Thursday, May 16, 2013
Fundamental Change in the IRS Is Called For
President Barack Obama got it right and wrong Monday when he stated, “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions.”
He was right in declaring it was “outrageous” for the IRS to target conservative organizations for tough tax treatment. But he was incorrect in saying “it is contrary to our traditions.”
For the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has for decades gone after organizations and individuals that take stands in conflict with the federal government at the time. This has been a tradition, an outrageous tradition.
It is exposed in detail by David Burnham, longtime New York Times investigative reporter, in his 1991 book A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power. He relates how President Franklin D. Roosevelt likely “set the stage for the use of the tax agency for political purposes by most subsequent presidents.” Burnham writes about how a former U.S. Treasury Secretary, banker Andrew Mellon, was a special IRS target under FDR. During the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, he recounts, the focus of the IRS’s efforts “at political control” were civil rights organizations and those against the U.S. engaging in the Vietnam War. Nixon’s “enemies list” and his scheme to use the IRS against those on it is what the current IRS scandal is being most compared.
History Professor John A. Andrew III in his 2002 book Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon—its title drawn from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall’s dictum “The power to tax is the power to destroy”—focuses further on this tradition. He tells of how John F. Kennedy administration’s “Ideological Organizations Project” investigated, intimidated and challenged the tax-exempt status of right-wing groups including the John Birch Society. Then, with a turn of the White House to the right with Nixon came investigations, he writes, of such entities as the Jerry Rubin Foundation, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Center for Corporate Responsibility.
During the Reagan administration, I had my own experience with the IRS—ostensibly because of a book I wrote. Nicaragua: America’s New Vietnam? involved reporting from what was then a war zone in Nicaragua and in Florida—where I interviewed leaders of the contras who were working with the CIA to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government—and Honduras, being set up as a tarmac for U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. I visited a U.S. military base there. The book warned against a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua (subsequently decided against by the Reagan White House after the Iran-contra scandal). The book was published in 1985 and soon afterwards I was hit with an IRS audit. It would be more, I was informed, than my showing up at an IRS office. The IRS was to come to my house for a “field audit.”
The investigator sat on one side of our dining room table and on the other side was me and my accountant, Peter Berger of Shelter Island. What would be an all-day event started with the investigator asking me to detail how much my family spent on food each week and then, slowly, methodically, going through other expenses. Then he went through income. He obviously was seeking to determine on this fishing expedition whether income exceeded expenses. He went through receipts for business expenses including restaurant receipts, asking who I ate with. He sorted through receipts for office supplies. By mid-afternoon, he had gotten nowhere. At that point, having been hours together, a somewhat weird relationship had been formed. And he began to tell me how his dream in college was to become a journalist. He expanded on that, and then asked: “Have you ever faced retaliation?”
“What do you think this is?” I responded.
He was taken back—insisting my name had come up “at random.”
In the end, all he did was trim some of what was listed as business use of my home phone.
Was I being retaliated against for the book I had written? One would never know. Recently, I ran into accountant Berger, now retired, and he commented about how that day at my house was the strangest IRS audit he had ever been involved in.
The IRS has been beyond reform. Burnham writes in A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power that a “political imperative of not messing with the IRS” has become “close to being a law of nature almost as unbending as the force of gravity.” It is “rarely examined by Congress.”
President Obama announced yesterday that the acting commissioner of the IRS was asked and agreed to tender his resignation as a result of the scandal. That’s a small start. Far more important is somehow ending the tradition of IRS political tyranny. Fundamental change in the IRS is called for.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Frankenfish
(My column in Long Island papers this week)
By Karl Grossman
Kathleen Furey has been busy on Long Island, New York City and elsewhere in the state challenging what’s become known as GMO — genetic modification or genetic engineering. The technology is used to create “transgenic species” of plants and animals. Through it, genes from one species are introduced into another.
More than 60 countries have enacted laws banning GMO in producing food or requiring the labeling of food that has used it. But in the U.S., because of pressure by the biotechnology industry, there are no such laws.
Crops using GMO were introduced commercially in the United States in 1996. But “Americans are still dining in the dark,” said Ms. Furey of Hampton Bays, education and media director of GMO Free NY, in a recent presentation in Sag Harbor. Ms. Furey is a graduate of Stony Brook University’s Sustainability Studies Department with a degree in environmental humanities. She started her studies with the sustainability program then at Stony Brook Southampton.
Now in the U.S., said Ms. Furey in Sag Harbor, 88 percent of corn, 90 percent of sugar beets and 94 percent of soybeans are grown using GMO. Some 80 percent of “bottled, boxed or canned foods in the U.S.” contain GMO ingredients. And livestock feed “is comprised mostly of GMO corn and soybeans.” GMOs “dominate the agricultural landscape” of America today, she said.
Ms. Furey and her group are working hard presently for passage of a New York State GMO Labeling Bill. People have “the right to make informed choices about what we eat,” she emphasizes. “We have the right to be protected from food health risks and the right to stop being used as guinea pigs.”
