Carly Fiorina did a 4-minute riff on climate change. Everything she said was wrong. - Vox

Katie Couric recently interviewed Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, and the subject of climate change came up. They discussed it for over four minutes, likely marking the longest any national GOP political figure has spent talking about climate change in the past five years.

Conservatives are delighted with Fiorina's performance. Thrilled. Pumped. They think she crushed Couric and showed how to outwit liberals on climate change.

In fact, Fiorina's comments are a farrago of falsehoods and red herrings, a derp different in character from science-denial derp, but no less derpy.

The key to a "moderate" Republican position on climate change is that it has to neutralize the science debate, which party leaders have concluded is not favorable terrain. The Tea Party base remains staunchly wedded to science denialism, but everywhere else on the political spectrum (including among other Republicans), majorities now agree that climate change is a problem that warrants serious solutions. Denialism, concentrated in conservative white men, has become a liability among young people, Hispanics, and other demographics Republicans badly need to court.
So the trick for the aspiring Republican moderate is to acknowledge the scientific consensus on climate change while maintaining opposition to any policy that might penalize fossil fuels or advantage renewable energy.
Jeb Bush has tried to do this, with little success. But Fiorina seems to have pulled it off, at least in the eyes of conservatives.

Carly Fiorina did a 4-minute riff on climate change. Everything she said was wrong. - Vox

See also:
 

Carly Fiorina Says All The Stupid On Climate Change And Then Some

Someone Has to Sort Your Recycling and It’s a Disgusting and Dangerous Job | The Nation

The industries that pride themselves on being friends of the earth are often hostile to workers, according to new research on the safety conditions in recycling plants. Published by Massachusetts Council for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH), National COSH, and other advocacy groups, the analysis of the industry shows that despite the green sector’s clean, progressive image, workers remain imperiled by old-school industrial hazards. Workers face intense stress, dangerous machinery and inadequate safeguards, while toiling in strenuous positions amid constant toxic exposures.

Often the sorting of recyclables requires directly handling hazardous materials and improperly disposed waste, such as plastic bags that accumulate and cause potentially deadly clogs in machines. Some cities allow dumping of “mixed” trash, leaving workers to separate metal cans from organic waste, or battery fluid from old meatloaf (cities could prevent such dangers through the slight inconvenience of simply requiring people to separate garbage beforehand).
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Just as sanitation workers have historically suffered both extreme labor abuses and job hazards, recycling workers’ physical insecurity is aggravated by economic vulnerability, as workplaces often lack labor protections and adequate staffing. One worker told researchers, “When I started working a sorter over 10 years ago, they had eight people on a sorting line, now there are only four, but the company expects us to work as if there are eight people on the line.” Some workers have reported “constant pressure from supervisors to work fast so as to not get fired.”

Someone Has to Sort Your Recycling and It’s a Disgusting and Dangerous Job | The Nation

A Nuclear Plant Leaked Oil Into Lake Michigan For Two Months Straight | ThinkProgress

A cooling system attached to a nuclear power plant in southwest Michigan was steadily spilling oil into Lake Michigan for about two months, the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.

Approximately 2,000 gallons of oil from a cooling system at the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant leaked into the lake last year, according to an event notification posted on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website. The leak started on October 25, and was isolated on December 20, the report said. Plant officials reportedly notified the State of Michigan of the leak on December 13.

Bill Schalk, communications manager for the Cook Nuclear Plant, assured the Detroit Free Press that there would be no impact on the lake.

“One of the first things we did when we looked at the potential for a leak is examine the lake,” he said. “Oil floats on top of the water and you see a sheen, but we could find no evidence of oil in our reservoirs, in the lake or on the beach. It has been dispersed.”

Others disagree that just because the oil is dispersed, there no threat to the lake and its ecosystems. Michael Keegan, director of the nonprofit Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, lamented that the oil would not be recoverable, and questioned whether plant officials truly knew how much oil had spilled into the lake, considering they didn’t know the leak had been happening for two months.

A Nuclear Plant Leaked Oil Into Lake Michigan For Two Months Straight | ThinkProgress

Here's What Happens When Evangelical Christians Debate Science

The stereotype of Evangelical Christians is that they are anti-science, and therefore don't believe in climate change. But in fact, they are deeply divided over environmental issues. A debate over climate change is raging in Evangelical churches, fueled by conflicting interpretations of Biblical scripture.

