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Featured stories in this issue...

Healthy Cleaners in a Changing World
  It's important to understand that much of what we currently know as
  American culture developed in a different time. Our laws, economic
  system, shopping habits -- the way we manufacture, transport, use, and
  throw away all our stuff -- developed in a time when we thought the
  earth was limitless.
Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near
  "Changes needed to preserve creation, the planet on which
  civilization developed, are clear. But the changes have been blocked
  by special interests, focused on short-term profits, who hold sway in
  Washington and other capitals." --Dr. James E. Hansen
Toxic Smoke and Mirrors
  "This has every appearance of the industry buying science,"
  observed Erin Bigler, a professor of psychology at Brigham Young
  University who studies brain trauma, aging, and autism. "I've never
  seen anything like this."
CDC: About 8 Percent of Americans Have Diabetes
  In the U.S., some 24 million people have diabetes and another 57
  million have blood sugar abnormalities called "pre-diabetes." About
  27% of us have one or the other.
Nanotech: The Unknown Risks
  The potential damage from nanoparticles could take years or even
  decades to surface. So these tiny particles could soon become the next
  big thing -- only to turn into the next big disaster.
Sticker Shock as the Cost of Nuclear Power Rises Rapidly
  "If not nuclear, then what?" asks the nuclear industry's Heymer.
  Coal, gas and other fossil-fueled power plants all use the same raw
  materials that are escalating in price. The same cost uncertainties
  facing nuclear plants are also problematic for new coal plants.
An Interview with Mathis Wackernagel: 'There Is Only One Planet'
  "If everyone lived the way the U.S. does, we would be taking
  the resources of six earths, and we only have one."

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From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News, Jun. 26, 2008
[Printer-friendly version]

HEALTHY CLEANERS IN A CHANGING WORLD

(or: How Bad Could it Be? -- I Bought it at the Supermarket.)

By Katie Silberman

The other day I noticed that Oprah.com had a feature on going green.
No crunchy Birkenstocks for Oprah, no: instead this was the
"gorgeously green lifestyle checklist." It had a long list -- change
your light bulbs, use healthy cosmetics, eat organic -- but my
favorite part was the end. It had a checklist for your intentions.

Do you wish to become healthier? Do you want to live
according to your deepest values? You actually had to check these off.

And I realized that Oprah is right. Like any other behavior change -
diet, exercise, that guy you really need to break up with -- first you
have to make up your mind that you're ready to act. And to do that,
you need some compelling reasons. This article aims to lay out some
compelling reasons for changing your life by changing your cleaning
products.

I. Are we ready? or: Times Have Changed

To decide whether to change direction, first we have to know where we
are. It's important to understand that much of what we currently know
as American culture developed in a different time. Our laws, economic
system, shopping habits -- the way we manufacture, transport, use, and
throw away all our stuff -- was developed in the late 19th and early-
to mid-20th centuries.

This was a time when we thought the earth was limitless -- that we
could produce as much as we could, extract as much as we could, and
therefore dump as much as we could and pollute as much as we could,
and there would be no consequences.

Now we know that isn't true. Now we know there are consequences.
First, the Earth has only a certain amount of abuse it can handle, as
we clearly see with global warming, drought, wildfires, extinction of
whole species, and the perfect balance of nature disrupted.

Currently in the San Francisco Bay Area, several counties are
rationing water because the snow pack in the Sierras has fallen so
much in the past few years that the reservoirs can't serve the cities.

We now know we are capable of destroying our only home.

But our bodies also have a limit to what we can handle. We see this
with rising incidence rates of diseases that are linked to
environmental exposure. Things like childhood asthma, childhood
cancer, and breast cancer -- diseases that could not be rising so fast
based on genetics alone.

I don't like to cite statistics because they tend to be more confusing
than helpful, but I want to highlight just one: pre-school asthma
rates have gone up 160% in less than 15 years. Obviously toddlers
haven't changed that much -- trust me, I have one. So what has?

Something is different in the world than it used to be, and our bodies
are fighting hard to keep up.

So we see that the Earth has its limits, and our bodies have their
limits. But there's one other thing we now understand more clearly
than we did 50 or 100 years ago: corporations don't always tell us the
truth.

This is relevant to the marketplace of cleaners, because hundreds of
products are on the market, sold to us as healthy for our families.
We've all seen the ads with adorable babies crawling on sparkling
clean floors. What they don't reveal is which chemicals are absorbing
into that baby's skin while she's down there.

In fact, we are still living with the consequences of a mid-20th
century, post-War conviction that all industry is good, chemicals are
the wave of the future, and government should stay out of the way. So
where has this gotten us?

II. How bad could it be? I bought it at the supermarket.

I want to digress for a moment and discuss chemicals policy in this
country. I know that sounds really boring and you're thinking "how
wonky can you be?" -- but it's important to understand how chemicals
are regulated in the U.S. so we can see how a product that is known to
cause asthma or birth defects can be perfectly legal.

This is also the key to understanding a whole constellation of issues
- from toxic toys to lead in lipstick to BPA in baby bottles -- that
have been in the news lately. I think sometimes these news stories
start to feel so arbitrary and overwhelming that it's hard to make
sense of them -- is everything toxic? So I want to explain where we
are.

As mentioned, most of our laws governing the use of chemicals in
consumer products -- the stuff we use every day, like shampoo, makeup,
toys, water bottles, furniture, paint, and cleaning products -- come
from a mid-20th century ideal that all industry was good.

As a result, the main law governing chemicals in this country, the
Toxic Substance Control Act, passed in 1976, literally assumes
everything on the market at that point must be safe. This was not
based on scientific testing, epidemiology, health studies.... nothing
but the political expediency of regulating hundreds of thousands of
chemicals: how do you do it?

The way Congress chose was to grandfather in everything on the market
in 1976 and leave it on the market with no scrutiny at all. This is
still over 90% of chemicals in our products today, almost none of
which have ever been tested for their effects on human health.

The law then says that for future chemicals to come on the market,
they would have to be submitted to the government before going on the
market. And what do you think is required in that pre-market notice?
The manufacturer would have to test the chemical and show that it
didn't harm human health? No. It didn't cause environmental damage?
No. At least it wasn't the worst tool for the job? No.

Basically manufacturers don't have to show any health or safety
information at all, unless they happen to have done it on their own.
Government has a brief chance to try to spot a problem if they can;
otherwise industry can legally put substances on the market without
testing them for safety , label them for any variety of uses, and
they're good to go.

The end result is that thousands more chemicals have been put on the
market since 1976 with little or, often, no information about their
safety at all.

So, you might ask, where's the regulation in this regulatory system?
As it stands, the EPA has the power to remove a toxic chemical from
the market only if the EPA can prove that it's dangerous. This takes
years of scientific testing, and often ends in the EPA being sued by
the manufacturer of that chemical.

So while years go by, real people are being harmed by these chemicals
- the bodies are piling up. We know a whole suite of dangerous
chemicals crosses the placenta and can affect a developing baby in
utero.

We find chemicals in umbilical cord blood and breastmilk. And still
this is not enough for the EPA to take action. In fact, with over
81,000 chemicals on the market, the EPA has restricted only five since
1976.

This is backwards. Instead of the EPA having to prove that a chemical
is dangerous before they can take it off the market, a manufacturer
should have to show that it's safe before putting it on the market.
This is called "shifting the burden of proof," and it is the main
reason why so many of the products we live with every day have the
potential to harm our health.

It's worthwhile to note that the European Union actually passed a
sweeping chemicals reform law recently that does shift the burden of
proof and require safety testing from manufacturers before a product
is allowed on the market. And as we know, Europe's economy is stronger
than ours. In fact, some US manufacturers are now making two parallel
product lines: one with dangerous chemicals, for the US market, and
one without, for the European Union (you see some products now, like
Avalon Organics cosmetics, that say "EU compliant" -- meaning they're
selling the same, safer product in the U.S. that they're selling in
Europe).

