3p Contributor: RP Siegel
Recent Articles
Monsanto’s Misguided Foray Into GMOs Goes Into the Weeds
Those of you who can remember the Vietnam War will be familiar with the term “escalation.” That was when the powers in charge of our “limited military operation” were compelled to increase the size and scope of our involvement, as the enemy increased theirs.
If you remember that, then you will also remember Agent Orange, the powerful chemical defoliant, whose heavy usage resulted in close to 40,000 disability claims from US military personnel who suffered numerous maladies ranging from skin conditions to various cancers as the result of limited exposure to it. As bad as that was, it was minor compared with the 400,000 Vietnamese citizens who were either killed or maimed by the more prolonged exposure they suffered.
Both of those terms will apply to today’s story.
Bio-tech giant Monsanto has now applied for USDA approval on a new variety of genetically-modified corn that is not only resistant to its well-known glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, but is also resistant to the far more potent and dangerous 2,4-D produced by its competitor, Dow Agro-Science. Not surprisingly, with all the friends Monsanto has in the government, the USDA appears likely to approve it.
Why, you might ask, would they develop a new variety of corn that is compatible with its competitor’s product?
Because, as many critics have long maintained, the proliferation of genetically modified crops would eventually lead to the proliferation of herbicide-resistant superweeds, such as pigweed, which is exactly what has happened. Hence, we now have a dangerous escalation of chemical warfare in the fields from which our food is being harvested.
UN Calls Sustainable Development a Top Priority
The UN High-Level Panel Global Sustainability released its report in Addis Ababa yesterday entitled “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing.” The panel’s 99-page report, which will serve as an input to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in June, (otherwise known as the Rio+20 Summit) is a call to action, “to address the sustainable development challenge in a fresh and operational way.”
This document is incredibly rich, beautifully written and filled with a tremendous amount of good thought, clear vision, careful analysis, sober assessment, and useful suggestions for ways to move sustainable development from an abstract concept to the core of mainstream economics.
The High-level Panel on Global Sustainability argues that by making transparent both the cost of action and the cost of inaction, political processes can summon both the arguments and the political will necessary to act for a sustainable future. The long-term vision of the Panel is to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality and make growth inclusive, and production and consumption more sustainable, while combating climate change and respecting a range of other planetary boundaries. In light of this, the report makes a range of recommendations to take forward the Panel’s vision for a sustainable planet, a just society and a growing economy.
The panel’s snapshot of the current state includes the following observations:
Does Sustainability Increase Profits or Not?
A UN-backed survey conducted by Globescan and SustainAbility, of 642 senior executives, campaigners and academics found that the vast majority feel that pressure to deliver short-term financial results is impeding their sustainability efforts. Eight-eight percent of respondents called this pressure a “significant barrier.” These results will by fed into the UNEP report on the business case for the Green Economy that will be released later this year.
Those surveyed also named inappropriate regulations, low awareness of the financial benefits of green practices and low demand for green products and services as important factors.
In response to these results, UNEP executive director Achim Steiner, said. “This survey underlines that governments must play their part, national and internationally, in setting the standards and backing the smart policies needed to promote sustainability over extraction and degradation of the world’s natural resource base,”
Certainly having governments weigh in on the issue would be helpful. But do companies today really have to choose between profitability and sustainability or is this a false choice?
Is There a Better Way to Stop Global Warming?
Most efforts to slow the impact of global warming have focused on reducing carbon emissions, because, according to the EPA, they are the most dominant and the fastest growing greenhouse gas (GHG). But CO2 is only one of several greenhouse gases, which also include methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases, such as hydrofluorocarbons, and soot. A team of scientists led by NASA Goddard’s Drew Shindell (who also works at Columbia’s Earth Institute), in an article published in this month’s issue of Science, suggest that an easier and possibly more effective approach, at least in the short term, would be to focus on methane and soot. Why? Because these two pollutants are both fast acting, so reducing their presence in the atmosphere can have a more immediate impact on the overall GHG concentration. If a two degree Celsius increase in average global temperature is seen as the cliff that we are rapidly driving towards, focusing on methane and soot might actually help to slow us down more quickly than our current approach, which focuses on CO2. Not only that, but according to the paper’s title, reducing these two pollutants, could also improve human health and food security.
