California Board Endorses Forest Clearcutting in Fight Against Global Warming

Environmental News Service
December 20, 2010

SACRAMENTO, Calif.— A cap-and-trade program approved Thursday by the California Air Resources Board includes damaging loopholes that would incentivize clearcutting in the name of reducing carbon emissions. The program — adopted as part of California's effort to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions — would allow industrial polluters to purchase carbon "offset credits" instead of reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions. Among the options is buying offset credits from forest clearcutting.

"Clearcutting forests is not the solution to global warming," said Brian Nowicki, California climate policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Including forest clearcutting not only threatens forest ecosystems and important wildlife habitat, but the integrity of California's cap-and-trade program as a whole."

Dozens of representatives of forest conservation organizations and residents of rural communities in California's forested areas testified at the air board's hearing Thursday in opposition to the inclusion of forest clearcutting in the rule. Air Resources Board member Dorene D'Adamo proposed an amendment to protect against forests being converted to tree farms for the purpose of generating carbon credits, but the board ultimately voted to allow forest clearcutting to remain in the rule.

"At best, this will subsidize, at the expense of the people of California, the operations of some of the most damaging forest management going on today," said Nowicki. "At worst, this will incentivize the clearcutting of natural forests to be replaced by tree farms."

Other loopholes in the new regulation will allow big timber companies to claim offset credits for forest growth and other management actions that likely would have occurred anyway, even in the absence of a forest offset program. These so-called "non-additional" credits do not represent actual emissions reductions, yet under the cap-and-trade rule can be sold to industrial polluters, who then can evade responsibility for reducing their own emissions. The result will be an overall increase in greenhouse gas pollution.

The Air Resources Board had outsourced the development of the forest offset protocol to the Climate Action Reserve, a nongovernmental organization that registers carbon offset projects. The Climate Action Reserve developed rules that reflect the strong influence and preferences of the timber industry, particularly Sierra Pacific Industries, California's largest private landowner and greatest practitioner of forest clearcutting.

"Last night the board voted to make clearcutting the face of California's efforts to fight global warming," said Nowicki. "Industrial polluters, instead of making positive changes to improve their operations and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, will be able to simply buy dubious offset credits from industrial tree farms. This is a serious blow to the state's forests as well as its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can and must do better, and that starts with closing these dangerous loopholes."

The cap-and-trade regulations adopted Thursday also allow industrial polluters to avoid responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning forest "biomass" — including whole, live trees — for the generation of energy and other industrial uses. This not only would encourage the wholesale logging of California's forests to provide fuel for industrial processes and electrical power generation, but also threatens to increase overall greenhouse gas emissions because the actual greenhouse gas emissions from burning wood can be higher than from burning fossil fuels.

Contact Info: Brian Nowicki, (916) 201-6938

Website : Center for Biological Diversity

Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags

Grist
December 10, 2010

Follow the honey: Smoking bees makes them less mad when you move them, but leaked EPA documents might have the opposite effect.Photo: Kris FrickeIt's not just the State and Defense departments that are reeling this month from leaked documents. The Environmental Protection Agency now has some explaining to do, too. In place of dodgy dealings with foreign leaders, this case involves the German agrichemical giant Bayer; a pesticide with an unpronounceable name, clothianidin; and an insect species crucial to food production (as well as a food producer itself), the honeybee. And in lieu of a memo leaked to a globetrotting Australian, this one features a document delivered to a long-time Colorado beekeeper.

All of that, plus my favorite crop to fixate on: industrial corn, which blankets 88 million acres of farmland nationwide and produces a bounty of protein-rich pollen on which honeybees love to feast.

It's The Agency Who Kicked the Beehive, as written by Jonathan Franzen!  

Hive talking
 
An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.

Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it. Like other members of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides, clothianidin gets "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees, which have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006.

The colony-collapse phenomenon is complex and still not completely understood. While there appears to be no single cause for the annual die-offs, mounting evidence points to pesticides, and specifically neonicotinoids (derived from nicotine), as a key factor. And neonicotinoids are a relatively new factor in ecosystems frequented by honeybees -- introduced in the late 1990s, these systemic insecticides have gained a steadily rising share of the seed-treatment market. It does not seem unfair to observe that the health of the honeybee population has steadily declined over the same period.

According to PANNA, other crops commonly treated with clothianidin include canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat -- all among the most widely planted U.S. crops. Bayer is now petitioning the EPA to register it for use with cotton and mustard seed.

The document [PDF], leaked to Colorado beekeeper Tom Theobald, reveals that EPA scientists have declared essentially rejected the findings of a study conducted on behalf of Bayer that the agency had used to justify the registration of clothianidin. And they reiterated concerns that widespread use of clothianidin imperils the health of the nation's honeybees.

On Thursday, I asked an EPA press spokesperson via email if the scientists' opinion would inspire the agency to remove clothianidin from the market. The spokesperson, who asked not to be named but who communicated on the record on behalf of the agency, replied that clothianidin would retain its registration and be available for use in the spring.

Wimpy watchdogging

Before we dig deeper into the leaked memo, it's important to understand the sorry story of how an insecticide known to harm honeybee populations came to blanket a huge swath of U.S. farmland in the first place. It's nearly impossible not to read it as a tale of a key public watchdog instead heeling to the industry it's supposed to regulate.

In the EPA's dealings with Bayer on this particular insecticide, the agency charged with protecting the environment has consistently made industry-friendly decisions that contradict the conclusions of its own scientists -- and threaten to do monumental harm to our food system by wiping out its key pollinators.

