Urban Ecoist

Part and parcel of being an urban ecoist is worrying about those lands outside of our urban habitat, as we understand and appreciate the importance of the wilderness and its inhabitants. That said, let’s get right into this.

Oil Shale: A Destructive Way to Put Off the Inevitable

It is not like oil shale has not been around forever, literally. Cavemen figured out how to burn oil shale rocks. It wasn’t until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution that mankind rediscovered this resource and started mining it in great quantities. That was all well and good, but oil shale was more expensive to process than petroleum, which also has more potential energy, and petrol became our fuel of choice.

Oil shale does not contain oil, per se. It contains kerogen, which contains hydrocarbons. But it’s a bit of a process to get those hydrocarbons, which means it costs more to get those hydrocarbons. And we all know what it means when a form of energy costs more than good ol’ gas or coal — it is not going to fly with the American public.

But wait, oil prices have been rising, which makes oil shale extraction more attractive to the American public in terms of cost. However, there are costs involved in oil shale that many of us might not see as part of the bottom line.

Oil shale has to be mined, and mining is almost always a very destructive process in terms of the environment in which the minable resource is found. Look at mountaintop removal-style mining in Appalachian coal deposits, and you will see what I mean.

In an odd move by the Obama Admin, in the person and department of Ken Salazar and the Interior, our federal government is going to offer our public lands to oil shale development projects. Incidentally, there are already six 160 acre parcels of public lands that have already bee “leased” out to companies for “research, development, and demonstration” purposes.

Oil shale is a great way to finish destroying the West. This is what the Powder River Basin looks like after coal.

It’s not so much that oil shale wouldn’t provide cost-effective energy, but really? Are we still looking for ways to fill up our conventional combustion engines, or are we looking past fossil fuels to a cleaner and more responsible future? I say, screw the development leases, save what’s left of the Western United States, and spend that money and time on algae, or switchgrass, or jatropha, or something that doesn’t rely on the same tired technology that is not only destroying our planet, but if you need a more selfish and individualized reason, but air pollution affects your health.

It’s like the ship is sinking, but we keep thinking that if we go to the lower decks, we’ll be safe. Dig deeper? Please.

You have less than a month to bitch to Salazar about this futile exercise in energy development. Click here if you want to go the National Wildlife Federation website and have them send a letter to the DOI for you, or you can mail your own letter to the following:

Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240

or save a tree and email the DOI at feedback@ios.doi.gov

oil shale, United States, energy, oil, fossil fuels, environment, mining, resources, wilderness, Department of the Interior, Ken Salazar, Obama

Ok, so normally, I am not one to count on celebrities to either a) do something or anything important enough for me to care about or b) tell me how to think about things that I may already care about. However, as this is a site with a focus on all things sustainable, I have made an exception in Mr. Brad Pitt’s and Make It Right NOLA’s case.

So, in my first installment of “green” celebrity news…I bring you…Brad Pitt.

Enough about making grandchildren envious already, and nice shiny suit there, Brad. Oh, and you forgot that top button, too. Ok, I got that out of me…

Visiting D.C. within just a few weeks of his frequent co-star, George Clooney’s visit, Pitt’s star power was kept as secret as humanly possible in the cesspool of Washingtonian politics. But according to the AP story about the visiting “dignitary”, “The Power of Pitt drained entire congressional offices of their female employees and quite a few male aides as well, all of whom could be picked out by the way they suddenly appeared in the Senate’s doorways and halls, nonchalantly cupping cell phones and cameras at their sides and hanging around waiting news crews.”

Pitt was in Washington (Angie is also shooting a movie there, so he was in town already) to talk with the people in power about affordable, sustainable housing. If you didn’t know, Pitt is the starpower behind an effort in New Orleans called Make It Right NOLA (click on that link to read more about Make It Right). MIRNOLA is working to design and build green housing in the Lower Ninth Ward, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina and an area home to a predominantly low-income minority population.