The sponsor of the bill in the State Senate is Suffolk’s Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson who says: “Consumers have a right to know what’s in their food, especially concerning products for which health and environmental concerns have been raised. My bill was introduced to give consumers the freedom to choose between GMOs and conventional products. Essentially, if a foodstuff is produced using genetic engineering, this must be indicated on its label.”
The biotechnology industry insists GMO technology doesn’t harm people and is useful. It points to how, with genetic modification, plants resistant to some pests have been developed. But GMO opponents hold it is harmful and various uses have backfired. Moreover, they charge that the federal government, notably the Food and Drug Administration, has been acting as a rubber stamp for the biotechnology industry’s bidding. And it’s not that inside of government there isn’t an awareness of the dangers of GMO. Ms. Furey points to “internal memos from FDA scientists citing the risks of GMO safety and toxicity that were disregarded by their superiors.”
On pest resistance through GMO, Ms. Furey speaks of how “superbugs resistant to pest-resistance GMO crops have evolved and are destroying those crops.” Also, “superweeds resistant to herbicides sprayed on GMO crops have evolved and caused farmers to spray more herbicide per acre and resort to the use of even more-toxic herbicides.”
Ms. Furey and GMO Free NY have major allies.
The Institute for Responsible Technology, based in Iowa, describes genetically modified foods as “not safe.” Its literature stresses a report by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine citing studies finding “serious health risks associated” with GMO food including “infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging…and changes to major organs and the gastrointestinal system.”
Food & Water Watch, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is warning on its website about the FDA now “paving the way for genetically engineered salmon,” which it calls “frankenfish.” This, furthermore, “would open the floodgates” for genetically-modified “cows and pigs which biotech companies are waiting in the wings to finally commercialize after years of research and development.”
The power of the biotechnology industry was demonstrated in California in November when a referendum to require GMO labeling failed after a multi-million dollar advertising blitz led by Monsanto. Just last month, the U.S. Congress passed and President Obama approved what GMO foes call the “Monsanto Protection Act” — a measure to last initially six months stripping federal courts of the authority to halt the planting and sale of genetically modified crops if litigation is brought alleging health risks.
“It is incredibly unconstitutional,” says Ms. Furey.
Overall, the biotechnology industry’s drive for GMO has been incredibly undemocratic and the process is quite likely unhealthy. Labeling is a minimum — so people can at least know what food is GMO-modified and choose what’s still GMO-free.
By Karl Grossman
Kathleen Furey has been busy on Long Island, New York City and elsewhere in the state challenging what’s become known as GMO — genetic modification or genetic engineering. The technology is used to create “transgenic species” of plants and animals. Through it, genes from one species are introduced into another.
More than 60 countries have enacted laws banning GMO in producing food or requiring the labeling of food that has used it. But in the U.S., because of pressure by the biotechnology industry, there are no such laws.
Crops using GMO were introduced commercially in the United States in 1996. But “Americans are still dining in the dark,” said Ms. Furey of Hampton Bays, education and media director of GMO Free NY, in a recent presentation in Sag Harbor. Ms. Furey is a graduate of Stony Brook University’s Sustainability Studies Department with a degree in environmental humanities. She started her studies with the sustainability program then at Stony Brook Southampton.
Now in the U.S., said Ms. Furey in Sag Harbor, 88 percent of corn, 90 percent of sugar beets and 94 percent of soybeans are grown using GMO. Some 80 percent of “bottled, boxed or canned foods in the U.S.” contain GMO ingredients. And livestock feed “is comprised mostly of GMO corn and soybeans.” GMOs “dominate the agricultural landscape” of America today, she said.
Ms. Furey and her group are working hard presently for passage of a New York State GMO Labeling Bill. People have “the right to make informed choices about what we eat,” she emphasizes. “We have the right to be protected from food health risks and the right to stop being used as guinea pigs.”
The sponsor of the bill in the State Senate is Suffolk’s Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson who says: “Consumers have a right to know what’s in their food, especially concerning products for which health and environmental concerns have been raised. My bill was introduced to give consumers the freedom to choose between GMOs and conventional products. Essentially, if a foodstuff is produced using genetic engineering, this must be indicated on its label.”
The biotechnology industry insists GMO technology doesn’t harm people and is useful. It points to how, with genetic modification, plants resistant to some pests have been developed. But GMO opponents hold it is harmful and various uses have backfired. Moreover, they charge that the federal government, notably the Food and Drug Administration, has been acting as a rubber stamp for the biotechnology industry’s bidding. And it’s not that inside of government there isn’t an awareness of the dangers of GMO. Ms. Furey points to “internal memos from FDA scientists citing the risks of GMO safety and toxicity that were disregarded by their superiors.”
