The California power grid wants to make sure it can keep electricity flowing as residents rely on a greater amount of wind and solar power and strict water rules force the shutdown of power plants along the coast in the next few years, the agency said.

California has the most ambitious plan of any state to expand use of renewable resources to 33 percent by 2030, by boosting wind and solar generation.

California is also ahead of other states in efforts to dramatically reduce the amount of ocean-water used for cooling at existing natural gas-fired power plants built along the coast.

via Calif. seeks flexible power rules as wind expands | Reuters.

Cash Mob!Our goal is to support local family farmers by each spending $20 at the Alachua County 441 Farmers Market. Come check it out Saturday, February 4th 8:30AM to 1:00PM. Click here to see the flyer.

via Florida Organic Growers.

During a Republican presidential primary debate last June, Michele Bachmann lit into the Environmental Protection Agency, recommending it be renamed the “job-killing organization of America.” Her fellow contenders nodded in agreement, each explaining how shutting down the EPA, or at least instituting a moratorium on regulations, would be a priority in their White House.

The GOP’s desire to kill America’s chief environmental regulator hasn’t just been grist for the bizarre sideshow that is the Republican Party’s presidential primary. Over the past year, Republicans in Congress — in actual positions of power — have succeeded in massively defunding the EPA. In March, no less than nineteen riders were floated on the floor of the House of Representatives to cut the EPA’s budget. Fifteen Republican senators even proposed deleting the EPA as a cabinet-level agency. The harshest of these legislative bombs were diffused, but the cuts that prevailed added up to the largest single year drop in EPA funding since 1981 when President Reagan (“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do”) began his unprecedented assault on the greens.

Republicans by no means have a monopoly on the “job killer” trope. Moderate, so called-Blue Dog Democratic senators like Jay Rockefeller and Ben Nelson, who hail from states with huge corporate energy interests, have co-sponsored legislation to ditch specific EPA standards. Even President Obama recently reinforced the mythology that environmental regulations are counterproductive to economic development, saying in September that his decision to rescind ozone air-quality standards was essential to the nation’s economic recovery. Both parties also are seriously pursuing environmental deregulation of industry, and cuts to the nation’s major cleanup programs.

The problem with all of this, however, is that California’s economy is now crucially dependent on environmental regulation and remediation. This is especially true in cities where decades of industrial pollution have created an environment not only toxic to human health, but also economic investment.

In fact, cleaning up toxic sites has become a fundamental driver of the Bay Area’s economy. As a result, cutting the EPA’s budget, and possibly reducing funds for the state agency responsible for partnering in cleanup, the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), will stall job creation and condemn huge swaths of urban California as economic dead zones.

But the fallacy that environmental laws kill jobs doesn’t end there. According to economists who study the impact of regulation on markets, California’s economy will likely add more jobs and develop new vibrant sectors of activity much faster if politicians embrace ambitious environmental goals. According to this emerging school of thought, environmental regulations aren’t only pivotal for human health and environmental quality, they stimulate innovation, and innovation is the key to California’s economy.

Read the rest here.

We had a great January candidates forum at Blue Water Bay – thanks to Shawn Sheppard and Jason Fults, as well to all of you who joined us! And now it’s time for some more fun next week…

Jan. 30 Sponsor Reception: Don Davis will host a reception to thank past and potential Cinema Verde sponsors at Capital City Bank, 1417 N. Main St., 5:30 – 7 p.m., please RSVP (Trish@CinemaVerde.org) if you’d like to join our circle of winners! Thank you, Don!

Green Drinks (www.gogreennation.org/category/green-drinks/) will be held 6 – 8 p.m. Feb. 1 at Cafe C, 424 Northwest 8th Avenue – opening this night just for us, so please come hungry and thirsty!

The UF Office of Sustainability is sponsoring Green Drinks this month as a kick-off event of their month-long Food For Thought series highlighting sustainable and local foods. The evening will be co-hosted by Cafe C, a sustainable restaurant owned by Celebrations Catering, in celebration of our partnership with Celebrations to use their lovely Villa East (301 N. Main) as our venue for Cinema Verde (Feb. 24 – March 2).