Among the most active groups in this debate is the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). Founded in 1993, its defining document is the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, which affirms basic Evangelical tenets such as the "full authority of Scriptures" while also rejecting nature worship and positing stewardship of God's creation as the Biblical rationale for environmentalism.

Although EEN is primarily an educational outreach organization, it has become increasingly active in politics. In 1996, the group helped wage a successful campaign to prevent congressional Republicans from weakening the Endangered Species Act, which the EEN called the "Noah's Ark of our day." More recently, the group has emerged as a prominent voice in the Florida gubernatorial race.

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That kind of language is offensive to conservative Evangelicals, who feel that equating environmentalism with the "pro-life" movement diminishes their campaign against abortion. And, despite the caveats expressed by the EEN, the group's rhetoric, to conservative ears, has distinct undertones of nature-worship.

In 2005, conservative Evangelicals responded to the EEN by forming the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. The group's national spokesperson, theologian E. Calvin Beisner, has described the environmental movement as "the greatest threat to Western civilization" because it combines "the utopian vision of Marxism, the scientific facade of secular humanism, and the religious fanaticism of jihad" into a pseudo-religion that undermines Christianity.

Here's What Happens When Evangelical Christians Debate Science

Pa. Official Admits Errors In Investigation Of Whether Fracking Waste Spoiled Drinking Water | ThinkProgress

A Pennsylvania official has admitted that he may have used faulty information to determine that fracking waste was not poisoning the drinking water supply at a man’s property in Washington County, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report.

During his sworn testimony at a trial before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, Department of Environmental Protection water quality specialist Vincent Yantko said that his 2011 investigation of landowner Loren Kiskadden’s contaminated drinking water “did not follow its regulations to determine whether [chemical] leaks had occurred” at a nearby fracking site, the Post reported. Kiskadden is one of three landowners who say they have experienced health problems due to water pollution from the waste pit at the Yeager drilling site, owned by Range Resources Corporation.

The case happening now is an appeal of a complaint filed by Kiskadden, whose drinking water allegedly turned grey and foamy at his property in Amwell Township. In his original 2011 complaint, Kiskadden claimed that he had used the water there for decades without incident. The only change was heightened operations at the Yeager wastewater site, he said.

In response, the DEP conducted an investigation by collecting water samples from Kiskadden’s property. The DEP found that Kiskadden’s water had elevated levels of hydrogen sulfide odor, acetone, chloroform, and “explosive levels of methane.” However, the DEP also determined that the water contamination was not the result of fracking waste or any gas well-related activities.

Kiskadden appealed that decision to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, claiming the DEP’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and based on inaccurate information from the agency’s investigators. Now, that case has been going on for nearly 3 years, and seems to be getting closer to a decision. The official trial started on September 23, and is going until October 9.

Pa. Official Admits Errors In Investigation Of Whether Fracking Waste Spoiled Drinking Water | ThinkProgress

West Virginia Plans To Frack Beneath Ohio River, Which Supplies Drinking Water To Millions | ThinkProgress

Nine citizen and environmental groups are urging West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to reconsider his plans to let companies drill for oil and natural gas underneath the Ohio River, citing concerns that drilling and fracking could contaminate the drinking water supply and increase the risk of earthquakes in the region.

In a letter sent to the governor this month, the coalition of Ohio- and West Virginia-based groups said Tomblin’s Department of Environmental Protection has not proved that it can adequately protect the Ohio River, which supplies drinking water to more than 3 million people. The groups cited drilling currently taking place in a state-designated wildlife area, which some have complained is unacceptably disrupting the nature preserve, and a chemical spill in January that tainted the drinking water supply for 300,000 people.

“The well-documented deficient enforcement capability of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Oil and Gas has been on public display for years,” the letter reads. “How are we ever to believe that the state has the political will, technical capability and community commitment to guarantee that adequate controls, timely supervision and, when needed, ruthless enforcement would occur on well pads that close to the Ohio River?”