According to a time line provided by PANNA, the sordid story begins when Bayer first applied for registration of clothianidin in 2003. (All of the documents to which I link below were provided to me by PANNA.) By 2003, U.S. beekeepers were reporting difficulties in keeping hives healthy through the winter, but not yet on the scale of colony collapse disorder. In February of this year, the EPA's Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFED) withheld registration of clothianidin, declaring that it wanted more evidence that it wouldn't harm bee populations.

In a memo [PDF], an EFAD scientist explained the decision:

The possibility of toxic exposure to nontarget pollinators [e.g., honeybees] through the translocation of clothianidin residues that result from seed treatment (corn and canola) has prompted EFED to require field testing that can evaluate the possible chronic exposure to honeybee larvae and the queen. In order to fully evaluate the possibility of this toxic effect, a complete worker bee life cycle study (about 63 days) must be conducted, as well as an evaluation of exposure to the queen.

So, no selling clothianidin until a close, expert examination of how pollen infused with it would affect worker bees and Her Majesty the queen.

Again, that was in February of 2003. But in April of that year, just two months later, the agency backtracked. "After further consideration," the agency wrote in another memo, the EPA has decided to grant clothianidin "conditional registration" -- meaning that Bayer was free to sell it, and seed processors were free to apply it to their products. (Don't get me started on the EPA's habit of granting dodgy chemicals "conditional registration," before allowing their unregulated use for years and even decades. That's another story.)

The EPA's one condition reflected the concerns of its scientists about how it would affect honeybees: that Bayer complete the "chronic life cycle study" the agency had already requested by December of 2004. The scientists minced no words in reiterating their concerns. They called clothianidin's effects "persistent" and "toxic to honeybees" and noted the the "potential for expression in pollen and nectar of flowering crops."

These concerns aside and "conditional registration" in hand, Bayer introduced clothianidin to the U.S. market in spring 2003. Farmers throughout the corn belt planted seeds treated with clothianidin, and billions -- if not trillions -- of plants began producing pollen rich with the bee-killing stuff.

A bee does what it does best -- thankfully, not in a corn field.Photo: PurplekeyIn March of 2004, Bayer requested an extension on its December deadline for delivering the life-cycle study. In a March 11 memo [PDF], the EPA agreed, giving the chemical giant until May 2005 to complete the research. Clothianidin continued flowing from Bayer's factories and from corn plants into pollen.

But the EPA also relayed a crucial decision in this memo: It granted Bayer the permission it had sought to conduct its study on canola in Canada, instead of on corn in the United States. The EPA justified the decision as follows:

[Canola] is attractive to bee [sic] and will provide bee exposure from both pollen and nectar. An alternative crop, such as corn, which is less attractive to bees as a forage crop, would provide exposure from pollen, only.

Bee experts cite three problems with this decision:

1. Corn produces much more pollen than does canola;
2. its pollen is more attractive to honey bees; and
3. canola is a minor crop in the United States, while corn is the single most widely planted crop.

What happened next was ... not much. Bayer let the deadline for completing the study lapse; and the EPA let Bayer keep selling clothianidin, which continued to be deposited into tens of millions of acres of farmland.

Not until August of 2007, more than a year after its deadline, did Bayer deliver its study. In a November 2007 memo [PDF], EPA scientists declared the study "scientifically sound," adding that it, "satisfies the guideline requirements for a field toxicity test with honeybees."

Beeing and nothingness

So what were the details of that study, on which the health of our little pollinator friends depended?

Well, the EPA initially refused to release it publicly, prompting a Freedom of Information Act by the Natural Resources Defense Council. When the EPA still refused to release it, NRDC filed suit in response. Eventually, the study was released. Here it is [PDF].

Prepared for Bayer by researchers at Canada's University of Guelph, the study is a bit of a joke. The researchers created several 2.47-acre fields planted with clothianidin-treated seeds and matching untreated control fields, and placed hives at the center of each. Bees were allowed to roam freely. The problem is that bees forage in a range of 1.24 to 6.2 miles -- meaning that the test bees most likely dined outside of the test fields. Worse, the test and control fields were planted as closely as 968 feet apart, meaning test and control bees had access to each other's fields.

Not surprisingly, the researchers found "no differences in bee mortality, worker longevity, or brood development occurred between control and treatment groups throughout the study."

Tom Theobald, the Colorado beekeeper who obtained the leaked memo, assessed the study harshly on the phone to me Thursday. "Imagine you're a rancher trying to figure out if a noxious weed is harming your cows," he said. "If you plant the weed on two acres and let your cows roam free over 50 acres of lush Montana grass, you're not going to learn much about that weed."

James Frazier, professor of entomology at Penn State, concurred. Frazier has been studying colony-collapse disorder since 2006. "When I looked at the study," he told me in a phone interview, "I immediately thought it was invalid."

Meanwhile, Bayer continued selling clothianidin under its conditional registration. Then, on April 22 of this year, the EPA finally ended clothianidin's long period of "conditional" purgatory -- by granting it full registration.

The agency gifted the bee-killing pesticide with its new status quietly; to my knowledge, the only public acknowledgment of it came through the efforts of Theobald, who is extremely worried about the fate of his own bee-keeping business in Colorado's corn country. Theobald forwarded me a Nov. 29 email exchange with Meredith Laws, the acting chief of the EPA's herbicide division in the Office of Pesticide Programs, to whom he'd written to enquire about clothianidin's registration status. Laws' reply is worth quoting in its entirety:

Clothianidin was granted an unconditional registration for use as a seed treatment for corn and canola on April 22, 2010. EPA issued a new registration notice, [but] there is no document that acknowledges the change from conditional to unconditional. This was a risk management decision based on the fulfillment of data requirements and reviews accepting or acknowledging the submittal of the data.

