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Featured stories in this issue...

Why Can't Government Prevent Global Warming?
  Why can't government prevent global warming and protect the natural
  environment? The heart of the problem is this: Although the purpose of
  every local, state and federal environmental law is to protect natural
  resources, nearly every law authorizes the agencies to permit the very
  pollution or damage that the laws were designed to prevent.... Most
  agencies today spend nearly all of their resources to permit, rather
  than prohibit, environmental destruction.
Common Chemicals Are Linked to Breast Cancer
  A study published this week revealed that more than 200 common
  chemicals, found in everyday products, can cause breast cancer in
  laboratory animals. Isn't it time to take precautionary action and
  minimize exposures to these chemicals except when absolutely
  necessary? Don't we know enough to act?
Radioactive Wastes from A-bombs Are Being Dumped in City Landfills
  The nation's nuclear industry (manufacturing weapons and nuclear
  power plants) has never found a permanent solution to the problem of
  long-lived radioactive waste. The latest temporary fix is to bury
  radioactive waste in a municipal landfill near you.
Mainstream Economists Now Say Globalization Is Harming the U.S.
  This important article describes a major shift in thinking among
  some mainstream economists. Almost all economists used to believe
  that globalization was good for corporations and good for the United
  States. The new thinking argues that globalization is good for
  corporations but bad for the United States. This is a sea change.
U.S. Infrastructure: An Economic Disaster Waiting to Happen
  "There is simply no way around it -- the current level of
  infrastructure investment cannot sustain current economic activity."
  Privatization has siphoned resources away from nuts and bolts projects
  needed to keep the economy going, such as the Chicago transit system.

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From: Eugene (Oregon) Weekly, May 10, 2007
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DISCRETION OR OBLIGATION?

How should government view a looming catastrophe?

By Mary Christina Wood

Editor's note: Mary Christina Wood is the Philip H. Knight Professor
of Law and Morse Center for Law and Politics Resident Scholar
(2006-07) at the University of Oregon School of Law, where she teaches
natural resources law, federal Indian law, public lands law, wildlife
law, hazardous waste law and property law. She is the founding
director of the school's Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Program. This is a transcript of her talk to Eugene City Club May 4,
2007.

==============

Last month Time magazine issued a special edition on climate change in
which it said, "Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a
slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly
and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us."

United Nations reports show rapid melting of the polar ice sheets,
Antarctica, Greenland and glaciers throughout the world. The oceans
are heating and rising. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying. Species
are on exodus from their habitats towards the poles. As a result of
global warming the world now faces crop losses, food shortages,
flooding, coastal loss, wildfire, drought, pests, hurricanes, heat
waves, disease and extinctions. An international climate team has
warned countries to prepare for as many as 50 million human
environmental refugees by 2010. Scientists explain that, due to the
carbon already in the atmosphere, we are locked into a temperature
rise of at least 2 degrees F. This alone will have impacts for
generations to come, but if we continue business as usual, they
predict Earth will warm as much as 10.4 degrees F, which will leave as
many as 600 million people in the world facing starvation and 3.2
billion people suffering water shortages; it will convert the Amazon
rainforest into savannah, and trigger the kind of mass extinction that
hasn't occurred on Earth for 55 million years.

Global heating is leagues beyond what civilization has ever faced
before.

I will give only brief background here. As you know, global heating is
caused largely by heat-trapping gasses that we emit into our
atmosphere. The more greenhouse gasses we put into the atmosphere, the
hotter Earth gets. It's rather like putting a greenhouse roof around
the entire Earth and locking it down. Carbon dioxide has climbed to
levels unknown in the past 650,000 years, and we are still pumping it
out at an annual increase of over 2 percent per year. The U.S.
produces 25 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Carbon persists
in the atmosphere up to a few centuries, so our emissions on this very
day will have impacts far beyond our lifetimes. We can't turn this
thermostat down. Scientists across the globe warn that we are nearing
a dangerous "tipping point" that will set in motion irreversible
dynamics through environmental feedback loops. After that tipping
point, our subsequent carbon reductions, no matter how impressive,
will not thwart long-term catastrophe. British Prime Minister Tony
Blair said months ago, "This disaster is not set to happen in some
science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime. Unless
we act now... these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be
irreversible."

Let us consider the magnitude of the challenge we face.

First -- the scale of the threat. It's global. It affects every square
inch of Earth.

Second, the intensity of the threat. Global warming threatens all of
our basic survival mechanisms -- food, water, shelter, and health.
British commentator Mark Lynas, author of High Tide, summarizes it
this way: If we go on emitting greenhouse gases at anything like the
current rate, most of the surface of the globe will be rendered
uninhabitable within the lifetimes of most readers of this article.

Third -- the timeframe for response. Jim Hansen, the leading climate
scientist for NASA states: "[W]e have at most 10 years -- not 10 years
to decide upon action, but 10 years to alter fundamentally the
trajectory of global greenhouse emissions." We have to reverse what is
now still a climbing trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and bring
it down within 10 years at most, then reduce it 80 percent by 2050.
You can think of these requirements as Nature's Mandate. The tipping
point concept means that we are sitting on a ticking clock. If we fail
to bring carbon down in the next decade, we effectively lock the doors
of our heating greenhouse and throw out the keys, leaving ourselves
and future generations trapped inside as disaster unfolds over the
long term.

Fourth -- consider the scale of response needed to meet Nature's
Mandate. Nearly every aspect of human daily living results in carbon
emissions. Therefore, climate response must reach into virtually every
sector of society: residential, commercial, industrial, transportation
-- everything.

When we consider the scale, intensity, timeframe and kind of action
needed, it is plain to see that we have never faced anything remotely
like global warming before. Only a national response that is swift,
focused and encompassing will be sufficient to confront this threat.

