Under fire from industry, scientific panel is 'gutted'

California Watch
August 30, 2010

 Amy Standen

Five out of nine members of a scientific panel that advises the state on toxic chemicals have been fired in recent weeks, following disputes with the chemical industry and a conservative group that targets environmental laws.

"It's been gutted," said Paul Blanc, a professor of occupational medicine at UC San Francisco and one of the panel's four remaining members.

While the Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants is not well known outside of regulatory circles, its work carries clout in state environmental policy. Since its inception in 1983, the panel has evaluated more than 300 chemicals – everything from pesticides to secondhand smoke – and advised the state on how these chemicals should be regulated.

Among the dismissed members is panel chairman John Froines, who also heads the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA's School of Public Health. Froines has served on the panel since it was founded and has been its chairman since 1998. Froines says he learned of his dismissal July 22 in a two-sentence letter from Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, D-Los Angeles.

Panel members, including Froines, have come under fire over the years when their designation of certain substances as toxic came at a cost to industry.

Most recently, Froines and other members of the panel made enemies in the chemical industry when they publicly criticized the California Department of Pesticide Regulation for its plans to approve a strawberry fumigant called methyl iodide, which the scientists said would endanger farm workers.

Froines, who said he'd received no explanation for his dismissal, praised the work of his colleagues, many of whom had served on the panel for more than a decade. "The integrity of this panel has been nothing short of impressive," he said. "Why would you destroy it?"

Craig Byus, dean of UCLA's Thomas Haider Program in Biomedical Sciences, learned of his dismissal the same day as Froines. Then, on August 20, three other panel members received similar notices, this time from the California Environmental Protection Agency. The three members were Joseph Landolph of USC, Gary Friedman of Stanford University School of Medicine, and Charles Plopper of UC Davis.

Asked about the dismissals, staffers for both Perez and California EPA said the time had come for panel members to be reappointed. Candidates for these positions, they explained, come from a list supplied by the UC Office of the President.

When the list arrived, they said, the names of Froines and others weren't on it. UC Provost Lawrence Pitt said that he couldn't speak directly to the names on the list, but that he wasn't aware of any specific instructions to remove specific panel members.

"I'm confident we have no part of it," Pitts said. 

Froines and others on the panel said that while single panel members may step down and be replaced every few years or so, such widespread, simultaneous dismissals are unprecedented. "Normally what happens is we get reappointed, or the state just continues us."

"It's curious, you've got this obscure panel that's been doing a good job," said Sierra Club California director Bill Magavern, "so why suddenly the wholesale changes?"

One group taking credit for the shakeup is the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based conservative group with a history of fighting environmental legislation. The foundation has charged, in an ongoing lawsuit, that panel members shouldn't be able to serve such long terms.

Foundation attorney Damien Schiff said he believes the lawsuit served as a catalyst for the dismissals, which he called a "needed infusion of fresh blood for the panel."

The lawsuit stems, in part, from longstanding complaints from the building and transportation industries over the panel's 1998 conclusion that diesel particulate is toxic to human health. That determination formed the basis for a series of regulations of the trucking industry, which has vigorously fought the new rules.

State officials have announced the appointment of five new UC scientists to replace the departing members. Michael Kleinman, whom Froines says he admires, is an adjunct professor at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. Kleinman will be chairman of the revamped panel.

UCSF's Paul Blanc said he believes the quick turnover will get in the way of the panel's ability to do its work. "I think this will cripple the committee," he said "certainly in the short term."

Recovery Act: How Obama's Stimulus Is Changing America

TIme
August 26, 2010

AFP/File – US President Barack Obama speaks in Chicago, Illinois on August 5.

By MICHAEL GRUNWALD Michael Grunwald – 2 hrs 8 mins ago

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 - President Obama's $787 billion stimulus - has been marketed as a jobs bill, and that's how it's been judged. The White House says it has saved or created about 3 million jobs, helping avoid a depression and end a recession. Republicans mock it as a Big Government boondoggle that has failed to prevent rampant unemployment despite a massive expansion of the deficit. Liberals complain that it wasn't massive enough.

It's an interesting debate. Politically, it's awkward to argue that things would have been even worse without the stimulus, even though that's what most nonpartisan economists believe. But the battle over the Recovery Act's short-term rescue has obscured its more enduring mission: a long-term push to change the country. It was about jobs, sure, but also about fighting oil addiction and global warming, transforming health care and education, and building a competitive 21st century economy. Some Republicans have called it an under-the-radar scramble to advance Obama's agenda - and they've got a point. (See TIME's special report "The Green Design 100.")

Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's effusive Recovery Act point man, "Now the fun stuff starts!" The "fun stuff," about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. "This is a chance to do something big, man!" Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME.

For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet. (See TIME's special report "After One Year, A Stimulus Report Card.")

The only stimulus energy program that's gotten much attention so far - chiefly because it got off to a slow start - is a $5 billion effort to weatherize homes. But the Recovery Act's line items represent the first steps to a low-carbon economy. "It will leverage a very different energy future," says Kristin Mayes, the Republican chair of Arizona's utility commission. "It really moves us toward a tipping point." (Watch the video "TIME Polls America: Spend or Cut?")

The stimulus is also stocked with nonenergy game changers, like a tenfold increase in funding to expand access to broadband and an effort to sequence more than 2,300 complete human genomes - when only 34 were sequenced with all previous aid. There's $8 billion for a high-speed passenger rail network, the boldest federal transportation initiative since the interstate highways. There's $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants to promote accountability in public schools, perhaps the most significant federal education initiative ever - it's already prompted 35 states and the District of Columbia to adopt reforms to qualify for the cash. There's $20 billion to move health records into the digital age, which should reduce redundant tests, dangerous drug interactions and errors caused by doctors with chicken-scratch handwriting. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calls that initiative the foundation for Obama's health care reform and "maybe the single biggest component in improving quality and lowering costs." (Comment on this story.)