While on the Hill, Brad Pitt met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about “nationalizing” Make It Right’s ideas and designs for more American cities that have been afflicted by disasters, both natural and man-made (hello, Detroit, Michigan).

Brad Pitt, NOLA, New Orleans, Make It Right, Capitol Hill, Washington DC, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Lower Ninth Ward, affordable housing, sustainable housing, George Clooney, green building, green design, low income

Within days of getting my email from the Great Sunflower Project asking me to confirm my mailing address for my free sunflower seeds, I also get news that the Natural Resources Defense Council is campaigning to get the EPA to suspend use of and review its approval of the pesticide imidacloprid, a “moderately” toxic pesticide that works on the neurotransmitters in insects.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I often lambaste the EPA for its shortsightedness when it comes to approving chemicals for use in industry and agriculture (and pharmaceuticals and consumer use) without any true long-term testing. And in the case of imidacloprid, the NRDC is asking that something as simple as multi-generational studies on how this pesticide affects honey bees.

Imidacloprid was first patented and put into use in the late 1980’s. The pesticide is a neonicotinoid, which is based on the chemical makeup of nicotine. Imidacloprid works on a an insect’s nervous system, after the insect ingests the chemical after feeding on a plant’s sweet juices. A neonicotinoid blocks a receptor in the brain and causes an excess amount of acetylcholine. The excess creates paralysis and then death in the victim.

France has banned imidacloprid, sold thereunder the name Gaucho, for use on sunflowers since 1999 after one-third of all the country’s honeybees dies after a season of wide-spread usage. The French further banned the chemical on sweet corn, and last year, decided not to approve its use at all. Germany banned imidacloprid and its 8 neonicitinoid cousins last year after a huge die-off of honeybees following an application of the pesticide, clothianidin. Furthermore, imidacloprid’s maker, Bayer, is being sued by various groups, from farmers to local and national environmental groups.

What you can do

You can write to the EPA calling for action. Click here for the NDRC action site to send a pre-written letter to the Office of Pesticide Programs.

Also, buy organic produce and support farmers that eschew chemical pesticides.

EPA, pesticide, agriculture, imidacloprid, neonicotinoid, honeybees, colony collapse disorder, bees, toxicity, chemicals, organic, France, US, Gaucho, corn, farming, Germany, banned, Europe, clothianidin, acetylcholine, brain, nervous system, insects, plants

For the time being, let’s hope so.

First, a little backstory…The Arctic is melting. Whether you want to blame man for that or not, it is happening. Summer of 2007 saw the lowest “minimum”* of sea ice since, well, the last Ice Age. 2008’s figures are not any better, though not as minimum as ‘07.

*sea ice minimum refers to the point in the summer season in which the ice cap melts to it’s lowest level. Conversely, the “maximum” is the point during the winter in which there is the most ice. Simple enough.

So, with Arctic ice sheets abating, that means that the Arctic Ocean is becoming more and more navigable to ships and fishing boats. Also, it seems that some species of fish that prefer colder water may be moving into Arctic waters. If the fish go to the Arctic Sea, so will the fishing boats.

Or so it would seem. But somehow the North Pacific Fishery Management Council are becoming a more forward-thinking government agency, and fishing boats may not be allowed in Arctic waters off of Alaska. The NPFMC is meeting in early February to make the final determination on whether or not to create legal fisheries in the Arctic Ocean.

To get a little more detailed, the NPFMC may one day allow fishing in the Arctic, but not until proper studies of the region and its ecosystem can be conducted. The fish populations should be studied first and maybe fished second if the populations can withstand harvest.

You can do your part (besides making sure the fish you consume is sustainably harvested) in this decision making process by writing the NPFMC and letting them know that you support the decision to make an environmental survey of the Arctic fish stocks (and future immigrant populations fleeing warming waters in more southern seas) before allowing commercial fishing concerns to pillage and plunder in order to make more fish sticks.