Manufacturers know how to make their products safer in a cost-
effective way. There is no reason for this backward system in the US
other than bad political decisions.

III. What's the Dirt on Cleaners?

Let's look at household cleaning products. Now we understand how a
chemical that may cause asthma, cancer or birth defects could be in
this product, sitting on the shelf at the grocery store. But there's
one more piece to the non-regulation of cleaning products in this
country, and that is that they are not required to list their
ingredients on the label.

A leading laundry soap, for example, has more than 400 ingredients,
but the manufacturer calls them a "trade secret" and doesn't list them
on the box. So the first thing to look at, when you are buying
cleaning products, is the ingredient list.

If the manufacturers won't tell you what's in their product, do you
trust it enough to spray it in your tub and literally put your naked
child in that tub? Choose only products that list all ingredients on
the label, so you know what you're getting.

What are the chemicals of concern in cleaning products? This piece
focuses on two categories of chemicals: those that cause asthma, and
those that cause reproductive harm like birth defects. We focus on
these because they affect women and children, who are most likely to
be using the cleaning products, and home when they are being used.

Some of the known health effects of chemicals in common cleaning
products are: -- several are known to cause occupational asthma in
cleaning workers. -- animal studies have shown reproductive harm:
testicular damage, reduced fertility, maternal toxicity, early
embryonic death, and birth defects.

So where are we with the science? Obviously we can't say "this bottle
of cleaning fluid caused this child to get asthma." What we do know is
that several studies have linked exposure to these chemicals with
asthma in cleaning workers -- the people who are exposed to them every
day. We do know that janitorial workers have twice the rate of asthma
as other workers.

With the reproductive toxins, obviously it would be unethical to
expose a pregnant woman to these products and then see if it hurts her
baby. So instead we rely on animal studies. (Some people, of course,
also find animal studies unethical.)

We do know that several of these chemicals get absorbed through the
skin, and by breathing them. As previously mentioned, we find
chemicals of concern in our blood, urine, breastmilk and umbilical
cord blood.

So what do we do in this situation? The evidence is piling up, but we
can't say for sure that any single product is harming any one of us.

Well, what would you do if something was potentially harming your
child? You'd take it away!

In the face of scientific uncertainty, which is where we are now, how
do you take action? That part is simple: you take precaution. You
think "better safe than sorry." You think "an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure." These are time-tested ideas for a reason:
they're smart, and they keep us safe.

IV. What can we do at home?

First, it's important to think precaution and prevention. You may have
someone in your household questioning whether you need to make this
switch. Some of these products might cost more than the ones you're
using now -- and some cost less.

I think the most compelling argument for taking action, right now, is
something called cumulative impacts.

Cumulative impacts describes the situation that each one of us is in
right now when it comes to toxic chemicals: sure, maybe one squirt of
air freshener won't hurt you. Maybe breathing those scrubbing bubbles
a few times won't hurt you. But what happens when you start to add
these things up?

What happens when you're surrounded by dusting spray and scented
laundry soap and squirt-on window cleaner and plug-in air fresheners
and car exhaust and diesel emissions and mercury from power plants and
chemicals in toys and makeup and pesticides in food?

Every single day of your life? We're all living in a grand experiment
without our consent: we have no idea what all these chemicals do in
combination with each other. And that's why it's so important to take
precautionary action and remove any exposures that you can.

Five simple steps to a greener home

1.) Educate yourself. Learn enough to make good choices. A non-profit
organization called Women's Voices for the Earth, at
www.womenandenvironment.org, has a lengthy report on cleaning
products that is available for free downloading. The green cleaning
company Seventh Generation has a comprehensive web site at
www.seventhgeneration.com that lists the ingredients in their
products, has a "guide to a toxin-free home" and has coupons.

2.) Use fewer products, and less of them. I have a little secret for
you that the cleaning product companies don't want you to know: you do
not need a different product for every room in your house! Soap and
water work for lots of things -- you can get a big bottle of castile
soap that will last you for months. Baking soda and vinegar, which
cost pennies per use, have many uses.

Question whether you need the products you're using -- maybe instead
of spraying an air freshener, you could simmer a cinnamon stick on the
stove (this is what realtors do when they want to sell a home, it
makes the house smell so good!) Put half a lemon in your disposal.
Open your windows when you clean to let the bad air out and the good
air in.

3.) Make your own cleaners. These are several great web resources with
recipes for inexpensive, effective cleaners. Have a green cleaning
party! Womens' Voices for the Earth has a fun "green cleaning party
kit" that you can download form their website,
womenandenvironment.org. They'll send you an educational DVD, fact
sheets, and supplies you need to invite your friends over and have fun
getting healthy.

4.) Buy good brands. These are several great companies out there right
now who are making safe, healthy products for the home, and working
hard to push this market. Only buy products that list their
ingredients. Don't buy anything that says "caution" or "warning" or
"use in a well-ventilated room." Support the companies who are doing
the right thing and creating this market, such as Seventh Generation,
Method, and other brands you'll find at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and
natural food shops.

But there is a corollary to this: watch out for greenwashing, the
practice whereby companies try to make themselves look good by
claiming to be healthy, but actually are not. Words on the label like
natural, green, eco, and even organic are not regulated in this
market. Think about which companies you want to support.

5.) Perhaps most important, join together and speak up: join a non-
profit organization such as Women's Voices for the Earth, the
Science and Environmental Health Network (www.sehn.org), or the
Center for Environmental Health (www.cehca.org). Continuing to use
these same old dangerous chemicals are political and economic
decisions, and both respond to consumers when we join our voices
together.

Just as an example of recent results of consumer advocacy, Wal-Mart is
pulling Bisphenol-A baby bottles form their shelves, and Target is
phasing out PVC plastic. This is a direct result of great advocacy by
non-profit organizations and the members who support them.

You can do some easy advocacy from home too: call the 800 number on
the back of your cleaning products. Ask the manufacturers to list all
of the ingredients on the product label, and to remove chemicals of
concern from their products. Companies are thinking about doing this,
but they need to hear from their customers to push them over the edge.
You can also sign an online petition and leave comments at 
http://www.womenandenvironment.org (click on "Take Action on
Toxics").

This is a great time to get involved in issues of household
environmental health. Consumers are learning more and demanding more
from the marketplace, and manufacturers hear this and want a piece of
that market. The market is shifting to healthier products, and it is
because of each of us asking for products that don't harm our children
or our planet. It's the perfect time to be gorgeously green.

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

Katie Silberman is Associate Director, Science and Environmental
Health Network, www.sehn.org. Contact Katie@sehn.org. This piece is
adapted from a presentation to the Jewish Environmental Initiative,
St. Louis, MO, May 15, 2008. The author wishes to thank Alexandra
Gorman Scranton of Women's Voices for the Earth for her research
assistance.

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From: James E. Hansen, Jun. 23, 2008
[Printer-friendly version]

GLOBAL WARMING TWENTY YEARS LATER: TIPPING POINTS NEAR

By James E. Hansen

[Introduction: Dr. James E. Hansen,[1] a physicist by training,
directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a laboratory of
the Goddard Space Flight Center and a unit of the Columbia University
Earth Institute.]

My presentation today is exactly 20 years after my 23 June 1988
testimony to Congress, which alerted the public that global warming
was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now,
but one big difference.

Again a wide gap has developed between what is understood about global
warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by
policymakers and the public. Now, as then, frank assessment of
scientific data yields conclusions that are shocking to the body
politic. Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a
certainty exceeding 99 percent.

The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule
for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next
President and Congress must define a course next year in which the
United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility
for the present dangerous situation.

Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon
dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a
level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points
that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of
humanity's control.

Changes needed to preserve creation, the planet on which civilization
developed, are clear. But the changes have been blocked by special
interests, focused on short-term profits, who hold sway in Washington
and other capitals.