Cinema Verde NEWS

ATTEND AND ADVERTISE: Our plans for Cinema Verde are evolving rapidly. We’ll have fairs to “Celebrate Nature” and provide “Sustainable Solutions” Feb. 24 and 25, and we invite environmental organizations and sustainable businesses to participate. We’re also creating our program and Sustainable Business Directory, which we would to be as comprehensive a resource as possible – please let us know if you’d like to be included. Details on our schedule and program opportunities are here: http://www.verdefest.org/2012-cinema-verde-schedule/

CHECK OUT OUR FILMS: While we won’t be releasing our full film schedule until the end of January, we have posted links to a few films we plan to include. Directors and principals of many of these films would like to attend – please help bring them in by making a donation to cover their expenses! View the trailers for these films and donate here: http://www.verdefest.org/2012-cinema-verde-schedule/

FREE TICKETS!! Wear your Cinema Verde t-shirt around town, and if we see you we’ll give you a free ticket to one of our films! We’re selling tickets online and at the Wednesday Farmer’s Market, where you can get a shirt, too!

We welcome support of our 2012 festival, which is just around the corner, Feb. 24 – March 2, 2012. There will be tabling and booth opportunities for environmental organizations and businesses during our opening weekend and also during the week at individual films.

Please let us know if you’d like to let us help showcase your sustainable initiatives! Call Trish Riley: 352-327-3560… thank you!

Best,
Trish*–
Trish Riley, Director: Cinema Verde Environmental Film & Arts Festival
www.CinemaVerde.org, PO Box 358711, Gainesville, FL 32635, 352.327.3560
Cinema Verde is a Florida not-for-profit corporation designated as a 501(c)(3) public charity by the IRS: Contributions are tax deductible.Thank you for your support!
Publisher: www.GoGreenNation.org

Huge thanks go to Brett Shipp for staying on this story. To recap:

• A chemical plant blew up and I knew right away that fracking was involved.
• Chemical fire spawns fish kill, criminal investigation
• Waxahachie chemical firm cited for environmental violations
• Chemical plant relocation upsetting Ellis County residents
• Ellis County Commissioners catch heat from chemical plant foes

So that was that. A bunch of fish died, people got sick, water was contaminated, the plant wants to locate next to a diary and… life goes on.

Then it started raining.

Now the rain is washing away the containment areas and the chemicals are causing massive foaming in the creeks. Here is Shipp’s story with some great video.  But, don’t worry because Jerrell with TCEQ is on the scene and they are monitoring it.

People, people, PEOPLE!!!  This is nothing new. We have been trying to tell you about foaming creeks, ditches and well water for years now.

WFAA-TV posts video with a report on its site.

If you missed watching Al Jazeera’s The Stream special on Monsanto’s biopiracy in India while advancing Bt Brinjal, and its implications, you can catch it on You Tube. Its about 45 mins. long).  The programme covers many diverse issues, in addition to biopiracy.

Rootworms in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska are suspected of developing tolerance of the plants’ insecticide, based on documented cases of severe crop damage and reports from entomologists, the EPA said in a document dated Nov. 22 and posted yesterday on the government website. Monsanto’s program for monitoring suspected cases of resistance is “inadequate,” the EPA said.

An Iowa State University study said in July that some rootworms have evolved resistance to an insect-killing protein derived from Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a natural insecticide engineered into Monsanto corn. Entomologists in Illinois and other Midwestern states are studying possible resistance where the insects devour roots in Monsanto’s Bt corn.

“Resistance is suspected in at least some portions of four states in which ‘unexpected damage’ reports originated,” the EPA said in the document, an internal memo that reviewed damage reports.

There is no scientific confirmation of resistance to Monsanto’s Bt corn, Lee Quarles, a spokesman for the St. Louis- based company, said today by telephone. Monsanto takes the EPA report “seriously” and is increasing efforts to teach farmers how to respond to unexpected damage in their fields, he said.

Delegates from 194 parties are meeting in Durban, South Africa, for the annual U.N. Conference of Parties, or COP, climate change conference. Among topics being addressed is the reduction of carbon emissions worldwide, clean energy funding in lower-income nations, and the future of the Kyoto Protocol. One lesser-discussed issue that diplomats will address is the growing body of science about the impacts of climate change on global health.