Click on this sentence to go to the PEW Environmental Group’s website to send an email (save paper) to the Chairman of the NPFMC asking him to close off Arctic waters to commercial fishing.

Arctic, Arctic Ocean, fisheries, fishing, commercial fishing, Alaska, ice, global warming, climate change, fish, populations, stocks, North Pacific Fishery Management Council, sustainably harvested

This is interesting to me, not because Robert Redford is involved or that gas companies are funding the protesters, but because this exemplifies the contentious relationship between society and wilderness, the urban and the ecoist.

I have tried to bring to your attention to Bush’s attempt to sell off parts of the Utah wildlands to oil and gas companies — well, not sell, but lease at bargain prices, so that the oil and gas companies can make billions off of publicly owned minerals.

A group called the Congress of Racial Equality has set up camp in Utah just in time for the Sundance Film Festival in order to call out Robert Redford and his protests of the Bush Landgrab Auction. CoRE’s stance is that by protesting the sale of mineral rights for some of Utah, Robert Redford hates poor urban people.

CoRE believes that by not allowing the natural gas companies drill in Utah, prices will increase for Grandma on Social Security back in New York City. That may seem like a simplified version of the protest, but I have only broke it down into its real merits. Granted, fuel prices will rise this winter season, but not because Robert Redford is helping an environmental group urge Obama to overturn the late lame duck actions that did end up getting passed.

I am all for equality and environmental justice, but I gotta say that CoRE is off its rocker. To even surmise that Robert Redford or any opposition to drilling or mining is what is driving up fuel costs is so unbelievably wrong that it is almost laughable. CoRE would be better serving its members and those it claims to defend by protesting the oil and gas companies for making so much money off the backs of the poor. CoRE should be protesting outgoing (hallelujah and praise the lord) President[sic] Bush for allowing Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Coal from running rampant during his two ungodly long terms and make all those billions on substances that already lie beneath public lands. Not only that but CoRE should be protesting the whole system of a government that will pump so many dollars of subsidies into the fossil fuel industries so as to skew the cost of those fuels so low that no other fuel source can compete cost-wise — until those fuels start running out after causing catastrophic damage to the ecosystem.

Yeah, maybe you should look at your actions, CoRE. Is it really Redford that is using his fame to preserve Utah so he can “look at the scenery” or is it CoRE that is using Redford’s fame to push the agenda of ExxonMobil, a major funding source for CoRE’s operations?

protests, Utah, lease, mineral rights, wilderness, Robert Redford, Sundance, natural gas, festival, Congress of Racial Equality, Exxon, ExxonMobil, oil, gas, coal, mining, drilling, fossil fuels, heating costs, environmental justice

If you haven’t run across something about Guerrilla Gardening before now, let me introduce you to the concept and the group. There is a website, that is based in Britain, even though it has members from around the world. So if the site seems too British-y, the guy behind GG is a Brit, so many of the projects covered are London-based.

Guerrilla gardening is kind of like squatting, except that it will be plants, not yourself, in a seemingly abandoned urban space, that is not a building. Let’s say your neighborhood has a curb space that no one looks after, or an oddly placed and unused planter by an older school that is no longer in use. Well, do you think anyone would mind if you put in a few marigolds?

For the most part, people don’t mind.

It is a pleasant way to vandalize someone else’s property. I’d recommend finding a spot to adopt. I live in Portland, Oregon and it is hard to find an abandoned plot of land that doesn’t have something cool growing in it already, but while living in Chicago, I could find spaces with no problem. Choose drought-resistant varieties of plants, so that you don’t have to water it constantly. You should not expect the neighbors to look after your plot — some may, but don’t rely on that resource to keep the plants alive.