I argue that a path yielding energy independence and a healthier
environment is, barely, still possible. It requires a transformative
change of direction in Washington in the next year.

On 23 June 1988 I testified to a hearing, chaired by Senator Tim Wirth
of Colorado, that the Earth had entered a long-term warming trend and
that human-made greenhouse gases almost surely were responsible. I
noted that global warming enhanced both extremes of the water cycle,
meaning stronger droughts and forest fires, on the one hand, but also
heavier rains and floods.

My testimony two decades ago was greeted with skepticism. But while
skepticism is the lifeblood of science, it can confuse the public. As
scientists examine a topic from all perspectives, it may appear that
nothing is known with confidence. But from such broad open-minded
study of all data, valid conclusions can be drawn.

My conclusions in 1988 were built on a wide range of inputs from basic
physics, planetary studies, observations of on-going changes, and
climate models. The evidence was strong enough that I could say it was
time to "stop waffling". I was sure that time would bring the
scientific community to a similar consensus, as it has.

While international recognition of global warming was swift, actions
have faltered. The U.S. refused to place limits on its emissions, and
developing countries such as China and India rapidly increased their
emissions.

What is at stake? Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over
land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather
fluctuations. But more warming is already "in--the-pipeline", delayed
only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing
dangerous tipping points. Elements of a "perfect storm", a global
cataclysm, are assembled.

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large
rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming
initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more
sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional
greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice
sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-
mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration
gets well underway it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists
is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my
opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level
rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of
millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be
reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Animal and plant species are already stressed by climate change. Polar
and alpine species will be pushed off the planet, if warming
continues. Other species attempt to migrate, but as some are
extinguished their interdependencies can cause ecosystem collapse.
Mass extinctions, of more than half the species on the planet, have
occurred several times when the Earth warmed as much as expected if
greenhouse gases continue to increase. Biodiversity recovered, but it
required hundreds of thousands of years.

The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper[2] I have written
with several of the world's leading climate experts, is that the safe
level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per
million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm
and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated
goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.

These conclusions are based on paleoclimate data showing how the Earth
responded to past levels of greenhouse gases and on observations
showing how the world is responding to today's carbon dioxide amount.
The consequences of continued increase of greenhouse gases extend far
beyond extermination of species and future sea level rise.

Arid subtropical climate zones are expanding poleward. Already an
average expansion of about 250 miles has occurred, affecting the
southern United States, the Mediterranean region, Australia and
southern Africa. Forest fires and drying-up of lakes will increase
further unless carbon dioxide growth is halted and reversed.

Mountain glaciers are the source of fresh water for hundreds of
millions of people. These glaciers are receding world-wide, in the
Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains. They will disappear, leaving
their rivers as trickles in late summer and fall, unless the growth of
carbon dioxide is reversed.

Coral reefs, the rainforest of the ocean, are home for one-third of
the species in the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several
reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of
ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean
life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by
dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.

Such phenomena, including the instability of Arctic sea ice and the
great ice sheets at today's carbon dioxide amount, show that we have
already gone too far. We must draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to
preserve the planet we know. A level of no more than 350 ppm is still
feasible, with the help of reforestation and improved agricultural
practices, but just barely -- time is running out.

Requirements to halt carbon dioxide growth follow from the size of
fossil carbon reservoirs. Coal towers over oil and gas. Phase out of
coal use except where the carbon is captured and stored below ground
is the primary requirement for solving global warming.

Oil is used in vehicles where it is impractical to capture the carbon.
But oil is running out. To preserve our planet we must also ensure
that the next mobile energy source is not obtained by squeezing oil
from coal, tar shale or other fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel reservoirs are finite, which is the main reason that
prices are rising. We must move beyond fossil fuels eventually.
Solution of the climate problem requires that we move to carbon-free
energy promptly.

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy
future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil
companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco
companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are
sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook
discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware
of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my
opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity
and nature.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation,
if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be
impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and
intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless
species would leave a more desolate planet.

If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must
demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block
fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from
public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no
solution. They yield continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted
self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-
term energy source.

Moving from fossil fuels to clean energy is challenging, yet
transformative in ways that will be welcomed. Cheap, subsidized fossil
fuels engendered bad habits. We import food from halfway around the
world, for example, even with healthier products available from nearby
fields. Local produce would be competitive if not for fossil fuel
subsidies and the fact that climate change damages and costs, due to
fossil fuels, are also borne by the public.

A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax.
Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend[3] is needed to wean us off
fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not
politicians, to make investment decisions.

Carbon tax on coal, oil and gas is simple, applied at the first point
of sale or port of entry. The entire tax must be returned to the
public, an equal amount to each adult, a half-share for children. This
dividend can be deposited monthly in an individual's bank account.

Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is non-regressive. On the
contrary, you can bet that low and middle income people will find ways
to limit their carbon tax and come out ahead. Profligate energy users
will have to pay for their excesses.

Demand for low-carbon high-efficiency products will spur innovation,
making our products more competitive on international markets. Carbon
emissions will plummet as energy efficiency and renewable energies
grow rapidly. Black soot, mercury and other fossil fuel emissions will
decline. A brighter, cleaner future, with energy independence, is
possible.

Washington likes to spend our tax money line-by-line. Swarms of high-
priced lobbyists in alligator shoes help Congress decide where to
spend, and in turn the lobbyists' clients provide "campaign" money.

The public must send a message to Washington. Preserve our planet,
creation, for our children and grandchildren, but do not use that as
an excuse for more tax-and-spend. Let this be our motto: "One hundred
percent dividend or fight!" The next President must make a national
low-loss electric grid an imperative. It will allow dispersed
renewable energies to supplant fossil fuels for power generation.
Technology exists for direct-current high-voltage buried transmission
lines. Trunk lines can be completed in less than a decade and expanded
analogous to interstate highways.

Government must also change utility regulations so that profits do not
depend on selling ever more energy, but instead increase with
efficiency. Building code and vehicle efficiency requirements must be
improved and put on a path toward carbon neutrality.

The fossil-industry maintains its strangle-hold on Washington via
demagoguery, using China and other developing nations as scapegoats to
rationalize inaction. In fact, we produced most of the excess carbon
in the air today, and it is to our advantage as a nation to move
smartly in developing ways to reduce emissions. As with the ozone
problem, developing countries can be allowed limited extra time to
reduce emissions. They will cooperate: they have much to lose from
climate change and much to gain from clean air and reduced dependence
on fossil fuels.

We must establish fair agreements with other countries. However, our
own tax and dividend should start immediately. We have much to gain
from it as a nation, and other countries will copy our success. If
necessary, import duties on products from uncooperative countries can
level the playing field, with the import tax added to the dividend
pool.

Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008
election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture
the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address
climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great
expectations.

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

[1] Dr. James E. Hansen, a physicist by training, directs the NASA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a laboratory of the Goddard Space
Flight Center and a unit of the Columbia University Earth Institute,
but he spoke as a private citizen June 23, 2008 at the National Press
Club and at a Briefing to the House Select Committee on Energy
Independence & Global Warming.

[2] Target atmospheric CO2: where should humanity aim? J. Hansen, M.
Sato, P. Kharecha, D. Beerling, R. Berner, V. Masson-Delmotte, M.
Raymo, D.L. Royer, J.C. Zachos. Two papers available here and
here.

[3] The proposed "tax and 100% dividend" is based largely on the cap
and dividend approach described by Peter Barnes in "Who Owns the
Sky: Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism", Island Press,
Washington, D.C., 2001

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From: Mother Jones, Aug. 1, 2008
[Printer-friendly version]

TOXIC SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Commentary: Overexposure to manganese has caused Parkinson's-like
symptoms for thousands of welders. So why does the welding industry
still get a free chemical pass? A Mother Jones investigation

By Jim Morris

The shaking in Jeffrey Tamraz's right hand began in 2001. It was
intermittent, so he paid it little mind. A six-foot, 260-pound bear of
a man, he'd played football and thrown shot and discus in high school;
later he got into competitive weightlifting, and worked up to bench-
pressing 465 pounds -- once, to win a bet, he flipped a Honda Civic on
its side. He brought the same passion to his work. "I taught welding
for six years," he says. "I read books on welding. I loved to weld."

