News

Support builds for the “End Polluter Welfare Act”

Prashanth Kamalakanthan — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:26:38 -0400

The public has reached a strong verdict on the billions of dollars of subsidies that our government hands annually to fossil fuel corporations making historic profits: end them. According to one recent poll, seventy percent of the public opposes giveaways to oil, coal and gas companies, support that largely holds up across the political spectrum.

It’s no wonder. In fiscal year 2011, oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil made $41 billion in profits, meaning that in the fifteen minutes it might take you to read a regular blog post like this one, the company reeled in more than a million dollars in profits. At every level, financing these kinds of corporations with taxpayer money makes no sense.

Congress has so far resisted taking substantive action to reverse this absurd situation. The astronomic sums doled out by the fossil fuel industry in the form of annual campaign contributions might explain much of the inaction and gridlock on Capitol Hill. But a broad coalition of grassroots organizations, public interest groups and environmentalists has now emerged, standing up to say enough is enough.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) lit a fire under our efforts when they introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act two weeks ago. This bill is the boldest, most comprehensive proposal ever introduced to end fossil fuel subsidies, eliminating more than $113 billion in direct subsidies, loopholes, and tax breaks over ten years.

Since we joined Senator Sanders and Congressman Ellison outside the U.S. Capitol on May 10 for the bill’s introduction rally, Friends of the Earth has worked with groups including 350.org, Oil Change, Climate Solutions, Public Citizen, Labor Network for Sustainability, The Nation, Natural Resource Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Environmental Action to build grassroots support behind it. People are clearly fired up. In only ten days, we gathered more than 100,000 signatures from people backing the End Polluter Welfare Act -- 17,291 of them Friends of the Earth activists.

Showing members of Congress the breadth and depth of grassroots support for ending fossil fuel industry subsidies -- and getting more of them to get behind this progressive bill -- is our goal. Echoing the sentiments of the overwhelming public consensus for ending these subsidies, Senator Sanders recently wrote in the Huffington Post:

It is immoral that some in Congress advocate savage cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while those same people vote to preserve billions in tax breaks for Exxon Mobil which is the most profitable corporation in America. It is equally obscene that as those members of Congress fight to continue never-ending fossil fuel subsidies worth tens of billions, they are working overtime to deny a one year extension for key sustainable energy incentives for the emerging wind and solar industries. Instead of passing strong legislation to help reverse global warming, Congress continues the giveaways to the 200-year-old fossil fuel industry even as that industry's carbon pollution wreaks devastation on our planet. Enough is enough.

Surmounting climate change is humankind’s greatest collective challenge at this point. In Bill McKibben’s words, helping out the immense corporations that profit precisely off of this impending disaster is “like giving a fellowship to a graduate student who wants to pursue a thesis on ‘Strategies for Stimulating Doughnut Consumption Among Diabetics.’”

We know that taking on lobbies as powerful as the oil, coal and gas industries will be an uphill battle. But more than 100,000 -- and counting -- have made it clear that business as usual is not an option. The fossil fuel industry will likely push back with corporate contributions and misinformation campaigns, but we must push back harder. Our taxes and our Congress should serve the public, not fantastically wealthy corporations fueling the pollution of our air, water, and climate.

Take action: Sign the petition to show your support for ending fossil fuel subsidies.

Keep the “Dolphin Safe” tuna label safe!

Bill Waren — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:46:12 -0400

One of the best-known and trusted environmental labels is the “dolphin-safe” label that today can be found on much of the tuna sold in the U.S. On May 16, a World Trade Organization appeals panel ruled that this label unfairly discriminates against Mexican tuna fishers, and violates international trade law. Now, the U.S. is likely faced with the choice of either rolling back its standards or face possible trade sanctions from Mexico.

Mexican fishing ships find tuna by following dolphins that swim with tuna. The ships use dangerous purse seine nets that encircle both the dolphins and tuna. Mothers and calves can be separated. Lactating females can be killed. This is not a trivial issue: the dolphins’ reproductive success is threatened by these practices, and simply placing observers on ships, as is now the Mexican practice, is not an adequate safeguard. There can be some serious but unobserved side effects, such as severe stress on dolphins caused by repeated chase-downs, encirclement and entanglement in nets

After years of effort by consumer and environmental advocates, United States in the 1990s developed “dolphin safe” labels for tuna packaging, so that consumers can choose to buy tuna that is not harvested using nets that kill dolphins by the multitude. Many Mexican commercial fishing operations refuse to abide by these “dolphin safe” practices. As a result, in 2008 Mexico sued the United States before a WTO tribunal, where commercial values are given far greater weight than environmental values In September 2011, Mexico won the case, but the U.S. appealed. On May 16, the WTO Appellate Body ruled against the United States, and its ruling was even worse than the lower tribunal decision in terms of legal consequences.

