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Featured stories in this issue...
Burying the Future
The "Group of Eight" (G8) nations announced this week that they aim
to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to half of 2005 levels by
the year 2050. How will they do it?
Memo on the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act
"Growing scientific evidence of human contamination with hazardous
chemicals and mounting global toxic pollution underscores the urgency
of reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)."
Down and Dirty
How carbon farming, the practise of putting CO2 back into the soil,
can help fight global warming.
The Case for Efficiency
Energy efficiency can save trillions in national costs, but its
side benefits are often even more valuable: 6% to 16% higher labor
productivity in efficient offices, 20% to 26% faster learning in well-
day-lit schools, 40% higher sales in well-day-lit shops, faster
healing in efficient hospitals.
Acidifying Oceans Add Urgency To CO2 Cuts
"We need to consider ocean chemistry effects, and not just the
climate effects, of CO2 emissions. That means we need to work much
harder to decrease CO2 emissions. While a doubling of atmospheric CO2
may seem a realistic target for climate goals, such a level may mean
the end of coral reefs and other valuable marine resources."
This Is How the World Ends
"What makes this such a terrifying book is it isn't based on
theoretical mathematics. Rapid increases in greenhouse gases have shut
down the ocean conveyor several times before, resulting in severe
climate change and mass extinction. If Ward's analysis is correct, we
know what caused it and we know how to make it not happen again. The
question is: can we save us from ourselves?"
The Perils of Playing Nice
"In all these examples, we see reluctance on the part of
organisations and people to go beyond the bounds of perceived
acceptability. This results in the advocacy of solutions that, even if
fully implemented, would not actually solve the problem."
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From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News #166, Jul. 10, 2008
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BURYING THE FUTURE
By Peter Montague
The "Group of Eight" (G8) nations met for 3 days in Hokkaido, Japan
this week and hammered out a new energy strategy for the planet. The
G8 are the world's 8 richest nations: Canada, England, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the U.S.
The official G8 declaration did not mention it, but Japan's Prime
Minister announced at a press conference that,
"We, the G8, arrived at a common view which is to seek to adopt as a
global target the goal of at least a 50% reduction of global emissions
of greenhouse gases (GHG) by 2050."
Despite the weak language ("arrived at a view to seek to adopt as a
global target..."), it appears that the G8 made some sort of
commitment to reduce greenhouse gases to 50% of 2005 emission levels
by 2050.
The 50% reduction below 2005 levels is spelled out quite clearly in
Figure 2 of a document prepared for the G8 summit by the International
Energy Agency (IEA) called "IEA Work for the G8: 2008 Messages."
So here's the deal:
In 2005, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were roughly 28 billion
metric tonnes (one tonne = 2200 pounds). CO2 is the main greenhouse
gas thought to be causing global warming. If "business as usual"
continues, this 28 billion tonnes per year will rise to 62 billion
tonnes per year by 2050, growing 1.8% per year for the next 45 years.
The total emitted during the 45 years would be nearly 2 trillion
tonnes of CO2. Total CO2 emissions during the 20th century were about
1 trillion tonnes of CO2, so the "business as usual" scenario
represents a huge increase in CO2 emissions compared to the 20th
century.[1] Yes, it will be getting hot in here, if we don't
change our ways.
As the IEA put it, "Concerted global action is urgently needed to
address today's daunting energy challenges. Without such action... the
threat of climate change will become a devastating reality."
So to avert to the "devastating reality" of climate change the G8
agreed to cut global CO2 emissions back to 14 billion tonnes per year
by the year 2050, half of where global emissions were in 2005. They
hope this will stabilize CO2 concentration in the atmosphere at 450
parts per million and prevent the earth's surface temperature from
rising more than 2 to 3 degrees C. (3.6 to 5.4 degrees F.) this
century.
Let's leave aside the question of whether a 50% cut below 2005 levels
will be adequate. Suffice it to say that there are eminent climate
scientists who think we need to stabilize C02 in the atmosphere at
350 ppm or even 325 ppm. CO2 in the atmosphere is presently at 385 ppm
and rising about 2 ppm per year. To get back to 350 or 325 ppm would
require far steeper cuts than 50% by 2050.
How does the G8 expect to reach its 2050 goal of 50% below 2005? The
IEA says...
** Renewables will provide 21% of the needed cut.
** Power generation efficiencies and fuel switching (unspecified) will
provide 7% of the needed cut.[2]
** End use fuel switching (unspecified) will provide 11% of the needed
cut.
** End use electrcity efficiency will provide another 12% and end use
fuel efficiency will provide 24% of the needed cut.
** The world must also build 960 to 1280 nuclear power plants between
2010 and 2050, each with a capacity of 1000 megawatts (MW). This will
provide 6% of the needed cut.
** The world must also build 1200 to 1400 new coal-fired power plants,
each with a capacity of 500 MW, and bury their CO2 in the
ground, hoping it will stay there forever. This will provide 9% of
the needed cut.
** The world must also build 40 to 800 gas-fired power plants, each
with a capacity of 500 MW, and bury their CO2 in the ground,
hoping it will stay there forever. This will provide 10% of the needed
cut.
In other words, 25% of the needed cuts will come from building nuclear
power plants (with their threat of spreading nuclear weaponry, and
their attendant long-lived radioactive wastes) and from burning coal
and burying liquified, pressurized CO2 in the ground. The IEA did not
say so, but these hazardous wastes will have to be passed along to the
next generation, perhaps with a note that begins, "Sorry to have to
tell you this, but we're handing you a couple of problems that you and
your grandchildren will not be able to ignore...."
==============
[1] For source of data, see footnote 3 in Rachel's #945.
[2] IEA says it plans to publish more details in a document called
"Towards a Sustainable Evergy Future -- IEA Programme of Work on
Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development" to be made
available at www.iea.org, but we can't find it there as of today
(July 10, 2008).