But by 2004, the twitching had grown too persistent to ignore, and the
47-year-old felt sluggish and clumsy. He consulted a neurologist and
was stunned to get the diagnosis: parkinsonism. Upon learning that his
patient had been welding for 25 years, and knowing that welding fumes
contain manganese, a toxic metal, the specialist suggested the
symptoms were work related.

Since then, Tamraz has lost not only his livelihood, but much of his
easygoing personality. Gone, says Terry, his wife of 10 years, is her
husband's sense of humor and his penchant for impromptu dances in
malls and grocery stores. Driving is difficult, and eating, and sex.

Even the most mundane tasks -- brushing his teeth, applying
deodorant-- -- now require a mental run-through. "Pretty much nothing
is automatic anymore," Jeff says. "I can be walking down a straight
concrete sidewalk and I just trip. My toes dig into the concrete."

He no longer goes out much, in any case. "I became kind of a hermit,"
he says. "You get tired of people looking at you. It's embarrassing to
shake. It's a sign of weakness."

Following Jeff's diagnosis, the couple, who live in Grants Pass,
Oregon, hired a lawyer and sued Lincoln Electric and four other makers
of manganese-containing welding wire and electrodes -- also called
rods or sticks. Filed in federal District Court in Cleveland, their
claim joined thousands of others pending against welding-products
manufacturers in state and federal courts. (Employers have not been
among the targets because lawyers generally concluded they were
ignorant of the metal's dangers.)

The odds weren't great. Since the lawsuits began in the 1970s, the
position of the $5 billion welding-products industry had remained
consistent: There are no reliable scientific data to prove welding
fumes cause the Parkinson's-like syndrome known as parkinsonism -- or
"manganism" if manganese-related -- that many longtime welders
experience. It was an argument familiar to anyone acquainted with
large-scale toxics litigation, and it seemed to work. Industry had
ended up settling a few cases -- including a $6.5 million payout to
four Florida welders in 1985 -- but as the Tamrazes went to trial last
November, it had won 16 of 17 actual courtroom bouts.

Not long after, though, came a startling revelation. For several
years, US District Judge Kathleen O'Malley -- whose Ohio courtroom is
the fact-finding venue for Tamraz and hundreds of other cases -- had
watched lawyers squabble over disclosure of alleged payments to
researchers studying the effects of manganese on welders. Finally, in
December, O'Malley ordered both sides to fess up and provide a "full
and complete" accounting of any such payments.

It's hardly uncommon for an industry to pay for research -- think Big
Pharma -- but the payouts unearthed by O'Malley's order provide an
exceedingly rare view of the system at work. "This has every
appearance of the industry buying science," observed Erin Bigler, a
professor of psychology at Brigham Young University who studies brain
trauma, aging, and autism, after reviewing the documents. "I've never
seen anything like this. I've suspected it forever, but I've never
seen it."

Court documents obtained by Mother Jones show that the welding
companies paid more than $12.5 million to 25 organizations and 33
researchers, virtually all of whom have published papers dismissing
connections between welding fumes and workers' ailments. Most of the
money, $11 million, was spent after the litigation achieved critical
mass in 2003; attorneys for the welders, meanwhile, spent about half a
million.

The pattern doesn't surprise George Washington University
epidemiologist David Michaels, author of Doubt Is Their Product: How
Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. Corporate-funded
research articles are often "advocacy documents that are being
produced purely for use in court cases," he says. "It's unfortunate,
because it really pollutes the scientific literature."

Judge O'Malley singled out a researcher named Jon Fryzek, whose large
studies of Swedish and Danish welders found no significant link
between welding fumes and Parkinson's symptoms-- -- but the studies,
based almost solely on hospital records, ignored welders who were
never hospitalized. O'Malley was particularly troubled to learn that
industry lawyers had reviewed a prepublication draft of the Danish
study. "[T]here is no doubt that this was not simply an independent
study," she wrote, "and that the experts who participated in the study
are continuing to act in an advocacy capacity." Fryzek worked for
Maryland's International Epidemiology Institute (iei)-- -- known for
its industry-commissioned studies, including one that found no link
between radiation and cancer in uranium millers. The institute
received more than $971,000 from welding defendants.

The embattled manufacturers also paid $860,000 to Paul Lees-Haley, an
Alabama psychologist and inventor of a widely criticized test that
often concludes brain-injury patients are malingering. Two consulting
firms linked by court documents to C. Warren Olanow, a Manhattan
neurologist who has published at least a dozen articles cited by
defense experts, got almost $2.9 million. And the Parkinson's
Institute in California got nearly $3.4 million to conduct a four-year
study-- -- not limited to welders -- seeking links between Parkinson's
symptoms and factors other than manganese, including smoking and
drinking. (The institute's research director says the work was neither
influenced by its funders, nor will she let them see the resulting
manuscript until it has been accepted for publication.)

Fryzek, who now works for Amgen, a California biotech company, did not
return phone calls and emails; Olanow and Lees-Haley declined comment.

iei president Joseph McLaughlin insisted in written statements that
the manufacturers "had no say whatsoever" in the study's conduct or
content, and that it is "common" for funders to view unpublished
results.

welders are by and large a stoic bunch. At 56, Joe McMahon, a business
agent at Steamfitters Local 420 in Philadelphia, has worked in all
sorts of hellholes -- inside chemical-encrusted cracker units at
refineries, for one -- and he never obsessed over the acrid white
smoke from melted welding rods. If he ever saw warning labels -- most
of the time, he notes, the rods were out of the can by the time he got
them -- they seemed meaningless. "It was all small print," recalls
McMahon. "It probably said, 'Try to avoid breathing smoke.' Well, how
the fuck am I gonna do that?" Supplied-air or cartridge respirators,
he says, were pressed on welders at nuclear plants (because of
radiation worries), but no one else: "If you wanted a dust mask you
could request it, but it wasn't mandatory."

Manganese poisoning is hardly a new concern. In a 1932 German paper,
industrial doctor Erich Beintker described two patients who welded
inside boilers and tanks. One complained of dizziness, ringing ears,
sudden sweats, and sleeplessness. The other had developed a speech
impediment and balance problems. "A nervous disorder appears to be
present here because of the manganese fumes," Beintker concluded,
urging welding companies to share information about the compounds in
their products.

In the United States five years later, the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company distributed a welding-safety booklet describing manganese as
an "important poison" that "causes a disease similar to paralysis
agitans" -- Parkinson's. (The welding industry responded by demanding
MetLife rewrite the booklet to tamp down the "scare" it had created;
the insurer obliged.) In 1943, Occupational Hazards Inc. of Cleveland
published an industrial-safety handbook warning of the metal's
paralyzing effects. "Manganese victims usually remain life-long
cripples, unfit for gainful employment," the authors wrote. They
encouraged employers to provide ventilation and examine workers four
times a year "to detect early signs or symptoms."

Documents show that welding suppliers knew of the problems. In an
October 1949 memo, an executive from Airco Welding Products (now
defendant the boc Group) recalled how the National Electrical
Manufacturers Association, an industry trade group, had called for
warning labels. "Some of the manufacturers did not do this and as a
result immediately capitalized on the advantage of being able to sell
an electrode which did not have to be marked 'poison,'" the official
wrote. "As a result, one by one, all of the various manufacturers took
this information off the label and all were very glad to get it off."