On pest resistance through GMO, Ms. Furey speaks of how “superbugs resistant to pest-resistance GMO crops have evolved and are destroying those crops.” Also, “superweeds resistant to herbicides sprayed on GMO crops have evolved and caused farmers to spray more herbicide per acre and resort to the use of even more-toxic herbicides.”
Ms. Furey and GMO Free NY have major allies.
The Institute for Responsible Technology, based in Iowa, describes genetically modified foods as “not safe.” Its literature stresses a report by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine citing studies finding “serious health risks associated” with GMO food including “infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging…and changes to major organs and the gastrointestinal system.”
Food & Water Watch, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is warning on its website about the FDA now “paving the way for genetically engineered salmon,” which it calls “frankenfish.” This, furthermore, “would open the floodgates” for genetically-modified “cows and pigs which biotech companies are waiting in the wings to finally commercialize after years of research and development.”
The power of the biotechnology industry was demonstrated in California in November when a referendum to require GMO labeling failed after a multi-million dollar advertising blitz led by Monsanto. Just last month, the U.S. Congress passed and President Obama approved what GMO foes call the “Monsanto Protection Act” — a measure to last initially six months stripping federal courts of the authority to halt the planting and sale of genetically modified crops if litigation is brought alleging health risks.
“It is incredibly unconstitutional,” says Ms. Furey.
Overall, the biotechnology industry’s drive for GMO has been incredibly undemocratic and the process is quite likely unhealthy. Labeling is a minimum — so people can at least know what food is GMO-modified and choose what’s still GMO-free.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
"Fukushima: Two Years After"
A TV program I host, "Fukushima: Two Years After," is now up on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYClI5orMY&feature=youtu.
The VVH-TV News Special Report is pegged on the symposium co-sponsored by Dr. Helen Caldicott’s Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility held on March 11-12 at the New York Academy of Medicine.
It is also being broadcast on cable TV by VVH-TV throughout the New York Metropolitan Area as well as over-the-air and on the VVH-TV website www.wvvh.com.
The VVH-TV News Special Report is pegged on the symposium co-sponsored by Dr. Helen Caldicott’s Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility held on March 11-12 at the New York Academy of Medicine.
It is also being broadcast on cable TV by VVH-TV throughout the New York Metropolitan Area as well as over-the-air and on the VVH-TV website www.wvvh.com.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Nuclear Power/Nuclear Weapons -- and A Precarious Future
With the second anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster this week, with North Korea having just threatened a “pre-emptive nuclear attack” against the United States and a U.S. senator saying this would result in “suicide” for North Korea, with Iran suspected of moving to build nuclear weapons, with the continuing spread of nuclear technology globally, the future looks precarious as to humankind and the atom.
Can humanity at this rate make it through the 21st Century?
We were only able to get through the 20th Century without a major nuclear weapons exchange—without atomic doomsday—by the skin of our teeth.
With more nations having the ability to construct nuclear weapons—and any country with a nuclear power facility has the materiel and trained personnel to make nuclear weapons—the likelihood of this luck running out is high.
The only realistic way to secure a future for the world without nuclear war is for the entire planet to become a nuclear-free zone—no nuclear weapons, no nuclear power.
Radical? Yes, but consider the even more radical alternative: a world where many nations will be able to construct nuclear weaponry because they possess nuclear power technology. The only real way to end the threat of nuclear weapons spreading throughout the world is to abolish nuclear weaponry and eliminate nuclear power. Consider the alternative: trying to keep using carrots and sticks, juggling on the road to inevitable nuclear catastrophe.
There are major parts of the Earth—the entireties of Africa and South America, the South Pacific and others—that are Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones because of regional treaties recognized by the United Nations. In 1975, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution defining a Nuclear-Weapon Free Zone as an area with the “total absence of nuclear weapons” and establishing “an international system of verification and control…to guarantee compliance with the obligations deriving from [this] statute.” http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/NWFZ.shtml
But if we are truly to have a world free of the horrific threat of nuclear weapons, the goal needs to be more than zones without them. A world free of the other side of the nuclear coin—nuclear power—is also necessary.
Any nuclear power facility can serve as a nuclear bomb factory.
That’s how India got The Bomb in 1974. Canada supplied a reactor for “peaceful purposes” and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission trained Indian engineers. And lo and behold, India had nuclear weapons
Some will say putting the atomic genie back into the bottle is impossible. However, anything people have done other people can undo—especially if the reason is good. And the prospect of massive loss of life from nuclear destruction is the best of reasons.
There’s a precedent in the outlawing of poison gas after World War I when its terrible impacts were tragically demonstrated. Chlorine gas, mustard gas, phosphene gas killed thousands on both sides of the conflict. http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/gas.htm The Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemicals Weapons Convention of 1933 outlawed chemical warfare and to a large degree the prohibition has held.