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For the coalition of groups opposing the practice, though, drinking water is not the only concern. In their letter, the groups said that there is a fault line located near West Virginia’s proposed drilling site, and that drilling would increase the risk of earthquakes in the region. Though drilling itself is not linked to quakes, scientists have found evidence “directly linking” earthquakes to wastewater injection, a process widely used during fracking to dispose of large amounts of wastewater underground.

West Virginia Plans To Frack Beneath Ohio River, Which Supplies Drinking Water To Millions | ThinkProgress

​The Climate March: Will It Be a Call to Arms For the Earth, Or Are More Radical Actions Needed? | Alternet

On September 21, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to march in New York and other cities across the globe to pressure world leaders to take more aggressive action on global warming. The organizers of the People's Climate March believe it will be one of the biggest social-change marches in history.

The march precedes a United Nations Climate Summit — a meeting of world leaders in New York — by two days. Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Secretary General has said he hopes the summit will inject momentum in reaching a global deal on greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2015, when leaders will convene again in Paris.

Organizers think the demonstration will send a message to the assembled world powers that swift and dynamic action must be taken (China and India will not be represented).

But not everyone in the enviornmental and progressive movement thinks the organized march is the best way to create the needed social change. Chris Hedges, the activist journalist who writes for the news website Truthdig, likens the rally, which will be nowhere near the United Nations building, to a big “climate-change street fair” and laments that anyone can join. This means organizations such as the Climate Group and the Environmental Defense Fund, which include chemical, banking and oil interests among their members and supporters, will be represented at the march.

“These faux environmental organizations are designed to neutralize resistance,” says Hedges. “And their presence exposes the march’s failure to adopt a meaningful agenda or pose a genuine threat to power.”

​The Climate March: Will It Be a Call to Arms For the Earth, Or Are More Radical Actions Needed? | Alternet

Wind Turbine Syndrome? Courts Aren’t Buying It | Climate Central

To wind farm opponents, wind turbine syndrome is a manifold malady triggered by acoustic pulses and other unfortunate side effects of large wind turbines. To wind farm developers, syndrome claims can mean stomach-churning marches into courtrooms and municipal hearings, where legal teams defend projects against allegations they’re responsible for everything from headaches and sleeplessness to vertigo, blurred vision, and forgetfulness.

In these legal fights, the wind energy developers are winning. To the judges presiding over the cases, evidence that wind turbine syndrome exists has seemed as wispy as the cirrus clouds that can herald a stiffening breeze.

The Energy and Policy Institute, a clean energy advocacy group, reviewed rulings from 49 lawsuits and similar complaints filed in five Western countries. In a report published last week, the group says it could find just one case of a court siding with neighbors who claimed wind turbines had made them ill. That one ruling out of 49 is being appealed in Massachusetts.

“These claims about wind turbines causing health impacts are not being upheld, which means there isn’t sufficient evidence to prove that wind turbines cause any problems with human health,” said Gabe Elsner, the nonprofit’s executive director. “That’s a big deal, because claims about that are used across the globe by anti-wind advocates to try to slow the development of wind farms.”

Wind Turbine Syndrome? Courts Aren’t Buying It | Climate Central

In One Month, The Chesapeake Bay's 'Most Critical' Pollution Issue Could Be Unsolvable | ThinkProgress

I know some that would read this may think 'alarmist mentality." But in this instance is that such a bad thing to have when this is taken into consideration: Conowingo Dam’s operating permit is up for renewal. The dam’s owner, Exelon Corp., has applied for a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That permit could be approved as early as September 1, and if that happens, Exelon will not be legally required to remove the sediment for another 46 years."

What struck me, " [b]ut preliminary results show that 80 percent of the sediment flowing into the bay is from the entire Susquehanna River watershed — not from the sediment piled up behind the Conowingo Dam. " Where I live, about 9+ hours away from the Bay, is part of the Susquehanna River watershed. What occurs in my little part of the world effects a much broader part of the world.

(There are some interesting comments attached to this article that imply the issue at stake is not as clear cut as TP make it out to be. An issue to keep an eye on me thinks.)

For more than 30 years, states and environmental groups have been fighting to clean up the heavily polluted Chesapeake Bay. But according to some, the tremendous effort will all be for nothing if one issue isn’t addressed soon: the Conowingo Dam.