Any of those programs would have been a revolution in its own right. "We've seen more reform in the last year than we've seen in decades, and we haven't spent a dime yet," says Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "It's staggering how the Recovery Act is driving change." (See where employment will rebound in the U.S.)

That was the point. Critics have complained that while the New Deal left behind iconic monuments - courthouses, parks, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Grand Coulee Dam - this New New Deal will leave a mundane legacy of sewage plants, repaved roads, bus repairs and caulked windows. In fact, it will create new icons too: solar arrays, zero-energy border stations, an eco-friendly Coast Guard headquarters, an "advanced synchrotron light source" in a New York lab. But its main legacy will be change. The stimulus passed just a month after Obama's inauguration, but it may be his signature effort to reshape America - as well as its government. (See pictures of Barack Obama behind the scenes on Inauguration Day.)

"Let's Just Go Build It!"
After Obama's election, Depression scholar Christina Romer delivered a freak-out briefing to his transition team, warning that to avoid a 1930s-style collapse, Washington needed to pump at least $800 billion into the frozen economy - and fast. "We were in a tailspin," recalls Romer, who is about to step down as chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "I was completely sympathetic to the idea that we shouldn't just dig ditches and fill them in. But saving the economy had to be paramount." Obama's economists argued for tax cuts and income transfers to get cash circulating quickly, emergency aid to states to prevent layoffs of cops and teachers and off-the-shelf highway projects to put people to work. They wanted a textbook Keynesian response to an economy in cardiac arrest: adding money to existing programs via existing formulas or handing it to governors, seniors and first-time home buyers. They weren't keen to reinvent the wheel.

But Obama and Biden also saw a golden opportunity to address priorities; they emphasized shovel-worthy as well as shovel-ready. Biden recalls brainstorming with Obama about an all-in push for a smarter electrical grid that would reduce blackouts, promote renewables and give families more control over their energy diet: "We said, 'God, wouldn't it be wonderful? Why don't we invest $100 billion? Let's just go build it!' "

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It wasn't that easy. Utilities control the grid, and new wires create thorny not-in-my-backyard zoning issues; there wasn't $100 billion worth of remotely shovel-ready grid projects. It's hard to transform on a timeline, and some congressional Democrats were less interested in transforming government than growing it. For instance, after securing $100 billion for traditional education programs, House Appropriations Committee chairman Dave Obey tried to stop any of it from going to Race to the Top, which is unpopular with teachers' unions.

Ultimately, even Obama's speed focused economists agreed that stimulus spending shouldn't dry up in 2010. And some Democrats were serious about investing wisely, not just spending more. So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted on $17 billion for research. House Education and Labor Committee chairman George Miller fought to save Race to the Top. And while the grid didn't get a $100 billion reinvention, it did get $11 billion after decades of neglect, which could shape trillions of dollars in future utility investments. (See 10 big recession surprises.)

It takes time to set up new programs, but now money is flowing to deliver high-speed Internet to rural areas, spread successful quit-smoking programs and design the first high-speed rail link from Tampa to Orlando. And deep in the Energy Department's basement - in a room dubbed the dungeon - a former McKinsey & Co. partner named Matt Rogers has created a government version of Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road, blasting billions of dollars into clean-energy projects through a slew of oversubscribed grant programs. "The idea is to transform the entire energy sector," Rogers says. "What's exciting is the way it fits all together."

"They Won't All Succeed"
The green industrial revolution begins with gee-whiz companies like A123 Systems of Watertown, Mass. Founded in 2001 by MIT nanotechnology geeks who landed a $100,000 federal grant, A123 grew into a global player in the lithium-ion battery market, with 1,800 employees and five factories in China. It has won $249 million to build two plants in Michigan, where it will help supply the first generation of mass-market electric cars. At least four of A123's suppliers received stimulus money too. The Administration is also financing three of the world's first electric-car plants, including a $529 million loan to help Fisker Automotive reopen a shuttered General Motors factory in Delaware (Biden's home state) to build sedans powered by A123 batteries. Another A123 customer, Navistar, got cash to build electric trucks in Indiana. And since electric vehicles need juice, the stimulus will also boost the number of U.S. battery-charging stations by 3,200%.

"Without government, there's no way we would've done this in the U.S.," A123 chief technology officer Bart Riley told TIME. "But now you're going to see the industry reach critical mass here."

The Recovery Act's clean-energy push is designed not only to reduce our old economy dependence on fossil fuels that broil the planet, blacken the Gulf and strengthen foreign petro-thugs but also to avoid replacing it with a new economy that is just as dependent on foreign countries for technology and manufacturing. Last year, exactly two U.S. factories made advanced batteries for electric vehicles. The stimulus will create 30 new ones, expanding U.S. production capacity from 1% of the global market to 20%, supporting half a million plug-ins and hybrids. The idea is as old as land-grant colleges: to use tax dollars as an engine of innovation. It rejects free-market purism but also the old industrial-policy approach of dumping cash into a few favored firms. Instead, the Recovery Act floods the zone, targeting a variety of energy problems and providing seed money for firms with a variety of potential solutions. The winners must attract private capital to match public dollars - A123 held an IPO to raise the required cash - and after competing for grants, they still must compete in the marketplace. "They won't all succeed," Rogers says. "But some will, and they'll change the world." (Watch TIME's video "Google's Energy Initiatives Director Talks Clean Power.")

The investments extend all along the food chain. A brave new world of electric cars powered by coal plants could be dirtier than the oil-soaked status quo, so the stimulus includes an unheard-of $3.4 billion for clean-coal projects aiming to sequester or reuse carbon. There are also lucrative loan guarantees for constructing the first American nuclear plants in three decades. And after the credit crunch froze financing for green energy, stimulus cash has fueled a comeback, putting the U.S. on track to exceed Obama's goal of doubling renewable power by 2012. The wind industry added a record 10,000 megawatts in 2009. The stimulus is also supporting the nation's largest photovoltaic solar plant, in Florida, and what will be the world's two largest solar thermal plants, in Arizona and California, plus thousands of solar installations on homes and buildings.