The National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, identified six natural disaster events thought to be exacerbated by climate change. Those events include ozone air pollution, heat waves, the spread of infectious disease, river flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires. Tragically, extreme weather ravaged Durban itself just days before international delegates arrived. Torrential rains caused severe flooding that destroyed 700 homes and resulted in the deaths of 10 people. But beyond the immediate effects, all these disasters have wide-reaching consequences for national health, and a study published in Health Affairs magazine estimated that health costs incurred from the tragedies exceeded $14 billion from 2000 to 2009.

In the national debate on health care, it is imperative that the international community and our lawmakers at home not ignore the value of preventing the damage that climate change will cause to both the environment and human health.

The whole story

In a 2003 report, the World Health Organization, or WHO, posited that perhaps not all effects of climate change will be detrimental. Milder winters in temperate areas might mean a decrease in the death toll during the coldest months. Further, higher average temperatures in tropical areas could kill off mosquitos that carry deadly infectious diseases.

The WHO was careful to note that human vulnerability to climate change depends on population density, economic stability, food availability, income distribution, and various other mitigating factors. Thus, it is possible that not everyone will suffer uniformly. The WHO concluded, however, that on the whole, the ill effects of climate change will disproportionately affect lower-income regions and nations compared to post-industrial nations. The disadvantages to global health, the WHO concluded, will outweigh the few potential perks of climate change.

Direct impact

The immediate effects of climate change on human health are perhaps clearest. It is no secret that heat causes dehydration and that carbon emissions result in air pollution. The Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, noted that heat waves account for the highest proportion of weather-related deaths annually, with children and older adults most susceptible. The CDC estimated that heat-related deaths could climb from about 700 a year to between 3,000 and 5,000 by the year 2050, given expected levels of human-caused warming. In order to counteract the loss to human life, the CDC recommended air conditioning for poorly ventilated areas, though such utilities are hard to come by in the lower-income areas that need them most.

The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, reported that an increase in particulate matter will exacerbate respiratory diseases. While some air pollutants may occur naturally, as in the case of volcanic ash and dust, there is reason to believe that a significant portion of particulate matter in the air is anthropogenic—that is, humans produce them by burning fossil fuels. NASA estimates that humans cause at least 10 percent of aerosols, a particularly hazardous type of air pollution that contributes to the greenhouse gas effect and the deterioration of human health. An increase in ground-level ozone is also associated with decreased lung function, as well as cancer.

The CDC elaborated on potential detriments to asthma and airway diseases; fine particles in the air are associated with heart attack and blood clots. Indirectly, early flower blooming increases pollen, which can cause allergic reaction. Higher temperatures also increase mold spores, further irritating respiratory diseases. Furthermore, more frequent droughts may lead to increase in airborne dust, and increasingly frequent wildfires caused by climate change may also contribute to particulate matter.

A January 2010 report from the EPA offered a conservative estimate that heat waves cost the public $5.1 billion a year in health costs. The EPA put the baseline cost for asthma and respiratory illness at $5 billion. Additionally, the EPA estimated that public health costs incurred by poor indoor air quality and communicable respiratory diseases could exceed $10 billion.

Natural disasters

With climate change comes extreme weather: more frequent and severe flooding, storms, and forest fires. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, found that the number of hurricanes had increased annually since 1970, writing, “There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures.”

The IPCC went on to predict an influx of hurricanes in the near future:

Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.

The cost to human life from extreme weather is significant. Scientists and economists from the NRDC estimated that Florida hurricane season racked up $1.4 billion in health bills in 2004 alone. California wildfires cost $578 million in 2003, and flooding in North Dakota cost $20 million in 2009. Many of these figures do not take into account the added cost of damage to hospitals and other health care infrastructure, as well as the costly effects to health that pervade the population years later in the form of heart disease, cancer, and disorders of mental health.

Implications for disease control

As the globe heats up, the outlook for the containment of pathogens is becoming increasingly dismal. Rising average temperatures worldwide expand the range and seasonality of communicable diseases unique to warmer months. The WHO estimated that climate change was responsible for 2.4 percent of deaths from diarrhea and 6 percent of deaths from malaria in middle-income countries in the year 2000.