As evidence of the dangers mounted -- "the fumes are far worse than I
had any reason to suspect," another Airco official wrote in 1950 --
the industry continued to resist warning labels. It wasn't until the
1990s that the warnings were made explicit. Today, one brand of
welding wire bears this caution: "Overexposure to manganese and
manganese compounds above safe exposure limits can cause irreversible
damage to the central nervous system, including the brain."

like other industries in the crosshairs of litigation, welding-rod
manufacturers have zeroed in on the concept of "safe exposure limits."

Manganese is toxic, they've acknowledged, but not at the levels
present in their products. In fact, independent researchers have
documented a range of symptoms in welders exposed to ordinary levels
of the metal, from depression, memory loss, and irritability to the
zombielike state of full-blown manganism. Some get "cock walk" -- a
lurching, toe-heavy gait resembling that of a strutting rooster. A
recent study described numbness (61 percent), tremors (42 percent),
and hallucinations (19 percent) among 49 welders working on the San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Epidemiologist Robert Park of the National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health (niosh) says there's ample evidence that welding
fumes wreak havoc on the brain. One of several Korean studies that
yielded such evidence in the 1990s, for example, found a significantly
greater incidence of speech impairment, tremors, and gait disturbances
among welders than nonwelders. "I'd be amazed if there was something
else going on instead of manganese," Park says. And a 2005 study of
welders in Alabama (whose medical screenings were paid for by lawyers
suing the industry) found a 7- to 10-times higher prevalence of
neurological symptoms among the welders than within a control group.

But niosh toxicologist James Antonini says the existing studies lack
good exposure data and fail to quantify "confounding factors" such as
other workplace neurotoxins. "I don't think there's any really solid
information out there," he says. (Antonini accepted an award, albeit
no cash, from a prominent welding trade group in 2006 and more
recently coauthored, with several industry consultants, a literature
review that jibed with the manufacturers' position. "I've tried to
work with everybody," he says.)

niosh's official verdict on manganese and welding---- -- an exhaustive
state-of-the-science report that will lay the pathway for government
regulators -- is four years overdue; a House science committee chided
the agency for the delay last December, noting that the health of some
185,000 highly exposed welders hangs in the balance. niosh division
chief Paul Schulte says the delay is nothing unusual: "We have an
array of opinions. We're debating and working through them, and that's
really the issue."

But Park, who worked on the report, is frustrated. "Right now, what's
happening is that the lawsuits are driving the science, and that's
pretty pathetic," he says. "I think the fact that it's contentious has
encouraged people not to move forward."

if you were to graph out the welding industry's spending on science,
you'd see a dramatic uptick in 2003 -- the year an Illinois jury
awarded $1 million to a welder named Larry Elam. The verdict, not
surprisingly, turned a trickle of lawsuits into a flood, stoking
manufacturers' fears that welding fumes could become the next
asbestos, with the requisite ambulance chasers hopping on the
bandwagon of legitimate claims.

Charles Ruth III is no ambulance chaser. Stout and athletic like
Tamraz, the 41-year-old welder was diagnosed with manganese-induced
parkinsonism in 2000, three years after going to work at the Ingalls
Shipyard in Mississippi. When I met him, his face looked blank, his
voice was a dull monotone, and his right hand shook ceaselessly. Since
his diagnosis, Ruth's marriage had failed and he'd lost his job, not
to mention hunting, fishing, and the church softball league. He can't
even drive anymore -- at one point he was detained by an officer
convinced by Ruth's erratic driving that he'd pulled over a drunk.

He's had recurring depression and suicidal thoughts, but hasn't acted
on them because of his girls, ages 10 and 16, and his 8-year-old boy.

"I can't wrestle with my son because I'm scared I might fall on him
and hurt him," Ruth laments. "When I eat, food goes all over me." No
one at Ingalls ever told him, he says, that welding fumes could do
this to a man.

Ruth's father Chuck, a retired vice president at the shipyard, says
he, too, was unaware of the dangers. "For me it's a fairly easy fix,"
he says. "You put them in an air-fed welding helmet. They do it with
sandblasters and they could do the same thing with welders. But if
they do that, that means the industry's got to admit there's a
problem." Indeed, when a prominent industrial health organization
proposed lowering manganese-exposure limits 25-fold during the 1990s,
a trade group that included welding companies griped in a letter that
"respirator use would become mandatory at most of our operations" if
the new limits were enacted.

Ruth's case settled on the eve of trial in August 2005 for seven
figures. (The exact sum is confidential.) Industry lawyers claimed the
settlement was merely the product of a procedural misstep that would
have weakened their case. But last fall, while attempting to rebut
medical experts during the Tamraz trial, defense lawyer Eric Kennedy
explicitly conceded that Ruth has manganism.

Since the Ruth settlement, the industry has let its insecurity show.

Last year, the manufacturers launched a PR offensive, hiring a New
York firm to prepare an eight-page "welding fume litigation status
report" full of statistics designed to steer journalists away from the
manganese story; among other things, the report noted that three cases
(out of the thousands filed) were dismissed "after discovery revealed
that one plaintiff faked his symptoms and two others lied about
illicit drug use."

No one could have claimed Jeffrey Tamraz was malingering -- and
defense lawyers didn't, arguing instead that 60,000 Americans each
year are diagnosed with Parkinson's of unknown origin. "Doctors,
lawyers, teachers, bus drivers, bricklayers, we all get it," Kennedy
insisted when the case came to court last fall. "And so do welders."
But his argument wasn't helped when the Tamraz attorneys showed a
deposition video in which Toronto neurologist Anthony Lang, an expert
witness for the industry, acknowledged that welding fumes likely do
cause manganism.

Last December, the jury ordered the five companies to pay Jeff Tamraz
$17.5 million, and give his wife $3 million more for loss of
consortium. "The manufacturers had 60 years to hide the ball," says
John Climaco, one of the couple's lawyers. "We've now caught up."

And then some. In March, Mississippi welder Robert Jowers won a $2.4
million verdict against three manufacturers. Some 2,800 cases are
still pending against the industry, with another 11,000 on a legal
back burner known as a tolling agreement.

When Terry and Jeff Tamraz learned of their verdict, they wept. "I
couldn't believe it," he says. "Man, we prayed and prayed and prayed."

But the euphoria has worn off. There's an appeal to get through, and
beyond that, an increasingly quiet life. "Jeff doesn't laugh anymore,"
Terry says. "Back when we were dating, he was the life of the party.
The conversation between us is minimal now."

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From: Associated Press, Jun. 24, 2008
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CDC: ABOUT 8 PERCENT OF AMERICANS HAVE DIABETES

ATLANTA (AP) -- The number of Americans with diabetes has grown to
about 24 million people, or roughly 8 percent of the U.S. population,
the government said Tuesday.

A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on
data from 2007, said the number represents an increase of about 3
million over two years. The CDC estimates another 57 million people
have blood sugar abnormalities called pre-diabetes, which puts people
at increased risk for the disease.

The percentage of people unaware that they have diabetes fell from 30
percent to 25 percent, according to the study.

Dr. Ann Albright, director of the CDC Division of Diabetes
Translation, said the report has "both good news and bad news."

"It is concerning to know that we have more people developing
diabetes, and these data are a reminder of the importance of
increasing awareness of this condition, especially among people who
are at high risk," Albright said in a statement.

"On the other hand, it is good to see that more people are aware that
they have diabetes."

A message left Tuesday night seeking further comment from the CDC
wasn't immediately returned.

The disease results from defects in insulin production that cause
sugar to build up in the body. It is the seventh leading cause of
death in the country and can cause serious health problems including
heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and amputations.

Among adults, diabetes increased in both men and women and in all age
groups, but still disproportionately affects the elderly. Almost 25
percent of the population 60 years and older had diabetes in 2007.

After adjusting for population age differences between various groups,
the rate of diagnosed diabetes was highest among American Indians and
Alaska Natives (16.5 percent). This was followed by blacks (11.8
percent) and Hispanics (10.4 percent), which includes rates for Puerto
Ricans (12.6 percent), Mexican Americans (11.9 percent), and Cubans
(8.2 percent).