The stimulus is helping scores of manufacturers of wind turbines and solar products expand as well, but today's grid can only handle so much wind and solar. A key problem is connecting remote wind farms to population centers, so there are billions of dollars for new transmission lines. Then there is the need to find storage capacity for when it isn't windy or sunny outside. The current grid is like a phone system without voice mail, a just-in-time network where power is wasted if it doesn't reach a user the moment it's generated. That's why the Recovery Act is funding dozens of smart-grid approaches. For instance, A123 is providing truckloads of batteries for a grid-storage project in California and recycled electric-car batteries for a similar effort in Detroit. "If we can show the utilities this stuff works," says Riley, "it will take off on its own."

Today, grid-scale storage, solar energy and many other green technologies are too costly to compete without subsidies. That's why the stimulus launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a blue-sky fund inspired by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the incubator for GPS and the M-16 rifle as well as the Internet. Located in an office building a block from the rest of the Energy Department, ARPA-E will finance energy research too risky for private funders, focusing on speculative technologies that might dramatically cut the cost of, say, carbon capture - or not. "We're taking chances, because that's how you put a man on the moon," says director Arun Majumdar, a materials scientist from the University of California, Berkeley. "Our idea is it's O.K. to fail. You think America's pioneers never failed?"

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ARPA-E is funding the new pioneers - mad scientists and engineers with ideas for wind turbines based on jet engines, bacteria to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline, and tiny molten-metal batteries to provide cheap high-voltage storage. That last idea is the brainchild of MIT's Donald Sadoway, who already has a prototype fuel cell the size of a shot glass. The stimulus will help him create a kind of reverse aluminum smelter to make prototypes the size of a hockey puck and a pizza box. The ultimate goal is a commercial scale battery the size of a tractor trailer that could power an entire neighborhood. "We need radical breakthroughs, so we need radical experiments," Sadoway says. "These projects send chills down the spine of the carbon world. If a few of them work, [Venezuela's Hugo] ChÁvez and [Iran's Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad are out of power."

Then again, the easiest way to blow up the energy world would be to stop wasting so much. That's the final link in the chain, a full-throttle push to make energy efficiency a national norm. The Recovery Act is weatherizing 250,000 homes this year. It gave homeowners rebates for energy-efficient appliances, much as the Cash for Clunkers program subsidized fuel-efficient cars. It's retrofitting juice-sucking server farms, factories and power plants; financing research into superefficient lighting, windows and machinery; and funneling billions into state and local efficiency efforts. (See TIME's special report "Obama's Agenda: Get America Back on Track.")

It will also retrofit 3 in 4 federal buildings. The U.S. government is the nation's largest energy consumer, so this will save big money while boosting demand for geothermal heat pumps, LED lighting and other energy-saving products. "We're so huge, we make markets," says Bob Peck, the General Services Administration's public-buildings commissioner. GSA's 93-year-old headquarters, now featuring clunky window air conditioners and wires duct-taped to ceilings, will get energy optimized heating, cooling and lighting systems, glass facades with solar membranes and a green roof; the makeover should cut its energy use 55%. It might even beta-test stimulus-funded windows that harvest sunlight. "We'll be the proving ground for innovation in the building industry," Peck says. "It all starts with renovating the government."

The New Venture Capitalists
The stimulus really is starting to change Washington - and not just the buildings. Every contract and lobbying contact is posted at Recovery.gov, with quarterly data detailing where the money went. A Recovery Board was created to scrutinize every dollar, with help from every major agency's independent watchdog. And Biden has promised state and local officials answers to all stimulus questions within 24 hours. It's a test-drive for a new approach to government: more transparent, more focused on results than compliance, not just bigger but better. Biden himself always saw the Recovery Act as a test - not only of the new Administration but of federal spending itself. He knew high-profile screwups could be fatal, stoking antigovernment anger about bureaucrats and two-car funerals. So he spends hours checking in, buttering up and banging heads to keep the stimulus on track, harassing Cabinet secretaries, governors and mayors about unspent broadband funds, weatherization delays and fishy projects. He has blocked some 260 skate parks, picnic tables and highway beautifications that flunked his what-would-your-mom-think test. "Imagine they could have proved we wasted a billion dollars," Biden says. "Gone, man. Gone!"

So far, despite furor over cash it supposedly funneled to contraception (deleted from the bill) and phantom congressional districts (simply typos), the earmark-free Recovery Act has produced surprisingly few scandals. Prosecutors are investigating a few fraud allegations, and critics have found some goofy expenditures, like $51,500 for water-safety-mascot costumes or a $50,000 arts grant to a kinky-film house. But those are minor warts, given that unprecedented scrutiny. Biden knows it's early - "I ain't saying mission accomplished!" - but he calls waste and fraud "the dogs that haven't barked." (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.)

The Recovery Act's deeper reform has been its focus on intense competition for grants instead of everybody-wins formulas, forcing public officials to consider not only whether applicants have submitted the required traffic studies and small-business hiring plans but also whether their projects make sense. Already staffed by top technologists from MIT, Duke and Intel, ARPA-E recruited 4,500 outside experts to winnow 3,700 applications down to 37 first-round grants. "We've taken the best and brightest from the tech world and created a venture fund - except we're looking for returns for the country," Majumdar says. These change agents didn't uproot their lives to fill out forms in triplicate and shovel money by formula. They want to reinvent the economy, not just stimulate it. Sadoway, the MIT battery scientist, is tired of reporting how many jobs he's created in his lab: "If this works, I'll create a million jobs!"

Obama has spent most of his first term trying to clean up messes - in the Gulf of Mexico, Iraq and Afghanistan, on Wall Street and Main Street - but the details in the stimulus plan are his real down payment on change. The question is which changes will last. Will electric cars disappear after the subsidies disappear? Will advanced battery factories migrate back to China? Will bullet trains ever get built? The President wants to extend transformative programs like ARPA-E. But would they be substitutes for the status quo or just additions to tack onto the deficit? And would they survive a Republican Congress?