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From: The Networker, Jul. 7, 2008
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MEMO ON THE KID-SAFE CHEMICALS ACT
To: The Honorable Frank Lautenberg, United States Senate; The
Honorable Hilda Solis, United States House of Representatives; The
Honorable Henry Waxman, United States House of Representatives
From: Carolyn Raffensperger, Executive Director; Ted Schettler,
Science Director; Joseph H. Guth, Legal Director, Science &
Environmental Health Network
Re: The Kid Safe Chemicals Act of 2008
We are writing to convey several remarks regarding The Kid-Safe
Chemicals Act of 2008 (KSCA). The Science & Environmental Health
Network (SEHN) is a non-profit organization dedicated to implementing
the precautionary principle as a basis for environmental and public
health policy. SEHN has worked on chemicals policy at the national,
state and local levels for many years.
KSCA represents a welcome, long overdue effort to improve the
management of chemicals in commerce over that provided by the federal
Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA). Numerous reports by government,
universities, and environmental health advocates over the years have
demonstrated the manifold deficiencies of TSCA. They have highlighted
TSCA's outdated and inadequate approach for protecting communities,
workers, consumers, children, and the environment from dangerous
chemicals as well as its failure to promote industrial development of
safer chemicals. Growing scientific evidence of human contamination
with hazardous chemicals and mounting global toxic pollution
underscores the urgency of reforming TSCA. We congratulate you and
your staffs for developing a serious proposal for this much needed
reform.
We respectfully offer several comments for your consideration. Our
first comment relates to the importance of considering cumulative
impacts in developing the overarching goals of a chemicals policy.
Then we follow with more specific comments directed to the structure
of KSCA as it is currently written.
A. KSCA Should Seek to Reduce Cumulative Impact of Chemicals
As the centerpiece of its approach for controlling hazardous chemicals
in commerce, KSCA applies a specific "safety standard" separately to
each individual chemical. As it is defined in the Act, this safety
standard requires not that each chemical be absolutely safe, but only
that it, taken alone, presents no more than a specified level of
threat. Thus, subject only to this safety standard, an unlimited
number of chemicals that are capable of causing cancer, reproductive
harm, neurological harm, and virtually every other form of damage to
human health and the environment will be permitted by KSCA to remain
in commerce, to be present in products used by all members of our
society (including children), and to be disseminated into the
environment.
The limitation of this approach to managing chemicals is that it does
not take account of the cumulative impact on human health and the
environment of the tens of thousands of chemicals in global commerce.
By "cumulative impact" we mean not just the effect of chemicals in
commerce in combination with each other, but also in combination with
the myriad chemicals that originate as pollutants (such as those that
result from combustion of fuels, chemical degradation, and various
industrial processes) and in combination with all the other causes of
adverse effects on human health and the environment that are occurring
throughout the world today.
This issue is of particular concern for mutagens, carcinogens, and
reproductive/developmental toxicants (which affect multiple
generations) and for persistent or bioaccumulative chemicals that
remain in the environment (the latent dangers of which are committed
to both ourselves and future generations, whether we recognize those
dangers or not). Because cumulative impacts are not controlled by the
Act, or even assessed, many chemicals that individually meet the
safety standard will undoubtedly still contribute to adverse effects
on human health and the environment. This problem will only grow as
the world continues to become industrialized and as global volume of
chemicals and chemical pollution continues to grow.
The chemicals industry should be accountable for all of the cumulative
contributions of its products to adverse effects on human health and
the environment, including both current and future generations. Just
as the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 was not up to the task of
regulating the rapidly growing chemicals industry of the late
twentieth century, no chemicals law that fails to account for the
problem of cumulative impacts will be up to the task of protecting
human health and the environment in the twenty-first century.
Accordingly, we believe that a comprehensive chemicals law should
prevent chemicals in commerce from cumulatively contributing to
adverse effects on human health and the environment. It should include
a set of incentives that will motivate a continual reduction in the
hazardous properties of chemicals, and should not be structured solely
around a safety standard for individual chemicals that will allow an
unlimited number of harmful chemicals to continue in commerce. It
should create tools for assessing the cumulative impact of chemicals
and should incorporate legal structures designed to promote the
development of alternatives that are less hazardous, persistent, or
bioaccumulative even than those that are deemed to meet the law's
safety standard. The law should reflect a policy that a continual
search for safer alternatives and their use must become the hallmark
of the chemicals industry in the United States and throughout the
world.
We recognize that KSCA intends to implement mandatory public chemical
information requirements. One of the salutary functions of such public
information is to provide information to the marketplace that will
enable the market to respond to consumer demand for safer
alternatives, and thus provide the chemicals industry with a market-
based motivation to continually develop safer products. However, there
is a need for additional government policy instruments designed to
strongly discourage use of hazardous chemicals, especially including
carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive/development toxicants and
persistent or bioaccumulative chemicals. Some examples of such
instruments are:
** Industrial manufacture and use of chemicals with problematic
intrinsic properties could be subjected to publicly available
alternatives analyses that provide society with available options to
such manufacture and use.
** Taxes or fees on hazardous chemicals designed to discourage their
use.
** Requirements for those marketing hazardous chemicals to invest in
research on safer alternatives.
** Time-limited authorizations for hazardous chemicals designed to
prompt periodic review of the need for them.
** It may be appropriate in some circumstances for government to
regulate use of a hazardous chemical in favor of a safer alternative.
While this is an incomplete list of preliminary ideas, we believe it
is essential that further effort be committed to developing such
instruments and incorporating them into a law designed to promote
continual reduction of the cumulative impact of chemicals in commerce.
B. Comments on the Structure of KSCA
KSCA contains numerous features that we strongly approve of and
believe to be critical components of a modern chemicals policy. We
urge that these features be maintained in the law and that they be
strengthened in accord with our comments.
1. The safety standard defined by KSCA focuses solely on whether a
chemical poses harm to human health and the environment with respect
to available data. It rejects TSCA's inappropriate balancing of such
harm against vested industrial economic interests (although exemptions
are available in some circumstances). It thus establishes a baseline
standard of risk to human health and the environment that each
chemical in commerce must meet in order to remain on the market.
2. KSCA places the burden of proof on the chemical industry to
demonstrate that their products meet the safety standard. It rejects
TSCA's inappropriate and outdated approach of presuming chemicals are
safe and then requiring EPA to prove otherwise. Chemicals that are
found in umbilical cord blood are in particular presumed to fail the
safety standard.
3. KSCA applies to all chemicals in commerce, whether already on the
market or yet to be introduced. It rejects the inappropriate
preference built into TSCA for older chemicals that were already on
the market when TSCA was passed and that still constitute the large
majority by weight of chemicals in commerce.