“The Conowingo Dam is a sediment trap,” said Chip MacLeod, general counsel at the Clean Chesapeake Coalition. “It’s been in existence for 85 years, and it’s never been dredged or maintained. If we do nothing to dredge that sediment, the bay is doomed.”

Today, approximately 175 million tons of polluted sediment sits trapped behind the Conowingo hydroelectric power dam in northeastern Maryland, a product of nearly a century of build-up from clay, silt, fertilizer runoff, and sewage plant runoff from Pennsylvania and New York. The sediment — enough to fill about 80 football stadiums — contains phosphorus, nitrogen, and other harmful nutrients that can cloud waters, sprout toxic algae bacteria, harm ecosystems, kill aquatic life, and sully drinking water.

Since 1929, the Conowingo Dam has been collecting that pollution and largely preventing it from entering the Chespeake Bay. But now, that polluted sediment has nearly reached the brim of the dam, and MacLeod worries that just one big storm event could send it over the edge, blanketing and destroying the Bay.

In One Month, The Chesapeake Bay's 'Most Critical' Pollution Issue Could Be Unsolvable | ThinkProgress

America Has a Scary Sewage Problem: Let's Clean It Up and Jumpstart the Economy While We're At It | Alternet

The problem is simple, surprising, and quite honestly disgusting: Our nation’s older cities depend largely on sewage treatment systems that overflow when it rains, dumping 860 billion gallons of raw sewage a year into “fresh” water across the country—enough to cover the entire state of Pennsylvania an inch deep.

This problem is very, very real for people like Lori Burns in Chicago, whose basement full of sewage and "climate change maggots" recently found its way into the Washington Post. Or for the people of Toledo, where a chronic "combined sewer overflow" problem has combined with runoff from industrial agriculture to drastically alter the ecological balance of Lake Erie, with toxic algal blooms making the city's drinking water poisonous.

But the stormwater crisis is also a tremendous opportunity to move in the direction of a new, community sustaining local economy.

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Happily, new methods of stormwater management are increasingly recognized as compelling alternatives to burying bigger and bigger pipes under our city streets. In green stormwater management, rather than scaling up overtaxed sewage pipes, the point is, wherever possible, to prevent runoff from entering the system in the first place. A rain garden with native plants captures water running off roofs and channels it into the soil, not the streets. Permeable paving does the same for traditionally impervious parking lots.

By reworking the urban environment along ecologically sensitive lines, the green stormwater management toolbox—which also includes urban forestry, green roofs and artificial wetlands—provides an effective way to lighten the load on our sewage systems, while reducing the pollution associated with runoff—not to mention sprucing up our communities with more plants.

But jobs–and new principles of systemic and institutional design that can be implemented in the creation of those jobs—are the real reasons to be encouraged by green stormwater management,,,

America Has a Scary Sewage Problem: Let's Clean It Up and Jumpstart the Economy While We're At It | Alternet

ADDENDUM::Video: Watch 4 Billion Gallons of Mining Waste Pour Into Pristine B.C. Waterways - ICTMN.com

First Nations, environmentalists and just about everyone else are aghast at the severity of the toxic spill from a tailings pond.

On August 4 the tailings pond of the gold and copper open-pit Polley Mine, operated by Imperial Metals Corp., breached and sent billions of gallons of metals-laden silt and water into waterways awaiting the return of the salmon.


The mess has only just begun to wreak its environmental havoc, with campgrounds evacuated, a local emergency declared and a fishing ban imposed, among other immediate effects. Long-term damage is not yet known, and Imperial officials say they have no idea why it happened.

But company president Brian Kynoch told CBC News that the tailings pond isn’t so bad and that he would even consider drinking it.

Video: Watch 4 Billion Gallons of Mining Waste Pour Into Pristine B.C. Waterways - ICTMN.com

Big mine dam rupture: ‘British Columbia’s Exxon Valdez’ - Strange Bedfellows — Politics News

A massive tailings dam rupture at a mine off the upper Fraser River, which occurred Monday on British Columbia Day, is being likened to Alaska’s Exxon Valdez tanker grounding, as a wide-ranging disaster preventable had there been competent oversight.

The rupture at the Mount Polley Mine released 10 million cubic meters of water, and 4.5 million cubic meters of toxic silt, into nearby Polley Lake. The lake in turn drains into the larger Quesnel Lake, close to one of the Fraser River’s major sockeye salmon spawning grounds.