By comparison, the rate for Asian Americans was 7.5 percent, with
whites at 6.6 percent.

Copyright The Associated Press

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From: Yale Environment 360, Jun. 23, 2008
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NANOTECH: THE UNKNOWN RISKS

Nanotechnology is booming. But concern is growing that its development
is outpacing our understanding of how to use it safely.

By Carole Bass

"It's green, it's clean, it's never seen -- that's nanotechnology!"

That exuberant motto, used by an executive at a trade group for
nanotech entrepreneurs, reflects the buoyant enthusiasm for
nanotechnology in some business and scientific circles.

Part of the slogan is indisputably true: nanotechnology -- which
involves creating and manipulating common substances at the scale of
the nanometer, or one billionth of a meter -- is invisible to the
human eye.

But the rest of the motto is open for debate. Nanotech does hold clean
and green potential, especially for supplying cheap renewable energy
and safe drinking water. But nanomaterials also pose possible serious
risks to the environment and human health -- risks that researchers
have barely begun to probe, and regulators have barely begun to
regulate.

What's more, the potential damage could take years or even decades to
surface. So these tiny particles could soon become the next big thing
-- only to turn into the next big disaster.

Nano enthusiasts see it as the next "platform technology" -- one that
will, like electricity or micro-computing, change the way we do almost
everything. While that prediction is still unproven, there's no
question that nanotech is booming. Universities, industry, and
governments around the globe are pouring billions into creating and
developing nanoproducts and applications. A range of nanotechnologies
is already used in more than 600 consumer products -- from electronics
to toothpaste -- with global sales projected to soar to $2.6 trillion
by 2014.

Environmentalists, scientists, and policymakers increasingly worry
that nanotech development is outrunning our understanding of how to
use it safely. Consider these examples from last month alone:

An animal study from the United Kingdom found that certain carbon
nanotubes can cause the same kind of lung damage as asbestos. Carbon
nanotubes are among the most widely used nanomaterials.

A coalition of consumer groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to ban the sale of products that contain germ-
killing nanosilver particles, from stuffed animals to clothing,
arguing that the silver could harm human health, poison aquatic life,
and contribute to the rise of antibiotic resistance.

Researchers in Singapore reported that nanosilver caused severe
developmental problems in zebrafish embryos -- bolstering worries
about what happens when those antimicrobial products, like soap and
clothing, leak silver into the waste stream.

The U.S. Department of Defense, in an internal memo, acknowledged that
nanomaterials may "present... risks that are different than those for
comparable material at a larger scale." That's an overarching risk
with nanomaterials: Their tiny size and high surface area make them
more chemically reactive and cause them to behave in unpredictable
ways. So a substance that's safe at a normal size can become toxic at
the nanoscale.

Australian farmers proposed new standards that would exclude
nanotechnology from organic products.

The European Union announced that it will require full health and
safety testing for carbon and graphite under its strict new chemicals
law, known as REACH (for Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation
of Chemical Substances). Carbon and graphite were previously exempt,
because they're considered safe in their normal forms. But the U.K.

study comparing carbon nanotubes to asbestos, along with a similar
report from Japan, raised new alarms about these seemingly harmless
substances.

Old Materials, New Risks The EU's move is a critical step toward
recognizing nanomaterials as a potential new hazard that requires new
rules and new information.

The raw materials of nanotechnology are familiar. Carbon, silver, and
metals like iron and titanium are among the most common. But at the
nanoscale, these well-known substances take on new and unpredictable
properties. That's what makes them so versatile and valuable. It also
makes them potentially dangerous in ways that their larger-scale
counterparts are not.

Yet governments are only beginning to grapple with those dangers.

Japan's labor department issued a notice in February requiring
measures to protect workers from exposure to nanomaterials: It may be
the world's first nano-specific regulation affecting actual practices.

Previously, Berkeley, California -- ever ready to stand alone -- had
adopted what is apparently the only nano-specific regulation in the
United States: a requirement that companies submit toxicology reports
about nanomaterials they're using.

At the federal level, the EPA launched a voluntary reporting program
in January; industry participation has been anemic. Both the EPA and
the Food and Drug Administration have so far declined to regulate
nanomaterials as such, saying they're covered under existing
regulations. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
has issued recommendations for handling nanomaterials, but the agency
has no enforcement power.

The European Union, by contrast, is taking a precautionary approach.

While U.S. regulators generally presume products to be safe until
proven harmful, the EU's new REACH legislation demands that
manufacturers demonstrate the safety of their chemicals. Just last
week, the EU released a document concluding that nanorisks "can be
dealt with under the current legislative framework," with some
modifications. For example, the document says that under REACH, when
companies introduce nanoforms of existing substances, they must
provide additional material about "the specific properties, hazards,
and risks" of the nanomaterials.

At this point, however, many of the most basic questions about those
nanohazards are unanswered. What materials are harmful, in what
particle sizes and shapes, under what conditions? Who is at risk:

Workers? People using nano-enabled products? Wildlife and ecosystems?

How should we measure exposures?

The U.S. government spends $1.5 billion a year on nano research. Less
than 5 percent of that is aimed at addressing these fundamental
questions.

Danger Signs What is known about nanohazards counsels caution.

Nanomaterials are so small that they travel easily, both in the body
and in the environment. Their tiny size and high surface area give
them unusual characteristics: insoluble materials become soluble;
nonconductive ones start conducting electricity; harmless substances
can become toxic.

Nanoparticles are easily inhaled. They can pass from the lungs into
the bloodstream and other organs. They can even slip through the
olfactory nerve into the brain, evading the protective blood-brain
barrier. It's not clear whether they penetrate the skin. Once they're
inside the body, it's not clear how long they remain or what they do.

What's more, current science has no way of testing for nano-waste in
the air or water, and no way of cleaning up such pollution.

The tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes, or CNTs, are among the
most widely used nanomaterials. These tubes, which come in different
sizes and shapes, lend extraordinary strength and lightness to bicycle
frames and tennis rackets; researchers are also investigating uses in
medicine, electronics and other fields. The recent UK study found that
long, straight CNTs, when injected into lab mice, cause scarring even
faster than asbestos. One of the investigators predicts the scarring
will lead to cancer; other experts are less sure. The study doesn't
prove whether it's possible to inhale enough CNTs to cause the same
results as the injections. But which workers want to serve as the test
cases?

Another red flag is silver. Manufacturers are lacing ordinary
household objects -- from toothpaste to teddy bears -- with
nanoparticles of silver, long known for its disinfecting powers. A
recent experiment on nanosilver-containing socks, touted as odor-
eating, found that silver particles leaked out into the wash water.

Once there, the silver could interfere with water-treatment efforts,
in part by killing good microbes as well as the nasty ones, and might
threaten aquatic life (a fear supported by the zebrafish study).

When Samsung started marketing a washing machine that emits silver
ions two years ago, a national association of wastewater treatment
authorities asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate
such equipment as pesticides. And indeed, EPA has required some
manufacturers to register nanosilver-containing products -- like
computer keyboards -- as pesticides or drop their germ-killing claims.

A farm-oriented pesticide law dating to 1947 is scarcely the right
tool for addressing the 21st-century hazards of nanotechnology. But
it's the only tool that EPA enforcers have, since the agency's
policymakers have explicitly declined to regulate nanomaterials as
such.

What Price Convenience?

Of the hundreds of nano-enhanced products now on the market, many are
cosmetics, and many others, such as clothing and computer peripherals,
are spiked with silver for unnecessary antibacterial effects.

Convenience items, like stain-resistant sofas and static-free fleece,
are a third big category.

It would be easy to say, "Who needs this stuff? Just wash your hands
(or feet, in the case of the smell-resistant socks), clean up your
spills and keep the nano magic on the shelf until we know whether it's
safe." Indeed, some environmental groups are calling for a moratorium
on nano-containing products.