Let's reflect back to when citizens across this country rose in
solidarity behind a clear national purpose. The attack on Pearl Harbor
galvanized America in a way that we desperately need today. Almost
overnight, the private business sector began retooling and overhauling
production lines. The automobile industry scaled down car sales and
channeled its workers and materials into the production of defense
vehicles. The financial world sold war bonds. Communities planted
victory gardens to grow food locally so that the commercial food
supplies could be sent to the military. Consumers made do with the
bare minimum. States lowered their speed limits to conserve gas.

Individuals took initiative without being asked. Men signed up for
active duty. Women took their place in the work force. Volunteers
entertained the troops.

Speakers Bureaus formed in cities across the country, drawing 100,000
volunteers. These Victory Speakers, as they were called, were key to
mobilizing the nation quickly. They would give five-minute speeches at
theaters, club meetings, town halls, schools -- any forum they could
find -- to explain the nature of the threat and the need for citizen
support. Victory Speakers were not chosen for their outstanding
oratory skills, but rather were the "trusted and familiar voices" in
the community -- the banker, carpenter, mother or school teacher.

People did not just sit by. This was a time in our nation's history
when individuals, families, businesses, schools and neighborhoods were
engaged together, tapping their resources, ingenuity and energy in
concerted defense of the country they loved and the future they hoped
to pass to their children.

Generations later, how is this same country responding to the threat
of climate crisis?

The reality today is that most Americans are too absorbed in their own
routines to make time for global warming. We parents tend to be an
especially busy group. We are so consumed with taking our children to
soccer games and piano lessons that we don't think ahead to how our
children will get food and water, and be safe from storms, disease,
and all of the other life-threatening circumstances that planet's
heating will bring them. By living out the American dream, we are
essentially signing our own children up for a draft for their
lifetimes. But this war will be the most frightening because it has no
end in sight for even their descendants, and all of Nature's survival
resources will be scarce. Unfortunately, it's no consolation that we
are good, devoted parents who just aren't that interested in global
warming. Nature won't recognize our children as conscientious
objectors to climate crisis.

To be sure, there are some Americans who are engaged and responding
with small changes in their lives. They ride the bus more often, they
refuse to buy bottled water, they turn off lights. This brings them
comfort, thinking the problem is on its way to being solved. These
people are important models, but national defense cannot be put on the
backs of a few good soldiers. Most concerned citizens are doing
nothing to enlist the rest of society in climate defense. There are no
Victory Speakers for climate crisis.

Small progress can give us a dangerous sense of security. Overall, our
society is nowhere near decarbonizing. Climate defense entails carbon
math. We lose this war for countless generations to come if we can't
get our total planetary carbon levels down before the tipping point.
Each day that passes, the window of opportunity to avert global
catastrophe closes a little more.

Looking back, Hurricane Katrina was the Pearl Harbor of climate
crisis. But in World War II, new agencies and commissions sprang up
overnight to amass a national defense effort. One would think that
every elected body and every agency in America would be convening task
forces to achieve carbon lockdown within a decade. But aside from a
small handful of officials, there is no leadership at the helm. There
are plenty of hummers on the streets of America, but we have no
national defense against global warming.

We simply cannot meet Nature's Carbon Mandate without leadership. Only
government can provide both the regulation and the infrastructure
necessary to bring carbon down within 10 years. We have thousands of
agencies -- more than any other nation in the world. If every one of
them made global warming a top priority, we might stand a chance of
meeting Nature's Mandate head on. But government would have to start
now. Tony Blair said to the world five months ago, "There is nothing
more serious, more urgent, more demanding of leadership... in the
global community."

Instead of defending our atmosphere, our government is driving this
country towards runaway greenhouse gas emissions. County commissioners
are approving trophy home subdivisions and destination resorts as if
global warming didn't exist. State environmental agencies are
approving air permits as if global warming didn't exist. The Forest
Service is approving timber sales as if global warming didn't exist.
And the electric power industry is racing to build more than 150 new
coal-fired power plants across the U.S., banking on federal approval
as if global warming didn't exist.

You might ask why, in the face of an unprecedented threat to the
planet, does our American population just sit by and allow government
to act as if the problem doesn't exist? Harvard psychology professor
Daniel Gilbert suggests that humans evolved to respond to immediate
threats, like enemies coming over the hillside. Intelligent as we are,
it's hard for us to take seriously any threat that is not immediate.
In other words, we'd be better off being invaded by Martians. But I
think there is even more to it than that. Global warming has been
captured by the press and the public as an environmental issue.
Americans are fundamentally confused about government's role towards
our environment, and that confusion operates as a dead-weight against
decisive action.

In the remaining time, I want to suggest why our modern environmental
law inhibits a response to global warming. And then I will suggest how
Americans could demand climate response through asserting their
collective property rights.

Let me first explain how our atmosphere has been caught in a legal
death spiral. Environmental law consists of hundreds of statutes and
regulations passed since the 1970s to protect our natural resources.
This is the body of law I have taught over the past 16 years. Had
environmental law worked, we would not have this ecological crisis on
our hands. The heart of the problem is this: While the purpose of
every local, state and federal environmental law is to protect natural
resources, nearly every law authorizes the agencies to permit the very
pollution or damage that the statutes were designed to prevent. Of
course, the permit systems were never intended to subvert the goals of
environmental statutes. But most agencies today spend nearly all of
their resources to permit, rather than prohibit, environmental
destruction. Most officials are good, dedicated individuals, but as a
group, they dread saying no to permits. Essentially, our agencies have
taken the discretion in the law and have used it to destroy nature,
including its atmosphere.