Obviously, check out the spot for how much sunlight it receives, because some plants like shade and some like sun. Think easy gardening. There is no reason to put in finicky places. These spaces may have poor, compacted soil, so find those species that don’t mind poor or average soil. Think food, too, and put in easy to grow veggies here and there. Check out ideas in companion planting for ideas. But again, this is not your space, so if you cannot get there everyday, don’t set your plot up for failure. That will make people sad, not happy, and the whole point of putting in flowers is to make people happy. They may not know it, but it will.

Sneak out in the middle of the night with spade and plants. Maybe dress up like a ninja…

Oh, yeah, and it is technically illegal, so don’t get caught.

guerrilla gardening, urban spaces, abandoned, land, garden plot, soil, plants, Portland, Oregon, Chicago

George Bush is not going quietly into that good night, indeed. I warned before of the sneaky lame duck tactics of our dear, soon-to-be-departed-but-not-forgotten Dubya. And once again, I ask you to continue your good work of bitching at the appropriate people when needed, although it had no effect on the recent EPA’s repeal of the Stream Buffer Zone.

Now, the Bureau of Land Management is holding an auction, and wilderness lands in Utah’s Red Rock Wilderness are up for grabs for all the oil and gas mining you can shake a dollar at.

According to a recent press release from the BLM (a sub-agency within the Department of the Interior), the BLM is forced by law to hold such auctions every quarter. However, in that same law, the BLM is also entrusted with safeguarding “special and unique non-energy resources”.

Ah, the great debate that we will be facing more and more in the coming century. What pristine wilderness is worth saving when there is oil in that there ground?

I could go on and on about how we should save these wild lands from industrialized rape, but then I am typing on a laptop that uses electricity. I could point out that most of the energy that I am consuming right now comes from the Bonneville Dam, but then I have to apologize for the salmon hurt by dams. I am in a Catch-22 right now, but I still think that some areas should be preserved no matter what. Even if I have no gas to go the candle store to buy candles since I don’t have electricity, I don’t care. Some areas should not be touched, and maybe we should figure out a better way to support our energy habit and get off the junk.

But this is the United States, and for some reason, our industry is only looking for a quick buck and our politicians only look for quick fixes.

Vast swatches of the Utah Redrock Wilderness are coming up for sale December 19th. Many of those areas are in lands that are very, very close to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks as well as Dinosaur National Monument. This auction was initially announced on Election Day; the thinking being that with the whole nation focused elsewhere, maybe nobody would notice. That didn’t work. Under pressure from environmental groups, the BLM recently took nearly 100,000 acres off the auction block. Oh, but wait, the BLM took off the canyon floors but not the canyons’ sides.

Kinda like that scene in Poltergeist when you find out that Craig T. Nelson’s boss removed the tombstones, but not the bodies

You can bitch about this to the Bureau of Land Management, but they are hardly concerned with what you think. You can bitch about it to the Obama Transition Team, but they may not be able to do anything either. You can send letters and emails and phone calls to your Representative and your Senators. You should probably do all of the above. Sometimes complaining gets things done. Let’s hope this is one of those times.

An easy way to hit all of those people is to check out the Natural Resources Defense Council’s campaign website by clicking here. All you have to do is fill out your name and address and voila, you are protesting. I love internet activism.

A mine is a terrible waste.

BLM, Bureau of Land Management, George Bush, Bush, Dubya, Utah, Red Rock, wilderness, EPA, Stream Buffer Zone, auction, oil, gas, mining, industry, National Parks, Canyonlands, Arches, Dinosaur National Monument, public lands, lame duck, Department of the Interior, energy, electricity, Bonneville Dam, Natural Resources Defense Council, Obama, senator, representative

If you have been reading this site, you may have noticed that I spend some days focused on ecology outside the Urban Ecoist’s immediate concern, and I do that because most people that are concerned about the ecology in one place are concerned about the ecology every place.

Has anyone out there caught Animal Planet’s new series Whale Wars?

Whale Wars follows the increasingly incompetent adventures of the Sea Shepherd, an environmental NGO hell-bent on saving the whales. Go ahead, check out the link in that last sentence, and you will find no end of things to laugh at on the site. Actually, that is not fair. The website doesn’t seem funny until after you’ve watched an episode or two of the series.