The members of the initial tribunal determined that the U.S. voluntary system of dolphin-safe labeling for tuna packaging was only “more trade-restrictive than necessary.” This suggested that some other system might pass muster. In other words, the September decision implied that providing consumers with such information could be a legitimate government objective – although it is astonishing that WTO law allows the legitimacy of such basic governmental functions to be questioned in this way.

The WTO Appellate Body adopted the view that the U.S. dolphin safe tuna labeling program was discriminatory. This is nonsense given that the U.S. program treats imported and domestic tuna exactly the same – no matter where the tuna is caught, it is subject to the exact same labeling standards. The U.S. labeling system does not ban tuna from Mexico; in fact Mexican-caught tuna can still be sold in the U.S. without the dolphin-safe label.

But instead of letting consumers “vote with their dollars” to persuade Mexican tuna fishers to change their harmful ways, the U.S. now must contemplate weakening our own standards. To make matters worse, this is not an isolated international trade tribunal ruling, nor is it an unusual problem resulting from international trade and investment agreements. The WTO pact, NAFTA and subsequent trade agreements are binding on the United States and contain many provisions that put the profits of multinational corporations ahead of the public interest and the environment.

Despite the fact that at this very moment these trade agreement provisions are harming the ability of the United States to protect the environment, the U.S. is pushing for a new trade deal called the Trans Pacific Partnership – and is keeping the negotiating text secret. The secret TPP text no doubt contains language that is intended to facilitate international legal challenges to environmental laws. Or, as in the case of the WTO litigation on dolphin safe tuna labeling, the TPP text may contain language that the U.S. trade representative does not intend to result in successful challenges to environmental laws, but is so loosely drafted as to have that result. The U.S. trade representative must release the TPP negotiating text so that the public can identify its intended and unintended consequences for environmental policy.

Enbridge confirms plans to build New England tar sands pipeline, announces massive pipeline expansion

Kim Huynh — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:50:17 -0400

Yesterday evening, Canadian pipeline company Enbridge kicked off one of the most sweeping expansions in its history, a $3.2 billion (Canadian) series of pipeline projects that would carry some of the world’s dirtiest oil—tar sands oil—across Canada, the American Midwest, and even New England, a region that currently doesn’t import tar sands.

The extraction and processing of tar sands oil is one of the largest industrial operations in the world. Tar sands oil emits three times more greenhouse gases during production than conventional gasoline, making tar sands oil production the fastest-growing contributor to Canada’s carbon pollution and the continent’s biggest carbon bomb. Tar sands extraction also harms the health and cultural traditions of downstream indigenous communities.

Moving to break ground on Trailbreaker

Enbridge, the largest transporter of Canadian oil exports, further confirmed its scheme yesterday to pipe tar sands oil through New England with the Trailbreaker pipeline project. Trailbreaker would transport tar sands by reversing the direction of oil flowing through two major pipelines—Enbridge Line 9 and the Portland/Montreal Pipeline—along an approximately 750-mile route from Ontario and Quebec in Eastern Canada through Vermont, New Hampshire, and terminating in Portland, Maine’s Casco Bay, where the oil would be exported into the international market on super tankers.

Along its path, Trailbreaker would threaten New England's most important waters, including Sebago Lake, the major drinking water resource for greater Portland, Maine’s largest metropolitan area, and would terminate at Casco Bay, a large, rich estuary near Portland, Maine that is home to a variety of coastal natural resources and a thriving marine economy.

In August 2011, Enbridge asked the Canadian National Energy Board for permission to reverse part of its Line 9 pipeline through Ontario, a furtive move to revive the Trailbreaker project. We joined environmental and public interest groups in the US and Canada to deliver a petition with more than 17,000 signatures from Friends of the Earth activists, demanding that the energy board conduct a thorough review of the pipeline’s likely impacts. All together, our allies on both sides of the border submitted more than 41,000 comments opposing this tar sands pipeline project, smashing through our initial goal of 25,000 comments.

Public hearings on Enbridge’s proposal to reverse Line 9 begin on May 23^rdin London, Ontario—yet yesterday’s announcement makes it overwhelmingly clear that Enbridge is scheming to circumvent a rigorous review process by reversing the entire Line 9 pipeline from Ontario to Montreal, four times the distance the National Energy Board is currently looking at, in its underhanded plot to eventually pipe tar sands through New England. The National Energy Board must order a comprehensive environmental and economic review of Enbridge’s broader ploy to bring tar sands into the US.

