Author: Grist – the Latest from Grist

by Jonathan Hiskes

At least one miner killed in this week’s tragic disaster in West Virginia seemed to sense that safety problems in the mine might prove fatal. 

Josh Napper left a note for his girlfriend and toddler daughter the weekend before he died.  As his mom, Pam Napper, tells CNN, it said, “If anything happens to me, I’ll be looking down from heaven at you all. I love you. Take care of my baby. Tell her that daddy loves her, she’s beautiful, she’s funny. And just take care of my baby girl.”

Pam Napper, whose brother and nephew were also killed in the accidents, says her son had noted safety problems at the Massey Energy mine. 

Here’s her interview with CNN: 

 

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by Tom Laskawy

This is Part 1 of 2 posts of in-depth analysis into the breakthrough work on high-fructose corn syrup and weight gain by Princeton researchers.

_______________

I have to admit that I was fascinated to watch the fallout over the Princeton HFCS study. What I thought would generate a “oh, look, another great reason to avoid HFCS!” reaction swiftly turned into “that study doesn’t prove a thing!!”—a sentiment that nutritionists, food business columnists and the Corn Refiners Association all, remarkably, shared.

Still, several questions raised by critics are worth addressing. We contacted the lead author of the Princeton study, Bart HoebelPrinceton researcher Bart Hoebel and crew prepare to feed rats HFCS. Photo: Princeton University, Office of Communications, Denise Applewhite, to see if he could shed some light on general questions surrounding the work as well as particular objections raised by physiologist Karen Teff, PhD of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in a blog post by Nicci Micco on Eating Well’s website.

The full email transcript appears below. One clarification in particular that I found interesting has to do with claims that the researchers didn’t directly compare HFCS consumption to table sugar consumption in a key experiment and thus are not able to conclude that HFCS causes more and worse weight gain over table sugar. In the experiment in question, researchers gave rats access to a 10% HFCS “drink” in addition to their normal feed. The rats gained excess weight in their abdomens (which is associated with metabolic disorders) and their triglyceride levels increased (also a symptom of metablolic disorders).

Dr. Hoebel points out that previous research has firmly established that if you give rats access to a 10% table sugar “drink” in addition to their normal feed, they do not gain additional fat. In other words, their bodies are able to metabolize the extra calories without creating more weight. This previous research is referenced in the study—but was apparently overlooked by critics. In other words, while the researchers didn’t compare HFCS to sugar directly in that particular experiment, we already know what happens to rats when you feed them small amounts of additional table sugar.

I understand that his answers to this and other criticisms won’t convince everyone, but I hope people will read the commentary below and think about just what level of “proof” we need before questioning the wisdom of making HFCS ubiquitous in our food system. For more thoughts on why the debate over HFCS has become so contentious, see Part 2 of this analysis, which will appear Monday.

The first two questions we had for Dr. Hoebel came from Grist Food Editor Tom Philpott:

Q: Do you have any particular comments on the issue of “statistical significance”? Is it true that the results in experiments 1 and 3 both lacked statistical significance, as some have claimed?

Hoebel: No, this is not true as a general statement. We reported results that are statistically significant as stated in the article. In Experiment 1, rats with 12-or 24-hour access to HFCS gained significantly more weight than the group with 12-hour access to sucrose.
In Experiment 3, the main finding is that females rats with 24-hour access to HFCS weighed the most after 7 months , and this was overall (Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance) statistically different than the sucrose and chow fed controls.

This is important and meaningful because the 24-hour HFCS females had significantly heavier fat pads in the abdominal and uterine areas. They also had higher blood triglyceride levels than the other groups, which may have contributed to the body weight and body fat.

Q: Why did “Experiment 2” in your study, which compared rats’ access to HFCS over 12 and 24 hour time periods, not include sucrose? What are the clearest conclusions that can be drawn from its results as constructed? [Note to reader: this question is also addressed above—the bit about access to table sugar solution not seeming to show weight gain in rats.]

Hoebel: The goal of this paper was not exclusively to compare HFCS to sucrose. Rather, we were interested in assessing 1) limited vs. continuous access to HFCS, as our previous research has focused on binge eating of sugars, 2) differences in body weight gain as a results of access to HFCS that might result in males vs. females, and 3) the effects of long term access to HFCS on parameters such as triglyceride levels and fat accrual.