OK, let’s begin. Whaling has a long history of greed and waste and the near-extinction of many species of whales. I abhor whale hunting, and only in a few instances, do I think it is “culturally justified” and in those cases, I think the number of whales harvested should only be enough to satisfy the handful of people on this planet who entire way of life revolves around the whale, as it was one of the few prey that those few, few people had throughout their history.

When it comes to the Japanese (picture above to right), sorry, but you are an industrialized nation that has absolutely no need whatsoever for hunting whales. And yet, Japan regularly hunts whales, and a lot of them.

This is where the Sea Shepherd ship of fools come into play.

Sea Shepherd sails out and tries to harass the Japanese whaling fleet every season, and this last season was filmed and we get to watch it from the comfort of our urban living rooms.

And oh my, if you have ever had the desire to volunteer for an environmental organization or maybe still harbor that notion, Whale Wars will make you happy that you never signed up for active duty on the front lines, per se.

I honestly don’t know where to begin, as I don’t want to dissuade anyone from checking the show out on their own. It is too, too funny. The captain is a fat, slovenly, kicked-out-of-Greenpeace fascist that never seems to be around when the sh*t is going down. He has two toadies, a guy that looks just like the guy who was the right hand man of Jack Nicholson as the Joker in the first Batman movie; and the other guy is a scrawny guy from Sweden (although his accent is strangely Middle-American) with huge nostrils and an upturned nose, so you cannot help but be looking up his nose the whole time. He has an “executive producer/quartermaster” that seems to also do nothing most of the time, except talk about everyone else. Luckily, she decided to stay behind in Melbourne in this last episode, so hopefully, she won’t be on camera anymore.

And then there is the crew. A lot of bleeding hearts that thought, “hey, a semester at sea and we get to save whales. Righteous.” But the crew is likable, and you only like them more when you see what madness they have subjected themselves to aboard the Sea Shepherd’s flagship, the ill-named Steve Irwin (I don’t think Mr. Irwin would want his name attached to this megalomanical captain and his delusions of grandeur).

I think the most shocking thing about Whale Wars i.e. Sea Shepherd is how absolutely incompetent these people are. I mean, seriously, I am surprised they manage to keep the boat afloat.

If this is all the whales have, they are screwed.

Animal Planet, Whale Wars, Sea Sheperd, conservation, environmentalists, NGOs, whaling, Japanese, extinction, Steve Irwin, Melbourne, whales, ecology

When will humankind learn to choose a cautious path? Why is it that our species, and I am especially pointing fingers at the American sub-species, is quick to make a poor decision on a subject that would be best served with a little more understanding.

The Alaskan Pollock has become a “go-to” fish for a good portion of the American fishing fleet. Pollock is used in place of other seafood, such as crab and lobster, as well as in fish sticks and those unspecified-species-of-fish-sandwiches you get at fast food places. For years, fisheries experts have cited the Alaskan Pollock of an example of a successfully (sustainably) managed fish stock.

And now, the realization that maybe we are in fact overfishing the Alaskan pollock is starting to dawn on those who pay attention and worry about other species that also eat pollock — stellar sea lions, fur seals, whales, among other marine creatures.

I mentioned in Urban Ecoist’s step-sister site, Daily Science Dose, that it has been reported that a large percentage of Alaskan pollock are moving to the cooler waters of Russia. As waters around the Aleutian Islands, which are the spawning grounds for Alaskan Pollock (also known as walleye pollock), warm up, the fish are following their food to colder waters, leaving the American waters behind and depleting the numbers that American fishing ships are catching.

Well, not only are the pollock movin’ on up to the East Side, but there are also less of them.