So, the EPA gave Bayer and its dubious pesticide a full pass without even bothering to let the public know.

Just bee very careful, please
 
Now we get to the leaked memo [PDF]. It is dated Nov. 2 -- three weeks before Laws' reply to Theobald. It relates to Bayer's efforts to expand clothianidin's approved use into cotton and mustard. Authored by two scientists in the EPA's Environmental Fate and Effects Division -- ecologist Joseph DeCant and chemist Michael Barrett -- the memo expresses grave concern about clothianidin's effect on honeybees:

Clothianidin's major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees).

Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct ...  risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

The real kicker is that the researchers essentially invalidated the Bayer-funded study -- i.e., the study on which the EPA based clothianidin's registration as an fully registered chemical. Referring to the pesticide, the authors write:

A previous field study [i.e., the Bayer study] investigated the effects of clothianidin on whole hive parameters and was classified as acceptable. However, after another review of this field study in light of additional information, deficiencies were identified that render the study supplemental. It does not satisfy the guideline 850.3040, and another field study is needed to evaluate the effects of clothianidin on bees through contaminated pollen and nectar. Exposure through contaminated pollen and nectar and potential toxic effects therefore remain an uncertainty for pollinators. [Emphasis mine.]

So, here we have EPA researchers explicitly invalidating the study on which clothianidin gained registration for corn. But as I wrote above, despite this information's being made public, the EPA has signaled that it has no plans to change the chemical's status.

In the 2011 growing season, tens of millions of acres of farmland will bloom with clothianidin-laced pollen -- honeybees, and sound science, be damned.

Now, in my correspondence with the EPA, the agency has denied that the downgrading of the Bayer study from "acceptable" to "supplemental" meant that the agency should be compelled to clothianidin's approval. In a Thursday email to me, the agency delivered a limp defense of the Bayer study, contradicting its own scientists and addressing none of the critiques of it:

EPA's evaluation of the study determined that it contains information useful to the agency's risk assessment. The study revealed the majority of hives monitored, including those exposed to clothianidin during the previous season, survived the over-wintering period.

And it downplayed the study's importance to Bayer's application to register clothianidin: The study in question is "not a 'core' study for EPA as claimed," the agency insisted. "It is not a study routinely required to support the registration of a pesticide."

I ran that response by Jay Feldman of Beyond Pesticides, the group that collaborated with PANNA in publicizing the leaked document. "I find the EPA response either misinformed or misleading," he told me. "The paper trail on this is clear. We're talking about a bad study required by EPA [that is central] to the registration of this chemical."

Feldman's assessment appears to bear out. He pointed me back to the above-linked Nov. 27 document in which EPA originally accepted the Bayer study. There, on page 5, we find this statement:

Specifically, the test was conducted in response to a request by the Canadian PMRA [Pesticides and Pest Management Agency] and the U.S. EPA; as a condition for Poncho@ [clothianidin] registration in these countries, Bayer CropScience was asked to investigate the long-term toxicity of clothianidin-treated canola to foraging honey bees.

So evidently, the discredited Bayer study does lie at the heart of clothianidin's acceptance. (I have requested an interview with an EPA official who can talk knowledgeably and on the record about these matters; the anonymous-by-request spokesperson is, at the time of publication, still looking for the "right person," I was informed via email.)

A stinging assessment

At the very least, we have ample evidence that the EPA has been ignoring the warnings of its own staff scientists and green-lighting the mass deployment of a chemical widely understood to harm pollinators -- at a time when honeybees are in grave shape.

But why? Tom Theobald, the Colorado beekeeper who broke this story, ventured an answer. "It's corporatism, the flip side of fascism," he said. "I'm not against corporations, I think they have a good model. But they're like children -- we have to rein them in or they get out of hand. The EPA's supposed to do that."

When regime change came to Washington in 2008, many of us hoped that an EPA under Barack Obama would be a better parent. EPA Director Lisa Jackson inherited quite a mess from her predecessor, and she faces the Herculean challenge of regulating greenhouse gases against fierce Republican and industry opposition.

But as concern mounts -- from her own staff and elsewhere -- that clothianidin is harming honeybees, there's no excuse for Jackson's agency to keep coddling Bayer. Frazier, the Penn State entomologist, put it to me like this: "If the Bayer study is the core study the EPA used to register clothianidin, then there's no basis for registering it." He urged the EPA to withdraw registration to avoid unnecessary risk to a critical player in our ecosystem -- as have the governments of Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia.

Common plastic chemical linked to infertility

California Watch
December 16, 2010

December 16, 2010 | Susanne Rust

Daquella Manera/Flickr

A new study suggests a chemical widely found in a variety of household products may reduce the success of in vitro fertilization and damage human eggs.

Researchers at UC San Francisco analyzed the blood of 26 infertile women and their eggs. The eggs had been collected for in vitro fertilization.

The team found that those women with the most bisphenol-A (or BPA) in their blood had the least viable eggs, and vice versa. Indeed, as the blood levels of BPA in the women doubled, the percentage of eggs that fertilized normally declined by 50 percent.

Because the study was very small, the authors say it cannot be viewed as definitive.

However, they suggest that women trying to get pregnant might try avoiding food and personal care products known to contain the chemical.