You can think of environmental law, with all of its statutes and
regulations, as one big picture. The agencies have constructed a frame
for that picture. The four sides of that frame are discretion,
discretion, discretion and discretion -- to allow damage to our
natural resources. All of environmental law is carried out through
that frame. And so, though our statutes were passed to protect the
air, water, farmland, wildlife and other resources, when the laws are
carried out through the discretion frame, they are used as tools to
openly legalize damage. That is why we have species extinctions,
rivers running dry, dead zones in our oceans, and global warming.

Why would public servants whose salaries are funded by tax dollars use
their discretion to allow destruction of resources? It is because the
discretion frame never characterizes natural resources as quantified
property assets. Instead, the environment is portrayed as a nebulous
feature of our world. So when private parties come to agencies seeking
permits to pollute or destroy resources, they almost always carry the
day because their property rights are clear and tangible.

Our federal government uses this discretion frame to justify inaction
in the face of climate crisis. Protecting our atmosphere is
characterized as a political choice. EPA claims discretion to permit
pollution by the oil, gas, coal, and automobile industries -- no
matter that this legalized pollution will degrade the atmosphere so
much that it will no longer support human civilization as we know it.

So how can the public engage government to immediately respond to
global warming? The public has to find a new frame for viewing
government's role towards Nature. As author George Lakoff says,
"Reframing is changing the way the public sees the world. It is
changing what counts as common sense." This new way of looking at
government's role must engage all agencies and officials in climate
defense as the supreme national priority.

Reframing environmental law does not mean throwing out our
environmental statutes. Those statutes give us a tremendous
bureaucracy that we can steer back on course. They simply have to be
infused with clear principles. The reframing I suggest draws on
Supreme Court jurisprudence that has been around since the beginning
of this country. It characterizes all of the resources essential to
human survival -- including the waters, wildlife, and air -- as being
packaged together in a legal endowment which I call Nature's Trust.
Our imperiled atmosphere is one of the assets in that trust. A trust
is a fundamental type of ownership whereby one manages property for
the benefit of another. Long ago, the Supreme Court said that
government, as the only enduring institution with control over human
actions, is a trustee of Nature's resources. In other words,
government holds this great natural trust for all generations of
citizens. We all hold a common property interest in Nature's Trust.

With every trust there is a core duty of protection. The trustee must
defend the trust against injury. When we call upon government to
safeguard our atmosphere, we are invoking principles that are
engrained in government itself. Back in 1892, our Supreme Court said:
"The state can no more abdicate its trust over property in which the
whole people are interested... than it can abdicate its police powers
in the administration of government." The Nature's Trust concept is so
basic to governance that it is found in many other countries today.
For example, 13 years ago, the Philippines Supreme Court invoked the
trust to halt logging the last of the ancient rainforest there,
saying, "[E]very generation has a responsibility to the next to
preserve that... harmony [of Nature]... [These principles] are assumed
to exist from the inception of humankind." In contrast to the
discretion frame, the trust frame forces government to protect
Nature's Endowment as property for future generations to inherit.
Failure to protect natural inheritance amounts to generational theft.

We can all take the very same set of environmental laws, and without
changing a word of them, reframe the government's discretion to
destroy Nature into an obligation to protect Nature. But this
principle works in reverse as well. We can pass any new law we want,
and no matter what it says, if it is pressed through the discretion
frame, the government will continue to impoverish natural resources
until our society can no longer sustain itself.

The trust frame can be a coalescing force to confront climate crisis,
in three ways. First, it may generate a national feeling of
entitlement towards Nature. The discretion frame gives no hint of
environmental loss. Because air and other natural resources are not
defined assets, we never imagine that they could be all spent down,
all used up. We seem unbothered even when our government leads us into
global environmental catastrophe. But when we portray nature as a
trust rather than an ill-defined commons, we vest citizens with
expectations of enduring property rights to a defined, bounded asset.
We start thinking, "Hey, that's my air, even if I share it with
others." Pollution of that air becomes an infringement on American
property. Government is obligated to defend that property. The failure
to mount a national climate defense becomes as absurd a proposition as
the idea of government sitting idle during an attack on American soil.

Second, by defining Nature in familiar property terms, the trust frame
reconciles private property rights with environmental protection. The
discretion frame doesn't do this. It portrays environmental resources
as nebulous features of the world we live in. Private property rights
carry the day in our agencies simply because they draw upon a language
of property that is so deeply embedded in our national culture. To
confront any environmental crisis today, including global warming, we
have to be clear on how public resources and private property rights
fit together in the scheme of things. The trust frame is itself a
property concept, so rather than pitting environment against property
rights, you are fitting Nature into the system of property rights. The
Nature's Trust frame is not anti-property rights. To the contrary, it
affirms our collective property rights in assets, like the atmosphere,
that support humanity. In securing our public property, the trust also
anchors our entire system of private property rights. All private
property depends on Nature's infrastructure. When that infrastructure
collapses, it causes natural disasters that make property boundaries
irrelevant. Remember, private property deeds didn't account for
anything in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And they won't account
for anything along coastlines inundated by rising sea levels.

Third, the trust frame positions all nations of the world in a logical
relationship towards Nature. The atmosphere is shared as property
among sovereign nations of the Earth. They are sovereign co-tenant
trustees of that atmosphere. They are all bound by the same duties
that organize, for example, the relationship of family members who
share ownership of a cabin as co-tenants. Property law has always
imposed a responsibility on co-tenants to not degrade the common
asset. This one concept lends definition to international climate
responsibilities.

Let me conclude. Global heating dwarfs any threat we have known in the
history of Humankind. Giving our government political discretion to
allow further damage to our atmosphere puts the future of this nation
and the rest of the world in grave danger. If Americans take the lead
to reframe our government's purpose as a trust duty to safeguard the
commonly held atmosphere, we may soon find every other nation in the
world engaged with us, not against us, in a massive, urgent defense
effort to secure the systems of life on Earth for all generations to
come.