The vision of the paper was to study the effects of HFCS on body weight and obesity, not just to pit it against sucrose.
The clearest conclusions that can be drawn from Experiment 2 are that, in male rats, long term consumption of HFCS increases triglyceride levels and fat accrual. To us, this is an important finding. It shows that not only will HFCS increase body fat, but it will also increase these obesogenic parameters

Next, we asked Dr. Hoebel to respond to criticisms of his work leveled by Dr. Karen Teff of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in a blog post by Nicci Micco on Eating Well:

Comment #1: The solutions of HFCS and sucrose used in all the studies—there were a few—in the Princeton report provided different levels of calories. (The HFCS, in fact, was lower in calories.)

Hoebel: It is true that the solutions of HFCS and sucrose were not offered as calorically equivalent. We note this in the Methods section of the paper. However, it is important to note that the HFCS consuming rats in Experiment 1, the short-term (2-month) study, showed greater gains in body weight while taking in fewer calories of sugar compared to the groups consuming sucrose. This led us to hypothesize that there might be something different about the way HFCS affects the body. Thus, we conducted Experiment 2, the long-term (6 month) study, and measurements showed that increased triglyceride levels and increased body fat were seen in the rats will access to HCFS, but not sucrose.

Comment #2: In one of the studies, the authors reported that male rats had a higher body weight after being exposed to 12 hours of access to the HFCS plus their typical rat chow compared to 1) standard chow alone, 2) 12 hours of access to sucrose with chow, and 3) 24 hours of access to sucrose with chow. However, they did not report or do the statistics on the change in weight. Thus, this is meaningless and poorly controlled.

Hoebel: One of the groups listed above is cited incorrectly; group 3 had 24 hours of HFCS and chow access (no sucrose access). As stated in the Methods section, the males in the three groups of Experiment 1 were “weight-matched”. That means the average (mean) weight of the rats in each group started out the same. Therefore the end-point body weights reported are in fact accurate representations of the mean body weight change. Ergo, the statistics were done on the appropriate measure. The result is meaningful and well controlled, given the use of not one but three comparison groups.

Comment #3: In a second experiment, they compared chow to chow-plus-HFCS for 24 hours and chow-plus-HFCS for 12 hours and found that access to the HFCS increased body weight. So what? Again, meaningless. This is like taking two groups of people, giving them the same diet but allowing one group to drink sweetened soda whenever they liked. Of course, they will gain weight because they are ingesting more calories. These findings have nothing to do with the controversy between sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup.

Hoebel: The result is, in fact, meaningful. As cited in the Discussion section, we have previously shown that the rats are able to compensate for the excess calories obtained when drinking 10% sucrose by taking fewer calories of chow and thereby maintaining a normal body weight. Therefore, we thought it was interesting and important to report that long-term access to HFCS causes rats to become overweight, whereas access to 10% sucrose does not. While comparisons were made to sucrose in some of the studies, this was not the sole focus of the paper. Rather, we were interested in seeing the effects of HFCS on body weight and obesogenic characteristics, and there were other variables of interest that were studied (as described in the response to the next comment).

Comment #4: Finally, in a third study, they show body weight as a percent of baseline (this is appropriate) and show that rats who had free access to both chow and HFCS gained a tiny bit more weight than chow alone, 12 hours of HFCS or 12 hours of sucrose. They did not compare it to the control of 24 hours of access to sucrose.

Hoebel: The statistical test (Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance) did show an overall significant difference between female rats with HFCS to drink 24-hr per day and the groups with chow alone or 12-hr access to sucrose, as described in the Results section. We did not compare 24-hr HFCS vs. 24-hr sucrose in this study because 1) in our previous studies (with both male and female rats) we have noted that rats with 24-hr access to 10% sucrose do not gain significantly more weight than chow-fed controls, and 2) in addition to comparing HFCS to sucrose, we were interested in the effects of limited (12-h) access to HFCS to see if it would cause binging that might enhance HFCS intake or body weight. Further, we chose to focus on assessing 12-h access as a variable because we did not know the effect of 12-hr vs. 24-hr HFCS access in female rats. This was of interest to us in light of the findings in Experiment 1 in males where we made that comparison, and because our laboratory has a long-standing interest in the effects of binge eating of palatable food. We explain and give the rationale for the choice of these variables in the Methods section.

So, yes the females drinking 24-hr HFCS showed a statistically significant increase in body weight. It is important and meaningful because these females had significantly heavier fat pads in the abdominal and uterine areas. They also had higher blood triglyceride levels than the other groups, which may have contributed to the body weight and body fat characteristics of obesity.

