

I will leave you with a few terms that were more than bandied about the entire weekend- base of the pyramid, metrics, leverage, binary, CSR, corporate citizenship. If you want to work in the business world, you might want to learn these terms.

Recap of Net Impact Conference: Part I

This past weekend I attended the Net Impact conference at Cornell University. It was sponsored by the Johnson School of Business and its purpose was to bring together MBA students and professionals interested and focused on sustainability and corporate responsibility. I felt a little out of place the whole weekend as many of the discussions were off topic for me but I definitely brought something new to the table- an angle to the sustainability discussion that many of these people had not thought about. Many times over the weekend these students were commended for their commitment to sustainability and environmental change- but as some of the panelists pointed out it is mostly motivated by economics. While I don’t doubt that the majority of the people there truly have a passion for saving the environment I can’t help but be skeptical about their motivations. We come from a place of health. In our world, the driving force for sustainability and environmentalism is human health. In their world they are motivated by dollar signs.
I will break this blog into two separate posts so that I don’t overwhelm you with information.
I attended some interesting panels throughout the weekend. The first one I attended was called “Creating Access to Clean Water: A Top Down vs. Bottom Up Approach”.
The two main points that I took away with me was the importance of community building. When trying to create a social movement it is essential to get the community involved and let them be the owners of the project. You must have buy in from all the stakeholders or your venture will never succeed. Secondly, Kevin Mc Govern, Founder and CEO of the Water Initiative and professor at the Johnson School, made an excellent point that I had never really thought about before. His company provides filters for people in Mexico to filter arsenic, fluoride, and pathogens. We all know the ill health effects of all three of these things and understand the need for these filters. He said that his company is for profit and he doesn’t feel bad about it at all. Non-profits can go into a country and do work and then leave because their money ran out or some other reason. The two main problems that communities face from NGO work is abandonment and maintenance. For profits don’t leave as easily and usually stay in the country for a much longer time to see things through because their product and their reputation are on the line. A good example of this would be the digging of tube wells in Bangladesh by UNICEF. The majority of the wells contained arsenic and there was consequently a major arsenic poisoning of the Bangladeshi people. UNICEF has worked to fix this problem on a small scale. But ultimately, they are not claiming responsibility for this. In my Water and Infectious Disease class we talked at length about the important role women play in providing clean drinking water and clean water for sanitation for their families. The world over women are usually the keepers of the household but in many poor areas girls are the ones walking the 10 miles to fetch the water. So it is important to target them to teach them about water, sanitation and hygiene (aka WASH). Here is an interesting factoid: if you teach boys your return is 1:1 but if you teach girls your return is 1:10!!!!!!!

Fracking- Just as Dirty as it Sounds!

I have recently been introduced to the term fracking. I thought the fellow telling me about it was just being cheeky but no, it's an actual term. Fracking is the shorthand way of saying hydraulic fracturing- a method of drilling that includes injecting fluid into an oil/gas deposit to fracture the rock and release the oil/gas. Energy and gas companies want to drill in the Marcellus Shale, a formation of sedimentary rock that stretches from NY State to Tennessee, for natural gas. Last year Gov. Paterson signed a law that would allow companies to drill this area in New York. In 2005 Congress passed the "Halliburton Loophole" that exempts hydraulic fracturing from the reach of the Safe Drinking Water Act, which regulates most drilling in drinking water resources. However, many concerned citizens and public officials are concerned about the wastewater pollution and environmental health effects this is going to have on the NYC watershed and other watersheds located throughout this region. The DEC has released reports that fracking can cause radioactive wastewater. Fracking is known to release toxins during the drilling process that can then contaminate the aquifers and wells. The Chesapeake Energy Co. owns leases on some of the land but they have promised that they will not drill in the area. Some public officials are calling for written statements that declare there will be no drilling done. The DEC has been holding public hearings that are beginning to get quite heated.
Here is a video of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer at the recent DEC hearing at Stuyvesant High School.

This is an interesting debate that I will continue to follow closely and hopefully attend one of the open hearings.
One of our other bloggers blogged about hydraulic fracturing in an earlier post in the context of the citizen's right to know. Check it out here.

Egypt gives new meaning to "Pig Out"

Apparently swine flu is here to stay. I just wish the hysteria would die down already. More people die from seasonal flu every year and people are not in such a panic over it. If there was one aspect of public health that I think needs major work it would be the communication of risk to the public. I think the CDC is trying very hard and I give them credit but the media and such get people whipped into such a frenzy that there is no way to calm them down. The facts and figures are no longer persuasive because everyone is afraid they are going to die from swine flu. The most asinine action that really got me worked up was the actions of the Egyptian government. When the panic first swept the world Egypt ordered the slaughter of every single pig in the country. Six months later they are realizing it was maybe not the best idea! (In my best 80's voice- DUH!) Not only will that not stop the spread of swine flu but it had other unintended consequences, such as trash build up. In Egypt, pigs ate all the organic matter from the garbage. Now the job has fallen to the goats who do not do nearly as good a job as the pigs and hence Egypt now faces a major trash problem!
It seems that even after the ministers were informed that pigs were not the main culprit in the spread of the disease it became more of a social issue. It was an effort to clean up the areas where the garbage collectors lived and fed organic waste to pigs.
When faced with health scares many governments (ours included) do not create a well thought out game plan. The solution usually lies in how best to treat the problem NOW- the future be damned. Egypt is a prime example of how not to react during a crisis. Read the article here.
It seems like Egypt could definitely use a revamp of their public health system. I do need a job, but I don't think I want one that badly!

Bee Update

As per one of my previous posts we know that Haagen-Dazs is trying to promote the repopulation of honeybees. Through November 11, Haagen-Dazs will donate $1 for every tweet about the honeybees. They will donate for up to 500 tweets a day with the proper hashtag. The money will go to honeybee research at UC Davis.

Environmental Crimes

I recently read an article in the NAEP (National Association for Environmental Professionals) journal that was really eye opening. It explored the question of who should be held responsible for environmental crimes and what is the exact definition of environmental crime. The article brought forth the examples of Kuwait, Hiroshima and Vietnam as environmental casualties of war. The authors argue that it is essential to legitimize the idea of environmental crimes so that someone is held accountable in the aftermath of a war. As a child, I remember watching on TV the oil wells in Kuwait burn for days. This was before I was an environmental advocate so it never occurred to me to be worried about the massive amounts of pollution being released into the atmosphere from these fires. Now, that I have a better understanding of pollution I find it horrifying that these things are allowed to go unpunished. The Vietnam War was a little before my time but I definitely learned about it many times in school and Agent Orange was only mentioned in passing. However, this was a major destructive force in the war, in addition to weapons and artillery. According to the article the US used 1.84 million gallons of Agent Orange between June 1962 and January 1971. The US used this chemical to eliminate Vietnamese camouflage and destroy food supplies of the Viet Cong. However, exposure to this chemical has caused a higher incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in American soldiers. I am sure that there are many undocumented consequences for the Vietnamese as well.
I understand that war is hell, but there are standards for war, i.e. the Geneva Convention. But it seems that when it comes to environmental and human health damage countries are never properly punished. Currently, there is no international legal framework by which standards can be set and people/countries can be prosecuted for crimes. Many countries have strict laws against pollution and environmental crimes but once you add war across international borders to the mix it becomes a lot more murky. There is also the question of what is considered an environmental crime? What is the exact definition of environment? How do you prove deliberate actions?
This article was quite thought provoking and made me consider an aspect of environmental harm that I had not previously thought of. I would love to hear some thoughts on this topic....