4. KSCA requires the chemical industry to produce a minimum publicly
available data set for all chemicals in commerce as a condition for
placing or keeping them on the market.
While we strongly support this requirement, we are nevertheless
concerned that as written KSCA may be susceptible to other
interpretations and thus may not make this requirement ironclad. We
believe that a mandatory statutorily defined "no data, no market"
requirement is a prerequisite of effective chemicals management. The
public availability of safety information would not just enable better
government protection of human health and the environment but would
also, as we have mentioned, enable the existing demand for safer
chemicals to help drive the market toward producing safer products.
Accordingly, the bill should unambiguously provide that a defined data
set sufficient to enable a reasonable evaluation of the risks
associated with every chemical in commerce by government, industry,
and consumers must be made publicly available by a date(s) certain.
5. The safety standard applies to all aggregate exposures to a
chemical in commerce from all uses as well as legacy exposures from
existing environmental contamination. This "aggregate exposure" is a
far cry from the kind of cumulative impact of chemicals that we
believe the law should seek to control, for it focuses only on the
effect of each chemical individually. Nevertheless, we believe the
safety standard should apply to aggregate exposures and should not be
balkanized into evaluation of small increments of exposure from
particular uses. What is important to society is that chemicals
themselves be safe, not just that each individualized use would be
safe if it were the only use.
Accordingly, the safety standard should evaluate aggregate exposure
from all uses of each chemical and existing environmental
contamination; industry should be required to ascertain and report all
uses of each chemical; and any authorization under the Act must
specify and apply only to the exposures and uses considered in
evaluating the safety standard.
6. The safety standard is intended to protect the "public welfare." We
interpret this term as including protection of the environment and
non-human species, and strongly support such protection. We believe
that the meaning of this term should be made more explicit in the law
to ensure its broad application. Environmental contamination by toxic
chemicals is an important component of the ecological crisis we face
today, which is diminishing the habitability of the Earth for all
people. Chemical manufacturers should be accountable for damage their
products contribute to the environment and general public welfare as
well as for direct damage to human health.
Finally, implementation of the safety standard established by the Act,
like implementation of any technical legal test, will always be
subject to uncertainty and error. Inevitably, chemicals will
erroneously be permitted on the market even though they would not in
fact meet the safety standard if more were known about them. Society's
confidence that chemicals in commerce actually do meet the "reasonable
certainty of no harm" safety standard could be materially enhanced by
requiring that industry demonstrate that chemicals satisfy that test
by clear and convincing evidence rather than by the less stringent
legal standard of preponderance of the evidence. Also, robust
provisions for ensuring transparent decision-making and public input
will enhance society's confidence in the safety of chemical products.
Reforming U.S. chemicals policy is a major undertaking that will take
further thought and work. And yet, it is a doable task. Europe has
taken significant steps to reform its management of chemicals already,
and California is proceeding under its Green Chemistry Initiative. The
time for chemicals policy reform has come.
Thank you for your hard work in developing the Kid Safe Chemicals Act
of 2008 over the last several years. You have demonstrated courage and
commitment to public health. We look forward to working with you on
the details of this legislation to strengthen it and to ensure that it
will in fact enable government to protect Americans and the
environment from the cumulative impact of dangerous chemicals,
establish a transparent chemicals market that will allow consumers and
industrial users of chemicals to choose safer alternatives, and
provide a system of incentives that will motivate the chemicals
industry to actively and continually develop and use safer chemicals.
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From: Ode Magazine, Jun. 1, 2008
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DOWN AND DIRTY
By Jay Walljasper
Of all the potential solutions for global warming, this has to be one
of the, well, most unusual: "Eat a local grass-fed burger." Yet John
Wick is entirely serious when he suggests it on an unseasonably warm
and sunny winter morning -- the kind that lulls you into thinking
climate change can't be all bad -- during a meeting of
environmentalists and sustainable agriculture advocates at his
California ranch.
It's a diverse group -- longtime ranchers, a forestry professor from
Berkeley, organic food activists, the author of a new book on global
warming, a Vermont dairy farmer, the author of a famous children's
book -- united in their belief that current proposals to address the
climate crisis simply don't go far enough.
"We now have 380 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere
compared to 280 before the industrial revolution," notes Wick, echoing
the conclusions of a report released last year by the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group awarded
the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.
"Even if we stopped all emissions today, which is a long way from
happening, it would still be 345 a century from now."
Wick -- who owns this ranch in the hills of Marin County north of San
Francisco with Peggy Rathmann, author of the classic picture book
Goodnight Gorilla -- goes on to pitch his grass-fed-burger solution in
greater detail. Then Abe Collins, the Vermont dairy farmer, chimes in:
"It will take carbon out of the air and put it back into the soil."
The idea is surprising on two counts. First, the cattle industry and
meat-eating are targeted as leading sources of the emissions that
cause global warming, right up there with autos, jet planes and coal-
burning power plants. Second, until now, most efforts to stop global
warming have focused on reducing emissions, not on taking existing
carbon out of the atmosphere, a process known as carbon sequestration.
But Wick believes sequestration works, and the place to sequester the
stuff is in the soil -- hence the new field of "carbon farming."
Carbon farming is new but carbon sequestration is not. Sequestration
figures prominently in the popular carbon offsetting programs that
allow people to pay a firm to plant trees -- which absorb atmospheric
carbon in their trunks, branches and roots -- to compensate for their
carbon emissions from air or auto travel. But initiatives to sequester
carbon in soil with the help of grazing animals are less common, but
perhaps more promising since croplands and grasslands cover more of
the Earth's surface than forests and grow faster. No-till farming,
which uses minimal plowing to keep plant cover on farm fields, also
promotes carbon sequestration.
Organic matter in topsoil is on average 50 percent carbon up to about
a foot (a third of a metre) in depth. Bumping that carbon content up
by as little as 1.6 percent throughout the world's agricultural land,
according to Wick and Collins, would solve the problem of global
warming.