Doubling Line 6B: a Kalamazoo disaster redux?

Enbridge’s expansion also includes plans to double the capacity (from 250,000 barrels/day to 500,000 barrels/day) of the very same tar sands pipeline—Line 6B—that burst in the wee hours of the night in July 2010, spilling over a million gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River and causing the largest tar sands spill in US history. Almost two years later, small businesses are still hurting, property values are down, and miles of river remain closed. Residents living near the site of the disaster in Marshall, Michigan are still sick from the spill’s toxins, experiencing seizures, mysterious rashes, headaches, and memory loss. Read the Cornell Global Labor Institute’s study on the public health, economic, and social disruption resulting from the Kalamazoo River spill.

As our Canadian allies at Environmental Defence Canada and Equiterre have put it:

“Getting raw tar sands oil through pipelines is like moving hot, liquid sandpaper that grinds and burns its way through a pipe, thus increasing the chance that weakened pipelines will rupture.”

These pipelines must operate at higher temperatures and pressures to move the thick tar sands through a pipe and are subject to severe problems with leak detection and safety issues from the unstable mixture of heavier and more toxic chemicals. Tar sands pipelines have an abysmal safety record, with a spill rate three times the national average for conventional oil in some parts of the US, putting communities at risk of devastating oil spills and pollution to air and drinking water.

What’s more, the cleanup costs of the Kalamazoo spill have now surpassed $700 million, 10 times as much per liter as the cleanup costs for conventional crude oil, particularly because of tar sands oil’s uniquely corrosive properties. According to the EPA, the clean up of the Kalamazoo spill has been especially difficult because conventional oil response techniques have been ineffective. While conventional oil floats on the surface, tar sands is thick and heavy and sinks in water, making it very difficult to clean up.

More pipelines = more risks to our water, land, and climate

Ultimately, Enbridge’s announcement has massive implications for tar sands development across both Canada and the US and will involve major pipeline expansions and reversals designed to ferry tar sands oil eastward. In addition to reviving the Trailbreaker project and doubling the capacity of the pipeline that led to the Kalamazoo River oil spill, Enbridge’s announced plan includes:

- An expansion of the Alberta Clipper pipeline, bringing in an additional 120,000 barrels/day

- An expansion of part of the Lakehead system between Superior and Flanagan Terminal near Pontiac, Illinois from 400,000 barrels/day to 560,000 barrels/day

- A new pipeline bringing 80,000 barrels/day to Enbridge’s Toledo Pipeline that connects the Enbridge mainline at Stockbridge, Michigan and serves refineries at Toledo, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan

- An expansion of the Spearhead North pipeline between Flanagan and Griffith, Indiana for an additional 330,000 barrels/day

This kind of bait-and-switch isn’t anything new from the tar sands industry—by dividing up its dirty and dangerous projects into smaller segments and expanding already existing pipelines, Enbridge is attempting to shield itself from the type of scrutiny faced by tar sands pipelines like TransCanada’s Keystone XL. But Enbridge can’t hide the dirty truth that no matter how it tries to slice it and dice it, tar sands oil has no place in our clean energy, justice-fueled future.

Synthetic Biology - Big promises backed by bad theory

Eric Hoffman, Stuart Newman, Ph.D. — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:36:33 -0400

Synthetic biology is the newest purported cure-all technology for remedying our social, environmental, and public health ills. As many prominent synthetic biologists proclaimed in 2007, the world “face[s] daunting problems of climate change, energy, health, and water resources. Synthetic biology offers solutions to these issues…Fifty years from now, synthetic biology will be as pervasive and transformative as is electronics today.”i

Bold claims aside, the basic assumption behind synthetic biology—that organismal complexity can be remolded with predictable outcomes using simplistic engineering tools and standardized parts—may divert scientific research and funding away from programs more beneficial to the advancement of science and the public good. In addition, the undeniable power of the technology to alter living systems also contains potential for harm.

Synthetic biology is a collection of techniques and agendas (both research and business) that includes:

Genome-driven cell engineering: the substitution of chemically synthesized DNA or DNA analogues for their natural counterparts in order to change cell behavior and/or produce novel products;DNA-based device construction: the construction of DNA sequences that encode protein or RNA molecules that assemble into complex entities with previously defined or novel functions; andProtocell creation: attempts to define and construct basic living systems from minimal sets of molecules.ii

The field’s implicit and sometimes explicit view of cells and multicellular organisms is that they are devices that implement sets of defined tasks or functions, or if they are not inherently so, they can be engineered to fit this description.iii To quote the synthetic biologist Drew Endy, the goal is “to help make biology easy to engineer.”iv Synthetic biologists view the world through the metaphor of “biology-as-machine,” and as such believe that DNA is the “code” that, once inserted into a “chassis” tells the cellular “computer” how to function.