Pollock was not always the fish of choice for US Consumers. Remember cod? Maybe you don’t actually, as it has been severely over-fished and extreme hard to find. The World Wildlife Fund has gone so far as to call cod endangered. Because cod was taken off the menu for a cheap white fish, pollock stepped in to fill the gap. And now, 20 or so years after the cod fishery started sinking, and the pollock became the substitute of choice, scientists are finding evidence of plummeting numbers of pollock. Low enough to cause concern among environmentalists and scientists that are allowed to be honest about the situation (i.e. not paid for by the fishing industry).

And that brings me to the fur seal. Northern Fur Seals live on the remote Commander Islands (the westernmost Aleutians that are actually closer to Russia than Alaska) as well as the Pribilof Islands up in the Bering Sea (map at right). And the fur seals, after almost being wiped out by over-hunting (they have really nice pelts), face a similar fate if their main food source is over-fished.

Greenpeace has launched a campaign to try and help the fur seals before their numbers also plummet. The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council is about to set the 2009 quota for pollock, and you can write a letter to the NPFMC to speak out against their ideas to raise the quota rather than lower it in order to try and restore the pollock population. If you want to get involved, check out the link here.

Also, you may want to avoid pollock. If demand is driven down, we may be able to rectify the situation that certain fishery management councils won’t.

pollock, Alaska, Alaskan pollock, walleye pollock, American fishing, fisheries, Pacific, Commander Islands, Pribilof Islands, Aleutian Islands, Bering Sea, Russia, fish stocks, fishsticks, fast food, imitation crab, imitation lobster, stellar sea lions, fur seals, whales, Greenpeace, cod, overfishing, North Pacific Fisheries Management Council

I finally watched WALL-E last night. I write finally because I usually see Pixar films in the theatre, usually within the first two weeks of their release. I never got around to seeing WALL-E as I hate going to the cinema now that I have to sit through television commercials, and my boyfriend is a big poophead when it comes to seeing so-called kids films.

Now, there was some disgruntlement among some caused by WALL-E’s rampant environmentalism. Some said children shouldn’t be exposed to the Church of Al Gore, and some claimed that Disney was being hypocritical in regards to its merchandising habits when it comes to films like WALL-E. I happen to agree with the second issue, but the first is ridiculous.

Kids should be initiated into the world of environmentalism. You know, I have resented that label since I was young and idealistic, thinking that we could save the planet. I resent it even more now, as no one should not be an environmentalist. Being human and environmentally-mindful should be one and the same, and the fact that some don’t get that yet is why the Earth is in so much trouble. However, to be fair the beginning of the Industrial Age was a while ago, and I doubt that first person to burn coal or a gallon of gas could even imagine what devastation that act would cause. But there is so much more to the environmental crisis than just carbon dioxide — we do produce a lot of crap, both in the form of trash, but also in the form of dangerous chemicals and toxins that are destroying the planet and its inhabitants much faster than global warming.

The more children of today are exposed to the truth the better. Let’s get beyond the Bush Regime’s maybes and omissions and upcoming Republican party spokeswoman Sarah Palin’s not caring to know the causes of climate change.

I loved WALL-E, by the way. My boyfriend liked it, too, although he kept complaining about WALL-E having human emotions. He just doesn’t understand kids’ movies.

WALL-E, Disney, Pixar, environmentalism, environment, trash, chemicals, toxins, Al Gore, children, kids, movies, films, Republican, denial, Palin, Bush

A Superfund site involves the cleanup of hazardous waste. It’s a term used by the US Environmental Protection Agency to designate a program to clean up abandoned hazardous waste. The Superfund program, full name being Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), was a result of disasters like toxic waste dumping sites Love Canal and Times Beach. You see, it seems that some business owners feel it is okay to dump toxic waste, and just cover it up and sell the land to unsuspecting buyers or mix toxic waste into something else, but not mention it to anyone until people start dying. Not that all Superfund sites are the result of such egregious behavior, but there is at least a degree or two of negliglence.

Do you know how many Superfund sites there are?