But nanotech also has a tremendous upside in medicine -- whether for
treating cancer or regrowing bones -- and in green applications, from
affordable solar cells to super-efficient water filtration. In any
case, this technology is not going away. The U.S. House of
Representatives voted on June 5 to reauthorize the $1.5 billion-a-year
National Nanotechnology Initiative; the Senate is expected to act in
the coming weeks.

The House bill mandates "a detailed implementation plan for
environmental, health, and safety research." That's an important step
forward, but it's not enough. As we hurtle into this very small
future, we need to pay much more attention to the potentially large
risks.

Copyright 2008 Yale University

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From: EnergyBiz Insider, Jun. 23, 2008
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NUCLEAR COST ESTIMATES

By Pam Radtke Russell

The rising cost of materials and labor has the potential to put an end
to the nuclear renaissance before it ever gets started. Company
estimates that have been released show costs for an individual unit
could be as high as $12 billion, and one consultant expects those
estimates could rise if material prices continue to escalate.

Florida Power & Light told the Florida Public Service Commission late
last year that the cost for building new units at Turkey Point in
south Florida could be up to $8,000 per kilowatt -- or $24 billion for
two units. Earlier this year, Progress Energy pegged its cost
estimates for two new units on Florida's west coast at about $14
billion plus $3 billion for transmission and distribution. While
Progress' estimates are lower than FPL's, they are more than twice as
much as the $2,000 per kilowatt that industry contractors promised for
new nuclear plants just two years ago.

"There's a lot of sticker shock," says Jim Harding, an energy
consultant who helped the Keystone Center develop its June 2007
report, Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding. That report concluded that
overnight estimates for a new reactor would be $2,950 per kilowatt, or
between $3,600 and $4,000 per kilowatt with interest. That estimate,
generated with the input of 27 participants, including power companies
and nuclear contractors, is already outdated because of the rapidly
rising cost of metals, forgings, other materials and labor needed to
build a new nuclear unit, Harding says.

In October, Moody's Investor Service estimated total overnight costs
of a new nuclear plant, including interest, would be between $5,000
and $6,000 per kilowatt. But even those numbers are only guesses,
Moody's notes in its report, New Nuclear Generation in the United
States. "We believe the ultimate costs associated with building new
nuclear generation do not exist today and that the current cost
estimates represent best estimates, which are subject to change."

While the Florida PSC ultimately gave FPL approval to move forward
with the Turkey Point project and is evaluating Progress Energy's
proposal, other companies, such as South Carolina's SCANA, are still
evaluating whether nuclear is the right option.

"It's not an easy decision for a utility to make going forward," says
Harding. The decision to move forward with building a new nuclear
plant is going to be a real "head scratcher" for companies to
determine whether they can finance such a large project and whether it
will be the most cost-effective resource, he adds.

Best Option

Adrian Heymer, senior director for new plant deployment for the
Nuclear Energy Institute, says that many companies are regularly
evaluating conditions. He says that new nuclear plants are still the
best option for new baseload generation, but expects that not all 17
companies with plans for new nuclear generation will move forward.

"Some people may run the evaluation and say no, others may say yes,
this is for us," Heymer says. Moody's report says it expects only one
or two new plants to be online by 2015 -- the target date for many of
the companies that have proposed new nuclear units.

The cost to get firm estimates may turn some companies away from
pursuing nuclear power. A company must spend at least six months and
several million dollars to get a number it is comfortable with,
Harding maintains.

Despite the cost issues, new baseload generation is a necessity in
many places in the country. If new nuclear plants aren't built, other
power plants will have to be built.

"If not nuclear, then what?" asks the nuclear industry's Heymer. Coal,
gas and other fossil-fueled power plants all use the same raw
materials that are escalating in price. Moody's report notes that the
same cost uncertainties facing nuclear plants are also problematic for
new coal plants.

"It's not so much how much the plant costs, it's what's the price of
electricity is when the plant comes online and how does that compare
with natural gas, that's really the important question," says Heymer.

Yet consultant Harding says that he estimates that operating cost per
kilowatt-hour for a new nuclear plant will be 30 cents per kilowatt-
hour for 12 or 13 years until construction costs are paid down, at
which point operating costs will drop to 18 cents. Harding adds those
costs are a tough sell when concentrated solar power and wind power
can be had for about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour. He said he believes
that those renewable resources, as well as natural gas, and perhaps
LNG, might prove competitive to a new nuclear plant.

In the end, the cost of a new nuclear plant won't be known until it
comes online. And Harding expects that if prices continue to rise,
even FPL's high estimate could be on the low end. "There's no real
escalation in their numbers moving forward," he says, "just nominal
inflation of 2.5 percent."

Nuclear energy's potential could therefore be undercut by the high
price of construction. And while the same phenomenon exists with
respect to other energy forms, the nuclear industry is already
battling a generation-long handicap.

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From: Euractiv, Apr. 21, 2008
[Printer-friendly version]

AN INTERVIEW WITH MATHIS WACKERNAGEL: 'THERE IS ONLY ONE PLANET'

Introduction: Mathis Wackernagel is executive director of the Global
Footprint Network, which is "committed to fostering a world where all
people have the opportunity to live satisfying lives within the means
of Earth's ecological capacity."

Euractiv: The Ecological Footprint Theory is a way to measure
how humans consume the earth's resources. How is it possible to
measure it accurately?

MW: The theory is based around the premise that there is only
one planet. Then we ask ourselves how many potatoes we eat, how much
space do we need to grow them, how much cotton do we produce, how much
space do we need to grow it and etc? We basically add it all up and
that is our footprint.

So it is pretty straightforward, although the devil is of course in
the detail. For example, sugar can be produced from sugar cane and
from beet, so there is some complication there. Or vice-versa, soy has
a number of different products so how can you allocate each of them?

But overall, it is a very straightforward adding up of all the
ecological services that we depend on that are in mutual competition.

For example, one competition is: do we want to use this space to grow
potatoes or for growing timber or for sequestering carbon dioxide?
Perhaps some of them can overlap, but most of the time it's done in
mutual competition. We would have enough space on the planet to absorb
all the carbon dioxide that we emit extra from fossil fuels, but then
wouldn't have enough capacity to have cities, potatoes and sugar and
cotton etc. So it is ultimately a budgeting question. A farmer knows
how big their farm is and how many cows fit in their farm. It is not
that different to apply that to the world as whole, it's just a little
more complicated.

Now why do we need to measure the footprint? There are inaccuracies,
and some of these are due to lack of data. We use the best UN data,
and some of this can be improved. That is why we work with nations to
find out how the accounts can be strengthened. Unfortunately there is
no better result available at this point.

Euractiv: Do you have some common measurement systems for each
country?

MW: We have one manual, one template, so we calculate all the
nations equally. As we work with nations, improvements come built in
for all nations, so all nations will have a more accurate account
hopefully.

The underlying theory, in terms of change, is that big companies start
to become possible with accounting, then they start to organise the
finances of a large corporation. In the same way bankruptcy can be
easily avoided if you understand how much you make and how much you
spend, we need to apply the same rationale to ecological assets. If we
want to avoid ecological bankruptcy, it doesn't happen on its own and
it isn't totally avoided by having accounts, but it is a necessary
condition as a way to be able to manage how much we have to how much
we use.

We think nations should be the indicators of success. We want ten
nations to adopt the ecological footprint within a couple of years. We
want them to take responsibility themselves to say: how much capacity
do we have compared to how much we use?

Euractiv: Are nations actively asking you to come up with such
criteria? Are they taking your work seriously?

MW: I was invited to a seminar with government administrators
in Israel next week and we will be seeing President Peres. So there is
high level interest. Jacques Chirac talked about the footprint in
Johannesburg, so high level interest is there.