Genome-driven cell engineering deliberately ignores many of the features of cells and organisms that have emerged from the broad area of systems biology (see below), including recognition of nonlinear responses to small internal or external variations, causality at multiple spatial and temporal scales, many-to-many mapping between genotypes and phenotypes, and the emerging field of epigenomics, which looks at how DNA interacts with its cellular and external environment.

A systematic understanding of the genotype-phenotype relationship is scorned in favor of industrialized natural selection. One highly touted strategy involves mass production of billions of variant E. coli genomes followed by screening for favorable phenotypes.v

Device Construction

DNA-based device construction propounds an alternative, marginally less simplistic view of biological systems, asserted with equal assurance to the genetic program idea though clearly inconsistent with it. This method seeks to produce biochemical-genetic circuits that constitute “standard biological parts” or “BioBricks,”vi molecular Lego blocks that can be put together to build new life forms with desired properties.

The field’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts exemplifies the difficulties of implementing this program in the face of complexities of even the simplest living organisms. Whereas the Registry promises "a collection of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems,"vii presenters at a synthetic biology meeting in July 2010 concluded that, of the 13,413 items then listed in the Registry, 11,084 did not perform as advertised.viii

DNA-based device construction nonetheless capitalizes on and has contributed to the burgeoning field of systems biology, which works not only with genes, but also the physics and chemical dynamics of interacting gene products and cells on multiple spatial and temporal scales.ix Our best understanding of how these systems work comes from mathematical and computational models.

Even so, the results from these models seem to indicate that "partition[ing] of a network into small modules…could in some cases be misleading, as the behavior of these modules is affected to a large extent by the rest of the network in which they are embedded."x In fact, simple genetic networks with minuscule changes can give rise to qualitatively different or even opposite effects.xi Furthermore, many proteins change their structure and function depending on the context.xii

The major conceptual deficiency of synthetic biology, however, arises from its side-stepping of the evolutionary history of all present-day organisms (e.g., those that genome-driven cell engineering seeks to reprogram and DNA-based device construction hopes to embellish). This pertains even to much work in the scientifically most fundamental branch of the field, protocell creation, which seeks to construct the minimal units of life.

When the original, ancient protocells arose more than 3 billion years ago from nonliving components, they most likely contained no DNA, RNA, protein, or membrane-forming lipid (i.e., water-insoluble) molecules; different molecules provided the material substratum for ancient life.xiii,xiv Protocells made from modern biomolecules, however “basic” they may appear, provide little insight into life’s origins.

When it comes to the more practically and commercially driven branches of the field described in this article, there is little acknowledgment that genomes of present-day cells are overwritten and revised records of the billions of years of evolution since DNA became the primary genetic material. Fundamental cellular mechanisms are therefore impossible to decipher by simply reading (or writing) any modern organism’s DNA sequence.

Risk Assessment

While the science behind synthetic biology rests on questionable theory, its potential to alter living systems may cause real harm. Unfortunately these risks have yet to be properly studied. According to an article on avoiding a “synthetic biology disaster” published in Nature, “no one yet understands the risks that synthetic organisms pose to the environment, what kinds of information are needed to support rigorous assessments, or who should collect such data.”xv

A study conducted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars found that of the $430 million spent by the U.S. government on synthetic biology between 2005 and 2010, no projects were dedicated to environmental risk assessments, either from the accidental or intentional release of synthetic organisms into the environment.xvi

The U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues stated in its 2010 report on synthetic biology that “responsible science should reject the technological imperative: the mere fact that something new can be done does not mean that it ought to be done. The history of science here and abroad is sadly full of examples of intellectual freedom exercised without responsibility that resulted in appalling affronts to vulnerable populations, the environment, and the ideals of the profession of science itself.”xvii

Rejection of this technological imperative and recognition of synthetic biology’s inherent limitations and risks requires the use of precaution moving forward.

The recently published Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology,xviii endorsed by 113 civil society organizations from around the world, has called for a moratorium on the release and commercial use of synthetic organisms until government bodies, with full participation of the public, have:

Developed a research agenda guided by the public interest;Ensured that alternative approaches to synthetic biology applications have fully been considered;Conducted full and inclusive assessments of the implications of this technology, including but not limited to devising a comprehensive means of assessing the human health, environmental, and socio-economic impacts of synthetic biology and preventing harms where they are present; and,Developed national and international oversight and security mechanisms equipped to keep pace with the risks as synthetic biology technologies develop.