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From: Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2007
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COMMON CHEMICALS ARE LINKED TO BREAST CANCER

By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer

More than 200 chemicals -- many found in urban air and everyday
consumer products -- cause breast cancer in animal tests, according to
a compilation of scientific reports published today.

Writing in a publication of the American Cancer Society, researchers
concluded that reducing exposure to the compounds could prevent many
women from developing the disease.

The research team from five institutions analyzed a growing body of
evidence linking environmental contaminants to breast cancer, the
leading killer of U.S. women in their late 30s to early 50s.

Experts say that family history and genes are responsible for a small
percentage of breast cancer cases but that environmental or lifestyle
factors such as diet are probably involved in the vast majority.

"Overall, exposure to mammary gland carcinogens is widespread," the
researchers wrote in a special supplement to the journal Cancer.
"These compounds are widely detected in human tissues and in
environments, such as homes, where women spend time."

The scientists said data were too incomplete to estimate how many
breast cancer cases might be linked to chemical exposures.

But because the disease is so common and the chemicals so widespread,
"the public health impacts of reducing exposures would be profound
even if the true relative risks are modest," they wrote. "If even a
small percentage is due to preventable environmental factors,
modifying these factors would spare thousands of women."

The three reports and a commentary were compiled by researchers from
the Silent Spring Institute, a women's environmental health
organization in Newton, Mass.; Harvard's Medical School and School of
Public Health in Boston; the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo,
N.Y.; and USC's Keck School of Medicine. Silent Spring Institute
Executive Director Julia Brody led the team.

In response to the findings, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast
cancer prevention group that funded the work, pledged an additional $5
million for developing research tools to root out environmental
causes.

Reviewing hundreds of existing studies and databases, the team
produced what it called "the most comprehensive compilation to date of
chemicals identified as mammary carcinogens." No new chemical testing
was conducted for the reports.

The researchers named 216 chemicals that induce breast tumors in
animals. Of those, people are highly exposed to 97, including
industrial solvents, pesticides, dyes, gasoline and diesel exhaust
compounds, cosmetics ingredients, hormones, pharmaceuticals,
radiation, and a chemical in chlorinated drinking water.

"Almost all of the chemicals were mutagenic, and most caused tumors in
multiple organs and species; these characteristics are generally
thought to indicate likely carcinogenicity in humans, even at lower
exposure levels," they reported.

For many of the compounds, the federal government has not used animal
breast cancer data when conducting human risk assessments, which are
the first step toward regulating chemicals or in setting occupational
standards to protect workers. Companies are not required to screen
women who work with the chemicals for breast cancer.

"Regulators have not paid much attention to potential mammary
carcinogens," the researchers wrote.

Toxicologists say that other mammals, such as rats and mice, often
develop the same tumors as humans do, and that animal tests are
efficient means of testing the effects of chemicals. Environmental
regulators, however, often want conclusive human data before taking
action.

Animal studies generally use high doses of a substance to simulate a
lifetime of exposure, and then the results are extrapolated to the
lower levels that people are exposed to.

Ana Soto, a Tufts University professor of cell biology who specializes
in cellular origins of cancer and effects of hormone-disrupting
contaminants, said there probably was a link between breast cancer and
exposures to chemicals in the environment, particularly early in life.

"I cannot say I'm convinced, but what I can say is that it's a very
likely, very plausible hypothesis," said Soto, who did not participate
in the new research. "More and more, cancer looks like an
environmental disease."

Twenty-nine of the chemicals are produced in volumes exceeding 1
million pounds annually in the United States.

Seventy-three are present in consumer products or are food
contaminants -- 1,4-dioxane in shampoos, for example, or acrylamide in
French fries. Thirty-five are common air pollutants, 25 are in
workplaces where at least 5,000 women are employed, and 10 are food
additives, according to the reports.

There are probably many more than 216, the research team said, because
only about 1,000 of the 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the
United States have been tested on animals to see whether they induce
cancerous tumors or mutate DNA. Such tests cost $2 million each.

Because epidemiological studies are difficult to conduct and full of
uncertainties, human data are "still relatively sparse," the
researchers wrote. Only 152 studies worldwide have examined whether
women exposed to contaminants are more likely to have breast cancer --
compared with nearly 1,500 that have explored the links between diet
and the disease -- and most of the 216 carcinogens were not included.

"Despite this large remaining gap, research in the last five years has
strengthened the human evidence that environmental pollutants play a
role in breast cancer risk," the researchers wrote. They said the
existing studies suggested "substantial public health impact."

Human evidence is particularly strong for PCBs, or polychlorinated
biphenyls -- compounds widely used in the 1940s to late 1970s that
still contaminate fish and other foods -- and for polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons, or PAHs, found in diesel and gasoline exhaust.

Solvents in dry cleaning, aircraft maintenance and other jobs also may
increase breast cancer risk.

Some of the chemicals named as breast carcinogens already are
regulated to protect public health, but some, particularly those in
consumer products, are not.

The scientists conducted the review hoping to lay the groundwork for
new human studies, as well as to persuade regulators to use existing
animal data to strengthen regulations and require more testing of
chemicals.

"Animal models are the primary means of understanding and anticipating
effects of chemicals in humans," they wrote. "All known human
carcinogens... are also carcinogenic in animals."

Emerging evidence suggests that the roots of breast cancer are in
infancy or the womb. More animal and human research should focus on
such early exposure, said Patricia Hunt, a Washington State University
School of Molecular Biosciences professor.

But Hunt and Soto urged society not to wait for scientific proof to
reduce exposure to the chemicals.