Soil scientists are more measured in their predictions, yet still
enthusiastic about the prospect to reduce global warming. "The idea of
soil sequestration is still under the radar," notes soil science
professor Chuck Rice of Kansas State University in the U.S., a member
of the IPCC panel who directs a project studying the potential for
reducing greenhouse gases through agricultural practises. "There is
more carbon stored in the soil than in the atmosphere. If we can make
a small change in managing that carbon in the soil, it would make a
big difference in the atmosphere."
Sounds good, but how would eating a grass-fed burger help?
Allan Savory can answer that. Savory, a biologist and game rancher in
Zimbabwe, noticed decades ago that land roamed by large herds of
antelope or other hoofed animals was generally healthy, while land
managed by farmers or government agencies was often in danger of
becoming desert. Savory, who now divides his time between Zimbabwe and
the U.S. state of New Mexico, formulated a new method of grazing
called "holistic management," which has become the basis of carbon
farming. The central idea of carbon farming is to move the animals
frequently -- as once happened with wild herds chased by predators --
so grasses are not gnawed beyond the point of natural recovery and
plant cover remains to fertilize the land and sequester carbon.
The sequestration process works like this: The grass takes in carbon
from the atmosphere; the animals trample the grass into the soil,
where the carbon is absorbed; new grass sprouts; and the process is
repeated, with the grass absorbing more carbon each time.
The technique flies smack in the face of conventional agricultural
thinking, which holds that intensive grazing ruins land and the only
way to restore it is by removing animals for a long period of time.
Many farmers, especially those with large operations, are also
skeptical of the practise because of the extra labour involved.
Not Abe Collins. He farms carbon, sowing native grasses such as
timothy, brome, red clover, and ryegrass (which grows as high as two
feet, or two-thirds of a metre) on his 135-acre (55-hectare) Vermont
pasture. He moves his herd of 65 dairy cows to different spots around
the pasture five to eight times a day. Collins estimates that over
three years he's created at least six inches of prime topsoil capable
of sequestering substantial amounts of CO2.
Collins, 35, reasons that eating grass-fed beef from sustainably
managed herds will contribute in a small way to reversing global
warming. But any large-hoofed animals -- sheep, goats, bison, elk,
antelope or horses -- will have the same effect, and raising meat
isn't essential to the process. Collins, after all, is a dairy farmer.
He's advising the Marin Carbon Project, a new initiative to promote
carbon farming as a way to lower Marin County's high carbon footprint.
Wick and Rathmann are running 180 head of cattle on 340 acres using an
intricate grazing system designed by Collins to mimic the ecological
conditions that occurred when wild bison and elk thundered across the
grasslands of North America. The couple restricts the cattle to a few
acres of grassland at a time, moving them as many as four times a day
to minimize the effects of grazing and maximize the carbon absorbed by
native grasses into the soil.
Whendee Silver, a biogeochemist at the University of California,
Berkeley, will do chemical analysis of the soil to test the results of
these practises. "This could really be a win-win situation," she says,
"because these soil practises almost always improve the agricultural
capacity of the land."
Silver, Kansas State University's Rice and other researchers see hope
for fighting global poverty as well as global warming through carbon
farming. Tropical climates and degraded land, frequently found in the
world's poorest nations, have the most potential for sequestering
carbon.
"The best places are Africa and Asia," notes soil science professor
Rattan Lal, director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center
at Ohio State University. Lal, a native of India who spent 18 years at
the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria before
coming to Ohio State in 1987, advocates an international trading
system that would offer incentives for people in the developing world
to undertake sustainable forestry, managed grazing and no-till
farming, all methods that return carbon to soil in significant
quantities.
"Carbon should be a farm commodity people can buy and sell like any
other commodity; then poor farmers would have another income stream,"
Lal says.
Collins has launched a trading program along these lines through
Carbon Farmers of America, a group he co-founded. "What we are
proposing is to pay farmers for their important services that we as a
society need -- climate regulation, healthy soils," he says. The
organization sells offsets on its website for carbon sequestered into
the soil by its member farmers.
Collins estimates that $45 billion in annual payments to farmers
sequestering carbon would make the U.S. carbon-neutral -- not such a
high price tag, Collins muses, when you consider that U.S. taxpayers
fork over $31 billion in agricultural subsidies every year to continue
farm policies that degrade the environment and fuel global warming.
It's true, of course, that meat-eating is a major cause of global
warming due to massive emissions of nitrous oxide, methane and other
greenhouse gases from livestock operations. "That's absolutely correct
about feedlots and absolutely wrong about grass-fed livestock," Wick
counters. "Sustainably raised grass-fed beef is a natural system and
the methane and other greenhouse gases are mitigated by the carbon
sequestration in the soil. We see this as a way to phase out
feedlots." Collins adds that nitrous oxides are in huge part the
product of chemical fertilizers, which don't make any sense in a
farming system based on restoring the soil.
Peter Barnes, author of the new book Climate Solutions, was also at
the meeting at Wick and Rathmann's ranch. "Scientists realize that
climate change is happening faster than in their models," he says. "We
seem to be [near] a tipping point right now, and that's the context
for ideas like carbon farming. Sequestration is not a marginal idea
but central to any effort to keep the planet from tipping into
disaster."
Adds Rice of Kansas State: "This isn't wishful thinking down the road.
It's being done right now and we can do a lot more."
As far as Wick is concerned, let the grass-fed burger flipping begin.
"The days of hands-off environmentalism are over," he declares.
"Humans are part of nature. We are part of ecosystems. We can be part
of the solution."
Carbon Farmers of America
Started by family farmers in Vermont and Massachusetts to provide
training and support for farmers interested in creating high organic-
matter topsoil
Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming
An Australian organization that advocates for the need for carbon
sequestration and the role of agriculture
Soil Carbon Coalition
A non-profit group founded by Abe Collins, Terry Gompert and Peter
Donovan that's committed to research and education about increasing
the organic matter in soil
Managing Wholes
A site devoted to sharing knowledge through articles and photos about
practical, "real world" experiences with holistic management
Amazing Carbon
Launched by Christine Jones, founder of Carbon for Life, the site
explains the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme (ASCAS),
incorporating articles about carbon and soil
Jay Walljasper is a senior editor at Ode.
Copyright Ode Magazine USA, Inc. and Ode Luxembourg 2008
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From: Forbes, Jul. 7, 2008
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THE CASE FOR EFFICIENCY
By Amory B. Lovins
Using smarter technologies, more brains and less money to wring more
work from less delivered energy--what energy experts call "end-use
efficiency"--is the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest, fastest, most
diverse, least visible, least understood and most neglected way to
provide energy services.