What Are the Real Causes of Global Warming?
The folks at Skeptical Science have put together a review of various scientific investigations into the causes of global warming, in hopes of coming up with a definitive answer. This seems like a good time to do this, in the midst of Republican primary season, as the various candidates try to one-up each other on bashing the science in lieu of what their supporters would prefer to hear.
Eight different studies were reviewed, dating from 2000-2012, with the average being just over four years old.
The results are summarized in the chart shown below which shows the causes of global warming over the past 50-65 years, according to six of the studies reviewed that used a variety of methods to reach their conclusions. (The other two studies not shown: Stott[2010] and Foster & Rahmstorf [2011] found the human contribution to be 86% and 100% respectively). The human contributions are shown at the left and natural contributions are shown on the right. As you can see from the chart, in many cases the natural factors actually contribute to global cooling, which is why some of the bars on the left show human contributions to be more than 100%, as they more than offset the naturally occurring cooling trend.
This is a clear message that shows an overwhelming consensus that most if not all of the warming over the past 50 years has been as the result of human activity, despite the fact that each of these studies used different methods to arrive at these conclusions.
RMI Weighs in on Forces Affecting the Solar Market
Jesse Morris, Ned Harvey and Dan Seif of Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) held an online chat session on the forces affecting the solar market last week that was chock full of useful information. The session was held in a Q&A format. The answers are summarized below.
Regarding recent solar bankruptcies and the influx of low-cost modules from China:
Given the global integration of the renewable technology markets, certain countries may capture significant portions of individual pieces of the solar and other renewables’ value chains. RMI hopes that such competition is done according to fair international trade rules. Nevertheless, RMI is working with the DOE and others to determine US whole system costs, and in 2011, the DOE’s Sunshot Initiative indicated that nearly two-thirds (~63 percent) of the cost of residential solar PV installation comes from items outside of solar modules (“balance of system costs”), such as inverters, permitting, taxes, wiring, etc.
What’s more, the ~37 percent of solar PV costs from solar modules includes roughly half non-Chinese modules (CA market in Q1-Q3 ‘11, Bloomberg NEF) as well as distribution and sales revenues which often go to US employees working directly for or under contract with foreign, including Chinese, module manufactures. Therefore less than 19 percent of the cost of solar PV installation goes to revenues captured by Chinese companies for module sales. Furthermore, in the higher technology solar cell/module areas, including thin film PV, US cell manufacturing and R&D remain strong, particularly First Solar, which has maintained nearly the best reported EBIT margin of any large module manufacturer whether crystalline or thin film.
Corruption and Sustainability: Like Oil & Water Do Not Mix
Recently, the Guardian ran a post addressing the question of why eliminating corruption is crucial for sustainability. A first glance the two topics might seem unrelated—the one about criminal behavior and the other about something like environmental responsibility.
Where exactly then, do the two ideas come together?
Merriam-Webster defines corruption as, “impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle,” and also as “inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery).”
A sustainable business, on the other hand, is one whose practices must be in alignment with the company’s core values, which, in turn, must be aligned with those of the larger system and the greater good, both in the immediate present, and with an eye towards future generations. Thus there is an implicit integrity involved.
Corruption short-circuits that alignment, and undermines that integrity, diverting valuable resources into the narrow coffers of a greedy few. It also breaks the chain of responsiveness to market, evolutionary, environmental, or compassionate signals and replaces them with a rigid reordering that has only resource diversion as its sole purpose.
This loss of resiliency results in a brittle structure of misaligned objectives, at cross-purposes, both to each other and the greater good that will not endure, but threatens to take down the host system when it collapses.
The following facts pertaining to corruption are from Transparency International UK.
Although it is inherently difficult to measure, the estimated annual cost of corruption worldwide is $1 trillion. It tends to reduce the GDP growth rate by 0.5-1% in any country in which it occurs. Efforts to fight corruption show as much as a 400% return on investment. 15 percent of companies worldwide (40% in Asia, 60% in the former Soviet Union) are required to pay bribes to win or retain business. Corruption costs Africa roughly 25% of its GDP each year. And in Mexico, nearly half of all bribe demands involved extortion and threat of physical harm.