As for the connection between purportedly “peaceful” atomic energy and nuclear weapons, physicist Amory Lovins and attorney Hunter Lovins spell it out well in their book Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link. http://www.amazon.com/Energy-War-Breaking-Nuclear-Link/dp/B001261BYK “All nuclear fission technologies both use and produce fissionable materials that are or can be concentrated. Unavoidably latent in those technologies, therefore, is a potential for nuclear violence and coercion which may be exploited by governments, factions,” they write.
“Little strategic material is needed to make a weapon of mass destruction. A Nagasaki-yield bomb can be made from a few kilograms of plutonium, a piece the size of a tennis ball,” they note. A large nuclear power plant “annually produces hundreds of kilograms of plutonium; a large fast breeder reactor would contain thousands of kilograms; a large reprocessing plant may separate tens of thousands.”
Civilian nuclear power technology, they emphasize, provides the way to make nuclear weapons, furnishing the materiel and personnel. Nuclear weapons non-proliferation, they say, requires “civil denuclearization.”
As to claims of the energy generated by nuclear power plans being necessary, that’s not true. Safe, clean, renewable energy—led by solar and wind energy technologies—is available to provide all the power the world needs.
Among entities focusing on this is the organization Go 100% which on its website http://www.go100percent.org/cms/index.php?id=3 says: “Across the globe—in regions, cities, communities, businesses, and individual lives—people are proving that 100% renewable energy is not a fantasy for someday, but a reality today….The conventional fossil and nuclear energy system has led to multiple convergent existential crises, including climate change, air and water pollution, destruction of the oceans, the threat of mass extinction, water and food shortages, poverty, nuclear radiation problems, nuclear weapons proliferation, fuel depletion, and geopolitical problems.” Go 100% provides details on the abundant research determining that the world can fully power itself with safe, clean, renewable energy, and what’s happening in nations—particularly Germany—now moving toward that goal.
The dangers of nuclear power—in addition to permitting the development of nuclear weapons by any nation that has it—are immense.
As he retired from the navy in 1982, Admiral Hyman Rickover, considered the “father” of the U.S. nuclear navy who was also in charge of building the first U.S. commercial nuclear power plant, in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, told a Congressional committee that inherent in nuclear power is radioactivity which made life impossible on Earth, Until a few billion years ago, Rickover told the panel, “it was impossible to have any life on Earth; that is, there was so much radiation on Earth you couldn’t have any life—fish or anything. “ Then, “gradually, “the amount of radiation on this planet and probably in the entire system reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin.”
“Now,” he went on, by utilizing nuclear power, “we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible…Every time you produce radiation,” a “horrible force” is unleashed,“in some cases for billions of years, and I think there the human race is going to wreck itself.”
Having seen the light after decades of being deeply involved in nuclear technology, Rickover said: “I’m talking about humanity—the most important thing we could do is to start in having an international meeting where we first outlaw nuclear weapons to start off with, then we outlaw nuclear reactors, too.”
As for nuclear weapons, he said: “The lesson of history is when a war starts, every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon has been available. That is the lesson learned time and again. Therefore, we must expect, if another war—a serious war—breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form” and “we will probably destroy ourselves.”
Planet Earth must be a nuclear-free zone—without nuclear weapons, without nuclear power—if the human race and other life forms are to survive.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Ernest Moniz: A Pro-Nuclear, Pro-Fracking U.S. Energy Secretary
With the nomination of Ernest Moniz to be the next U.S. secretary of Energy, President Barack Obama has selected a man who is not only a booster of nuclear power but a big proponent of fracking, too. What happened to Obama’s call for “clean” energy in his 2013 State of the Union address?
Moniz, a physicist and director of the MIT Energy Initiative, heavily financed by energy industry giants including BP and Chevron, has long advocated nuclear power. He has continued arguing for it despite the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex, maintaining that the disaster in Japan should not cause a stop in nuclear power development.
In a 2011 essay in Foreign Affairs magazine titled “Why We Still Need Nuclear Power,” Moniz wrote: “In the years following the major accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, nuclear power fell out of favor, and some countries applied the brakes to their nuclear programs. In the last decade, however, it began experiencing something of a renaissance….But the movement lost momentum in March, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and the massive tsunami it triggered devastated Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant…The event caused widespread public doubts about the safety of nuclear power to resurface. Germany announced an accelerated shutdown of its nuclear reactors, with broad public support.” But, insisted Moniz, “It would be a mistake…to let Fukushima cause governments to abandon nuclear power and its benefits.” www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136544/ernest-moniz/why-we-still-need-nuclear-power
Moniz went on: “Nuclear power’s track record of providing clean and reliable electricity compares favorably with other energy sources.” Foreign Affairs is the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, which regards itself an elite grouping of government officials, industry executives, scientists and media figures. Moniz is a member.
He also said in the essay that “the public needs to be convinced that nuclear power is safe.” As U.S. energy secretary, this will likely be a main thrust of Moniz. He would endeavor to lead the 16,000-employee Department of Energy with a budget of $27 billion for 2013 in trying to get the American public to believe in what decades ago the U.S. government promoted as “Citizen Atom.”