How big is it? The 46% drop in U.S. energy intensity, a measure of
energy consumption per dollar of real gross domestic product, during
1975-2005 represented, by 2005, the equivalent of a new energy
"source." This source was slightly larger than annual total European
energy use, 2.1 times the size of U.S. oil consumption, 3.4 times
bigger than U.S. net oil imports, six times domestic oil output or net
oil imports from OPEC countries and 13 times net imports from Persian
Gulf countries.
But because these savings came not from giant plants but in zillions
of tiny pieces imperceptible to the untrained eye, energy efficiency
gets little respect. It's ironic, given that rising energy prices
automatically make efficiency gains more valuable, and cheaper to
attain. And we've barely scratched the surface. Fully exploiting
wherever practical the best available efficiency techniques throughout
the U.S. economy could save half our oil and gas use, and three-
fourths of our electricity, at about an eighth of their current price.
Innovative designs, technologies, policies and marketing methods are
increasing that potential faster than we are using it up.
The three big efficiency stories--oil, gas and electricity--are all
remarkable. As detailed in a Pentagon-co-sponsored 2004 study titled
"Winning the Oil Endgame," half of U.S. oil can be saved for the
equivalent of $12 a barrel, mainly by tripling the efficiency of cars,
trucks and planes--without sacrificing consumer-pleasing design.
Fantasy? Not really. Already, Boeing is beating Airbus with the 787
Dreamliner--a plane that's 20% more efficient than rivals but costs
about the same. Wal-Mart, nearly done boosting its trucks' efficiency
by 25%, is set to make billions more by doubling their efficiency by
2015. And the hottest strategic trend in automaking--led by Ford
Motor, Nissan and China--is making lighter, safer and more fuel-
efficient cars.
Another example: natural gas. Half its use can be saved at an eighth
of its price, two-thirds indirectly. At times of peak demand,
electricity is made largely from natural gas in turbines so
inefficient that saving 1% of U.S. electricity, including peak hours,
saves 2% of total natural gas use and cuts its price 3% to 4%. This
saving is more than paid for by the value of the saved generating
capacity, so the net cost of saving the gas itself is less than zero.
Three-fourths of U.S. electricity--69% of which is used in buildings,
nearly all the rest in industry--can be saved for less than the price
of just running a coal or nuclear plant. This "negawatt" potential is
not just in smarter motors, lights, appliances, etc., but even more in
their larger systems. For example, three-fifths of the world's
electricity runs motors, and half their shaft power runs pumps and
fans. Designing friction out of pipes and ducts can save 10 times as
much fuel at the power plant.
The savings are arrestingly simple: Redesigning a standard pumping
loop in one factory saved 92% of the pumping power--with lower
construction cost and better performance. Even better design could
have saved about 98% at lower cost. The secret: Use fat, short,
straight pipes rather than thin, long, crooked ones.
More broadly, better design can make very big savings cost less than
small savings, turning diminishing returns into expanding returns (For
more detail, you can watch my lectures at Stanford's school of
engineering. My team of practitioners, lately redesigning $30 billion
worth of diverse facilities in 29 industrial sectors, typically finds
30% to 60% savings with two- to three-year paybacks on retrofit, and
40% to 90% savings in new facilities with generally lower capital
cost.
Energy efficiency can save trillions in national costs, but its side
benefits are often even more valuable: 6% to 16% higher labor
productivity in efficient offices, 20% to 26% faster learning in well-
day-lit schools, 40% higher sales in well-day-lit shops, faster
healing in efficient hospitals. When you count these kinds of side
benefits, you double the cost-effective energy savings in a typical
steel mill.
Yet the efficiency cornucopia is the manual model: You have to turn
the crank. Like any worthy management goal, saving energy requires
leadership, learning, metrics, alignment, relentless patience and
meticulous attention to detail. There are scores of real obstacles to
be overcome. But in any business struggling for energy and capital,
energy efficiency is often the highest-return, lowest-risk investment
available, limited less by technology or economics than by culture and
imagination.
Using energy in a way that saves money protects the climate too, not
at a cost but at a profit. McKinsey and Co. found that profits from
U.S. energy efficiency can probably more than pay for other climate-
protecting measures. And while politicians debate theoretical costs,
smart firms race for real profits. IBM and STMicroelectronics have cut
their carbon intensity 6% a year. BP made over $2 billion substituting
efficiency for fuel; DuPont and Dow Chemical, $3 billion apiece.
General Electric aims for 30% savings by 2012 to build shareholder
value. United Technologies cut its energy intensity 56% in a decade.
Interface built the carpet industry's most oil-independent cost
structure while cutting its greenhouse gas emissions 82%.
We can save our bottom lines, and maybe our butts, by taking
economics--and efficiency--seriously.
==============
Physicist Amory B. Lovins has been a leading practitioner of advanced
energy efficiency in buildings, vehicles and industry for over three
decades. He is co-founder, chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky
Mountain Institute, an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit think-
and-do tank that implements transformational energy and resource
efficiency, chiefly in the private sector.
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From: Carnegie Institution, Jul. 3, 2008
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ACIDIFYING OCEANS ADD URGENCY TO CO2 CUTS
Stanford, Calif. -- It's not just about climate change anymore.
Besides loading the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases,
human emissions of carbon dioxide have also begun to alter the
chemistry of the ocean -- often called the cradle of life on Earth.
The ecological and economic consequences are difficult to predict but
possibly calamitous, warn a team of chemical oceanographers in the
July 4 issue of Science, and halting the changes already underway
will likely require even steeper cuts in carbon emissions than those
currently proposed to curb climate change.
Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global
Ecology, writing with lead author Richard Zeebe of the University of
Hawaii and two co-authors, note that the oceans have absorbed about
40% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by humans over the past two
centuries. This has slowed global warming, but at a serious cost: the
extra carbon dioxide has caused the ocean's average surface pH (a
measure of water's acidity) to shift by about 0.1 unit from pre-
industrial levels. Depending on the rate and magnitude of future
emissions, the ocean's pH could drop by as much as 0.35 units by the
mid-21st century.