Our study in laboratory rats complements the growing body of literature suggesting that HFCS affects body weight and some obesogenic parameters. We cite in our paper additional evidence reported by other groups that supports our findings, and also acknowledge studies that suggest that HFCS does not affect body weight in ways different than that of sucrose. We acknowledge in the paper that at higher concentrations (e.g. 32%) sucrose has been shown to increase body weight. We are claiming, however, that at the concentrations we compared in this study, HFCS causes characteristics of obesity. The data show that both male and female rats are (1) overweight, (2) have heavier fat pads, particularly in the abdominal area and (3) have elevated circulating triglyceride levels.

For more information and references on this topic, as studied in both animals and humans, see a review published this year by George Bray, Curr Opin Lipidol. 2010 Feb;21(1):51-7.“Soft drink consumption and obesity: it is all about fructose”.

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by Tom Philpott

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries.

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Nasty, brutish, and short: the facts of life for hens in an egg factory. Moral of this story on inhumane practices in the egg industry: when a few huge companies dominate production of a commodity in a low-profit-margin industry, they zealously cut costs at every level of production. The key goal is to maximize output. Above a certain level, the company churns out a profit. Below that level, it loses cascading amounts of money for its shareholders.

If you happen to be a cog in the operation—say, a hen in an egg-laying shed with 300,000 other birds—life will be painful and short. And the end won’t be pretty.

To its everlasting discredit, the U.S. meat/livestock industry refuses to allow the media or the general public to enter its facilities. It hides its gruesome practices behind walls—and homilies:  “All Rose Acre Farms hens are cared for to make sure all hens are happy at all times. Only a happy hen will lay eggs!” Rose Acre Farms is the nation’s second-largest egg producer. The Humane Society of the United States managed to infiltrate its Iowa facilities and document cruel and highly unsanitary practices. Thank God for HSUS.

 

A section of Amazon rain forest being cleared for cow pasture. Photo courtesy Greenpeace/Daniel Beltrá. • In June of last year, Greenpeace came out with an excellent report on the Brazilian beef industry’s affect on deforestation: perhaps the single most urgent climate change issue.

As I summarized at the time, the Brazil is already the globe’s leading exporter of both beef and leather. The government, cheered on by the World Bank, wants to see the country double its share in the global beef-products market in the next decade, as part of a push for export-led growth.

The Brazilian government has been investing billions of dollars in infrastructure and loan guarantees to meet that goal—even though “the cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon is the largest driver of deforestation in the world, responsible for one in every eight hectares destroyed,” according to Greenpeace. Of course, the push for more beef production puts severe pressure on the rainforest, as ranchers expand pastures and hunt for new grazing land. Indeed, the government is literally investing in beef-processing infrastructure in the Amazon region.

At the time of the report, three huge players—Bertin, JBS, and Matrig—processed the great majority of Brazilian beef, and benefited directly from those investments. Since then, JBS has swallowed up Bertin, making it by far the biggest processor in Brazil. Meat Wagon readers will remember that JBS has become a heavyweight in the U.S. meat market—after a string of acquisitions in ‘08 and ‘09, JBS is our third-largest beef packer, second-largest poultry packer, and third-largest pork packer. Indeed, it’s combined global assets make it the largest meat producer in the world, larger even than U.S. behemoth Tyson.

JBS has always denied buying cattle from illegally deforested land, but in its report, Greenpeace proved that claim to be false. In October, JBS signed Greenpeace’s “Zero Deforestation Pledge,” promising to ensure that cattle it buys not come from deforested land. So, how’s that going? So far, not so well:

In a meeting on April 5th with Greenpeace, the major slaughterhouses of Brazil—including JBS/Bertin, Marfrig and Minerva—showed insufficient progress to comply with the first step in the Zero Deforestation Agreement they signed six months ago. Each of the companies reaffirmed their commitment to stopping deforestation of the Amazon by cattle ranchers, however, and asked for more time in order to be in compliance with the agreement.

• Leveling rain forest to create pasture for cattle production is clearly an idiotic practice. Rain forest ecosystems support a dizzying array of species (including humans). Large ruminants are not among them. Making rain forests hospitable to ruminants means obliterating rain forests—unleashing vast amounts of carbon, and sacrificing untold amounts of future carbon-sequestering capacity. Levelling rain forest for beef makes about as much sense as amputating your lungs and eating them for dinner.

However, the globe’s grasslands have long supported ruminants; and ruminants play a vital role in maintaining those ecosystems. So keeping cows on grass in, say, the prairies of Iowa—long since plowed up for corn—makes lots of sense. Which brings us to our next item: this crudely reported NPR segment on grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef.