Until such time, it is ill-advised to move ahead with synthetic biology anywhere outside the laboratory.

For a different take on synthetic biology, click here.

Eric Hoffman (EHoffman@foe.org) is food & technology campaigner for Friends of the Earth. Stuart Newman, Ph.D., is professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College.

Citations:
i. The Ilulissat Statement. June 2007. <http://www.research.cornell.edu/KIC/images/pdfs/ ilulissat_statement.pdf>.
ii. O’Malley, M.A., A. Powell, J.F. Davies, and J. Calvert. 2008. Knowledge-making distinctions in synthetic biology. Bioessays 30 (1): 57_65.
iii. Ball, P. 2004. Synthetic Biology: Starting from scratch. Nature 431 (7009): 624-626. See quote of Tom Knight, a senior computer scientist in the MIT School of Engineering and an originator of the BioBrick notion as stating, "an alternative to understanding complexity is to get rid of it."
iv. See: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Endy:Research#Synthetic_Biology
v. Bohannon, J. "The Life Hacker." Science 333, no. 6047 (2011): 1236-7.
vi. A trademarked coinage of the BioBricks Foundation: http://biobricks.org/
vii. See: http://partsregistry.org/Main_Page
viii. Kean, S. 2011. A lab of their own. Science 333 (6047): 1240_1241.
ix. Newman, S.A. 2003. The fall and rise of systems biology. Genewatch. 16 (4): 8_12.
x. Isalan, M., C. Lemerle, K. Michalodimitrakis, C. Horn, P. Beltrao, E. Raineri, M. Garriga-Canut, and L. Serrano. 2008. Evolvability and hierarchy in rewired bacterial gene networks. Nature 452 (7189): 840_845.
xi. Isalan, M. 2009. Gene networks and liar paradoxes. Bioessays 31 (10): 1110_1115.
xii. Uversky, V.N. 2011. Multitude of binding modes attainable by intrinsically disordered proteins: A portrait gallery of disorder-based complexes. Chemical Society Reviews 40 (3): 1623_1634.
xiii. Budin, I. and J.W. Szostak. 2010. Expanding roles for diverse physical phenomena during the origin of life. Annual Review of Biophysics 39: 245_263.
xiv. Deamer, D. and A.L. Weber. 2010. Bioenergetics and life’s origins. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2 (2): a004929.
xv. Dana, Genya V., Todd Kuiken, David Rejeski, and Allison A. Snow. "Four Steps to Avoid a Synthetic-biology Disaster." Nature 483 (2012): 29
xvi. Trends in Synthetic Biology Research Funding in the United States and Europe. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Synthetic Biology Project, June 2010.http://www.synbioproject.org/process/assets/files/6420/final_synbio_funding_web2.pdf.
xvii. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. 2010. New Directions: The Ethics of Synthetic Biology and Emerging Technologies, December 2010, Washington, D.C.
xviii. "Global Coalition Calls for Oversight of Synthetic Biology." Friends of the Earth U.S., 13 Mar. 2012. Web. <http://www.foe.org/news/blog/2012-03-global-coalition-calls-oversight-synthetic-biology>. Full report found at: http://bit.ly/GQC7zQ

Activists demand Obama save the Arctic from Shell oil exploration

Prashanth Kamalakanthan — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:02:17 -0400

Activists from a broad coalition of environmental groups including Friends of the Earth, Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity, Ocean Conservancy and Alaska Wilderness League, converged yesterday in front of the White House to demand that President Obama take bold, courageous steps to prevent Royal Dutch Shell from destroying the Arctic's invaluable ecology with harmful oil drilling.

Under the name M15, the May 15th "Million Mobilization to Save the Arctic," coalition activists heard from environmental leaders, native Alaskans, and others in working in solidarity to protect the Arctic Ocean and the people and wildlife that depend on it from rapacious oil extraction. Together, we delivered a petition to President Obama signed by more than one million Americans, including 18,314 Friends of the Earth activists.

Speakers emphasized the dangers in allowing multinational corporations like Shell to drill in the Arctic's remote Chukchi and Beaufort seas, delicate ecosystems that have long sustained some of America's most iconic wildlife: polar bears, walrus, ice seals, bowhead whales, beluga whales, eiders and others. Representatives of some of these beloved species were among the protesters, including a fully costumed polar bear and walrus that rallied the crowd during chants and speeches. Many event attendees also donned polar bear masks to represent the biological toll of oil drilling.