Polls suggest the actual contents of the Recovery Act are popular. But the idea of the stimulus itself remains toxic - and probably will as long as the recovery remains tepid. "Today, it's judged by jobs," Rogers says of the act. "But in 10 years, it'll be judged by whether it transformed our economy."

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EPA pesticide ban puts cotton growers on edge

California Watch
August 18, 2010

Susanne Rust

Kimberly Vardeman/FlickrCalifornia cotton growers say a pesticide ban will have a 'detrimental effect' on the industry.

The federal government announced on Tuesday a ban of a pesticide commonly used on food crops such as citrus, peanuts and sugar beets because of concerns about the chemical's effect on young children who may eat foods tainted with the chemical.

The ban will take immediate effect on all citrus and potato uses, but the pesticide will be phased out gradually for use on cotton, dry beans, peanuts, soybeans, sugar beets and sweet potatoes.

The ban is the result of an agreement reached between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Bayer CropScience LP, the manufacturer of the Temik 15G aldicarb pesticide.

"A new risk assessment conducted by EPA based on recently submitted toxicity data indicates that aldicarb no longer meets our rigorous food safety standards and may pose unacceptable dietary risks, especially to infants and young children," the EPA said in a statement.

In the 1980s, more than 2,000 people in California and Oregon became ill after eating watermelons contaminated by aldicarb. And the European Union banned it for a variety of crop uses in 2003, citing health concerns.

Bob Blakely of California Citrus Mutual, a trade association, said citrus growers in the state do not use the pesticide and won't be affected by the agreement.

But it is widely used on cotton in California. According to a 2007 EPA report, between 2001 and 2005 cotton growers applied an average of 234,000 pounds of the pesticide to their crop every year. And it was sprayed on nearly 220,000 acres.

Use of aldicarb has decreased in California since those numbers were recorded. According to Veda Fererighi, a spokeswoman for the Department of Pesticide Regulation, slightly more than 30,000 pounds of the chemical was used on about 30,0000 acres in 2009.

That drop is likely due to the decrease in cotton farming in the state, which now accounts for 195,000 acres - down from close to 700,000 in 2005.

Despite cotton's decline in the state, the ban "will have a detrimental effect on cotton growth in California," said Roger Isom, executive vice president of the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations.

"There is no single replacement for Temik," Isom said. "It could take multiple applications of multiple products to achieve the same effectiveness."

He said the EPA's action may lead to pest resistance, as fewer and fewer pesticides are available for use.

For more information on where aldicarb is used, see this report.

For information on aldicarb licenses in California, check out this page.

ARB staff moves forward with SB 375 goals

Healthy Cal.org
August 9, 2010

By Daniel Weintraub

The Air Resources Board took another step today toward its implementation of a state law meant to encourage local governments to adopt planning and transportation policies that cut automobile use and lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

The ARB released a staff recommendation that will likely lead to goals for regions around the state to reduce their per capita emissions of the gases believed to contribute to global warming.

The targets — which are the result of legislation known as SB 375 — are supposed to result in more support for transit, denser development, toll roads where the rates vary with the level of congestion, and traffic management policies designed to keep freeways and other major roads flowing smoothly.

The staff recommendation is largely similar to a draft recommendation released earlier this summer, and it builds upon decisions already being made at the local level. It will be considered by the full ARB at its Sept. 23 meeting.

In the state's four largest metropolitan areas, the recommendations call for greenhouse gas reductions of 7 to 8 percent per capital below 2005 levels by 2010. By 2035, the targets would range from a 13 percent reduction Los Angeles and San Diego to 15 percent in the Bay Area and 16 percent in Sacramento.

The staff report also included policy scenarios for each region that gave a crystal-ball look at what kind of changes might be necessary to achieve the emission goals.

In Sacramento, for example, the scenario assumes that 68 percent of new housing will be compact, compared to 60 percent in current land use plans. Growth is focused in the urban core and existing suburban centers, and a higher proportion of the development is served by transit.

The result: a 14 percent reduction in vehicle trips per capital, a 60 percent increase in the use of transit and a 21 percent jump in the walking and biking.

To see the full staff report, go here.

Food waste could be turned into fuel

San Francisco Examiner
August 8, 2010

By: John Upton
August 8, 2010

Rendered: Darling International on Amador Street in the Backlands area of The City currently turns food waste into tallow that's used to make soap and cosmetics. (Cindy Chew/The Examiner)

Waste cooking oil and chunks of farmed animals that are currently used to manufacture cosmetics and animal food might instead be converted locally into biodiesel.

A fleet of trucks delivers some of the food industry's grossest byproducts six days a week to a rendering facility that operates, sometimes 24 hours a day, in the Backlands area.

The Backlands is a 23-acre industrial park operated by the Port of San Francisco along The City's southeastern shoreline, where cargo ships, trains and trucks frequently arrive and depart.

Drivers working for the Darling International-owned rendering facility collect roughly 2.5 million pounds of fat, bone and other animal parts every week from butchers, grocers and slaughterers.

In addition, approximately 160,000 gallons of used cooking oil and grease are collected weekly from restaurants and other food preparers, city documents show.

The waste is trucked into the Backlands and melted down. High-quality tallow produced by the rendering process is sold to soap and cosmetics manufacturers while lower-quality tallow is used for animal feed.

Darling International proposed improving its rendering process to allow it to produce biodiesel, which could be sold for higher prices and blended or used by its customers instead of fossil fuel-derived diesel. Biodiesel produced at the Amador Street facility would be sold to customers in the Bay Area, including other Backlands tenants such as a rail operator that burns diesel.

"Darling is working closely with The City to find demand," company spokesman Brad Phillips said. "It seemed natural to work with a city that's committed to finding green solutions to our nation's oil dependence."