Is it translating into action? Not yet. I think there is still a
struggle concerning which way we should be going. We work with United
Arab Emirates (one of the six countries we work with) and they have
one trillion dollars worth of real estate in the making. For example
the artificial islands they are making. One of the things they are
starting to realise is, the houses they are starting to build, huge
towers with glass facades, are really like solar collectors which soak
up a lot of heat, only to use fossil fuels to cool them down. It is
kind of absurd. They are realising that the infrastructure
developments are losing value, and they built them in a way in order
to replace the value they lost from the oil in order to have something
else. But now the new value is as dependent on oil as oil itself. So
that is why they have started to recognise that we have to have an
ecologically sound development.

Euractiv: Do you think that we can maintain the same level of
consumption in rich countries that the Indias and Chinas of the world
where the average person can attain the same level of material well-
being and comfort as the average American can without putting the
planet into a catastrophic situation?

MW: If everyone lives the way the US does, we would be taking
the resources of six earths, and we only have one. That is physically
not possible. But there are many other ways of retaining a quality of
life that are not as resource intensive. But the biggest knowledge gap
we have is how to have good long lives, health and security, good
food, safe shelter, the ability to move around. Can we deliver these
kinds of functions on far fewer resources?

Euractiv: The common criticism of the whole theory of an
ecological footprint is that it doesn't take account of evolving
technology.

MW: That is one of the most common misconceptions because we
are not making any assumptions about technology. We compare every year
how much stuff we are able to squeeze out of the planet, and then how
much do we use compared to what the earth can generate? So through
technological change overall we have seen roughly a 15% increase of
what we call by-capacity.

By-capacity is what the earth can provide that is useful to people.
But overall we receive more stuff as humanity, we also have grown as a
population very rapidly. So on a per capita basis the technological
advances have not been able to cope with the increase of demand, as we
need to look at both demand and supply if you want to succeed.

Euractiv: Would you try to integrate technological advances in
your calculations?

MW: Every year we look at what the latest technology is so we
describe what it is.

Euractiv: So you are doing a benchmark exercise of what the
current dominant technology is in energy or agriculture etc?

MW: In some ways that all comes out of the statistics, you
don't have to make any assumptions. You just see overall how much CO2
is being emitted. As you get more efficient, you get more services out
of that amount.

Euractiv: We were mentioning the oil supplies and the scenarios
the oil companies are making on a regular basis. Are you proposing
such types of scenarios?

MW: We are not proposing scenarios. We are not making
scenarios. We are translating all the people scenarios into footprint
language. For example, if we followed the United Nations moderate
scenario in terms of population growth, CO2 emissions, IPCC, FAO,
rather aggressive increases in agricultural productivity, then what we
get as a curve is something that looks like this, going to about twice
the plants capacity by about 2050. That's the moderate scenario. All
the other ones are steeper. We believe that physically, we may not be
able to realise that. It doesn't just depend on people's wishes but
also on reality.

Euractiv: What are the key things that can be done to curb the
curve?

MW: There are five factors that determine the difference
between by- capacity and footprint. How much area is productive? How
productive is it per hectare? How many people? How much is consumed
per person? How efficient would that be? All of them have a role to
play.

We are actually very pro-technology. We need any technology we can get
to get enough overshoot. So what is the biggest low-hanging fruit? I
would say one of the big drivers is demographics, investing more into
women which is one of the biggest returns of investments in terms of
health outcomes, longevity, educational outcomes to children plus
being able to turn this curve round in the long run. We don't see the
effects in the first year. But in the long run, demographics is a huge
driver that is totally un-parenthesised and can generate enormous
well-being.

Another thing is infrastructure, are we getting our cities right?
Austria has 2000 zero energy houses, they are the world champions in
this sector. But they have 3,000,000 housing units, so 0.07% of their
housing units use zero energy. So if you are really serious about
turning things around, you need to build zero energy houses at a much
faster pace. We want perhaps 80% of our housing store at zero energy
by 2030. So then you can calculate how many we have to do per year.

Euractiv: Some people are saying that ultimately it is
population control and demographics that needs to be addressed. Is
this a view to which you subscribe?

MW: I'm not making a mathematical question. At this point we
don't have to have a Draconian intervention. Just by making the
choices available to many people we may be able to turn the
demographic situation around. There are many benefits that come with
it too. If women have more choices, they will probably actually want
that. Even for industrialised countries there are many good
indications that economically speaking an economy is more competitive
with a shrinking population. There are many good reasons for that, and
many haven't understood that. Some believe it is a threat to have a
shrinking population, and that is a very unfortunate misconception.

Euractiv: But a shrinking population always goes together with
wealth, as we can see in Europe with their shrinking populations. The
life we are leading today requires people to have less and less
children because of the cost of living. This is not the case with the
emerging economies, and until they reach that level the overshoot will
have happened.

MW: You wouldn't consider Thailand to be a particularly wealthy
nation, compared to Europe. Their population growth rate has dropped
from 3.5 % to 0.5%. But overall, women have less than two children.
Women's access to family planning is a much bigger determining factor.
You have wealthy situations like the UAE with 3% growth rates.

Euractiv: Moving to the carbon footprint issue, which is a hot
issue at the moment. There are compensation schemes (or upsetting
schemes) which are being put into place. For example, going onto a
plane and then planting a tree somewhere to compensate for that. Isn't
that a way of buying yourself a good conscience whilst continuing to
pollute?

MW: Buying a conscience is all about bottom-line rationality.
We have a collective challenge; it's not just about virtue doing
better than you.

Euractiv: Do you think carbon off-setting schemes are working?
Do you think something else needs to be done?

MW: We are in such a squeeze overall that we need any
technology possible to find out whether it can play a role or not. We
need all kinds of things. But carbon trading may play an important
role, I don't know yet. We need to try these markets out and find out
what happens.

Euractiv: So you are saying carbon dioxide trading schemes
could work but the price is not right yet? Planting a few trees for
your trans-Atlantic flight is simply not enough.

It's not enough, no. We need to try out any innovative scheme, and
then measure to see whether it has any positive impact or not, because
we need a lot of innovation in that area.

Euractiv: You are trying to persuade the EU to move in a
certain direction. What are you trying to get in terms of the next
policy move from the European Commission?

MW: Europe uses around 2½ times more resources than are
available in the European boundaries. There is an enormous risk that
Europe is exposed to overshoot. Some people have started to recognise
it. Even Barroso wrote a foreword for our European Plan Report, where
he said development doesn't work if you don't respect the ecological
limits.

This shows the inconsistency emerging and the recognition that we
really need to get a handle on it. But overall people are still quite
disoriented. We hope to be able to offer a way to navigate tough
policy decisions. How can we manage wealth in a more comprehensive
way? Wealth enables people to live well, and if we destroy it, it will
be very difficult to maintain our well-being, in Europe and elsewhere.

Our mission is to show that, having good accounts, looking at the
ecological footprint, is a way to help Europe maintain its
competitiveness and its position. But primarily, if Europe doesn't get
its act together fast enough, there will be serious hardship.

Euractiv: Do you think Europe is moving in the right direction,
with its efforts on renewables and cutting carbon emissions etc?

MW: One could say it's far too little, too late. But in some
ways we need anything possible, so it is never too late. The costs get
bigger. So Europe would be more cost effective if it invested in such
initiatives.

In order to understand why it is important we need a footprint. Also
in order to understand how rapidly we need to make this change.
Because I still believe we perceive it as a virtuous exercise to be
nicer than the Americans. But who cares what the Americans are doing?
Europe needs to save itself. So if Europe is not able to transform its
economy fast enough, it needs to get its infrastructure into place.

Euractiv: So carbon accounting is too limited in a sense?

MW: Carbon accounting is also an important piece that is
totally consistent with foot-printing. For industrialised countries
slightly over half is carbon foot-printing. But as you are moving out
of carbon aggressively it puts the pressure onto other domains, like
biofuels. So ultimately we need to look at the whole budget which is
planet earth. Carbon is a good start, but if we plan to stay with
carbon then it becomes dangerous.

Copyright EurActiv.com

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