Likewise, when it comes to hydraulic fracturing or fracking—the process that uses hundreds of toxic chemicals and massive amounts of waster under high pressure to fracture shale formations to release gas captured in them—Moniz told the Senate Energy Committee in 2011 that the water and air pollution risks associated with fracking were "challenging but manageable" with appropriate regulation and oversight.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/07/us-usa-cabinet-energy-idUSBRE91602H20130207
Fracking also can also lead to radioactive contamination. Many shale formations contain Radium-226 and other radioactive poisons unleashed in the fracking process.
Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, declared after Obama’s nomination of Moniz on Monday, that the group “has grave concerns about Mr. Moniz’s history of support for both nuclear power and fracking.” Pica described Moniz’s support of nuclear power despite “the unfolding catastrophe” of Fukushima as “frightening.” On Moniz being “a big booster of fracking,” Pica said this has been “seemingly without due regard for the environmental and public health risks and impacts.”
http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2013-03-04-statement-on-the-nominations-for-secretary-of-energy-epa-administrator
Nevertheless, in Washington Monday, Obama, describing Moniz as a “brilliant scientist,” said: “Most importantly, Ernie knows that we can produce more energy and grow our economy while still taking care of our air, our water and our climate. And so I could not be more pleased to have Ernie join us.” /www.heraldnews.com/newsnow/x2082705444/Obama-nominates-Fall-River-native-Ernie-Moniz-for-cabinet-post
It’s not as if Obama wasn’t warned about Moniz.
For weeks, as reports spread that Moniz would be replacing Obama’s first energy secretary, the also staunchly pro-nuclear power Steven Chu, former director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the organization Food & Water Watch circulated an online petition for people to send to Obama. It stated: “This is not the person we need as our country’s Energy Secretary at this critical moment. We need a visionary leader who can enact policies that move us away from intensive fossil fuel extraction, such as fracking, and toward a renewable energy future.” https://secure3.convio.net/fww/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=499&JServSessionIdr004=b8hjkk1b01.app339a Other groups circulated similar petitions.
And it’s not as if Moniz was unfamiliar to Obama, or Washington. He has been a member of both Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. And he was an undersecretary in the Department of Energy in the Clinton administration.
Obama’s stance as president on nuclear power has been a change from his position as candidate Obama. “I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,” Obama said campaigning in Iowa on 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32eHlQKAN8A He went on that unless the “nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don’t think that’s the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.” As he told the editorial board of the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire that year: “I don’t think there’s anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up and irradiate us and kill us. That’s the problem.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRxl2cVFTLw
Nevertheless, in his first State of the Union speech he spoke about “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” and kept repeating that pitch. But in recent times, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Obama has increasingly avoided using the words nuclear power—he didn’t refer to it at all in his State of the Union address this January. Instead he has let Chu, and will let, if he is confirmed, Moniz, do the talking about nuclear power and pushing it as an energy source for the United States.
As to fracking, in his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama said “the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. That’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.”
Moniz, a physicist and director of the MIT Energy Initiative, heavily financed by energy industry giants including BP and Chevron, has long advocated nuclear power. He has continued arguing for it despite the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex, maintaining that the disaster in Japan should not cause a stop in nuclear power development.
In a 2011 essay in Foreign Affairs magazine titled “Why We Still Need Nuclear Power,” Moniz wrote: “In the years following the major accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, nuclear power fell out of favor, and some countries applied the brakes to their nuclear programs. In the last decade, however, it began experiencing something of a renaissance….But the movement lost momentum in March, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and the massive tsunami it triggered devastated Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant…The event caused widespread public doubts about the safety of nuclear power to resurface. Germany announced an accelerated shutdown of its nuclear reactors, with broad public support.” But, insisted Moniz, “It would be a mistake…to let Fukushima cause governments to abandon nuclear power and its benefits.” www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136544/ernest-moniz/why-we-still-need-nuclear-power
Moniz went on: “Nuclear power’s track record of providing clean and reliable electricity compares favorably with other energy sources.” Foreign Affairs is the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, which regards itself an elite grouping of government officials, industry executives, scientists and media figures. Moniz is a member.
He also said in the essay that “the public needs to be convinced that nuclear power is safe.” As U.S. energy secretary, this will likely be a main thrust of Moniz. He would endeavor to lead the 16,000-employee Department of Energy with a budget of $27 billion for 2013 in trying to get the American public to believe in what decades ago the U.S. government promoted as “Citizen Atom.”
Likewise, when it comes to hydraulic fracturing or fracking—the process that uses hundreds of toxic chemicals and massive amounts of waster under high pressure to fracture shale formations to release gas captured in them—Moniz told the Senate Energy Committee in 2011 that the water and air pollution risks associated with fracking were "challenging but manageable" with appropriate regulation and oversight.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/07/us-usa-cabinet-energy-idUSBRE91602H20130207
Fracking also can also lead to radioactive contamination. Many shale formations contain Radium-226 and other radioactive poisons unleashed in the fracking process.
Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, declared after Obama’s nomination of Moniz on Monday, that the group “has grave concerns about Mr. Moniz’s history of support for both nuclear power and fracking.” Pica described Moniz’s support of nuclear power despite “the unfolding catastrophe” of Fukushima as “frightening.” On Moniz being “a big booster of fracking,” Pica said this has been “seemingly without due regard for the environmental and public health risks and impacts.”
http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2013-03-04-statement-on-the-nominations-for-secretary-of-energy-epa-administrator
Nevertheless, in Washington Monday, Obama, describing Moniz as a “brilliant scientist,” said: “Most importantly, Ernie knows that we can produce more energy and grow our economy while still taking care of our air, our water and our climate. And so I could not be more pleased to have Ernie join us.” /www.heraldnews.com/newsnow/x2082705444/Obama-nominates-Fall-River-native-Ernie-Moniz-for-cabinet-post
It’s not as if Obama wasn’t warned about Moniz.
For weeks, as reports spread that Moniz would be replacing Obama’s first energy secretary, the also staunchly pro-nuclear power Steven Chu, former director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the organization Food & Water Watch circulated an online petition for people to send to Obama. It stated: “This is not the person we need as our country’s Energy Secretary at this critical moment. We need a visionary leader who can enact policies that move us away from intensive fossil fuel extraction, such as fracking, and toward a renewable energy future.” https://secure3.convio.net/fww/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=499&JServSessionIdr004=b8hjkk1b01.app339a Other groups circulated similar petitions.
And it’s not as if Moniz was unfamiliar to Obama, or Washington. He has been a member of both Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. And he was an undersecretary in the Department of Energy in the Clinton administration.
Obama’s stance as president on nuclear power has been a change from his position as candidate Obama. “I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,” Obama said campaigning in Iowa on 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32eHlQKAN8A He went on that unless the “nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don’t think that’s the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.” As he told the editorial board of the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire that year: “I don’t think there’s anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up and irradiate us and kill us. That’s the problem.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRxl2cVFTLw
Nevertheless, in his first State of the Union speech he spoke about “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” and kept repeating that pitch. But in recent times, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Obama has increasingly avoided using the words nuclear power—he didn’t refer to it at all in his State of the Union address this January. Instead he has let Chu, and will let, if he is confirmed, Moniz, do the talking about nuclear power and pushing it as an energy source for the United States.
As to fracking, in his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama said “the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. That’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.”
Thursday, February 21, 2013
On Mayor Bloomberg's Push to Ban Polystyrene Food Packaging
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week announced that he would push for a ban on polystyrene food packaging. “One product that is virtually impossible to recycle and never biodegrades is Styrofoam—something that we know is environmentally destructive and that may be hazardous to our health, that is costing taxpayers money and that we can easily do without,” he said in his 2013 State of the City address. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bloomberg-new-york-ban-styrofoam-20130214,0,4423954.story
Congratulations to the mayor for an important environmental crusade and good luck as those with vested interests attempt to block his initiative.
For what Mayor Bloomberg is doing is not new in the New York Metropolitan Area. Suffolk County on Long Island, where I live, enacted the first-in-the-nation ban on the use of polystyrene food containers back in 1988. That was 25 years ago! And what a battle it was.
Mobil and Amoco, oil companies that produce the light, heat-resistant containers, mounted huge advertising campaigns against the Suffolk measure. Polystyrene is made of oil. The Society of the Plastic Industry fought the bill. Lobbying of Suffolk legislators was intense.
McDonald’s was deeply involved. I vividly recall executives of the fast-food chain appearing before the Suffolk County Legislature asserting that without these “clamshell” containers, the Big Mac as we know it would be no more. These containers were necessary, they said, to keep the Big Mac warm.
The measure passed and was signed into law. And people have been able to live quite well in Suffolk without the banned polystyrene food containers. They were never necessary other than to profit vested interests. And the Big Mac remains alive and well in Suffolk, still warm.
To be precise, Styrofoam is the trademark name of the Dow Chemical Company for the polystyrene foam it manufactures. The correct general term for the substance is polystyrene. And Mayor Bloomberg will no doubt soon find out about this for Dow is very up-tight about the use of the word Styrofoam to identify polystyrene foam.
I wrote a book a number of years ago about chemical dangers and was asked to speak at Delta College in Midland, Michigan, the corporate headquarters of Dow. I recall a lecture organizer advising me before I took to the rostrum that there would be Dow representatives in the audience and if I used the word Styrofoam “Dow will freak out” and I and Delta College could expect letters from Dow lawyers.