Biodiesel produced by the facility would help reduce the use of fossil fuels, but the San Francisco Green Party opposes the $15 million overhaul, according to party spokesman Eric Brooks. The opposition to the project is based on health impacts and party principles.

"Biodiesel has high nitrogen oxide levels," Brooks said. "Nitrogen oxide creates ozone that creates smog, and smog is really bad for human health."

The use of biofuels in general can cause edible food to be burned as fuel. Using factory-farmed animals as fuel also is a concern for the party, according to Brooks.

But the proposal, which would require approval from city lawmakers, is supported by Port staff.

"What they're bringing in for rendering are leftover parts that would otherwise be turned into tallow or landfill," Port official Richard Berman said. "Biodiesel is not going to alter the demand for domesticated animals."

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Food-waste-could-be-turned-into-fuel-100241819.html#ixzz0w99YXP2c

States weigh bans on plastic grocery bags

Stateline
August 9, 2010

By Ali Eaves, Special to Stateline

Photo illustration by Christina Griffiths, Getty Images Since San Francisco enacted the nation's first ban on plastic grocery bags in 2007, dozens of cities have followed with their own bans, regulations or taxes on the lightweight bags, which have a way of blowing into tree branches and waterways. At least 24 states have considered similar legislation, but so far, the movement has stalled in the statehouses. That may be about to change. A bill that would ban plastic bags in California has made it through the state Assembly and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has hinted that he will sign the measure if it passes the Senate. The bill, AB 1998, would create the first statewide ban on plastic bags in grocery and convenience stores. It also would require the retailers to offer recycled paper bags for sale, at a price of at least 5 cents each. Julia Brownley, the bill's sponsor in the Assembly, says the intent is to encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable bags to the store. AB 1998 boasts a long list of supporters, including environmentalists who view plastic bags as a symbol of throwaway culture, as well as local governments and waste management groups who are concerned about reducing waste and litter. Importantly, the bill enjoys the endorsement of grocers, who typically have opposed plastic bag bans because paper bags are more expensive to supply.  The California Grocers Association prefers the statewide measure to an ever-changing patchwork of local regulations. It also doesn't hurt that grocers stand to pocket a few pennies on each paper bag they sell. Brownley has tried similar measures in recent years, including a 25-cent fee on all grocery bags, but has never seen the broad backing her proposal is getting this year. She attributes the support in part to a growing desire to create a uniform statewide policy as more localities push for their own bag regulations. The plastics industry has been lobbying against the ban. So has the paper industry — although paper bags stand to gain market share, manufacturers don't like the bill's requirement that the bags be made from 40 percent post-consumer recycled material. "If California passes this bill," says Patrick Rita, spokesperson for the Renewable Bag Council, a paper industry group, "we're going to see a real opening up of floodgates on copycat legislation." Industry groups aren't alone in the battle over bags. Some consumers are arguing to keep the convenience of having free plastic bags at every checkout, while others say plastic bags are useful for lining trashcans, carrying lunch to work or picking up after pets. Limited-government activists also oppose the bill, as do some people who say California's priorities are out of order. As the headline of an editorial in Sacramento's Capitol Weekly put it: "$20 billion in debt, 12 percent jobless, no budget — and we ban grocery bags?" Playing hardball As the debate heats up, "paper or plastic?" has become more than a mundane supermarket question. The American Chemistry Council, which represents a variety of industries including plastics manufacturers, has denounced AB 1998 as a $1 billion bag tax, even though the nickel charge on paper bags would go to retailers rather than the state. The industry also is preparing to fight legislation in Oregon, where four state legislators plan to introduce a plastic bag ban next year. Like the bill in California, the Oregon proposal has gained critical support from grocers by requiring stores to charge at least 5 cents for paper bags, rather than give them out for free. State Senator Mark Hass, one of the plan's sponsors, says he hopes the nickel charge would be enough of a "pin prick" to get shoppers to remember to bring reusable bags when they go to the store. Hass expects heavy lobbying from the American Chemistry Council. He has asked the city of Portland to hold off on passing a local plastic bag ban, in order to avoid what happened in Seattle in 2008: The Seattle city council passed a 20-cent tax on grocery bags, only to see the chemistry council sponsor a successful local referendum to overturn it the following year.  "I know they're not afraid to spend money and do whatever they can to prevail," Hass says. "I'm certain they won't sit quietly through this." Tim Shestek, senior director of state affairs for the American Chemistry Council, says stepping up plastic bag recycling programs is a viable alternative to the more drastic approach some cities are trying. Advocates also have been arguing that plastic bags are more environmentally friendly than paper because the production and transport of paper bags produces more greenhouse gases. "If you're going to restrict plastic bags and force people to use paper," Shestek says, "there are some environmental impacts that people overlook." Pick your poison The answer to the paper-or-plastic question may simply depend on which environmental factor you care about most. The contention that paper bags create more greenhouse gases than plastic was backed by a report by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, published in February. But the paper industry counters that such calculations do not consider the greater capacity of paper bags. You need three plastic bags to carry the same amount of groceries as one paper bag, which evens out the comparison, paper proponents say. If wastefulness and landfill capacity is the issue, the picture is mixed here, too. Although paper bags make up only 15 percent of the grocery bags used nationwide, they occupy more landfill space than plastic bags. According to a 2008 waste characterization study by the California Integrated Waste Management Board, plastic bags made up 0.3 percent of the state's disposed waste stream, compared with 0.4 percent for paper bags. On the other hand, plastic bags may linger in landfills for up to 1,000 years, while paper bags break down in landfills in about a month. Much of the focus on plastic bags has come from their tendency to end up stuck in trees, along roadsides, in rivers and in the ocean. In Washington, D.C., the city's environment department studied the litter in the Anacostia River and determined that about 25 percent of the trash pieces greater than one square inch in size were plastic bags. (The city has passed a 5-cent tax on both paper and plastic grocery bags.) Finally, there's the question of natural resources. The manufacture of paper bags can involve chopping down trees. Most plastic bags used in the United States are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource. Although both types of bags are increasingly made from recycled materials, the average recycled content of paper bags is greater. Rise of reusables Most environmentalists, including California's Brownley, agree that the answer to cutting back on landfill volume, litter, greenhouse gases and natural resource depletion, is to use neither paper nor plastic but to shop with reusable bags instead. But lately, the plastics industry has been targeting that notion, too. A study published in June, funded by the American Chemistry Council, warns of health risks in unwashed reusable bags, citing bacteria found in 84 reusable grocery bags sampled from shoppers in California and Arizona. The study was widely publicized, but a Consumer Reports review of the study criticized the small sample size and said that the kind of bacteria found in the bags didn't normally make people sick. Charles P. Gerba, a professor at the University of Arizona who conducted the original study, says that the presence of any bacteria indicate a health risk, but that washing reusable bags can eliminate the risk. As states debate bag laws, they'll be keeping an eye on results from the cities that now have some experience with them. Some have criticized San Francisco's outright ban on plastic bags because it seems to have led to an increase in the consumption of paper bags. By contrast, D.C.'s 5-cent tax seems to have changed consumer behavior. According to grocers' estimates cited by the D.C. Department of the Environment, bag consumption has dropped by half since the tax went into effect in January. It is difficult to gauge the impact on litter and waste. In San Francicso, plastic bags are still reaching the landfill because the ban only applies to chains and large stores. In D.C., the Department of the Environment plans to study litter using a trash trap on a tributary of the Anacostia River. But John Wasiutynski, an environmental specialist with the department, says it's difficult to measure a direct result. "Plastic bags tend to move slowly," he says. "They get caught, snagged in branches. They're clingy but they do eventually migrate out." —Contact Ali Eaves at aeaves-temp@pewtrusts.org