A key point highlighted during the rally is the enormous risk and uncertainty surrounding oil exploration in the Arctic. While the Arctic Ocean's central role in regulating Earth's climate and sustaining coastal communities is well established, there is a conspicuous absence of scientific knowledge regarding the effects of industrial activity on this fragile, culturally significant marine ecosystem.

Moreover, as Dr. Brent Blackwelder, President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth, reminded the protesters, "Shell's horrendous track record of oil pollution in Nigeria," where the people of the Niger Delta have over the years suffered thousands of spills, exposes "the lie to its claims to be able to drill safely."

Despite these pressing concerns, the Department of the Interior and other federal agencies are still considering approvals for Arctic drilling leases sold by the Bush administration. Coalition protesters were clear in their emphatic demand that President Obama halt this process immediately.

Blackwelder echoed many of the protesters' shared sentiments when he stated: "There is no shortage of sound plans for getting off oil and coal over the next several decades. These plans offer the route to a less polluted planet, a healthier population, and a way to reduce the risk of runaway climate destabilization."

For protesters, saving the Arctic means sustaining our planet.

Naval activity imperils whales

Marcie Keever — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:26:17 -0400

Fred Felleman, Friends of the Earth’s Northwest consultant, stood on the dock in Everett, WA, this past February capturing evidence of the U.S. Navy’s active sonar use with a hydrophone. But the sonar gradually became so loud it could be heard standing at the dock without any special equipment. He was out on the dock that day because earlier in the month, on February 11, a female orca identified as L-112 was discovered washed up on Long Beach, WA. While Fred’s evidence doesn’t prove that sonar or an explosion was the cause of L-112’s death, navy training exercises that involve the use of sonar and explosives have been associated with cases of whales being injured or deafened in the past.

Fred has been studying orcas since 1980, and for the past several years he has been at the forefront of a fight in the Northwest to protect critical habitats from the U.S. and Canadian navies’ training and operational exercises.

The inland waterways of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State and British Columbia, known as the Salish Sea are home to the Southern Resident killer whale. These orcas are critically endangered; just 86 individual whales comprise the three family groups or pods known as J, K and L pods.

These amazing marine mammals are at risk from any number of threats: dwindling food sources, particularly Chinook salmon, which itself is a threatened species; accumulating contaminants such as PCBs and PBDEs found in their in their fatty prey; and escalating risk of oil spills and noise pollution from ships that interferes with the orca’s echolocation method of detecting fish. On top off all this, orcas have to contend with the literally deafening and sometimes fatal sound of Navy sonar and explosives.

The U.S. Navy’s Northwest Training Range Complex stretches from the inland marine waters of Puget Sound, west to the outer coast of Washington, and south to Northern California, encompassing more than 126,000 square nautical miles — an area nearly equivalent in size to the state of California. Despite this vast range, there are currently very few guidelines for when and where the navies can conduct training exercises.

In the wake of L-112’s death, Friends of the Earth, in coalition with other groups, found evidence that the U.S. and Canadian navies used active sonar and explosives in Puget Sound in February. We sent letters asking them to investigate the cause of L-112’s death, and the National Marine Fisheries Service has opened an official investigation.

Friends of the Earth is demanding that the Navy put in place restrictions on the timing and location of sonar exercises and use of explosives, in order to protect sensitive marine life, before it ramps up training off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts. We have joined several other environmental groups and tribes in suing the federal government for its failure to adequately protect the whales from sonar and explosive use. In addition, Friends of the Earth has joined a group of 20 scientists that represent much of the Northwest killer whale research community, including Fred Felleman, with a simple message for both the U.S. and Canadian navies: keep life threatening high-intensity sonar and explosives out of orca critical habitat.

Scientists are still trying to determine what caused L-112's death and we will post updates on the outcome of the investigation into L-112’s death on our blog at www.foe.org/news/archives/2012-05-naval-activity-imperils-whales.

Endangered orcas display their vulnerability to Canadian naval activities in the San Juan Islands near Boundary Pass
Photo Credit: Fred Felleman, NW Consultant, Friends of the Earth

L-112 shows her characteristic tight family bond with her mother L-86 near the San Juan Islands
Photo Credit: Ken Balcomb, Center for Whale Research

Understanding E15: the dangers of more ethanol for consumers and the environment

Michal Rosenoer — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:55:08 -0400

Today, the majority of U.S transportation fuel is comprised of approximately 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, a blend known as E10. However, the ethanol industry recently cleared all federal hurdles required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to sell a new fuel blend – E15 – at stations nationwide. E15, a mix of up to 15 percent ethanol with 85 percent gasoline, is now eligible for sale, although costs associated with infrastructure development and state regulations may keep it out of gas stations for the time being.