I say, crudely reported, because the reporter doesn’t seem to understand that all cows start out on grass; the distinction hinges on whether they’re finished on grass or grain. She also shows no appetite to delve too deeply into just what grain-fed cows get in their rations. “The typical corn-fed cows eats just grain from a trough,” she declares, in that singsongy tone of voice favored by kindergarten teachers and many NPR presenters. If only it were true! But I guess discussion of antibiotics, industrial chicken manure, waste from ethanol factories, etc, would have ruined the happy-happy NPR-world tone of the piece.

The interesting part, though, is when she performs a blind taste test of grass-fed vs. corn-fed steaks for two NPR staffers. Both prefer the “more tender” grain-fed sample to the “meatier” grass-fed. Moral of the story: thirty or so years of cheap grain-fed beef has shaped the American palate and made people prize the tender quality of beef from animals that don’t exercise.

 

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by Agence France-Presse

Activists outside the Bonn climate talks ask negotiators to “pick up the pieces” after CopenhagenPhoto courtesy WWF Climate via FlickrBONN—Hopes of hoisting the U.N. process for climate change out of the mire after December’s flawed Copenhagen summit suffered a setback at talks here on Friday.

In their first parley since the stormy December meeting, countries in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) divided over how to plot the way forward, and the mood was soured by fresh finger-pointing.

“The one thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history,” said Tosi Mpanu Mpanu of the Democratic Republic of Congo, representing African nations. Copenhagen damaged “the trust that is necessary for any partnership,” he said.

The three-day gathering in the former West German capital takes place nearly four months after a summit that, far from rallying humankind behind a post-2012 climate-stabilizing pact, came within an inch of disaster.

Attended by some 120 heads of state and government, the summit was saved after a couple of dozen leaders cobbled together a brief document outlining areas of agreement. Their “Copenhagen Accord” sets down a general goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), includes rich and poor countries in pledges for tackling greenhouse gases, and earmarks nearly $30 billion in aid from 2010-2012, with prospects of up to $100 billion annually by 2020.

But criticism of the accord resurfaced on Friday.

Left-led countries in the Caribbean and Latin America noted that emissions pledges under the Copenhagen Accord are only voluntary and, at present levels, would ensure warming of 4 degrees C (7.2  degrees F) or more. They also denounced the accord as a stitchup among an elite group of countries; more than a third of UNFCCC parties have still not endorsed the deal.

“The total failure of the meeting in Copenhagen … was simply because the principles of the United Nations were not respected, nor were international rules,” blasted Venezuelan delegate Claudia Salerno. The “neo-colonialist exercise” seemed set to be revived, she warned.

In the quest to revitalize the process for the next big UNFCCC meeting, due in the Mexican resort of Cancun in November and December, many countries endorsed ideas for speeding a laborious affair that requires the approval of 194 parties. These include setting up a “contact group” of several dozen countries that would haggle over core issues, then submit the outcome to a plenary for its approval.

“We cannot go back to business as usual,” said Spanish delegate Alicia Montalvo, speaking for the E.U.

Mexico is chairing informal talks among some 40 key nations, while the United States on April 18-19 will stage talks among 17 economies that together account for more than 80 percent of world carbon emissions.

“We need to improve our working methods,” said Fernando Tudela, Mexico’s vice minister for planning and environmental policy. “This process of negotiations requires adjustment and modernization without of course using different practices that are used in the United Nations.”

Other issues on the table in Bonn will be how many extra meetings to stage before Cancun and whether attempts should be made to craft a draft negotiating text in the coming weeks.

Outside the venue, half a dozen protesters shovelled shards of broken glass in a symbolic appeal to the UNFCCC to “pick up the pieces” after Copenhagen.

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by Umbra Fisk

Dearest
readers,

Thank you
all so much for joining me this week as we got down and dirty with our first
book club selection, Possum
Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money,
hitting all the hot buttons like leaving
the rat race, eating
meat, and bucking
the education system.

We’re in
the homestretch—let’s make Dolly Freed proud with our last day of discussion.
So do you think there’s something to this whole possum living thing? And if the
lifestyle is as simple as Freed says it is, why aren’t more people doing it? Is
it simply that we’re so culturally programmed about what’s accepted?

Has the
book inspired you to make any changes in your own life? Even if you aren’t
going to live a possum lifestyle, do you think there’s value in it?

Also, what was
your take on the 30-years-older Freed in the afterword? Were you surprised to
learn about her father’s alcoholism? Did it color your view of her story at all?