Dems, enviros won’t abandon legislation for Green Chemistry initiative

Capitol Weekly
August 5, 2010

Since 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has cited his Green Chemistry initiative as a reason not to pursue "chemical-by-chemical" bans.

At a hearing on that initiative on Tuesday, a pair of Democratic legislators sounded a defiant tone. Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, are known as two of the stronger environmental voices in the legislature. Feuer is the author of AB 1879, the 2008 bill that authorized the Green Chemistry regulations.

Meanwhile, Huffman had some tough words for the acting director of the agency responsible for creating those regulations, Maziar Movassaghi of the Dept. of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). In particular, Huffman focused on how quickly the agency would act to protect the public.

"What I'm taking away from this is that you are unable to say how long it would take for any given chemical, even one where there is a great deal of scientific consensus," Huffman said.

Huffman went on to say "we've got some calls to make about how much faith" he and others legislators can put into the process, adding: "To be perfectly candid, from what I'm hearing today, we may be in the business of legislating for a while before we can get some results… There are going to be two parallel processes, yours and the legislative one."
These thoughts were echoed by those in the environmental community. "The Legislature must continue to consider ban bills," said Ansje Miller, policy director of the Center for Environmental Health and coordinator of Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy, or CHANGE, "even if these regulations were perfect."

Under Schwarzenegger, that "legislative process" has been largely shut down in favor of the Green Chemistry initiative. His staff cited the initiative in three opposition letters to bills banning particular chemicals in 2007. He also used it as a reason to veto SB 1313 in 2008, a bill that would have banned PFCs, a chemical used in Teflon suspected of toxic and immune affects.

This de facto moratorium has not been complete, however. In 2007, Schwarzenegger signed AB 1108 by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, banning the use of chemicals called phthalates in children's toys.

Tuesday's event was a joint hearing of three different Assembly committees: Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials, Health and Natural Resources. Its purpose was to invite comment on the 61-page "Draft Regulation for Safer Consumer Products" released by DTSC on June 23.

Those regulations have been criticized by both the chemical industry and environmental groups.

"We've heard a lot in the media suggesting that this process is too friendly to industry," said John Ulrich, co-chair of the Chemical Industry Council of California, testifying at the hearing. "We're not so sure they're that friendly to industry."

While noting that his industry group "continues to voice strong concerns," Ulrich laid out numerous problems he sees. Many of the guidelines lack specifics, he said, while there was too much public participation laid out in the process of taking comments on particular chemicals.

He also cautioned against rushing "an extremely complex" process that he said goes beyond anything yet attempted in chemicals regulation, while saying that environmental groups were trying to push it forward too quickly.

Meanwhile, environmental groups have been pushing back against regulations they say are too slow and limited. Forty-seven of them signed on to a July 15 letter to Cal-EPA secretary Linda Adams saying they were "extremely disappointed" by the draft regulations. On that same day, Feuer sent a letter to Movassaghi, voicing many of the same concerns.
One particular bone of contention is the regulation's reliance on the Proposition 65 list. This is a 1986 voter initiative that sought to catalog chemicals which cause cancer and reproductive harm. The draft regulations limit the initiative to acting on chemicals which are on that list. In order for a new chemical to come under the initiative's regulatory scrutiny, it must go through what critics say is an overly-long process.

"That's a really bad idea," Feuer told Movassaghi. "I strongly urge the Department to change that regulation."

He added, "It's a very hard list to amend."

Another key objection was the so-called de minimis rule in the regulations, which would bar the initiative from acting on chemicals used a levels of less than 0.1 percent, or one part per thousand. Bill Allayaud of the Environmental Working Group got up during public comment and ran through a list of chemicals that are active in the human body at doses many times smaller - such as the erectile drug Cialis, which works at doses of 30 parts per billion.

"One part per thousand is absurd," he said.

Overall, it was a tough assignment for Movassaghi, who took over as head of DTSC in the midst of the Green Chemistry drafting process when former director Maureen Gorsen resigned in March of last year. Throughout his testimony and questioning, he cited the draft nature of the regulations, saying they were still a work in process.