"When you look at their list of chemicals, we are exposed to all of
it," Soto said. "We know humans are exposed to mixtures, and studying
mixtures is very difficult. We will never have the whole picture, and
it will take many, many years to collect epidemiological evidence, so
we should take some preventive measures now."

Although virtually all women are exposed to the chemicals, some may be
more susceptible because of differing metabolism or ability to repair
DNA.

Breast cancer is probably triggered by an interaction of multiple
environmental and genetic factors.

Experts have long suspected diet plays a role. But the new research
found "no association that is consistent, strong and statistically
significant" for any particular foods raising or reducing breast
cancer risk. There is substantial evidence, however, that regularly
consuming alcohol, being obese and being sedentary increase risk.

About 178,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year in the United
States.

The reports are at http://www.silentspring.org/sciencereview .

marla.cone@latimes.com

Chemical carcinogens

Researchers name 216 chemicals that cause breast cancer in animal
tests. Here are some of the most widespread:

Chemical Source (and use)

1,4-dioxane (Detergents, shampoos, soaps)

1,3-butadiene (Common air pollutant; found in vehicle exhaust)

Acrylamide (Fried foods)

Benzene (Common air pollutant; found in vehicle exhaust)

Perfluorooctanoic acid (Used in manufacture of Teflon)

Styrene (Used in manufacture of plastics; found in carpets,
adhesives, hobby supplies and other consumer products)

Vinyl chloride (Used almost exclusively by the plastics industry to
make vinyl)

1,1-dichloroethane (Industrial solvent; also found in some
consumer products such as paint removers)

Toluene diisocyanate (Used in foam cushions, furnishings, bedding)

Methylene chloride (Used in furniture polish, fabric cleaners,
wood sealants and many other consumer products)

PAHs (Diesel and gasoline exhaust)

PCBs (Electrical transformers; banned but still in environment)

Atrazine (Widely used herbicide, particularly for corn)

Source: Silent Spring Institute

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

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From: Nuclear Information and Resource Service, May 15, 2007
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIALS RELEASED TO LANDFILLS

Takoma Park, Md. -- Radioactive materials are being released from
nuclear weapons facilities to regular landfills and could get into
commercial recycling streams, finds a new report released today by
Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS).

The report: Out of Control -- On Purpose: DOE's Dispersal of
Radioactive Waste into Landfills and Consumer Products -- was
commissioned to track if and how the Department of Energy (DOE)
releases some of the radioactive wastes from nuclear bomb production.

The report authors, led by Diane D'Arrigo, NIRS' Radioactive Waste
Project Director, researched seven sites and the DOE national
headquarters. The seven sites were: Oak Ridge TN, Rocky Flats CO, Los
Alamos NM, Mound and Fernald OH, West Valley NY, and Paducah KY.

"People around regular trash landfills will be shocked to learn that
radioactive contamination from nuclear weapons production is ending up
there, either directly released by DOE or via brokers and processors,"
D'Arrigo said. "Just as ominous, the DOE allows and encourages sale
and donation of some radioactively contaminated materials."

The report tracked the laws, guidance and technical justifications
that DOE uses to rationalize allowing radioactive scrap, concrete,
equipment, asphalt, plastic, wood, chemicals, soil, and more out to
landfills, commercial businesses and recreation areas, recycling and
reuse in places unprepared to handle radioactivity. Applauding DOE's
ban on recycling of radioactive metal from nuclear weapons, the report
cautions there are loopholes and it is again threatened.

"DOE is ignoring public opposition to unnecessary exposures and
releasing radioactivity even though the U.S. Congress revoked such
release policies," said Mary Olson, director of the NIRS Southeast
office and a co-author of the report. "DOE is using its own internal
guidance to allow radioactive weapons wastes out of control, claiming
the doses to people will be 'acceptable' even though they are not
enforced or tracked."

Under the current system, the DOE and other nuclear waste generators
release materials directly, sell them at auction or through exchanges
or send their waste to processors who can then release it from
radioactive controls to landfills, to recyclers or for reuse.

The report found that the State of Tennessee is a leader in licensing
processors that can release radioactive materials for the nuclear
waste generators.

"Tennessee is serving as a funnel to bring in nuclear weapons and
power waste from around the country to disperse into the landfills and
recycling without public knowledge," D'Arrigo said.

The waste is processed by state-licensed companies and in some cases
"redefined" as "special" then released to regular landfills. This free
release also opens up the potential for the materials to enter the
recycling stream to make everyday household and personal items or to
be used to build roads, schools, and playgrounds.

"As long as DOE and other nuclear waste generators can slip their
contamination out -letting it get Out of Control -- On Purpose --
there is really no limit to the amount of additional radiation
exposure members of the public could receive," D'Arrigo concluded.
"Only an informed, outraged public can force DOE and agreeable states
to shift the goal from dispersal to isolation of radioactive waste."

The report authors and contributors include:

Diane D'Arrigo, NIRS' Radioactive Waste Project Director Mary Olson,
Director, NIRS Southeast Office Cindy Folkers, NIRS, Health and
Environment Project Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, Radioactive Waste Management
Associates, NYC

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From: The Nation.com, Apr. 30, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

THE ESTABLISHMENT RETHINKS GLOBALIZATION

By William Greider

The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with
infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther. An
unlikely dissenter has come forward with a revised understanding of
globalization that argues for thorough reformation. This man knows the
global trading system from the inside because he is a respected
veteran of multinational business. His ideas contain an explosive
message: that what established authorities teach Americans about
global trade is simply wrong--disastrously wrong for the United
States.

Martin Luther was a rebellious priest challenging the dictates of a
corrupt church hierarchy. Ralph Gomory, on the other hand, is a
gentle-spoken technologist, trained as a mathematician and largely
apolitical. He does not set out to overthrow the establishment but to
correct its deeper fallacies. For many years Gomory was a senior vice
president at IBM. He helped manage IBM's expanding global presence as
jobs and high-tech production were being dispersed around the world.