BPA is a chemical that makes plastics hard and clear. It is also widely used as a resin to line the inside of food and beverage cans.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has detected BPA in 93 percent of people the agency has tested.

"Given the widespread nature of BPA exposure in the U.S., even a modest effect on reproduction is of substantial concern," said Michael Bloom, one of the authors, in a statement.

Bloom is an environmental health scientist at the State University of New York.

Patricia Hunt, a Washington State University researcher, who has found evidence that BPA can damage mouse eggs, said she thought the results were interesting.

"This study provides the first direct evidence of a similar effect in humans," she said.

Scientists from the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry's trade association, were more skeptical.

"As noted by the authors, this is a small-scale, preliminary study and further studies are needed to confirm the findings," said Steven Hentges, a spokesman and scientist with the industry trade association. "In contrast, comprehensive studies on laboratory studies have found that BPA does not affect reproduction, in particular at the very low levels of BPA to which people may be exposed."

Findings are available online in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

 

Fox News Boss Ordered Staffers To Cast Doubt On Climate Change Science

Huffington Post
December 15, 2010

A top Fox News editor sent an email to staffers and journalists questioning the science behind global warming and directing them to always point out on air that the theory has its skeptics.

Media Matters obtained the memo. It is the second such email the organization has released in as many weeks. Like the last one, the global warming memo came from Bill Sammon, Fox News' Washington managing editor. Sammon was also the author of an email directing journalists to use the phrase "government option" instead of "public option."

Media Matters reports that the email was issued December 8, 2009, just fifteen minutes after Wendell Goler, currently the network's White House correspondent, said on air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization had announced that the decade of 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest on record." (Goler was speaking from the Copenhagen climate summit.)

Goler's report came during the so-called "Climategate scandal," which was seized on by global-warming skeptics as proof that the scientific community had been pushing false climate data in order to inflate the threat of global warming. (Studies later showed that the emails were not good enough evidence to cast doubt on the science.)

Minutes later, Sammon sent this memo:

From: Sammon, Bill To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 036 -FOX.WHU; 054 -FNSunday; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers; 069 -Politics; 005 -Washington Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay; Smith, Sean Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009 Subject: Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data...

...we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

Sammon's directive appears to have had its intended effect. Later that evening, on "Special Report," Goler delivered another report from Copenhagen. This time, he stated the UN's findings again, and immediately went on to say, "skeptics say the recordkeeping began about the time a cold period was ending in the mid 1800s and what looks like an increase may just be part of a longer cycle."

Warmest year on record

California Watch
December 14, 2010

December 14, 2010 | Susanne Rust

xedos4/freedigitalphotos.net

NASA scientists say the most recent meteorological year, which ran from December 2009 through November 2010, was the warmest in 131 years of of record keeping.

The world's average temperature in 2010 was 14.65 degrees Celsius, or 58.57 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2005, the former front-runner for warmest meteorological year, the temperature was 14.62 degrees Celsius, or 58.32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Whether other agencies will agree with NASA's rank remains to be seen.

That's because other global temperature collectors, such as the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, use different methods to track and rank temperatures.

Even if NOAA and others disagree with NASA's rankings, 2010 will go down as one of the warmest years on record – despite an unusually cool winter in Northern Europe and lower than average solar irradiance.

According to James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science, and three other NASA scientists:

 

The cold anomaly in Northern Europe in November has continued and strengthened in the first half of December. Combined with the unusual cold winter of 2009-2010 in Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, this regional cold spell has caused widespread commentary that global warming has ended. That is hardly the case. On the contrary, globally November 2010 is the warmest November in the GISS record.

NASANASA scientists say 2010 was the hottest year ever.

In addition, solar irradiance was low this past year. In general, when solar irradiance is low, global temperatures are low, as well.

"The new record temperature in 2010 is particularly meaningful because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect," wrote the scientists.

The scientists suggest that the heat waves recorded in Russia and France this year are unlikely to be anomalies in a future they predict will become increasingly warm.

Indeed, according to the scientists' data, nine of the 10 hottest meteorological years on record have occurred since 2001; 1998 is the only one to have occurred before 2000.

San Jose weighs plastic bag ban

San Jose Mercury News
December 13, 2010

By John Woolfolk

jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com

Posted: 12/13/2010 12:00:00 AM PST

Updated: 12/13/2010 12:04:53 AM PST

Click photo to enlarge

Xavier Campos, center right, greets San Jose City Councilman Kansen Chu,... ( Jim Gensheimer )

After two years of study, the San Jose City Council will vote Tuesday on banning disposable plastic carryout bags and charging for disposable paper sacks to encourage people to bring reusable totes.

"This is not a very difficult thing," said Councilman Kansen Chu, who changed his shopping habits three years ago after a visit to his native Taiwan, where a grocer charged him approximately 15 cents for a disposable plastic bag. "Why can't we do it?"

Hoping to tank the proposal are critics such as the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastic-bag makers and says the product is being unfairly maligned.

"The product they are banning is a fully recyclable product," said Tim Shestek, the chemistry council's senior director of state affairs. The trade group argues more should be done to promote recycling the bags, which can enjoy a second life as new plastic bags, carts or composite lumber for decking and park benches.

Shestek said that although state law requires stores to have recycling bins for their disposable plastic bags, those aren't well promoted or used.

Nationally, only 13 percent of plastic bags get recycled, he said. "There are better ways to work together and achieve some of these goals than the heavy-handed approach that's being suggested."