The Suffolk measure—which stuck to the word polystyrene—stressed how it constitutes “a threat to the environment in the County of Suffolk by causing excessively rapid filling of landfill space or, if incinerated, by the possible introduction of toxic byproducts into the atmosphere.” http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Suffolk-Co-NY-Ban.htm
The case against polystyrene is very strong. It takes centuries to biodegrade. Poisons are emitted if it’s incinerated. It’s a major component of plastic waste—including debris in the ocean. Polystyrene is lethal to any bird or sea creature that swallows a significant quantity. Also, chemicals in polystyrene migrate from packaging into food and there are health concerns for people. Moreover, as the Suffolk law stresses—there are “available substitutes.”
The current program in the TV series I have hosted for 22 years, Enviro Close-Up, is “Plastic Free with Beth Terry.” Enviro Close-Up is syndicated by Free Speech TV on 200 cable systems across the U.S., on the satellite TV networks, DirecTV and Dish, and on the Internet. Ms. Terry is the author of “Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.” http://myplasticfreelife.com/plastic-free-how-i-kicked-the-plastic-habit-and-how-you-can-too/
She tells on the program of the “epiphany” which caused her to become a crusader against plastics—learning about the death of “huge numbers” of birds caused by the North Pacific Gyre, also known as "Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” This is a gigantic deposit of plastic debris—a lot of it polystyrene—floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “Some people say it’s the size of the United States,” says Ms. Terry.
The Enviro Close-Up features graphic video of this toxic situation. And it provides Ms. Terry’s advice about how we can live with a minimum of plastic. You can view the program on youtube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2aA-LEUuvs
Since the Suffolk ban was enacted, cities and other counties and municipalities all over the United States—as well as Toronto, Canada and several cities overseas including Paris, France—have followed up with similar bans on polystyrene food packaging. http://www.ehow.com/list_7686702_countries-banned-styrofoam.html
It would be great if New York City joins in—but that will require Mayor Bloomberg surviving the gauntlet which now will be laid down by polystyrene promoters.
Congratulations to the mayor for an important environmental crusade and good luck as those with vested interests attempt to block his initiative.
For what Mayor Bloomberg is doing is not new in the New York Metropolitan Area. Suffolk County on Long Island, where I live, enacted the first-in-the-nation ban on the use of polystyrene food containers back in 1988. That was 25 years ago! And what a battle it was.
Mobil and Amoco, oil companies that produce the light, heat-resistant containers, mounted huge advertising campaigns against the Suffolk measure. Polystyrene is made of oil. The Society of the Plastic Industry fought the bill. Lobbying of Suffolk legislators was intense.
McDonald’s was deeply involved. I vividly recall executives of the fast-food chain appearing before the Suffolk County Legislature asserting that without these “clamshell” containers, the Big Mac as we know it would be no more. These containers were necessary, they said, to keep the Big Mac warm.
The measure passed and was signed into law. And people have been able to live quite well in Suffolk without the banned polystyrene food containers. They were never necessary other than to profit vested interests. And the Big Mac remains alive and well in Suffolk, still warm.
To be precise, Styrofoam is the trademark name of the Dow Chemical Company for the polystyrene foam it manufactures. The correct general term for the substance is polystyrene. And Mayor Bloomberg will no doubt soon find out about this for Dow is very up-tight about the use of the word Styrofoam to identify polystyrene foam.
I wrote a book a number of years ago about chemical dangers and was asked to speak at Delta College in Midland, Michigan, the corporate headquarters of Dow. I recall a lecture organizer advising me before I took to the rostrum that there would be Dow representatives in the audience and if I used the word Styrofoam “Dow will freak out” and I and Delta College could expect letters from Dow lawyers.
The Suffolk measure—which stuck to the word polystyrene—stressed how it constitutes “a threat to the environment in the County of Suffolk by causing excessively rapid filling of landfill space or, if incinerated, by the possible introduction of toxic byproducts into the atmosphere.” http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Suffolk-Co-NY-Ban.htm
The case against polystyrene is very strong. It takes centuries to biodegrade. Poisons are emitted if it’s incinerated. It’s a major component of plastic waste—including debris in the ocean. Polystyrene is lethal to any bird or sea creature that swallows a significant quantity. Also, chemicals in polystyrene migrate from packaging into food and there are health concerns for people. Moreover, as the Suffolk law stresses—there are “available substitutes.”
The current program in the TV series I have hosted for 22 years, Enviro Close-Up, is “Plastic Free with Beth Terry.” Enviro Close-Up is syndicated by Free Speech TV on 200 cable systems across the U.S., on the satellite TV networks, DirecTV and Dish, and on the Internet. Ms. Terry is the author of “Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.” http://myplasticfreelife.com/plastic-free-how-i-kicked-the-plastic-habit-and-how-you-can-too/
She tells on the program of the “epiphany” which caused her to become a crusader against plastics—learning about the death of “huge numbers” of birds caused by the North Pacific Gyre, also known as "Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” This is a gigantic deposit of plastic debris—a lot of it polystyrene—floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “Some people say it’s the size of the United States,” says Ms. Terry.