The experience still haunts him. He decided, in retirement, that he
would dig deeper into the contradictions. Now president of the Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation, he knew something was missing in the "pure trade
theory" taught by economists. If free trade is a win-win proposition,
Gomory asked himself, then why did America keep losing?

The explanations he has developed sound like pure heresy to devout
free traders. But oddly enough, Gomory's analysis is a good fit with
what many ordinary workers and uncredentialed critics (myself
included) have been arguing for some years. An important difference is
that Gomory's critique is thoroughly grounded in the orthodox terms
and logic of conventional economics. That makes it much harder to
dismiss. Given his career at IBM, nobody is going to call Ralph Gomory
a "protectionist."

He did not nail his "theses" to the door of the Harvard economics
department. Instead, he wrote a slender book--Global Trade and
Conflicting National Interests--in collaboration with respected
economist William Baumol, former president of the American Economic
Association. Published seven years ago, the book languished in
academic obscurity and until recently was ignored by Washington policy
circles.

I asked Gomory if his former colleagues from the corporate world
quarrel with his provocative message. "Most of them have never heard
it," he said. "It's a pretty new message." He has discussed his reform
ideas with some CEOs, "who said, Well, maybe we could do that. Others
couldn't have disagreed more strongly."

Now Gomory is attempting to re-educate the politicians in Congress. He
has gained greater visibility lately because he has been joined by a
group of similarly concerned corporate executives called the Horizon
Project. Its leader, Leo Hindery, former CEO of the largest US cable
company and a player in Democratic politics, shares Gomory's
foreboding about the destructive impact of globalization on American
prosperity. Huge losses are ahead--10 million jobs or more--and
Hindery fears time is running out on reform.

"We want to be a counter to the Hamilton Project," Hindery explains.
"They have a sense of stasis that is more benign than I have. I don't
think this is all going to work out." The Hamilton policy group was
launched last year by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to make
sure the laissez-faire trade doctrine known as Rubinomics continues to
dominate the Democratic Party. "We're never going to have the status
of Bob Rubin," Hindery concedes. "But we're not chopped liver either.
We have respectable business careers. You can't tell Ralph Gomory that
he is 'smoke and mirrors,' because he wrote the book."

Gomory's critique has great political potential because it provides
what the opponents of corporate-led globalization have generally
lacked: a comprehensive intellectual platform for arguing that the US
approach to globalization must be transformed to defend the national
interest. Still, it will take politicians of courage to embrace his
ideas and act on them. Gomory's political solutions are as heretical
as his economic analysis.

At IBM back in the 1980s, Gomory watched in awe as Japan and other
Asian nations captured high-tech industrial sectors in which US
companies held commanding advantage. IBM invented the disk drive, then
dropped out of the disk-drive business, unable to compete profitably.
Gomory marveled at Singapore, a tiny city-state, as it lured American
manufacturers with low-wage labor, capital subsidies and tax breaks.
The US companies turned Singapore into a global center for
semiconductor production.

"It was an unforgettable transformation," Gomory remembers. "And it
was pretty frightening.

"The offer that many Asian countries will give to American companies
is essentially this: 'Come over here and enhance our GDP. If you are
here our people will be building disk drives, for example, instead of
something less productive. In return, we'll help you with the
investment, with taxes, maybe even with wages. We'll make sure you
make a profit.' This works for both sides: the American company gets
profits, the host country gets GDP. However, there is another effect
beyond the benefits for those two parties--high-value-added jobs leave
the U.S."

China and India, he observes, are now doing this on a large scale.
Microsoft and Google opened rival research centers in Beijing. Intel
announced a new, $2.5 billion semiconductor plant that will make it
one of China's largest foreign investors. China's industrial
transformation is no longer about making shirts and shoes, as some
free-trade cheerleaders still seem to believe. It is about capturing
the most advanced processes and products.

The multinationals' overseas deployment of capital and technology,
Gomory explains, is the core of how some very poor developing nations
are able to ratchet up their technological prowess, take over advanced
industrial sectors and rapidly expand their share in global trade--all
with the help of US companies and finance, as they roam the world in
search of better returns.

The Gomory-Baumol book describes this as "a divergence of interests"
between multinational firms and their home country. "This overseas
investment decision may then prove to be very good for that
multinational firm," they write. "But there remains the question: Is
the decision good for its own country?" In many cases, yes. If the
firm is locating low-skilled industrial production in a very poor
country, Americans get cheaper goods, trade expands for both sides and
the result is "mutual gain." But the trading partners enter a "zone of
conflict" if the poor nation develops greater capabilities and assumes
the production of more advanced goods. Then, the authors explain, "the
newly developing partner becomes harmful to the more industrialized
country." The firm's self-interested success "can constitute an actual
loss of national income for the company's home country."

American multinationals, as principal actors in this transfer of
wealth-generating productive capacity, are distinctively free to make
the decisions for themselves without interference from government.
They want profit and future consumer markets. Their home country wants
to maintain a highly productive high-wage economy. Without recognizing
it, the two are pulling in opposite directions--the "divergence of
interests" most US politicians ignore, evidently believing church
doctrine over visible reality.

The Gomory-Baumol book explains the dynamics with charts and equations
for economists to study. For the rest of us, it is easier to follow
Gomory's personal explanation of changing fortunes among trading
nations. "What made America much wealthier than the Asian nations in
the first place?" Gomory asks. "We invested alongside our workers. Our
workers dug ditches with backhoes. The workers in underdeveloped
countries dug ditches with shovels. We had great big plants with a few
people in them, which is the same thing. We knew how, through
technology and investment, to make our workers highly productive. It
wasn't that they went to better schools, then or now, and I don't know
how much schooling it takes to run a backhoe.