Looking
forward to hearing your final thoughts.

Finally,
Umbra

P.S. It’s
time to announce next month’s book club pick. (Drum roll, please.) Next up, we’ll
be pouring over Anna Lappé‘s Diet for a Hot Planet. We’ll
kick off discussion on May 11, so get reading!

Here’s a synopsis of the book from the Small Planet Institute:

In 1971, Frances Moore Lappé‘s Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her daughter, Anna Lappé, picks up the conversation. In her new book, the younger Lappé exposes another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis.
While you may not think “global warming” when you sit down to dinner, our tangled web of global food—from Pop-Tarts packaged in Tennessee and eaten in Texas to pork chops raised in Poland, with feed from Brazil, then shipped to South Korea—is connected to as much as one third of total greenhouse-gas emissions. Livestock alone is associated with more emissions than all of the world’s transportation combined. Move over, Hummer. Say hello to the hamburger.
If we’re serious about the climate crisis, says Lappé, we have to talk about food.
In this groundbreaking book, Lappé exposes the interests resisting this conversation and the spin tactics companies are employing to deflect the heat. With seven principles for a climate-friendly diet and success stories from sustainable food advocates around the globe, she offers a vision of a food system that can be part of healing the planet. An engaging call to action, Diet for a Hot Planet delivers a hopeful message during troubling times.

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by Jake Schmidt

Today the World Bank approved a loan to build the fourth largest power plant in the world. The project is to be financed with a $3 billion loan to Eskom—the South African electricity company—and is the largest coal-plant loan in the Bank history. The 4,800-megawatt Medupi power plant would emit 25 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—an amount equivalent to about half the annual emissions of Norway.

This was a challenging and complicated project and was less about South Africa than about the World Bank’s role in helping (or hindering) the world’s efforts to address global warming.

We support the efforts of developing countries to alleviate their energy poverty, but dirty coal power is not the pathway to a sustainable economy. The World Bank must do much more to help countries meet their energy needs in a manner that protects them from disastrous climate change. Today’s decision is a failure by the World Bank to meet those needs. They must do better!

I’m now hearing that 4 voting members of the World Bank Board of Directors abstained from this project (U.S., U.K., the Netherlands, Italy, with Norway saying it would have voted no but it is a part of a Nordic voting block in the World Bank). Abstaining from a World Bank vote essentially means that they are opposed to the project, but they are not voting to block the project. The U.S. statement outlining its rationale for abstaining discussed these concerns:

… the United States is concerned about the project since it would produce significant greenhouse gas emissions, and uncertainty remains about future mitigation efforts. Without actions to offset the carbon emissions of the Medupi plant, the project is incompatible with the World Bank’s strategy to help countries pursue economic growth and poverty reduction in ways that are environmentally sustainable. We also remain concerned about other facets of the project, including the inconsistency of Eskom’s procurement process with the World Bank’s Procurement Guidelines, deficiencies in the environmental impact assessment, and potentially inadequate efforts to mitigate local pollution. The project is also inconsistent with new guidelines on coal lending adopted by the United States in December 2009.

South Africa responded to the criticisms of this project with some commitments, including a proposal to come back to the World Bank with a $1.25 billion loan for emissions reduction actions and changing their energy sector policies to better enable renewable energy to compete (the later a major limitation restricting the viability of wind in South Africa as the wind energy folks have told me). So hopefully some good will come out of this whole effort so that this will be the transition moment to help South Africa transform its energy sector so that renewables and energy efficiency will out compete uncontrolled coal (with some help from the World Bank to get there).

This project received significant criticism and generated strong opposition from groups in South Africa and serious questions from key Members of Congress—Sen. Leahy, Sen. Kerry, and Rep. Frank (as this ClimateWire article pointed out). So how do you think the World Bank would respond to these concerns/questions? This quote from a World Bank spokesperson before the vote was either way too optimistic or completely downplayed the grave concern that have been obvious for a while from key members of the Bank Board:

“We believe this project is important for South Africa and South Africans and we expect it will be well received by the board,” World Bank spokesman Peter Stephens told Reuters.

I don’t know if I would consider five abstentions from key countries as “well received.” And one of those statements (from the U.S.) basically said “don’t do that again:”

We expect that the World Bank will not bring forward similar coal projects from middle-income countries in the future without a plan to ensure there is no net increase in carbon emissions.