This acidification can damage marine organisms. Experiments have shown
that changes of as little as 0.2-0.3 units can hamper the ability of
key marine organisms such as corals and some plankton to calcify their
skeletons, which are built from pH-sensitive carbonate minerals. Large
areas of the ocean are in danger of exceeding these levels of pH
change by mid-century, including reef habitats such as Australia's
Great Barrier Reef.
Most marine organisms live in the ocean's sunlit surface waters, which
are also the waters most vulnerable to CO2-induced acidification over
the next century as emissions continue. To prevent the pH of surface
waters from declining more than 0.2 units, the current limit set by
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1976, carbon dioxide
emissions would have to be reduced immediately.
"In contrast to climate model predictions, such future ocean chemistry
projections are largely model-independent on a time scale of a few
centuries," the authors write, "mainly because the chemistry of CO2 in
seawater is well known and changes in surface ocean carbonate
chemistry closely track changes in atmospheric CO2."
Although the ocean's chemical response to higher carbon dioxide levels
is relatively predictable, the biological response is more uncertain.
The ocean's pH and carbonate chemistry has been remarkably stable for
millions of years -- much more stable than temperature.
"We know that ocean acidification will damage corals and other
organisms, but there's just no experimental data on how most species
might be affected," says Caldeira. "Most experiments have been done in
the lab with just a few individuals. While the results are alarming,
it's nearly impossible to predict how this unprecedented acidification
will affect entire ecosystems." Reduced calcification will surely hurt
shellfish such as oysters and mussels, with big effects on commercial
fisheries. Other organisms may flourish in the new conditions, but
this may include undesirable "weedy" species or disease organisms.
Though most of the scientific and public focus has been on the climate
impacts of human carbon emissions, ocean acidification is as imminent
and potentially severe a crisis, the authors argue.
"We need to consider ocean chemistry effects, and not just the climate
effects, of CO2 emissions. That means we need to work much harder to
decrease CO2 emissions," says Caldeira. "While a doubling of
atmospheric CO2 may seem a realistic target for climate goals, such a
level may mean the end of coral reefs and other valuable marine
resources."
==============
The Carnegie Institution (www.CIW.edu) has been a pioneering force
in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a private, nonprofit
organization with six research departments throughout the U.S.
Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental
biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and
planetary science. The Department of Global Ecology, located in
Stanford, California, was established in 2002 to help build the
scientific foundations for a sustainable future. Its scientists
conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental
issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological
invasions, and changes in biodiversity.
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From: Powells.com, Jun. 9, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]
THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS
Book review of: Peter D.Ward, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the
Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us about Our
Future (N.Y.: Collins, 2007).
By Doug Brown
Many books on global warming are based upon crude computer models
(crude compared to our planet's actual climate) and hypothetical what-
ifs. Thus they are easily dismissed by skeptics as alarmist litanies
of, "Here are some really bad things that could maybe possibly happen
if the worst-case outcomes of this model which is built on untested
assumptions turn out to be right." Peter Ward, a paleontology
professor at the University of Washington (and astrobiologist for
NASA), takes a different and much scarier approach. Rather than
hypothetical speculations into the future, he starts with actual data
from the past. Can we examine the fossil and climate record to
identify past instances of greenhouse global warming, and see what
happened then? The answer, very disturbingly, is yes.
The first section of Under a Green Sky covers how scientists have
examined mass extinctions over time, and how causes are determined.
After the Cretaceous-Tertiary event (a.k.a. the extinction of the non-
avian dinosaurs) was shown to have been largely caused by a meteor
slamming into the earth, extraterrestrial impacts became the assumed
cause of all mass extinctions. Everyone ran around looking for craters
of the approximate correct age to have caused other events. Ward
espoused a more systematic approach, where the fossil record itself
was first examined in detail to see if extinctions happened slowly, in
phases, or all at once (only the latter favoring an impact). The
granddaddy of all mass extinctions, the Permian extinction, was a
study target for both Ward and the impact crowd. In the Permian event,
almost 90% of species died. To find the cause of this event would
garner much fame. Thus, when the impact folks thought they found their
crater, they promptly reported to the press the extinction had been
solved. The fossil data said otherwise. Ward's wonderfully written
book Gorgon discusses this particular debate in more depth, but the
short story is the crater turned out to be the wrong age by several
million years, and the fossil record indicated waves of extinctions
over a short period of time.
If not an impact, what could have made so many things die so quickly?
Here's where global warming enters the picture. When carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gas levels were indirectly measured (via isotope
ratios in rocks and counting stomata in fossil leaves), it was found a
greenhouse event did take place at the end of the Permian, and also at
the end of the Triassic (the first part of the "age of the
dinosaurs"). Okay, so it got warm and stuffy, but so what? Don't
reptiles like the heat? Heat, yes, noxious gases like hydrogen
sulfide, no. It was the examination of ocean floor extinctions that
finally completed the picture. In impacts like the Cretaceous-Tertiary
event, things in the upper half of the ocean die, but not so much in
the lower half. In the Permian and Triassic events, the opposite trend
was seen; the extinctions started on the ocean floor. Also, dark bands
in the rocks signaled the presence of anoxic bacteria in deep water.
Ordinarily, there is a conveyor belt running through all the oceans,
both at the surface and at deep levels. The Gulf Stream is a famous
part of this conveyor. Warm water moves toward the poles, then sinks
down to the ocean floor and heads back towards the equator. This deep
water, having come from the surface in polar regions, is well
oxygenated. In previous global warming events such as the Permian and
Triassic, changes in atmospheric gases were enough to stop the
conveyor. With no oxygenated water on the ocean floor, everything
there died and anoxic bacteria took over. Ward posits these bacteria
produced large amounts of hydrogen sulfide (the gas made by rotten
eggs), which then burped up to the surface in large bubbles. Ward and
his colleagues calculated there was plenty enough of this nasty gas to
account for the extinctions. The scary thing is how fast the conveyor
stops. In a matter of decades, the climate can significantly alter,
and within a hundred years extinction is the order of the day.