Of course, many shoppers find second uses for the bags by lining wastebaskets or cleaning up after their pets.

The proposed San Jose ordinance, which would be effective Jan. 1, 2012, would ban single-use carryout plastic bags and prohibit the free distribution of paper bags by retail establishments. Retailers could offer paper bags made of at least 40 percent recycled content for a charge, which would start at 10 cents and increase after a year to 25 cents.

Food-stamp and other welfare recipients would not have to be charged. Retailers could face fines of $500 to $1,000 for violating the ban.

Restaurants could still give out plastic sacks to carry out meals, as city officials noted that "food may become wet or messy." Also exempted would be secondhand stores like the Salvation Army, which city officials noted promote the "reuse and recycling of donated goods and material." And the ban wouldn't apply to sandwich bags or store-bought garbage can liners.

San Jose wouldn't be the first city to ban plastic carryout bags, but it may be the most populous. San Francisco led the way with a plastic bag ban in 2007, inspired by similar measures to discourage plastic-bag use in countries including China and Ireland.

A state bill by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Woodland Hills, to ban single-use plastic carryout bags from grocery and drugstores died this year for lack of support in the Senate, despite backing from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But that has only spurred local government leaders to act on their own. Palo Alto, Oakland, Fairfax, Malibu and Los Angeles County have approved similar measures, while Fremont, Sunnyvale, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Marin County and Santa Clara County are considering them.

Chu believes San Jose's proposal is more environmentally and legally sound than many of the others because it discourages paper as well as plastic disposable sacks. San Jose's proposed ban also underwent a full environmental review.

Opponents have sued or threatened litigation against some cities over plastic-bag bans, arguing that they only encourage use of disposable paper sacks. Those critics contend paper bags are more environmentally harmful because of deforestation to produce wood pulp for paper and the energy needed to manufacture it.

Lawsuits and legal threats over bans in Oakland, Palo Alto and Fairfax argued the cities should have conducted a full analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act before taking action. Oakland suspended its ban, and Fairfax, in Marin County, made it voluntary.

Palo Alto settled out of court with an agreement to conduct a full environmental review if it expands its ban beyond grocers.

Late last week, the chemistry council lobbed a new legal threat at San Jose, arguing that with its paper-bag fee, the proposed ban runs afoul of Proposition 26. Voters passed the statewide initiative last month to prevent governments from raising taxes in the form of "fees" that are supposed to only cover specific program costs.

City Attorney Rick Doyle had anticipated the move and said it's a bogus threat. Although San Jose's proposal sets a minimum fee that retailers must charge for paper bags, the money goes to the retailers, not the city, and therefore can't be considered a tax, he said.

"I'm aware of the issue, and I just don't think it holds water," Doyle said. "All we're saying is that you've got to set a minimum price. It's not our money. It's not going into the public treasury."

Although many retailers statewide have argued such bans only increase costs to shoppers, some in San Jose are supportive. Tristan Elgin, a manager at Zanotto's downtown market, said he "wouldn't have any problem with it."

"I don't like giving out tons of plastic bags," Elgin said. "I don't think it will hurt us too much. People will come in regardless of how they have to carry their stuff."

The reaction among downtown shoppers outside the nearby Safeway supermarket was mixed. Mai Semana, 23, said that while she likes the idea of encouraging reusables, "people should have a choice." She was carrying her groceries in plastic.

But Michael Harris, 20, who also toted plastic bags full of groceries, called banning them "a great idea," noting that "a lot of people just leave them on the street."

He said he has a pair of reusable totes but had forgotten to bring them along.

Still, he said, "it's not too hard to keep a reusable bag in your car. I don't mind it at all."

Silver lining in dark economic times: Recycling rates soar

San Jose Mercury News
December 13, 2010

By Paul Rogers

progers@mercurynews.com

Posted: 12/13/2010 12:00:00 AM PST

Updated: 12/13/2010 07:24:33 AM PST

Click photo to enlarge

Saulman Valani, owner of Ranch Town Recycling Center in San Jose Friday Dec.... ( Patrick Tehan )

(PrintExpress PDF Export. - IPA S)

For the past three years, Mark Schwede has been coming to Ranch Town Recycling in San Jose's Willow Glen neighborhood, dropping off cans and bottles every couple of months to make a few extra bucks.

As the economy worsened, he began to notice a change.

"Before, it was mostly people with shopping carts," he said. "Now you're seeing nicer cars here."

The trend has taken off around the state. As California's economy has worsened, the state's recycling rates have soared, with more people than ever cashing in beverage containers instead of throwing them in the trash or leaving them at the curb.

Last year, 82 percent of the aluminum cans, glass bottles and plastic bottles sold in California were recycled,

up from 74 percent in 2008 and 55 percent in 2003, according to state statistics. That's the highest rate since 1992, when 82 percent were recycled amid another recession.

What once seemed like pocket change now seems like valuable extra income, experts say.

California is one of 11 states that charges a fee on beverage containers to encourage recycling. The state charges 5 cents on each glass bottle, aluminum can and plastic container up to 24 ounces, and 10 cents for containers 24 ounces and up. When consumers turn bottles and cans in at recycling centers, they get the money back.

Two main factors are driving the recycling surge.

Higher redemption rate

California's recycling rate, among the highest in the nation now, had been mired between 50 and 60 percent between 2000 and 2006. But it jumped to 67 percent in 2007 when a new state law increased the redemption value of most cans and bottles from 4 cents to 5 cents each.

Then came the Wall Street crash, California's 12 percent unemployment rate and the end of the housing bubble.