“This is devastation,” Joe Alphonse of the Tsihqot’in Tribal Council said in a statement.

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“The frightening fact is both environmental disasters could have been prevented by vigorous government oversight by an effectively resourced agency bound by robust legislative and environmental safeguards.”

The Aboriginal First Nations of Canada were given major new rights over ancestral lands in a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling.

They have wrestled repeatedly with the B.C. provincial government. The province supported a multi-billion-dollar project, called the Taseko Prosperity Mine, that would have turned a mountain lake in the scenic Chilcotin region into a toxic tailings dump.

The Taseko project was vetoed by the Canadian federal government.

But the federal and provincial governments just gave the go-ahead to a $5.3 billion open-pit gold mine at the head of the Unuk River, an important salmon stream that runs into Alaska. The project will get “reduced federal oversight,” The Tyee news site reported, despite fierce opposition downriver in Alaska.

Big mine dam rupture: ‘British Columbia’s Exxon Valdez’ - Strange Bedfellows — Politics News

Breaking News: Federal Legislation To Ban Plastic Microbeads In Cosmetics Introduced! - 5 Gyres - Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action - 5 Gyres – Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action

The 5 Gyres Institute applauds federal legislation just introduced by Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) that would ban the use of personal care products containing plastic microbeads. (See below.) Santa Monica-based 5 Gyres is the nonprofit that lead the scientific research in Lake Erie (partnering with State University of New York at Fredonia) that sparked national interest in this issue. 5 Gyres’ co-founder and Director of Research Dr. Marcus Eriksen was lead author of the first scientific paper on this issue. 5 Gyres’ grassroots campaign got Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and the Body Shop to agree to a voluntary phase-out of microbeads. The organization then crafted model legislation, co-authored by 5 Gyres founding board-member Lisa Kaas Boyle and Rachel Doughty, that was made into law in Illinois and upon which the federal legislation is based. 5 Gyres also published their work in the Tulane Law Journal, the first such journal dedicated entirely to plastic pollution, and found sponsors in NY, CA, MN and OH, where bills are pending.

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Today, Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) introduced legislation, the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2014, that would prohibit the sale or distribution of personal care products that contain synthetic plastic microbeads. These small bits of plastic, used as exfoliants in personal care products like face wash, soap, and toothpaste, can slip through water treatment systems after they are washed down the drain. As a result, these microbeads often end up in local streams, rivers and larger bodies of water. The bill would ban the sale or distribution of cosmetics products containing plastic microbeads effective January 1, 2018.

“These tiny plastic particles that are polluting our environment are found in products specifically designed to be washed down shower drains,” said Pallone. “And many people buying these products are unaware of their damaging effects. If we know that these products will eventually reach our waterways, we must make sure that they don’t contain synthetic plastic that does not biodegrade and ultimately pollute our waterways. We have a responsibility to put a stop to this unnecessary plastic pollution. By phasing out the use of plastic microbeads and transitioning to non-synthetic alternatives, we can protect U.S. waters before it’s too late.”

Breaking News: Federal Legislation To Ban Plastic Microbeads In Cosmetics Introduced! - 5 Gyres - Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action - 5 Gyres – Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action

Governor signs bill making Illinois first state to ban microbeads - Chicago Tribune

I have posted about the issues surrounding the use of microbeads before, highlighting what the issue is and what legislative actions were being proposed at the time. Illinois appears to be taking the lead in combating the problem.
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The new law bans the manufacture of personal care products containing microbeads by the end of 2017, the sale of personal care products and the manufacture of over the counter drugs by the end of 2018, and the sale of over the counter drugs by the end of 2019.

Environmentalists have said the non-biodegradable plastic particles used as exfoliants in many facial cleansers and soaps slip through sewage system filters and pile up in waterways, where they suck up toxins and harm wildlife. Preliminary studies in Lake Michigan have found millions of microbeads.

“I’m optimistic that we’ve started a nationwide movement to protect not just the Great Lakes, but other bodies of water with high concentrations of microbeads,” said State Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, who co-sponsored the bill.

At least four other states are considering similar bills, and at least one, New York, has an earlier deadline -- 2016 -- for eliminating the microbeads.