Southwest Airlines’ Cabin Experience Evolves in a Sustainable Direction
Long known as a company not afraid to think out of the box, Southwest Airlines, one of the most successful airlines operating today, is stepping out ahead of pack again by retrofitting its aircraft cabins with sustainable materials that will also reduce fuel costs by cutting weight.
The $60 million “cabin experience” overhaul, which is expected to be completed in 2013, will begin in March, with a total of 372 of the company’s 737-700s scheduled to receive the new Evolve interior.
The major elements of the new interior are as follows:
- New seats that will be more durable and six pounds lighter. Keeping in mind that everything that goes up, requires fuel to do so, explains how this alone will save the company $10 million in annual fuel costs.
- Seat covers made from recycled leather, which is lightweight, abrasion resistant and costs less.
- Seat frames will be recycled, which will save approximately $50 million
- Sustainable carpeting from Interface, which is designed to be replaceable in sections and is made using a closed loop recycling process
- Life vest pouches will be a pound lighter and take up less room under the seat
- Seat arms, tray tables and latches will be made from aluminum instead of plastic, saving additional weight
- Bulkhead wind screens will be made more durable reducing replacement rate
Is Bill Gates Really Batman?
It was Jon Stewart that first made the reference. He called Bill Gates “Batman” to his face on his TV show. Why Batman?
I think he probably meant Bruce Wayne, Batman’s civilian identity: the eccentric millionaire industrialist, who is also a philanthropist, sworn to do good and serve a greater ideal of justice. Of course, the big-hearted Mr. Wayne dons his cape and mask to perform his good deeds as Batman, supported by his lavish budget and high tech tools that he himself has created for the purpose.
Is this perhaps a new vision of an “Action Hero,” where the very idea of action is transformed from the mastery of violence that is currently glorified in comic books and video games to a new type of technologically informed social and political action marked by non-violence and compassion?
This is a bit far fetched perhaps, but a lighthearted piece in Frugal Dad takes the idea out for a spin, suggesting that perhaps Bill Gates is better than a real world Batman, despite the fact that Batman locks up all those bad guys. The piece has a great infographic and is definitely worth checking out.
So what exactly has Bill gates done to deserve to be considered such a hero besides making a ton of money?
Germany Takes “Power to the People” Literally
Back in the 1960s there was a social uprising in this country. It grew out of the civil rights movement and the protests of the Vietnam War. It was powered largely by young people and other groups who felt alienated by a consolidating centralized power structure of business and government whose interests seemed largely out of sync with their own.
The “movement” deeply influenced the culture of the time, as reflected in books, movies and perhaps most of all in popular music. John Lennon’s 1971 song Power to the People, epitomized the movement’s political edge with its reference to revolution, admonishing listeners to “get on your feet and out on the street.”
That revolution apparently fizzled out, or at least went underground, though there seem to be increasingly numerous signs that some seeds from that time might be starting to sprout today, after a long period of dormancy.
The Occupy Wall Street movement clearly springs to mind as the most obvious example, which has received lots of attention. Certainly the advent of the internet and decentralized renewable energy have provided the kind of tools that may well have sustained its predecessor past the point where it went quiet.
But while this movement, as well as Lennon’s song focused on political and social power, there is a transformation happening around the distribution of physical, electrical power, in a way that is not at all unrelated. Jeremy Rifkin argues in his book The Third Industrial Revolution, that a radical “democratization of energy” is about to take place. The book prescribes, among other things, turning every building in to a power plant through the use of wind or solar on the roof. Sounds like “Power to the People” to me.
The first evidence of this new order must surely be in Germany, where a decentralized energy model has been powerfully embraced by government leaders, with the result being that more than 50 percent of Germany’s 50 GW of renewable power is already being produced, not by utilities, but by private individuals and farms.