"I do think we have seen a boost in recycling rates because of the economy," said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, a Sacramento environmental group.

"Part of it was that the redemption rate went up to a nickel. When you are looking at how to make ends meet, you might not notice a few pennies, but a nickel gets on the radar screen."

The Valani family started Ranch Town Recycling with one employee in 1996. Today there are 13. On a recent weekday, as forklifts zipped around the lot, a steady stream of customers drove in. Some were scruffy, others well-dressed.

Owner Saulman Valani pays $2 a pound for aluminum. About 30 cans are in a pound. Glass bottles fetch 10 cents a pound, with two bottles per pound. And No. 1 plastic bottles pay 91 cents a pound, with 16 bottles per pound.

If each person in a family of four drinks one canned soda and one plastic bottle of juice per day, at those rates, recycling every container would earn the family about $180 a year.

"Friends collect bottles and cans for me," said Jeaneen Teixeira of San Jose, hauling two large bags to the weigh scales. "I use the money to bake cookies and fudge to give to people for Christmas. That's what I give for presents. It's an easy way to make extra money."

In many cities, if people put fewer aluminum cans in curbside recycling bins, the losers are the private companies that collect and recycle materials under contract with cities. That could cause them to seek to renegotiate. But that hasn't happened in San Jose, said John Stufflebean, city environmental services director.

Free landfill space

Statewide, the recycling boom continues to grow.

For the first six months of 2010, a staggering 86 percent of all beverage containers in California were recycled, the highest rate in state history since the first bottle bills were passed in 1987. And within that mountain of material, 95 percent of aluminum cans -- the most valuable of the recyclables -- were recycled in the first six months of 2010, compared with 90 percent of glass bottles and 74 percent of No. 1 plastic bottles.

Put another way, Californians purchased roughly the same number of cans and bottles in 2003 -- about 20 billion -- as they did last year. But in 2003, they recycled 10 billion of them, and last year they recycled 17 billion.

Apart from reducing litter, the increased recycling has helped free up space in landfills. Ten years ago, the state estimated that its landfills had a combined life of 35 years left. Now they have 45 years, said Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, although he noted that some of the extra space is due to a drop in construction, which means less debris going to landfills.

Meanwhile, recycling centers have become a crossroad of society.

"We have grandparents come in and they say they are going to put the money in their grandchildren's college fund," said Valani.

"I see families where the dad says to his kids, 'Let me show you the value of earning money.' I hear it all day."

China widens gap with U.S. in green energy race

Grist
November 30, 2010

A maintenance engineer inspects a wind turbine in Guangdong, China. Photo: Greenpeace InternationalA day after Energy Secretary Steven Chu's "Sputnik speech," in which he warned that China was investing billions in renewable energy while American politicians bickered over small-potatoes stimulus spending on green technology, a report from Ernst & Young released Tuesday confirmed Asia's ascendancy.

"A new world is emerging in the clean energy sector with China now the clear leader in the global renewables market," the report's authors wrote.

Ernst & Young publishes a quarterly "country attractiveness" index for investors that ranks nations' renewable energy policies, renewable energy markets, and other factors.

China took first place -- again -- ousting the U.S. from the spot it had occupied between 2006 and 2010.

"China's record spending on its wind industry this quarter represented nearly half of all funds invested in new wind projects around the world," the report states. "Figures released for the second quarter of 2010 showed that China invested around $10 billion in wind out of a global total of $20.5 billion."

Half the wind turbines that will come online this year worldwide will have been made in China, according to the report.

"Since reaching top spot in our index in September, China has opened up a healthy gap from other markets," Ben Warren, an Ernst & Young executive, said in a statement. "Cleantech, including renewable energy, represents a significant part of the country's future economic growth plans.

"The level of wind energy being deployed in China shows what can be achieved with a carefully planned energy and industrial policy that elevates cleantech to a national strategic level," he added. "The Chinese solar industry is also fast becoming of great importance in the global marketplace."

And China clearly has its eye on the U.S. market. As I wrote last week, one of China's largest solar companies has formed a joint venture with California startup SolarReserve to build photovoltaic power plants in the desert Southwest.

And it's not just China the U.S. has to worry about in the green energy race. According to Ernst & Young, South Korea, Romania, Egypt, and Mexico are rising fast as their governments devote more resources to renewable energy.

Todd Woody is a veteran environmental journalist based in California.

Leaked cables reveal Saudi minister of petroleum helped craft toothless Copenhagen climate accord 21

Grist
December 1, 2010

Tasty Hallal burgers aren't the only thing the Saudis are pushing.Photo: Rabun WarnaSo far most of the attention on WikiLeaks' Nov. 28 release of formerly secret U.S. diplomatic cables has been focused on what the cables reveal about Iran's nuclear aspirations. But buried in these cables are tantalizing clues about the back-door negotiations that surrounded last year's Copenhagen climate conference. A year later, many of the same negotiators are now in Cancun, where their motivations are likely to be the same. So what do these cables tell us about what to expect from current and future climate negotiations?

1. Nobody f*#ks with the Saudis

It's not clear if the following is an actual secret or an open secret, but here goes: A cable dated Jan. 26, 2010, records Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman, of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, saying that Saudi Arabia's minister of petroleum, Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi, "was involved in crafting the final agreement" of the Copenhagen Accord.

The cable goes on to note that because Al-Naimi participated in the drafting process, Feltman and the U.S. were "counting on Saudi Arabia to associate itself with the accord by January 31." That didn't happen, even though Saudi Arabia's lead negotiator later declared himself "satisfied" with the Copenhagen accord.