He also sought to sound an upbeat note, saying that he was "more optimistic than a couple of months ago" that his agency would get regulations in place by the January deadline. Critics of the Green Chemistry initiative have repeatedly said the process was moving too slowly. Movassaghi also cited the initiative as making the state a leader nationally and as "an opportunity to reindustrialize California."

Movassaghi took lumps from both sides — but mainly from those wanting greater environmental regulation. First to testify was Michael Wilson, a research scientist in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the lead author the initial Green Chemistry report commissioned by the Legislature in 2004. While Wilson has generally stayed away from the kind of rhetoric leveled by environmental activists, he has become increasingly willing to criticize the Green Chemistry initiative.  

"Without greater transparency and oversight, the Department runs the risk of capture by industry," he warned during his testimony.

He also echoed some industry concerns, noting: "If implemented today, the regulations run the risk of creating a burden on business without improving the safety of products on the market."

Feuer was more direct, at one point going so far as to say "The credibility of this process has been called into question on the floor."

With that line to Movassaghi, he summed up the ongoing tension over chemical regulation in the Legislature. A small number of Democratic legislators have continued to push for bans on particular chemicals - in particular, Senators Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, and Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

Meanwhile, many others have endorsed the primacy of the Green Chemistry process - not just Republicans, but some moderate Democrats. At least one Democrat has reportedly sent an opposition letter to a chemical ban bill this year which cited the initiative.

The initiative also promises to add to Schwarzenegger's complex environmental legacy as governor. Environmentalists and their allies in the Legislature have continually been confounded by the contrast between a governor who sticks his neck out by proposing a groundbreaking Green Chemistry in the first place - then pursues it in a way that is much more inclusive of industry concerns than they would have preferred.

"The key to green chemistry is the substitution of scientific judgment for political judgment," Feuer said, in the midst of a hearing that showed how difficult that substitution can be to pull off.

UN panel: New taxes needed for a climate fund

AP
August 5, 2010

AP – From left, Carol Browner, assistant to the President for energy and climate change, NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, …

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By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer Arthur Max, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 47 mins ago

BONN, Germany – Carbon taxes, add-ons to international air fares and a levy on cross-border money movements are among ways being considered by a panel of the world's leading economists to raise a staggering $100 billion a year to fight climate change.

British economist Nicholas Stern told international climate negotiators Thursday that government regulation and public money also will be needed to create incentives for private investment in industries that emit fewer greenhouse gases.

In short, a new industrial revolution is needed to move the world away from fossil fuels to low carbon growth, he said.

"It will be extremely exciting, dynamic and productive," said Stern, one of 18 experts in public finance on an advisory panel appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

A climate summit held in Copenhagen in December was determined to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries adapt to climate change and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide trapping the sun's heat. But the 120 world leaders who met in the Danish capital offered no ideas on how to raise that sum — $1 trillion every decade — prompting Ban to appoint his high-level advisory group.

The Copenhagen summit also resolved to mobilize a three-year emergency fund of $30 billion starting this year. It was unclear how much has been raised and disbursed so far.

The advisory panel, which began working in March, will present its final report to Ban in October, a month before the next decisive climate conference convenes in Cancun, Mexico.

It will analyze a range of options, Stern said, and governments must decide which to chose, how much to raise from each source, and how to distribute the money.

Potential revenue sources include auctioning the right to pollute, taxes on carbon production, an international travel tax, and a tax on international financial transactions, as well as government grants and loans. Each could produce tens of billions of dollars a year, Stern said.

"No one single source will deliver $100 billion by itself. There is no silver bullet, no hole in one," he said.

Private capital also will be crucial, and governments must adopt policies reducing the risk to investors, he said.

The panel's recommendations will weigh the practicality, reliability, and political acceptability of each method, he said.

The advisory panel is chaired by the prime ministers of Norway and Ethiopia and the president of Guyana. Its members include French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and public planners from China, India, Singapore and several international banks.

The governments of 194 countries are negotiating an agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called on industrial nations to reduce carbon emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Unlike Kyoto, the next deal would set emission goals for developing countries, especially rapidly growing economies like China and India, in exchange for help with financing and technology.

The negotiating session in Bonn ends Friday, and delegates will meet once more in China before the Cancun ministerial conference.

Long delayed Green Chemistry rules take center stage

Capitol Weekly
August 3, 2010

By Malcolm Maclachlan | 08/03/10 12:00 AM PST

 Environmentalists and industry representatives will square off at a three-hour hearing Tuesday over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's long-delayed Green Chemistry regulations.

 

Schwarzenegger first announced his Green Chemistry initiative back in 2007. It got under way the next year. 

 

Since then, a growing number of environmental groups have criticized the process as being too friendly to industry. 

 

With the release of "Draft Regulation for Safer Consumer Products" by the Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) on June 23, some in the environmental community are saying the initiative may be no better than inaction on the governor's part — particularly since the Green Chemistry initiative has repeatedly been cited by the Schwarzenegger and others as a reason to oppose "chemical-by-chemical" bans. 

 

Meanwhile, industry groups are criticizing the regulations, as well. 

 

In a July 22 letter to the DTSC, John Ulrich, co-chair of the Chemical Industry Council of California, wrote, "Given the current economic challenges to the state and business community, the Department must be realistic and pragmatic in assigning costly responsibilities that provide little or no benefit."

 

While representatives from both sides will speak at the hearing, so far it appears that environmentalists have been more outspoken in criticizing the draft regulations. 

 

"The proposed regulations read like a chemical company's wish list," said Renee Sharp, director of the California office of Environmental Working Group, in a July 15 press release attacking the shortcomings of the draft regulations. "It is a little frustrating that we had some really good promise in what was happening with the Green Chemistry initiative," said Ansje Miller, policy director of the Center for Environmental Health and coordinator of Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy, or CHANGE. "How it has turned out in implementation seems a lot weaker."

 

One particular bone of contention for environmentalists is how the process appears to have prevented legislative action against dangerous chemicals over the last three years. 