Governor signs bill making Illinois first state to ban microbeads - Chicago Tribune

BP is refusing to pay for Gulf oil spill research - Salon.com

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, BP is making much of its commitment to clean up the Gulf of Mexico — but it’s refusing to cough up the money needed to determine just how much damage the spill actually caused.

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US government agency, wrote to BP last July seeking almost $148m to pay for “injury assessment and restoration planning activities”, including funding of $2.2m for research into the recovery of the coastal wetlands, more than $10m for dolphins and whales and $22m for oysters.

In October, BP replied to the NOAA request rejecting the majority of those requests, saying it was concerned over “the lack of visibility and accountability” in the process, and the unwillingness of the NRDA trustees, which are US federal agencies and coastal state governments, to engage in technical discussions of the substantive issues,,,


BP is refusing to pay for Gulf oil spill research - Salon.com

Here's What Fracking Can Do to Your Health | Mother Jones

The study compiled existing, peer-reviewed literature on the health risks of shale gas drilling and found that leaks, poor wastewater management, and air emissions have released harmful chemicals into the air and water around fracking sites nationwide.

"It's clear that the closer you are, the more elevated your risk," said lead author Seth Shonkoff, a visiting public health scholar at the University of California-Berkeley. "We can conclude that this process has not been shown to be safe."

Shonkoff cautioned that existing research has focused on cataloging risks, rather than linking specific instances of disease to particular drilling operations—primarily because the fracking boom is so new that long-term studies of, say, cancer rates, simply haven't been done. But as the United States and the world double down on natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal (as this week's UN climate change solutions report suggests), Shonkoff argues policymakers need to be aware of what a slew of fracked wells could mean for the health of those who live near them.

Even given the risks involved in producing natural gas, it's still a much healthier fuel source than coal; particulate pollution from coal plants killed an estimated 13,000 Americans in 2010, while a recent World Health Organization study named air pollution (to which coal burning is a chief contributor) the single deadliest environmental hazard on earth.
click here

Still, how exactly could gas drilling make you ill? Let us count the ways:

Here's What Fracking Can Do to Your Health | Mother Jones

The Major Problem with GMO Seeds Engineered to Solve 3rd World Vitamin Deficiencies | Alternet

A view from the other side. A very naive one at that,

"Big Ag and biotech firms spent more than two decades developing Golden Rice. That gusher of money, time and resources could have solved some of the broader, overarching and easy-to-fix problems peasant farmers face.

"By focusing on the real, underlying problems instead of a narrowly defined nutrient deficiency, countless numbers of people could have enjoyed a higher standard of living."

Why do I say this is naive, because throwing money at a problem doesn't work either, especially in countries with corrupt regimes. The OP is so blinded by her hatred of anything GMO that she wants to ignore the immediate benefits. Most of the countries mentioned do not have the infrastructure necessary to carry out her grand plan.

Now I do not fully grasp this whole GMO-NonGMO argument; the "it's bad" versus it's safe brouhaha. And to be honest, from a personal standpoint I don't care. I accept that science will do it's best to keep me safe. But throwing out the baby with the bath water, I do have an issue with. That is what I take away from this OP.
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A recent Scientific American blog post blamed environmentalists for costing poor, malnourished people an estimated 1,424,000 life years in India alone. Why? Because they presumably kept Golden Rice off the market for over a decade when it could have been helping the world’s poor during that time.

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Nobody I have met in developing countries gets vitamin A from eating staple grains. Neither do Americans. Like us, they eat varied diets full of fruits and vegetables, many of which are rich in vitamin A.

Vitamin A isn’t rare in food. And it’s not the only nutrient that malnourished people worldwide lack.

The malnourished people I met in my travels did not only lack this nutrient or that one — they simply lacked food. Like a Kenyan school where many kids did without breakfast and lunch every day. Some had to work in a quarry after school just to earn money to eat. Good bet those kids needed vitamin A — and every other vitamin, mineral, protein, fat and just plain old calories.

Golden Rice isn’t the best solution in such cases. It’s solving the root causes of poverty and hunger. That means ending injustice and corruption, providing access to water, secure land tenure and birth control, taking on the climate crisis and dealing with HIV/AIDS, among other things.