2. Saudi Arabia has the most to lose from any binding emissions targets, and will never sign on to them

The Saudis believe greenhouse-gas regulation is one of the greatest threats to their economic future, right up there with a nuclear Iran and internal political instability.

A second secret cable from ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Smith to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, dated Feb. 11, 2010, lays it out:

Saudi officials are very concerned that a climate change treaty would significantly reduce their income just as they face significant costs to diversify their economy. We want to get beyond the obstructionism that Saudi negotiators have often shown during the negotiations and persuade senior leaders to work with us in a partnership to meet their strategic concerns, including by cooperating on developing solar and biomass energy. The King is particularly sensitive to avoid Saudi Arabia being singled out as the bad actor, particularly on environmental issues.

Most of the countries that have declined to sign on to the Copenhagen Accord contend that it has insufficient provisions for transfer of dollars from developed to developing nations to assist with climate-change adaptation. 

But not the Saudis. In their view, climate-change regulations are as big an existential threat to their way of life as climate change itself. Even though the Copenhagen Accord was relatively toothless -- it contained only voluntary targets that wouldn't come close to averting catastrophic climate change -- Saudi Arabia continues to refuse to sign it. Even though the country's own oil minister had a hand in its composition! This stance fits with the country's ongoing, vociferous denials of the reality of peak oil.

3. As long as binding international climate agreements work by consensus, Saudi Arabia is as big a threat to their success as China. The effort to reach binding emissions targets through consensus is permanently broken, QED

Asking Saudi Arabia, a country so rich in oil that it already expends half of what it digs up on electrical power generation, to sign on to climate agreements that have even the slightest chance of succeeding is like asking a drug dealer to start a rehabilitation clinic. 

The only logical way forward is for the world's biggest emitters and most vulnerable nations -- i.e., everyone who doesn't have a vested interest in inaction -- to try to forge their own agreements and commitments, petro-states and obstructionists be damned. 

Read more about WikiLeaks and climate change from Wonk Room and ClimateWire.

States and cities sign up to new Cancun climate commitment

Business Green
December 8, 2010

Regional players pledge to lead development of low carbon policy

Yesterday, more than 60 state and regional governments that together represent 15 per cent of global GDP reiterated their commitment to ambitious low carbon targets, regardless of the outcome of the Cancun climate summit.

Officials gathered at The Climate Group think tank's latest annual Climate Leaders Summit in Cancun said that the on-going negotiations at the neighbouring UN climate change talks would not derail existing green initiatives at a city and regional level designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts.

"We are proving that while a global agreement is important, we do not need to wait for it to start building the path to a new low carbon future," said Jean Charest, premier of Quebec and co-chair of the States & Regions Alliance. "As our national counterparts meet here in Cancun to continue the negotiations, states and regions are continuing to show the leadership necessary to make practical headway on climate action."

His comments were echoed by Steve Howard, chief executive of The Climate Group, who said that city and state governments were developing "laboratories for low carbon development" that should provide international leaders with evidence that environmentally sustainable policies can help drive economic growth.

"A clean industrial revolution is not only possible, but it is well underway in the world's leading states, cities and regions," he said. "The subnational governments in our Alliance are not waiting for a global agreement but are forging agreements of their own to lead a growing global market for low carbon goods and services already estimated at $4.7 trillion."

Ministers, governors and civil servants attending the event provided an update on environmental targets announced at last year's Climate Leaders Summit with a number of regional governments also unveiling new goals for the next decade.

Most notably, São Paulo announced that it would legislate to deliver a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, making it the first region in a developing country to commit to such a deep cut in emissions.

Similarly, Upper Austria committed to generating 100 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, while the German region of Bavaria announced details of its plan to have 200,000 electric cars on the roads by 2020.

Scotland also confirmed that it would become the first nation to commit to the Billion Trees initiative, pledging to plant 100 million trees by 2015.

Scientists: Mercury may cause homosexual behavior in birds

California Watch

December 2, 2010 | Susanne Rust

Brian Garrett/ FlickrMercury has been implicated in the homosexual behavior of polluted white ibises.

Researchers have found that a pollutant from coal-fired power plants may cause a species of bird to exhibit homosexual behavior, reducing successful mating and nesting behavior.

Mercury seems to cause male ibises to nest together, according to scientists at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

But they caution that what happens in birds doesn't necessarily happen in people.

Indeed, the lead author of the study, Peter Frederick, worries that "people will read this and immediately jump to the conclusion that humans eating mercury are going to be gay," he told the journal Nature. "I want to be very explicit that this study has nothing to say about that."

Mercury is a product of coal-fired power plants. It is also introduced into the environment via the burning of medical and municipal waste.

Mercury is converted into methylmercury, the most toxic and easily absorbed form of the metal found in the environment and is prevalent in wetlands and marine food chains across the globe.

To test whether mercury has an effect on white ibis reproductive behavior, Frederick and his colleagues gathered 160 nestlings in south Florida and split them into four groups. Each group had 20 males and 20 females.

When the birds reached 90 days of age, the researchers began adding methylmercury (the product of mercury in the environment) to their food. One group of birds was given a small amount of mercury, another a medium amount and the third group a lot. The last group, the control, was given no mercury.

Then, for three years, the researchers measured mercury levels in the blood and feathers of the birds and monitored their behavior.

And here's what they found: Not only did mercury accumulate in the birds over time but their behavior and reproductive ability was altered.