This map is not complete, but shows the worst of the bunch. Click on map for better detail.

Let me put it this way, as the Superfund site list (actually called the National Priorities List or NPL) is an ever-changing one, so far, assessments have been completed for over 40,000 sites. Are all of those terrible waste dumps — no, but they all have something toxic involved to some degree.

Actually, this is a little off topic, but when you talk about Superfund sites, it is hard to not also bring up the idea of environmental justice, or EJ for those in the know. Environmental Justice involves the whole issue of toxic waste and what neighborhoods or towns you find it in. Check out East St. Louis or West Dallas to see what I mean.

So you see, Superfund sites are often an urban problem.

Newtown Creek, an estuary between Queens and Brooklyn. Click here for story.

How can you find out where the Superfund sites are in your neck of the concrete woods?

May I recommend the EPA’s Superfund Sites Where You Live page (click on the title for the link)? I must warn you, it is somewhat depressing.

Superfund, site, sites, National Priorities List, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, United States, toxic, waste, hazardous, Love Canal, Times Beach, environmental, justice, East St Louis, West Dallas, NPL, urban

Last week, I wrote about how the EPA is considering revisions to protections that prohibit mining within 100 feet of a stream or river.   This little rule is called the Stream Buffer Zone, and you can read more about it here.

Why do we need stream buffers? Mostly to ensure that huge mining operations don’t bury rivers beneath waste product from the coal industry. And anything mined that is not coal is considered waste, so all those mountains in Kentucky and West Virginia that have been dynamited and leveled have to be deposited somewhere and valleys are the logical choice. Except that most valleys have some sort of water system running through them. Also, mining operators can also release some nasty stuff when processing coal, so buffers are needed to reduce contamination of stream and rivers.

I mentioned in that previous post, in addition to urging you to email or write the EPA and tell them not to revise the laws in place to protect said streams, that there must be some bigger reason why the Bush Administration is looking to open up more land to mining. And then I ran across this little article in the Dot Earth blog on the New York Times website.

Appalachian Coal to Power India?

Hmm. Maybe Bush and his EPA Administrator (by presidential appointment) are trying to open more land up to destructive mining practices because they have found new buyers for American coal. But wait, India doesn’t want to simply buy coal, they want to buy the coal mines.

In an email dispatch to our Green Inc. blog, Somini Sengupta confirmed some reports that top Indian government and industry figures, with some $4 billion to spend, were shopping in Appalachia and elsewhere not just for American coal (exports of coal from the United States have growing for awhile), but coal mines.

So let me get this straight, Indian mining companies operating in the United States. Will the companies hire American miners, or import Indian miners? It would be really ironic if the Indian mining companies hired American workers that had lost their previous jobs to outsourcing to, ta dah, India.

India, coal, mining, Stream Buffer Zone, Bush, EPA, pollution, mountaintop removal, rivers, streams, Kentucky, West Virginia, mines, coal mines, Indian, United States

Normally, I do try to focus on things that have to do with urban ecology and things we can do to preserve a healthy environment within cities, but every now and then, I feel compelled to bring outside interests to your attention. No, I am not trying to sell you a timeshare, but rather bring your attention to the latest Lame Duck Bush attempt to undermine environmental regulations so his friends can make more money and destroy the planet that much faster.

Something is rotten in the state of …the EPA.

A rule is currently in place that prohibits mining companies from operating within 100 feet of streams and rivers. Bush and his henchman, Stephen Johnson, the EPA’s protective-of-profit-only administrator, are trying once again to revise the Stream Buffer Zone. They tried last year, but a huge public outcry and tens of thousands of letters to the EPA shut the revision down. And now, with less than three months to go for our Lil’ Bush to fulfill all of promises to his Big Coal buddies, he is again trying to slip this one past us.