Big Ag and biotech firms spent more than two decades developing Golden Rice. That gusher of money, time and resources could have solved some of the broader, overarching and easy-to-fix problems peasant farmers face.

By focusing on the real, underlying problems instead of a narrowly defined nutrient deficiency, countless numbers of people could have enjoyed a higher standard of living.

The Major Problem with GMO Seeds Engineered to Solve 3rd World Vitamin Deficiencies | Alternet

Rattled By Industry Pollution, Residents Fear Drop In EPA Inspections And Enforcement

In New Mexico, Navajo communities worry that uranium mining could contaminate the aquifer that feeds their drinking water. In southeastern states from Alabama to Virginia, residents fear a cluster of coal-powered plants will impact their health for generations. And in the Harlem section of Manhattan, advocates say the high rates of asthma among residents are a “direct result from breathing dirty air.”

For these communities and others abutting big industry, worry over failing health and pollution has intensified as the Environmental Protection Agency intends to significantly curtail the number of inspections and enforcement cases it brings nationwide over the next five years.

Those cutbacks — continuing a trend, the Center for Public Integrity found, that began in 2006 and accelerated last year — mean the EPA will conduct thousands fewer inspections and evaluations each year, and initiate and conclude thousands fewer judicial and administrative enforcement cases.

Rattled By Industry Pollution, Residents Fear Drop In EPA Inspections And Enforcement

States Eye Toxic Chemical Reform As Washington Fails To Act

In 1976, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act, a federal framework intended to safeguard the public from dangerous chemicals. Yet in the nearly four decades since, TSCA, as it is known, has done little more than gather dust. Among tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency has “only been able to require testing on a little more than 200 existing chemicals,” and banned five, the EPA told The Center for Public Integrity.

Everyone wants to revamp TSCA — from the industry’s $100 million lobbying arm, the American Chemistry Council, to the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, to the EPA itself.

Yet three years to the month since the late New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg proposed sweeping change through the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011, the TSCA overhaul remains in the works, with proposals, counter-proposals and criticisms about the working draft’s fine print.

Fed up with logjams in D.C., state legislators are filing hundreds of measures in their own states to do what the federal government hasn’t — take action against destructive chemicals, by singling out the most dangerous toxins and seeking to remove them from shelves.

States Eye Toxic Chemical Reform As Washington Fails To Act

Investigation: Bakken Oil Waste Threatens Montana Farms And Local Water Supply

The 200 or so people who call Lindsay, Mont., home likely never imagined they would find themselves in the middle of an environmental battle fueled by radioactive waste. But that’s exactly what happened in the small community of farmers and ranchers in Eastern Montana after a local farmer opened a landfill and started collecting naturally occurring radioactive waste materials generated by the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota.

Known as Oaks Disposal Services landfill, the dump site is the creation of Ross Oakland and his wife, Tara. The duo are Montana-based farmers who have been growing wheat, peas and lentils on their farm in Lindsay since 1992.

In an interview with MintPress, Oakland said he got the idea to build a landfill on his property after an oil company began to drill on land adjacent to his farmland. Oakland, who worked as a driller in the 1980s after graduating from high school, noticed the oil company didn’t have a pit to dump the waste materials, so he asked a “company man” what was being done with the materials.

“Back when I was a driller, everything went into a pit on location and (we) just buried (the materials),” Oakland recalled. “Now they are environmentally friendly.”

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To ensure that the waste material doesn’t seep into the ground and, more importantly, the town’s water supply, Oakland said he created a “state-of-the-art facility” that includes two “top of the line” liners, an 18-inch layer of gravel, four monitoring walls around the perimeter of the landfill, a basal layer, as well as a leachate solution system. MintPress was unable to independently verify this.

Some of Oakland’s neighbors say they are concerned about the toxic materials being brought into their town from North Dakota. They claim that Oakland’s landfill is ruining the local land, air and water, and it’s only a matter of time before disaster strikes, which could result in a polluted water supply or health effects similar to those reported after prolonged exposure to radioactive and toxic waste materials in WWII-era Hiroshima.

Given that the landfill has already spilled or overflowed at least three times, Montana could be in the beginning stages of its own environmental and health disaster.

Investigation: Bakken Oil Waste Threatens Montana Farms And Local Water Supply