The latest science on E15 clarifies the fuel’s damaging impacts on the environment, public health, and consumers. Risks of increasing gasoline’s ethanol content by 50 percent – from E10 to E15 – include:

Environmental Damage:

Public Health Concerns:

More air pollutants (e.g. nitrous oxide and formaldehyde);
Leaks from underground storage tanks;
Drinking water contamination;

Exacerbating global food insecurity:

Costs to consumers:

Decreased fuel economy;
Damage to older cars and trucks, and to small and off-road engines;
Voided engine warranties.

The effort to replace gasoline with ethanol is misguided and dangerous. Adding small, well-tested amounts of oxygenated additives like ethanol to transportation fuel can help gasoline burn more efficiently. However, the effort to replace traditional gasoline with ethanol, even in small quantities, will lead to negative consequences for the environment, the public, and consumers. E15 and corn ethanol cannot be part of our clean energy future.

Ethanol industry toots its own horn, ignores the cost of ethanol to American taxpayers, consumers, and the environment

Michal Rosenoer — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:29:16 -0400

Today the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for the ethanol industry, released a report claiming corn ethanol reduces gas prices at the pump.

It is no surprise that a report bought by the corn ethanol corporations champions their industry. The Renewable Fuels Association claims are dubious at best. The real cost of ethanol is being born by the American public and the environment.

Consumers are paying more at the grocery checkout line and suffering engine damage from the use corn ethanol. Ethanol is also costing us the land, water, and air that we – and our children – depend on. You can’t measure the cost of pollution at the gas pump.

The public shouldn’t be duped by corporate schemes to push a dirty, polluting product.

Enforceable environmental standards must be included in Trans Pacific trade agreement

Bill Waren — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:02:00 -0400

Dateline Dallas: I arrived Tuesday, May 8, in this north Texas city for ten days of intense activity around a new regional trade pact called the Trans Pacific Partnership. During this week and a half, we have scheduled formal and informal meetings with negotiators, public teach-ins, civil society meetings and a major demonstration. Currently, Singapore, Malaysia, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, Australia, Peru, Vietnam and the United States are participating in talks, but Japan, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and other regional economic powers are now seeking or may soon seek to join. The U.S. negotiating team, backed up by scores of corporate lobbyists, is pushing hard to seal the TPP deal, which has the potential to not only be most expansive trade agreement the U.S has ever entered, but also one of the most socially unfair and one of the most dangerous for the environment.

What we are fighting for

One overarching civil society demand relates the way the TPP negotiations are conducted: most of the negotiating materials are kept secret from the public, but not from the official corporate advisors who are pushing hard for a "NAFTA of the Pacific.” While the majority of Americans are barred from knowing what's taking place in negotiations, approximately 600 corporate representatives have been named "cleared advisors," giving them regular access. This secrecy prevents a meaningful public debate about the consequences of the TPP agreement. Friends of the Earth is demanding the immediate release of the negotiating text.

On the environmental front, Friends of the Earth is telling negotiators that the TPP must include, among other key reforms, an environment chapter that does more than pay lip service to countries’ obligations to enforce domestic environmental protections and abide by multilateral environmental agreements. This means that the TPP environment chapter must be enforceable not merely through diplomatic consultations, but also through lawsuits before international tribunals with the authority to authorize sanctions.

Such a demand is well within the range of possibility. To the credit of the Obama administration, the Korea Free Trade Agreement, the most recent U.S. trade pact to come into force, does provide the means for effective enforcement. Chapter 20 of the Korea FTA, on environment, calls on both parties to enforce environmental laws at the national level and to observe listed multilateral environmental agreements. And, provision is made for state-to-state dispute resolution to enforce these obligations. The TPP environment chapter must take the same approach.

That’s not to say the Korea FTA is perfect on this matter; strictly state and local environmental regulations are exempt from chapter 20 coverage under the U.S.-Korea FTA, significantly limiting its efficacy. Many environmental regulations dealing with water or wildlife conservation, for example, involve state and local governments in the U.S. and “sub-national” governments in other countries. They were not covered under chapter 20 of the Korea FTA, even though water policy issues, for example, are frequent topics of international trade or investment litigation. Negotiators in Dallas need to close this loophole as they take up the TPP environment chapter.

All of that said, even if this loophole is closed and enforceable standards are adopted, there is no guarantee that the parties will spend the political capital necessary to effectively enforce their own laws, obey obligations under multilateral environmental agreements, or invoke state-to-state dispute mechanisms to enforce other parties’ compliance. So, environmental groups must remain vigilant and prepared to mobilize politically to hold governments accountable.