The Commission on Climate Change and Development, or CCCD, emphasized the importance of containing the rise of vector-borne diseases. Though the WHO does not predict that climate change will incite the mutation of new diseases, climate change could precipitate the resurgence of diseases that have plagued human history. Aside from malaria and diarrheal diseases, the CCCD warned of an influx of cholera, which is linked to low river flows in the dry season, and possibly due to pathogen infection of standing pools of water that result. Also of concern is an increase in rodent-borne diseases after flooding, and meningitis is linked to drought and heat, though the mechanism for transmission is still unclear.

Dengue fever and a spike in food-borne illnesses could also result from continued climate change, according to the same WHO study. A report from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, suggested that an increase in temperatures will result in more contamination of crops. The NIH also reported that drought increases the prevalence of insects and other pests that can hamper agricultural productivity.

Of particular concern is the seafood supply. The CDC warned that algal blooms are known to release harmful neurotoxins that cause death in humans; marine organisms can also pick up these neurotoxins. The most common neurotoxin that blue-green algae releases is anatoxin-a, which interrupts neurotransmitter activity at neuromuscular junctions and can cause muscle paralysis and even death from respiratory failure. Because cooking seafood does not necessarily kill harmful biotoxins, these harmful chemicals pose a unique threat to the food supply. Measures to prevent contamination of the food supply may not be consequential, however, as the CDC reports that it is also possible that marine neurotoxins will be aerosolized by the surf crashing onto the beach and dispersing into the wind.

Communicable diseases are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to health impacts of climate change, according to the CDC. With increases in temperatures comes an increase in the volatility of certain dangerous chemicals associated with cancer. Such hazardous chemicals like ground ozone, black carbon, diesel exhaust, and ammonia, are also known to be dispersed with heavy rainfall, which is associated with climate change. Further, the depletion of ozone means that more harmful UV radiation penetrates the atmosphere, increasing the occurrences of skin cancer.

The ripple effect

The direct consequences of climate change on public health are not relegated to the immediate effects of hotter averages and more extreme weather. The direct effects of extreme weather, like injury, property damage, and loss of life also create ripple effects that cause additional damage to society and public health. For example, the CDC warns that diminished access to food and water caused by drought could cause migration from rural to urban areas or vice versa. Migration itself is linked to health problems that impose a steep price tag for public funds. The International Organization for Migration reported that, among other health concerns, migration increases physical trauma and spreads diseases.

Additionally, climate-enhanced food insecurity has its own ramifications for human development. Starvation leads to malnutrition in mothers and, consequently, stunted development in fetuses and children.

Coastal flooding and pollution could impair food manufacturing and health care facilities. Reactions will vary regionally, but the consequences of population displacement, as well as the erosion of food manufacturing industries, may not be apparent for several decades.

Climate change is no longer just a looming threat in the abstract. Climate change is a hidden culprit with real impacts on health care costs, and, more gravely, human lives. Finding solutions to the climate crisis is no longer just an environmental issue. The effects of climate change permeate through all facets of human life, and preparing for the impact on health care should be a priority.

Lauren Simenauer is an intern with Science Progress and a senior at the University of Virginia.

If you are of a certain age, you will remember the 1980’s anti-drug advertisement where they fry the egg and opine “This is your brain on drugs”.  Well folks this yolk is your body on drugs.  It comes from a chicken that eats sub-standard food and a pharmaceutical soup of antibiotics and other chemicals.  Now, I don’t blame the chicken.  I do believe though. that it is time we collectively “Just say NO!”  I guess Nancy Reagan had something right.

Factory farms that produce eggs see chickens as machines.  It is all rather Orwellian.  To them hens are a mechanism of economic output.  They are fed the cheapest food possibe and live in ‘Third World’ conditions compared to their organic sisters.  Why?  These ‘farms’, factories really,  want to maximize their profit.  Not your health.

When we purchase most commercially produced eggs we unknowingly support practices like de-beaking, grinding up male chicks alive, forced molting, and other widespread practices of inherent cruelty.  I don’t know about you, but I just can’t bring myself to support these practices, which is what we do when we buy commercially produced eggs.