Which brings us to the present. Thanks to us tool-pushing primates,
carbon dioxide levels are rising precipitously, setting up
circumstances very similar to those seen before. And when those
circumstances arose, really bad things happened. Ward closes Under a
Green Sky with three hypothetical scenarios for the future, based in
part on past occurrences. In the first, we get our act together and
cut emissions drastically. If we can keep atmospheric CO2 below 450
ppm (parts per million) come the year 2100, things will get a bit
warmer and some ice will melt, but otherwise we should largely be
okay. However, this is unlikely, as the current level is 360 ppm (and
rising at 2 ppm per year), and much of the world is industrializing as
fast as it can, which may push the rate of increase to 4 ppm per year.
In scenario two, Ward assumes we hit CO2 levels of 700 ppm by the year
2100. Sea level will have risen several feet, the ocean conveyor will
have recently shut down triggering climatic changes, resulting in
massive numbers of refugees. In scenario three, Ward assumes year 2100
CO2 levels of 1,100 ppm. Earth would be 10 degrees Celsius warmer. All
of the world's ice would be melting, and much of the world's
population displaced by rising waters. The conveyor would have shut
down decades earlier, and signs of deep ocean anoxic bacteria
beginning to show. Due to changes in the atmosphere, the sky would be
turning a sickly shade of green. The sixth great mass extinction would
be underway.
What makes this such a terrifying book is it isn't based on
theoretical mathematics. Rapid increases in greenhouse gases have shut
down the ocean conveyor several times before, resulting in severe
climate change and mass extinction. If Ward's analysis is correct, we
know what caused it and we know how to make it not happen again. The
question is: can we save us from ourselves?
Perhaps if people read Under a Green Sky and tell their friends about
it, we might have a chance. Many people are apathetic about global
warming because the press concentrates on superficial metrics like
mean temperature and sea levels rising a few feet. So we grow oranges
in Alaska, who cares? Peter Ward offers a reason why we should all
care, and right now.
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From: NewMatilda.com, Jul. 4, 2008
[Printer-friendly version]
THE PERILS OF PLAYING NICE
In shooting for the political mainstream, the climate movement has
shot itself in the foot, argue David Spratt and Philip Sutton
By David Spratt and Philip Sutton
Global warming is an emergency, and "for emergency situations we need
emergency action," UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon told the world in
November 2007.
Why, then, has climate policy moved in such a painfully slow manner?
How can the impasse be resolved between what needs doing quickly,
based on the science, and what seems a "reasonable" thing to do in the
current political environment?
It seems as if there are two great tectonic plates -- scientific
necessity and political pragmatism -- that meet very uneasily at a
fault line.
For example, in 2007, under Kevin Rudd, the Australian Labor Party's
pre-election climate policy statement effectively supported a policy
of allowing global warming to run as high as a 3-degree Celsius (= 5.4
degree Fahrenheit) increase on pre-industrial temperatures, despite
data quoted in the statement itself that unequivocally demanded a much
lower target.
A number of other examples illustrate the tensions and compromises
that result from trying to balance the scientific and political
factors.
The British Government's Stern Review identified a need, based on its
reading of the science, for a 2-degree Celsius (= 3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit) cap, but then said that this would be too difficult to
achieve and advocated a 3-degree cap instead.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has not called
for climate modelling for stabilisation of temperatures at less than 2
degrees C., despite the evidence that the climate safe zone is much
lower. Although the IPCC says its role is to simply represent the
science, not to advocate policy, this seems to be a case of the IPCC
allowing political norms to limit the scope of the research that it
encourages or reports.
Many climate and policy researchers, while privately expressing the
view that the 2-degree C. cap is too high for a safe-climate world,
have nevertheless publicly advocated less effective goals, because
they perceive those to be more acceptable. Their argument is that they
"wouldn't be listened to" if they said what they really thought.
As well, some environment group advocates speak of the need to occupy
the "middle ground", or to be at least "heading in the right
direction", because "it is always possible to go further later on".
This stance turns risk aversion on its head by failing to consider
worst possible outcomes. At the same time, it is politically
advantageous because it obviates the need to talk about preventive
actions that are currently perceived to be "extreme". As a result,
advocacy is often for a direction-setting minimum, rather than
demanding a clear statement of what is required.
During 2007 the position of the Australian Conservation Foundation was
that emissions should be cut "60 to 90 per cent" by 2050 (a 60 per
cent cut would leave emissions in 2050 at four times the level
required of a 90 per cent reduction). Yet in his preliminary report
economist Ross Garnaut told the Rudd government that a 90 per cent cut
may be necessary and 60 per cent was far from enough.
In all these examples, we see reluctance on the part of organisations
and people to go beyond the bounds of perceived acceptability. This
results in the advocacy of solutions that, even if fully implemented,
would not actually solve the problem. There is a sense that many of
the climate policy professionals -- in government, research, community
organisations and advocacy -- have established boundaries around their
public discourse that are guided by a primary concern for
"reasonableness", rather than by a concern for achieving environmental
and social sustainability.
Many people whose work centres on climate change have been struggling
for so long to gain recognition for the issue -- having had to cope
with a lack of awareness, conservatism and climate deniers -- that
they
now have deeply ingrained habits of self-censorship. They are
concerned to avoid being dismissed and marginalised as "alarmist" and
"crazy". Now that the science is showing the situation to be far worse
than most scientists expected only a short while ago, this ingrained
reticence is adding to the problem.
A pragmatic interdependency links many of these players in a cycle of
low expectations and poor outcomes. Here is an outline of the concerns
of some of these key players, based on actual conversations and
correspondence. The cycle is a merry-go-round, so it matters little
where it starts.
Under pressure to stick to the science and avoid opinion, a climate
scientist may take the view that society needs to make the judgement
about what it determines to be dangerous climate change: "It's not for
me, as a scientist, to tell you what's dangerous or what the political
target ought to be. I try to inform the debate by explaining what the
risks actually are at these various levels, and by offering policy
options that society could consider."
Community-based climate action groups, often lacking detailed
technical knowledge, will respond by saying that they are not about to
doubt the views put forward by the science professionals, which they
hear from the media and from the IPCC: "We have to trust in their
abilities to lead us. They are the ones who know -- we can't say
things
that they haven't, and we can't speculate on what a few scientists
might be saying, if it isn't in the IPCC reports."