While in Dallas, other priority demands include:

Drop the investment chapter from the agreement, or at least exclude authorization for investor-state dispute resolution. Investor-state resolution mechanisms allow business-friendly tribunals to assess massive money damages against governments to compensate corporations for the cost of complying with environmental and climate policies, as well as other public interest measures;

Exclude intellectual property protections for patents on plants and animals. Also, exclude any other provisions that facilitate trade and commerce in genetically engineered plants and animals, and include provisions that preserve the authority of governments to enforce strict precautionary regulations and labeling requirements for products produced using genetic manipulation techniques -- notably synthetic biology; and

Exclude the regulatory coherence chapter, proposed by the United States that could promote the use of business-friendly, cost-benefit analysis to hamstring environmental or other public interest regulations.

These four TPP issues related to the chapters on environment, investment, intellectual property and regulatory coherence are not the only provisions of concern to environmentalists. Effective environmental and public health policies also could be compromised by chapters relating to trade in goods, services and government procurement, among others. The U.S. model for the Trans Pacific trade deal needs top to bottom reform. Friends of the Earth is demanding a fair deal for the environment or no deal at all.

San Onofre's steam generator failures could have been prevented

Becca Connors — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:00:00 -0400

A summary of the Fairewinds report, San Onofre's steam generators failures could have been prevented, commissioned by Friends of the Earth and released May 2012.

Background

The San Onofre nuclear power plant, located between Los Angeles and San Diego, has been kept shut for the past three and half months by Southern California Edison, after radioactivity leaked into the atmosphere.

During that time there has been no official statement by Edison company to describe the totality of its investigation of the causes of the leak. On the contrary, Edison has been warning the public of blackouts if the plant is not operating and has revealed that it was considering a restart in June 2012, a statement shot down by the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Friends of the Earth, by retaining Fairewinds, has supplied the public with two technical reports shedding light on the causes and extent of the problem. This is the third report in that series.

It reveals, in unmistakeable detail, why and how an attempt to cut regulatory corners resulted in a clear and present danger to the people of southern California not to mention an eight hundred million dollar mistake.

The reports essential findings are:

the Edison company deliberately sought approval from the NRC of its new Steam Generators as a “like-for like replacement” to avoid a more thorough license amendment and review process;
the new design did in fact make seven significant design changes, any one of which required a thorough analysis of the change, a public hearing and approval of a license amendment by the NRC;
the vital necessity for safety required by the NRC licensing process for a changed design is demonstrated by San Onofre where “it is likely the more thorough review would have identified the design and fabrication inadequacies” - for example the NRC would have identified the fact that Edison used a Mitsubishi computer model to evaluate the changes, even though that model was not capable of analysing the Combustion Engineering (CE) design at San Onofre, but only the very different Westinghouse design;
the physical changes from the original to new steam generators are very real and very significant, they include:

1 – the original design had a unique tube support to prevent vibration – these supports were changed in the new design;
2 – the main structural stay cylinder was removed;
3 – 400 additional tubes were packed into an already packaged design;

as a result of the design changes the top of the new steam generator is now “starved of water therefore making tube vibration inevitable”;
the tubes are now “at risk of bursting in a main steam accident and spewing radioactivity into the air”;
vibration is the result not the root cause of the steam generators problems at San Onofre;
plugging cannot repair design changes that cause the tubes to collide with each other;

Non-solutions

Operating at lower power

1 – reducing power does not provide a remedy for the underlying structural problems that are creating the vibration that has damaged and will continue to damage the tubes deep inside the San Onofre steam generators;
2 – reducing power will not change the pressure inside or outside the tubes - previously damaged tubes will continue to vibrate damaging surrounding tubes and tube supports and worsen the existing damage;
3 – lower power might create a resonate frequency at which vibration might increase without notice;
4 – historical evidence at other reactors have shown that operating at lower power has not been an effective solution.

Solutions

1 – repair in place by cutting off top of the steam generators to allow personnel to access, may be possible and would take as long as 18 months and cost an estimated US$ 400 million;
2 – after additional analysis of flow patterns it may be possible to change the internal structure to get more water into the upper U-bend regions or by replacing the steam water separators;
3 - the only solution that minimizes the safety steam generator risks at San Onofre is to replace the existing steam generators through the license amendment process.

Conclusion

A nuclear plant with tube vibration greatly magnifies the risk if a steam line accident were to occur. Vibration induced damage would cause an “inordinate amount of radiation” to contaminate “one of the most heavily populated area in the United States.”

The only solution that would ensure that the steam generators would perform in the same way as the original generators at San Onofre is to replace them through the license amendment process.

Resources

Read the full report.