EU Passes Law that Says: The Chicken Comes First
We’ve all heard the famous rhetorical question, “which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” Well, I’m here to tell to you that the answer is—it depends.
If you’re the American egg industry, then the answer is clearly, the egg. In fact, they don’t give a hoot about the chickens and would do away with them altogether if they didn’t need them to produce the eggs. Stuffing them in battery cages where they can barely move (67 square inches), in filthy conditions that the Humane Society characterizes as “inherent cruelty.” That is the way that most of the eggs are currently being produced in this country.
In Europe, however, you get a different answer as of January 1st of this year. The European Union passed a law that requires all commercial eggs to be hatched by chickens kept in “free-range barns or enriched cages.” In other words, across the pond, the chicken comes first.
At the minimum, the new “enriched” cages will provide twice as much space per bird as those currently being used in the US, but because the cages are large enough to hold up to 90 birds, that means there is enough room for the hens to spread their wings, perch and walk around.
Not all of the EU countries are ready to allow this new regulation to rule the roost. Eleven countries have not yet signed on to the agreement. Some of Europe’s largest egg producers including Spain and Poland have not yet signed on, despite having 12 years to prepare for this. Other major players, including France, Italy, Greece and Belgium are also non-compliant. That means that eggs produced in those countries will be considered illegal. They will likely find their way into markets indirectly as ingredients in prepared food. It is estimated that free-range eggs cost 8% more to produce than those in battery cages. That seems like a small price to pay to avoid this kind of cruelty.
Tesla to Launch Electric SUV
People at the green end of the spectrum tend to roll their eyes at the very mention of the word SUV. Some have even alleged that the term stands for “supersized unconscionable vehicle.” Others have wondered if rising fuel prices will lead to the demise of their nemesis. It would be nice to think that as people’s awareness and concern about the impact of their behavior on the environment grew, that they might switch to smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles. That’s probably not going to happen fast enough to really make a difference. The fact is, SUVs are fun to drive and people feel safe in them (whether they actually are or not). The good news is that at least the vehicles are getting more efficient.
That trend took another big leap forward with the announcement that Tesla Motors is going to unveil a new all-electric SUV on February 9th. The new Model X SUV is the third model developed by the California company following the Roadster and the Model S. Based on its predecessors, the Model X will surely be a high end, high performance machine, out of the price range of most consumers (the Model S starts at $49,900). But they are still important because they have set the standard for others to follow.
Can Synthetic Biology Produce Cheaper Biofuel? Should It?
News out of Washington at year-end included an announcement from the Department of Energy (DOE) concerning a breakthrough at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in which scientists have developed a methodology for creating “RNA machines” which can be used to enhance or express certain characteristics in a living organism.
This new capability is initially being used at JBEI to modify e-coli bacteria in such a way as to make them more efficient in their digestion of switchgrass, allowing them to convert released sugars into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel at lower cost.
This new RNA manipulation capability, which stems from an advanced type of computer-assisted design (CAD) for bio-molecules, can also be applied to a broad range of applications including medicines to more effectively treat diseases like diabetes and Parkinson’s.
FDA Caves in to Lobbyists on Antibiotics, Putting Public Health at Risk
Maybe it all goes back to high school science. Maybe the reason I’m sitting here, writing, with urgency about the importance of sustainability, is because over the past fifty to a hundred years, businesses, with a few notable exceptions, have spent too much time concentrating on Physics and Chemistry and not enough time on Biology (not to mention Earth Science).
It is Biology, after all, that comprehends the web of connectedness that forms an ecosystem, the fundamental unit of our natural world. And it is our lack of attention to this web that has gotten us into so much trouble. Yet we have been running our world based largely on the laws of Physics and Chemistry, ignoring the laws of Biology at our peril. Today’s story is a prime example.
The FDA is putting the brakes on plans to regulate the consumption of antibiotics by healthy livestock raised for human consumption. The news was conveniently announced during the low news period between Christmas and New Years, despite the fact that the agency has been stalling on their decision since October. They gave no reason for its action, stating only that it intends to “focus its efforts for now on the potential for voluntary reform and the promotion of the judicious use of antimicrobials in the interest of public health.”
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