I found a very oddly written FAQ sheet from the Office of Surface Mining. It seems to be hiding something in its language. Seems that it is an awfully defensive response to the public outcry. But the real gist of it is that the current laws regarding the Stream Buffer Zone are confusing to some, so it needs to be rewritten and enforced, because it wasn’t really enforced either. Oh, and don’t worry, because the the new revision and enforcement will be more protective of streams, not less, more. The OSM doesn’t really specify how exactly, but the mining companies will have more of a burden to protect the environment somehow.

The Stream Buffer Zone rule has been around since Reagan days, so why revise it now? Is it because maybe coal companies are more eager than ever to continue to destroy mountains in order to get to that sweet, sweet coal? Huh, what market mechanisms would make it worth their while to mine coal from a site that the EPA claims will be more expensive to mine due to the OSM’s proposed new rules and enforcement? Maybe that coal’s price has gone up, and the coal companies will still make money on the site? Or is coal perhaps running out in other mines and new mines are needed? Oh, but wait, coal is, like, totally abundant according to the industry. No need to develop other energy sources, coal will last forever.

Wow, the power of advertising. I love this one.

If you want to give Bush and Johnson a great going away present, send them a letter about what you think about revising the Stream Buffer Zone. A great place to start is Ilovemountains.org. Also, the Center for Biological Diversity has a campaign going that you can access here.

This is a little excerpt from the CBD letter. You can send an email right from your urban desk.

The Office of Surface Mining’s recommendation would overturn an existing ban on mining within 100 feet of streams that has been in place since 1983. The Stream Buffer Zone rule is one of the only habitat protections for Appalachian ecosystems. Rather than enforcing the rule to protect water quality, the Bush administration and the OSM are giving coal companies permission to permanently destroy streams. Over 1,200 miles of streams in Appalachia have already been devastated by mountaintop-removal coal mining.

Makes you miss those Lame Duck Clinton moves to protect the environment before he left office.

coal, stream buffer zone, office of surface mining, Bush, EPA, Stephen Johnson, lame duck, revision, enforcement, big coal, coal, coal mining, mountains, mountaintop mining, mountaintop removal, Reagan, Clinton

The wonderful thing about Urban Ecoists is that we are not only concerned about the immediate eco-system around us, but we see the macro-system as it is all inter-related. Healthy forests and rivers means healthy cities. Despite the fact, that we urbanites live in cities, we love our wilderness. And we love the myriad creatures that inhabit those places. We see protecting that wilderness and the organisms that dwell there as a sacred (not a word I use often) responsibility.

Too bad we don’t have an open season for this species…

In such, do you know what your lame duck president and his hench men are trying to do before they leave office? Well, I could never cover it all in this little blog, but today I will urge you to submit your comment during this next week to the Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne regarding proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act. The public comment period ends September 15, 2008.

The changes in a nutshell are a good start at gutting the very things that have made to the Endangered Species Act a success. I will not bore you with all the details, I will let the Center for Biological Diversity do that for me, but essentially, the ESA works because any federal agency, such as the Office of Surface Mining, would have to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to make sure that any new mine approved by the OSM would be environmentally-sound and not pose a danger to any, well, fish and wildlife. Do you like how I chose agencies whose names tell the story for me? A good writer is an efficient one, ask Hemingway. Not that I am comparing myself to Hemingway, oh, never mind. I’m lazy, there I said it.

Anyhoo, the new rules could lighten up on having “interagency checks and balances.” Also, the period for scientists to evaluate a project is cut by a third and automatically okay’d if the science doesn’t make the deadline. There are some other scary changes, too, like re-defining or limiting what effects would be considered harmful, and the like. Check out the Center for Biological Diversity’s website to find out more and to take action by emailing in a pre-written letter to Secretary Kempthorne and the Department of the Interior. I always like to email the [sic]President as well when it comes to these sorts of things. He whose name must not be named’s email is comments@whitehouse.gov.

Endangered Species Act, Dirk Kempthorne, Department of the Interior, Office of Surface Mining, Fish and Wildlife Service, Center for Biological Diversity