Back in 2007, the Schwarzenegger administration opposed three bills that would have banned potentially-dangerous chemicals. In each case, the administration recommended that any chemical bans "be postponed until the Secretary of the Environmental Protection has developed a comprehensive set of recommendations pursuant to the Cal/EPA Green Chemistry Initiative."

 

Schwarzenegger cited it again in 2008 when he vetoed SB 1313, a bill that would have banned a class of chemicals called PFCs. The initiative has also been cited on the floor and in letters, by legislators from both parties, as a reason to vote against chemical bans. 

 

The latest hearing was called by Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara. It's a combined hearing hosted by the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials, which Nava chairs, as well as the Assembly's Health and Natural Resources Committees. 

 

Nava said that he didn't have concerns at this time about the particulars of the draft regulations. Instead, he wants to hear from all sides and make sure the process keeps moving.

 

But he expressed concerns about how the administration has used the initiative to block legislative action.

 

"If the governor is interpreting the Green Chemistry initiative as a moratorium on public health, he's got it wrong," Nava said. "The Legislature has a standalone obligation to take aggressive, affirmative steps to protect public health. If that includes a chemical ban before the Green Chemistry Initiative issues their list, that's what we've got to do."

 

Forty-seven different environmental groups signed on to a July 15 letter to Cal-EPA secretary Linda Adams saying they were "extremely disappointed" by the draft regulations. On that same day, Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, sent a letter to Maziar Movassaghi, acting director of DTSC.

 

Both letters are critical of the proposed rules. First, the draft regulations rely on the Proposition 65 list and process for determining what chemicals should be examined under the system. Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, created a list of chemicals believed to cause cancer or birth defects.

 

But environmentalists have criticized Proposition 65 as too limited and slow to be up the task. CHANGE's Miller said the initiative has a "very limited" definition of carcinogens, and that chemicals must go through a very long process to be added to the list.

 

"Considering that people widely contend that the Prop. 65 process needs reforming, we don't want to take on another problematic process within the Green Chemistry initiative," she said.

 

Environmental groups have also raised concerns with the public comment process that would be used in evaluating chemicals and what they see as "trade secrets" provisions that would allow them hide much of the chemical formulas in their products.

 

But according to Ulrich of the Chemical Industry Council, there are not adequate protections for trade secrets. He also cited concerns that the regulations don't accurately take into account how people are likely to actually be exposed to particular chemicals and in what amounts. Ulrich also criticized the "third party" assessment process for chemicals as being too onerous—the same process that some environmentalists say isn't strong enough. 

 

DTSC's Movassaghi said his agency has had an "open and transparent process."

 

"That fact that you have both non-governmental organization and industry stating some concerns might show that we're trying to balance," he said. 

 

One thing is for sure: However the state attempts to ban particular chemicals, the effort is likely to end up in court, no matter what the final regulations say.

"Some companies are going to invest in lawsuits and some companies are going to invest in research," Movassaghi said.

Bay Citizen
August 2, 2010

Clean Energy Too Popular in Marin

Demand for renewable power outstripped new program's supply

By Zusha Elinson on August 2, 2010 - 8:25 p.m. PDT

 

Bay City News Service

The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from Belvedere, a town that signed up early for Marin Clean Energy's "deep green" program

Marin can't get enough clean energy—literally.

Marin Clean Energy — a brand-new program that gives people a greener alternative to PG&E — didn't buy enough power to keep up with Marinites who wanted to switch to 100 percent renewable energy in June.

"It just shows that as we projected that there's a high level of interest of consumers that want 100 percent green power," said Dawn Weisz, interim director of the Marin Energy Authority, which runs the program. "Clearly there is a high level of pent-up demand."

Since the launch of the cutting-edge program at the beginning of May, 9,674 Marin County customers have been enrolled automatically. Most are in what is called the "light green" program, in which 25 percent of the electricity comes from renewable sources. Customers must opt out if they want to stay with PG&E.

Extra-eager consumers can sign up for the "deep green" program, in which 100 percent of the power comes from renewable sources, such as hydroelectric, wind, biomass and gas coming off of landfills. The deep greeners pay a 1-cent premium and a $10 monthly service charge for the privilege.

A total of 459 customers, or 4.7 percent, have signed up for deep green. But the Marin Energy Authority hadn't bought enough clean energy and was forced to put 35 customers on a waiting list in June. Two weeks ago, the program was reopened — those on the waiting list are now getting enrolled — after the authority bought more clean energy. 

"We bought enough energy to serve about 20 percent of our need in Marin, but we didn't anticipate such a high level of interest in deep green," said Weisz.

Weisz sees the oversubscription as a sign of the program's popularity.

But Jim Phelps, a Novato resident and vocal critic of the program, said it's a sign that customers are getting swept into the program without knowing any better.

"The deep green premium is peanuts," said Phelps. "If you believed in the green banner that they're waving wouldn't you sign up for that?"

"I would think that there would be 80 percent, not 4 percent," Phelps continued. 

PG&E did its best to get customers to opt out, "accidentally" sending letters to 6,000 of its customers in May, encouraging them not to switch to the new program and incurring the wrath of state regulators. PG&E also failed in its bid to pass a state proposition to make it more difficult for cities and counties to buy their own power like Marin.

Weisz has said that around 16 to 18 percent of customers are opting out of the program.

Pam Hartwell-Herrero, executive director of Sustainable Fairfax, said she was one of the first to sign up for the 100 percent option. She said there's been little change to her electricity bill.

"Our bill has not increased that we noticed," she said. 

The switch came with little to no drama, she said.

"It was like, 'Woo hoo, deep green,'" said Hartwell-Herrero. "And then it's like, 'Oh, that was easy.'"

The towns of Fairfax and Belvedere signed up early on for the deep green program. Most recently, the Northern Marin Water District signed up.

The Marin Energy Authority buys its power from Shell Energy North America. Last month, the county landed at number 13 on the EPA's top 20 local governments that use clean energy.