Indeed, roughly 13 to 15 percent of the ibis nests failed. And a lot failed because they were being "manned" by two males.

All of the groups, except the control, showed less courtship behavior. As the mercury levels increased, so did the degree, frequency and persistence of homosexual pairings. They also produced fewer eggs than the birds that weren't exposed.

The levels of mercury in all three groups are typical of those found in the birds' natural environment, which suggests that this may actually be occurring in the wild, Fredericks told Nature.

Males that coupled with other males were also less likely to switch partners after their nests failed – a common behavior of ibises whose nests have failed.

The researchers say the next step is to observe animals in the wild, and see whether or not mercury is having an effect there, too.

The study was published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Brown may find it's not easy being green

Los Angeles Times
December 2, 2010

Governor-elect's plan to expand the state's green-energy industry could mean sharply higher costs for consumers.

Placing solar panels like these on parking-lot roofs, schools and along the banks of state highways are part of California Gov.-elect Jerry Brown's green energy plan.

Reporting from Sacramento —

Jerry Brown ran for governor promising to revive the economy through an aggressive expansion of California's green-energy industry — but that agenda could prove costly to consumers.

Brown wants the state to make major new investments in solar and wind power: building large-scale power plants that run on renewable resources and placing solar panels on parking-lot roofs, school buildings and along the banks of state highways. Although advocates of renewable energy tout the long-term savings of going green, billions of dollars would be required to reach the governor-elect's green-energy goals.

Nobody knows if the program would produce the "more than half a million green jobs" Brown promised during the campaign, but many experts agree that it could lead to sharply higher utility rates.

How much higher is unclear, because the eventual cost of Brown's plan would depend in part on the mix of wind, solar and other renewable energy used. Other factors may lower that estimate, said Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford. It depends on "what kind of cost savings can be realized through reducing the regulatory hurdles, it depends on how quickly we can ramp up job creation…. All of this is somewhat speculative at the moment."

But state regulators have already crunched some numbers associated with the linchpin of Brown's plan: to generate one-third of the state's power from renewable sources by 2020. That could require rate hikes of as much as 14.5%, in addition to billions of dollars in private investment, according to an analysis by the state's Public Utilities Commission.

Staff at the commission, which regulates Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and a handful of smaller utilities and sets rates for most Californians, estimates the cost of the plan at roughly $60 billion over the next decade. That is more than state taxpayers will spend on the University of California and California State University systems combined over the same period.

Clifford said the PUC analysis is not complete.

"One of the things that estimate does not take into account is the thinning of the regulatory thicket when it comes to renewable energy," he said. "We want to simplify the process by which renewable projects can be approved."

Although Brown has embraced the same goal as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on renewable energy — to have one-third of the state's electricity come from renewable sources by 2020 — his approach is radically different. Unlike Schwarzenegger, Brown wants the bulk of this new green power to come from sources in California. That would require billions of dollars to build new solar and wind power plants and to connect them to the state's power grid.

Schwarzenegger's plan opted for more power produced outside California, which he says is cheaper. That angered labor unions eager for power-plant construction jobs as well as environmentalists who say there's no way to prove that electricity generated outside California comes from renewable energy plants.

Consumer advocates and Democrats say the Schwarzenegger administration underestimates the cost of out-of-state power and that generating electricity within California would be more reliable and better for the state's economy.

During the gubernatorial campaign, Brown called for developing 20,000 megawatts of new, renewable energy in California. Each megawatt of power would be enough to serve up to 1,000 Southern California homes. Brown said this new green power would be at the heart of his plan to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state.

But he has not said how he would pay for new power plants, although he appears ready to act quickly. He and his staff have been meeting with key stakeholders in the renewable energy debate — labor leaders, consumer advocates and utility representatives — since the Nov. 2 election.

Clifford said the jobs plan is a priority for the incoming administration but promised that Brown would be "methodical" in setting its course.

"We want to do it, but that means doing it right — studying potential effects of legislation and regulation, figuring out which rules can be streamlined and which can't, ensuring an effective oversight process that allows for reasonable progress on construction projects," said Clifford.

More clues about Brown's plans may emerge from the three appointments that he will have the right to make to the Public Utilities Commission during his first year in office.

State Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), chairman of the Senate Utilities Committee, says regulators could help bring down the costs associated with in-state power. For example, he said a Brown-appointed PUC might be more consumer-friendly — more aggressive in overseeing power contracts between producers and utilities that would be likely to pass new costs on to ratepayers.

"I would imagine it will be significantly different under Gov. Brown," Padilla predicted. "As forward-thinking as he's been on energy policy, he's also been frugal."

Clifford said consumer protection "is going to be a priority when it comes to looking at appointments to the Public Utilities Commission."

Meanwhile, a coalition of business groups that has fought Schwarzenegger's renewable energy proposal also opposes Brown's. "There is a lot of pure cost anxiety on our side," said Dorothy Rothrock, vice president of the California Manufacturers & Technology Assn.

Schwarzenegger vetoed a 2009 bill that would have required utilities to buy a third of their electricity from renewable sources in the next decade, saying the measure relied too heavily on creating expensive new power sources within California. In his veto message, he cited the "negative impact it would have had on California's energy markets and ratepayers."

Supporters of that bill are hoping Brown will sign one that calls for more green power from California.

"We totally support Jerry Brown's initiative … but you simply can't get there without" in-state renewable energy, said Scott Wetch, a lobbyist for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which supported Brown's campaign for governor.

anthony.york@latimes.com

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