"The situation today is that the companies have discovered that using
modern technology they can do all that overseas and pay less for labor
and then import product and services back into the United States. So
what we're doing now is competing shovel to shovel. The people in many
countries are being equipped with as good a shovel or backhoe as our
people have. Very often we are helping them make the transition. We're
making it person-to-person competition, which it never was before and
which we cannot win. Because their people will be paid a third, a
quarter of what our people are paid. And it's unreasonable to think
you can educate our people so well that they can produce four times as
much in the United States."

As this shift of productive assets progresses, the downward pressure
on US wages will thus continue and intensify. Free-trade believers
insist US workers can defend themselves by getting better educated,
but Gomory suggests these believers simply don't understand the
economics. "Better education can only help," he explains. "The
question is where do you put your technology and knowledge and
investment? These other countries understand that. They have
understood the following divergence: What countries want and what
companies want are different."

The implication is this: If nothing changes in how globalization
currently works, Americans will be increasingly exposed to downward
pressure on incomes and living standards. "Yes," says Gomory. "There
are many ways to look at it, all of which reach the same conclusion."

I ask Gomory what he would say to those who believe this is a just
outcome: Americans become less rich, others in the world become less
poor. That might be "a reasonable personal choice," he agrees. "But
that isn't what the people in this country are being told. No one has
said to us: 'You're probably a little too rich and these other folks
are a little too poor. Why don't we even it out?' Instead, what we
usually hear is: 'It's going to be good for everyone. In the long run
we're going to get richer with globalization.'"

Gomory and Baumol are elaborating a fundamental point sure to make
many economists (and political leaders) sputter and choke. Contrary to
dogma, the losses from trade are not confined to the "localized pain"
felt by displaced workers who lose jobs and wages. In time, the
accumulating loss of a country's productive base can injure the
broader national interest--that is, everyone's economic well-being.

"Our objective," Baumol told a policy conference last summer, "is to
show how outsourcing can indeed reduce the share of benefits of trade,
not only for those who lose their jobs and suffer a direct reduction
in wages but can wind up making the average American worse off than he
or she would have been."

The conventional win-win assurances, they explain, are facile
generalizations that ignore the complexity of the trading system--the
myriad differences in country-to-country relationships and the vast
realm of government actions and policy interventions designed to shape
the outcomes. "Many of our 'dismal science' colleagues speak
unguardedly as though they believe free trade cannot fail, no matter
what," Baumol said.

Some nations, in other words, do indeed become "losers." Gomory fears
the United States is now one of them--starting to go downhill. When he
and Baumol wrote their book, they figured US trade relations with
China and India produced "mutual gain" for both ends. The United
States got cheaper goods, China and India got jobs and a start at
industrialization. But the rapid improvements in those two nations
during the past decade, Gomory thinks, are putting the United States
in the bind where their gain becomes our loss.

Essentially, the terms of trade have changed as more and more
value-added production has shifted from the United States to its
poorer trading partners. America, he explains, becomes increasingly
dependent, buying from abroad more and more of what its citizens
consume and producing relatively less at home. US incomes stagnate as
the high-wage jobs disappear and US exports become a smaller share of
the world total.

The persistent offshoring of domestic production is leading to a
perverse consequence: The United States finds itself paying more for
imports. The production that originally moved offshore to get low-wage
labor and cheaper goods is now claiming a larger and larger share of
national income, as the growing trade deficits literally subtract from
US domestic growth. "All the stuff you were already importing from
them becomes more expensive," Gomory explains. "That's why you can
start going downhill--because you pay more for what you were
previously getting." Put another way, one hour of US work no longer
buys as many hours of Chinese work as it once did. China can suppress
its domestic wages to keep selling more of its stuff, but that does
not alter the fundamental imbalance in productive strength.

The US predicament is vividly reflected in the nation's swollen trade
deficits, now running at nearly 7 percent of GDP every year. The
country consumes more than it produces. It borrows heavily from
trading partners, led by China, to pay for its "excess" consumption.
This allows America to dodge--temporarily--a reckoning with its
weakened condition, that is, falling living standards. But that will
eventually occur, when Americans are compelled to reduce their
consumption and pay off the overdue bills. Postponement will deepen
the ultimate injury because, meanwhile, the trading partners will gain
greater industrial capabilities, while US productive strength weakens
further.

Americans can choose to blame China or disloyal multinationals, but
the problem is grounded in US politics. The solution can be found only
in Washington. China and other developing nations are pursuing
national self-interest and doing what the system allows. In a way, so
are the US multinationals. "I want to stress it's a system problem,"
Gomory says. "The directors are doing the job they're sworn to do.
It's a system that says the companies have to have a sole focus on
maximizing profit."

Gomory's proposed solution would change two big things (and many
lesser ones). First, the US government must intervene unilaterally to
cap the nation's swollen trade deficit and force it to shrink until
balanced trade is achieved with our trading partners. The mechanics
for doing this are allowed under WTO rules, though the emergency
action has never been invoked by a wealthy nation, much less the
global system's putative leader. Capping US trade deficits would have
wrenching consequences at home and abroad but could force other
nations to consider reforms in how the trading system now functions.
That could include international rights for workers, which Gomory
favors.

Second, government must impose national policy direction on the
behavior of US multinationals, directly influencing their investment
decisions. Gomory thinks this can be done most effectively through the
tax code. A reformed corporate income tax would penalize those firms
that keep moving high-wage jobs and value-added production offshore
while rewarding those that are investing in redeveloping the home
country's economy.