Large climate-group and environment managers often join the
conversation, suggesting that they agree with strong goals and urgent
action, but that they are worried that if they promote them, their
lobbying wouldn't be taken seriously: "It is more important to agree
and campaign on targets that are heading in the right direction, than
that we have discussions about what the targets should be. It is
always possible to go further, or call for more, later on."
The consequence is that even those politicians who are climate
friendly feel constrained: "I can't go further than the environment
movement. I'd look extreme if I did." And: "I know our party's
position will have to be strengthened because the science has changed,
but that can't happen until after the next election. Our policy is now
set. I wish we could go further, but some people are worried that I
will look too extreme in the electorate."
Deep inside public administration, where climate policy is processed,
there is an avoidance of the political: "Although our climate-science
manager agrees with your targets... she has to stick to using
scientists, not lobbyists, and science, not policy. She needs to be
persuaded that setting targets and trajectories is fundamentally a
climate-science issue, not a political one. If, on the other hand, we
can find a scientist to make the case for real targets that you have
made, this would help a lot, but the scientists say that target-
setting is political, and outside their terrain."
Businesses, meanwhile, remain constrained by their commercial
interests: "You might well be right that 60 per cent by 2050 is not
enough, but the people I talk to wouldn't believe anything tougher.
Our business is one of the good ones -- we know that this is a big
problem, but if we are going to engage the wider business community,
we can only go so far."
It seems that everyone is waiting for someone else to break the cycle;
but how can this be done? Part of the problem seems to be fear: those
who are the first to move to a tougher position are worried about
becoming isolated or losing credibility.
Reticence on the part of advocates to push for serious action also
stems from the pervasive view in politics that everything is subject
to compromise, and that trade-offs are the norm: argue less for what
you really want than for what seems "reasonable" in the give-and-take
of normal political society. And when some brash advocates do argue
for what really needs to be done, it is simply assumed they are making
an ambit claim: an initial demand put forward in the expectation that
the negotiations will prompt a lesser counter-offer and end in
compromise.
While this mindset is widespread, there are domains from which it has
been banished. When it comes to public safety, society knows that
compromise and negotiable trade-offs cannot apply. Bridges, buildings,
planes, large machines and the like must be built to risk-averse, high
standards, which are applied rigorously. When standards are not met
and structures fail, corporations, governments and regulatory bodies
are held to account. We have learned from trial and error that a "no
major trade-off" policy in public safety is necessary to avoid the
killing and maiming of citizens.
With global warming, however, we do not have the luxury of learning by
trial and error. We have left the climate problem unattended for so
long that we now have just one chance to get things right by applying
a "no major trade-off" approach without a trial run. It will be a
particular challenge for decision-makers, who have grown up in a
political culture of compromise.
Past government inaction has also habituated an acceptance of lowered
expectations, which has continued to hinder serious climate action. A
non-government organisation staff member, reflecting on her
experiences, said that it has become increasingly clear to her how
constrained the environmental organisations are: "It's a legacy of 11
years of [the] Howard [government] -- they've all come to expect so
little environmental responsibility from government, so they don't ask
for much in the hope of a small gain. [It's] a very unfortunate
situation."
Generally, timidity, constraint and incrementalism have characterised
recent national and state government approaches to environment issues,
and the consequence is that low expectations have become embedded in
the relationship between lobbyists and government. When opportunity
knocks, or changing evidence demands urgent and new responses,
imaginative and bold leadership does not always emerge with solutions
that fully face up to the challenge. When, in late 2007, evidence
emerged of accelerated climate change, it appeared to have little
impact on the climate targets advocated by most of the peak green
organisations, which said that their position was "locked in" until
after the election.
Ken Ward, an environmental and communications strategist and former
deputy executive director of Greenpeace in the USA, believes that the
people who lead environmental foundations and organisations play a
critical part in reconstructing the issue as a climate and
sustainability emergency -- one that takes us beyond the politics of
failure-inducing compromise.
With the rapid loss of the Arctic summer ice cover, Ward says that the
opportunity for these leaders to adjust their position is narrow, and
this is due, in some part, to the deliberate decision, a decade ago,
by environment organisations to downplay climate change risk.
He says: "[They did so] in the interests of presenting a sober,
optimistic image to potential donors, maintaining access to decision-
makers, and operating within the constraints of private foundations,
which has blown back on us. By emphasising specific solutions and
avoiding definitions that might appear alarmist, we inadvertently fed
a dumbed-down, Readers Digest version of climate change to our staff
and environmentalist core. Now, as we scramble to keep up with climate
scientists, we discover that we have paid a hefty price."
For those who have, in the past, downplayed the risks, changing
position is now a matter of urgency, because what now needs to be done
is not incrementally reasonable. The desperate measures required to
advance a functional climate-change solution at this late date, says
Ward, "can only be conceived and advanced by individuals who accept
climate change realities and [who] take the less than 10-year
timeframe seriously".
He believes that we will need to actually confront the terror of the
situation before we can come to a real solution.
"We are not acting like people and organisations who genuinely believe
that the world is at risk. Therefore, we cannot take the measures
required, nor can we be effective leaders."
This is an edited extract from Climate Code Red: The Case for
Emergency Action, published by Scribe.
========================================================
David Spratt is a Melbourne businessman, climate-policy analyst, and
co-founder of Carbon Equity, which advocates personal carbon
allowances as the most fair and equitable means of rapidly reducing
carbon emissions. He has extensive advocacy experience in the peace
movement, and in developing community-campaign communication and
marketing strategies.
Philip Sutton is the convener of the Greenleap Strategic Institute, a
non-profit environmental-strategy think tank and advisory organisation
promoting the very rapid achievement of global and local ecological
sustainability. He is also the founder and director of strategy for
Green Innovations, and an occasional university lecturer on global
warming science and strategies for sustainability.
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Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's Environment &
Health News) highlights the connections between issues that are
often considered separately or not at all.
The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining
because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who
bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human
health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the
rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among
workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy,
intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and
therefore ruled by the few.
In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than, "Who
gets to decide?" And, "How do the few control the many, and what
might be done about it?"
As you come across stories that might help people connect the dots,
please Email them to us at dhn@rachel.org.
Rachel's Democracy & Health News is published as often as
necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the
subject.
Editor:
Peter Montague - peter@rachel.org
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