The Enviro Close-Up features graphic video of this toxic situation. And it provides Ms. Terry’s advice about how we can live with a minimum of plastic. You can view the program on youtube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2aA-LEUuvs
Since the Suffolk ban was enacted, cities and other counties and municipalities all over the United States—as well as Toronto, Canada and several cities overseas including Paris, France—have followed up with similar bans on polystyrene food packaging. http://www.ehow.com/list_7686702_countries-banned-styrofoam.html
It would be great if New York City joins in—but that will require Mayor Bloomberg surviving the gauntlet which now will be laid down by polystyrene promoters.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Will Good Science and Good Sense Come Together When It Comes to the Shoreline?
Soon after Sandy struck, an OpEd piece titled “We Need to Retreat from the Beach” by Dr. Orrin Pilkey, a pioneer in what’s now become the science of shoreline dynamics, appeared in the New York Times.
Dr. Pilkey wrote, “As ocean waters warm, the Northeast is likely to face more Sandy-like storms” with “surges…higher and ever more deadly….Yet there is already a push to rebuild homes close to the beach and bring back shorelines to where they were.” This “is the wrong approach to the increasing hazard of living close to the rising sea.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/opinion/a-beachfront-retreat.html
“We should not simply replace all lost property and infrastructure. Instead, we need to take account of rising sea levels, intensifying storms and continuing shoreline erosion,” he said.
Dr. Pilkey, co-author of the landmark work The Beaches Are Moving, wrote that “we should strongly discourage the reconstruction of destroyed or badly damaged beachfront homes…This is tough medicine, to be sure, and taxpayers may be forced to compensate homeowners. But it should save taxpayers money in the long run by ending this cyclc of repairing or rebuilding properties in the path of future storms.”
Now, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in an extraordinary move for a politician considering the intense lobbying through the years by beachfront homeowners, is proposing to purchase structures wrecked by Sandy—at their pre-Sandy value—have them demolished and then preserve the flood-prone land permanently, as undeveloped coastline.
“The land would never be built on again. Some properties could be turned into dunes, wetlands or other natural buffers that would help protect coastal communities from ferocious storms; other parcels could be combined and turned into public parkland,” reported the Times in breaking the story as a Page One lead article. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/nyregion/cuomo-seeking-home-buyouts-in-flood-zones.html?pagewanted=all
In a follow-up editorial, the Times called the Cuomo concept “splendid” and stated that “buying damaged properties and returning them to their natural state, as Mr. Cuomo proposes, is one of the best ideas to come along.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/opinion/gov-andrew-cuomos-sandy-plan.html
But will good science and good sense come together when it comes to the shoreline?
It will be mighty difficult—but it very much needs to happen.
The problem: vested interest. Many if not most of the folks who own beach houses—even ones left in shambles by Sandy and in highly vulnerable locations—don’t want to give them up. I appreciate this. Visiting an old friend with a beach house a while back, gazing out a window and seeing the majestic Atlantic Ocean outside, I thought of the thrill of having a house on the sea. Sitting on his deck, the waves breaking below, was exciting.
Dr. Pilkey realizes this. “I understand the temptation to rebuild,” he wrote in his OpEd. “My parents’ retirement home, built at 13 feet above sea level, five blocks from the shoreline in Waveland, Miss., was flooded to the ceiling during Hurricane Camille in 1969. They rebuilt it, but the house was completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.”
An inquiry by the Long Island newspaper Newsday to gauge sentiment towards the Cuomo plan, found the “overwhelming number of Island residents would rather rebuild than relocate.” http://www.newsday.com/classifieds/real-estate/pols-few-on-li-want-to-move-under-cuomo-buyout-plan-1.4562781
The Army Corps of Engineers is another factor in what’s been a constant—after a big storm the dumping of sand (given the appealing term “beach nourishment”) on the coast, sand often washed away in the next big storm, and otherwise taking on Mother Nature. The Corps is run by a combination of military officers and engineers who believe they can win any war including against nature. Also, coastal work keeps the Corps’ budget hefty.
Then there’s the National Flood Insurance Program. After seeing a TV commercial promoting it recently, I requested a brochure. The government pamphlet began: “Since flooding typically isn’t covered under your homeowners insurance policy, the best way to protect your home is through the National Flood Insurance Program.” The reluctance of private insurance companies to cover homes built in the teeth of the ocean says a lot. The lobbying of beachfront homeowners was instrumental in getting Congress to provide this taxpayer-supported program.
Key to the situation is Dr. Pilkey’s observation way back: The Beaches Are Moving. They are in flux and need to be flexible to protect the mainland. Add to this today’s rising sea levels and extreme weather caused by climate change.
Retreat might not be a good word to use for what needs to be done. It infers losing. Adjustment is a better word. We must adjust to the reality of our shifting shores.
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