US companies are not only free of national supervision but actively
encouraged to offshore production by government policy and tax breaks.
Other advanced economies have sophisticated national industrial
policies, plus political and cultural pressures, that guide and
discipline their multinationals, forcing them to adhere more closely
to the national interest.

Neither of Gomory's fundamental policy reforms--balancing trade or
imposing discipline on US multinationals--can work without the other.
Both have to be done more or less at once. If the government taxed US
multinational behavior without also capping imports, the firms would
just head out the door. "That won't work," Gomory explains, "because
you will say to the companies, 'This is how we're going to measure
you.' And the corporations will say, 'Oh, no, you're not. I'm going
overseas. I'm going to make my product over there and I'll send it
back into the United States.' But if you insist on balanced trade,
then the amount that's shipped in has to equal the amount that's
shipped out by companies. If no companies do that, then nothing can be
shipped in either. If you balance trade, you are going to develop
internal companies that work the way you want." Public investment in
new technologies and industries, I would add, may not achieve much
either, if there is no guarantee that the companies will locate their
new production in the United States.

Essentially, Gomory proposes to alter the profit incentives of US
multinationals. If the government adds rules of behavior and enforces
them through the tax code, companies will be compelled to seek profit
in a different way--by adhering to the national interest and terms set
by the US government. Other nations do this in various ways. Only the
United States imagines the national interest doesn't require it.

In recent months Gomory and Leo Hindery of the Horizon Project have
been calling on Congress with these big ideas and getting respectful
audiences. The two met with some thirty Democratic senators and
Congressional staffers from both parties. Senator Byron Dorgan, with
co-sponsors like Sherrod Brown, Russell Feingold and even Hillary
Clinton, has introduced several bills to confront the trade deficits.

Gomory's concept for multinational taxation is a tougher sell amid
Washington lobbyists because it goes right to the bottom line of major
US corporations. On the other hand, this proposal has stronger
intuitive appeal for citizens, who reasonably ask why multinationals
are allowed to undercut the national interest when they enjoy all the
benefits of being "American" companies.

Hindery's group is advocating Congressional action to arrange a
"national summit" on trade, where all these questions can be thrashed
out. The political system has never really had an honest, open debate
on globalization in the past thirty years. The dogmatic church of free
trade--"free trade good, no trade bad"--wouldn't allow it. As more
politicians grasp the meaning of Gomory's analysis, they should start
demanding equal time for the heretics.

Gomory's vision of reformation actually goes beyond the trading system
and America's economic deterioration. He wants to re-create an
understanding of the corporation's obligations to society, the social
perspective that flourished for a time in the last century but is now
nearly extinct. The old idea was that the corporation is a trust, not
only for shareholders but for the benefit of the country, the
employees and the people who use the product. "That attitude was the
attitude I grew up on in IBM," Gomory explains. "That's the way we
thought--good for the country, good for the people, good for the
shareholders--and I hope we will get back to it.... We should measure
corporations by their impact on all their constituencies.

"So in my utopian dream, we decide what we want from the corporations
and that's how they make a profit--by doing those things. Failing
that, I would settle for the general realization of this divergence
and let people argue it out."

Some older CEOs and board members at least listen to him
sympathetically. "They have grandchildren," he says. "They wonder too
what's going to happen to our grandchildren. You can't get a vote
around the corporate board table about, Is this good for the
grandchildren? But you can talk to them and they'll worry about it and
say, Well, maybe we need to do something."

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From: Progressive States Network, May 10, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

U.S. INFRASTRUCTURE: AN ECONOMIC DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN

By J. Mijin Cha

A major new report released this week by the Urban Land Institute
and Ernst & Young revealed shocking statistics on the state of transit
infrastructure in the U.S., including:

* 83 percent of the nation's transportation infrasturcture is not
capable of meeting the nation's needs over the next 10 years.

* 97 percent of roads, bridges and tunnels, and 88 percent of
transit/rail systems will require at least moderate improvement.

* Chicago alone needs $6 billion to bring its subways into good
repair. Rehabilitation of the Tappan Zee Bridge north of New York
City will cost as much as $14.5 billion.

* There is a $1.6 trillion deficit in needed infrastructure spending
through 2010 for repairs and maintanence.

A Threat to Economic Growth

Beyond the inconvenience of longer commute times due to poor upkeep of
roads and transit systems, these numbers signal real economic trouble.
The loss in time and productivity will slow economic growth, drive job
losses, and result in the U.S. becoming less economically competitive
globally.

Around the world, our economic competitors are investing heavily in
infrastructure to strengthen their economies, yet the U.S is spending
less than 1 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. Contrast that with
India, which spends 3.5 percent on infrastructure, or China, which
spends 9 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure in
its quest for economic growth.

The U.S. infrastructure neglect is not limited just to transit. In
order to comply with safe drinking water regulations, the U.S. must
spend ten times its current budget for replacing aging systems. The
power grids are also a mess and poor transmission networks are
resulting in loss of electricity and extremely inefficient power
delivery.

The False Promise of Privatization

The report emphasizes that the recent hype around privatization of
public assets like roads won't solve the problem-- and could make it
worse. Another new report released this week, also highlights how
states have been wasting taxpayer money by outsourcing and
experimenting with other forms of privatization that have just added
to costs.

Looking Forward

There is simply no way around it -- the current level of
infrastructure investment cannot sustain current economic activity,
let alone allow our states to grow competitively in the global
economy. Any further delay investing in infrastructure will only
result in much greater physical repair costs and even greater costs
from job losses.

The first step is facing up to the need for new revenue. The reality
is that the gas tax, when adjusted to inflation, is half of what it
was in the 1960s. Road tolls aren't paying enough for overall
infrastructure upkeep and other revenues are not making up the slack.
New revenues need to be combined with better planning to reduce road
congestion and promote more efficient public transit.

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