I sure hope before the World Bank comes to the U.S. and other donors with hat in hand asking for more money for a General Capital Increase that they come with a real energy strategy and a clear plan to stop funding projects which are causing global warming. Otherwise, I’m afraid they are going to have a major challenge convincing countries around the world that this is a worthy investment. After all, how can we use scarce resources to cause a problem—global warming—that we are simultaneously trying to eliminate?

Please World Bank help to fund the transition to a clean energy future—you must do better after this project.

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by Jonathan Hiskes

The American pet-food
industry spends more on research and development each year than the American
utility industry does, according to a mind-blowing line in Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat,
and Crowded. In most competitive industries, companies spend perhaps 8
to 10 percent of total revenues on R&D. Utilities, which don’t have to
compete with each other, spend a dismal 0.15 percent, writes Friedman.

So I think any sensible
experiments by utilities are worth applauding, including this one from the public
utility Seattle City Light:
The utility plans to use two historic company towns in the North Cascades in Washington state as a testing ground for
a handful of home energy-efficiency technologies.

Newhalem and Diablo, near
the Canadian border and the edge of North Cascades National Park, will
get high-efficiency heat pumps, lighting fixtures, water heaters, and
insulation. The utility intends to measure how effective such technologies are
when residents use them. It’s going to renovate 34 homes and up to 24
commercial buildings over the next several years, spending $700,000 on the
first phase. The utility built the
towns in the 1920s to house workers for its series
of dams on the Skagit River.

The improvements are
expected to save a good bit of electricity (2.5 million kilowatt-hours per
year), but the point is to learn how to scale up the best technologies to more
consumers. The ultimate goal, of course, is for these money-saving efficiency measures
to stop being “news” and become normal practices.

 

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by Tyler Falk

This month, in honor of Earth Day, Wal-Mart is selling garbage next to the garbage already on the shelves. The only difference is that these new products have been reincarnated into useful items thanks to the upcycling company TerraCycle. Until April 29, these kites, pots, and bags made from waste are being sold right next to the products they come from.

For example, this Oreo-branded backpack is on sale next to boxes of real Oreos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an added bonus, some kids might even pick up the backpacks thinking they’re full of Oreos. (The lil’ suckas!)

Find out more about how TerraCycle works from the male version of Annie Leonard:

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by Jeff Goodell

The other day, an MSNBC producer asked me, “What is the
connection between this coal-mine disaster in West Virginia and geoengineering the
planet?”

The question is not as strange as it sounds.

A few years ago, I wrote a book called Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future. Among other things, I spent a lot of time
underground with coal miners and learned a lot about the dangers and problems
of mining coal. I also learned a lot
about Don “I’m a poor guy with a lot of money” Blankenship, the CEO of Massey
Energy, which owns the mine where at least 25 men died as the result of a methane
explosion last Monday. Because of that
experience, I’m often asked to comment when there is breaking news about a mine
disaster.

My new book, which is about geoengineering the earth’s
climate, would seem to be entirely unrelated. But in fact—as I tried to explain to the MSNBC producer—it really
isn’t.

For one thing, writing Big Coal convinced me of the need to
take geoengineering seriously. After
four years of researching and writing about the coal industry, it became very
clear to me that the world is not going to stop burning coal any time
soon. Nor is carbon capture and
sequestration—the only technology on the horizon that might allow us to burn
coal without melting the planet—ever likely to amount to much (too
complicated, too expensive, the industry itself too moribund to ever change).

Upshot? Climate
calamities ahead. Geoengineering might
indeed be a foolish idea, but we live in foolish times.

But there are other connections between the West Virginia mine
disaster and geoengineering.

Both are creations of America’s failed energy
policies. The fact that the U.S.—the
richest, most technologically sophisticated nation on the planet—is still burning
more than a billion tons of black rocks every year to generate electricity is a
political outrage. Yes, burning coal
generates cheap power. But as everyone reading this knows, coal is only
“cheap” because the industry uses its muscle to make sure that the true costs—the broken bodies of coal miners, the blasted mountains of Appalachia, the
asthmatic children who live near coal plants, the superheated planet—are not
factored into the price. If they were,
we’d be burning a lot less coal, and we might be a lot further along in the
development of cleaner, more sustainable energy sources.

And of course if we were burning less coal, we probably
wouldn’t be talking about geoengineering at all. In this sense, geoengineering is a
technological fix for a broken political system.

Another connection between the West Virginia coal disaster and
geoengineering: Who eats the risk?

One of the big fears about geoengineering is that it will
allow rich, technologically sophisticated nations to essentially call the shots
when it comes to deciding what kind of climate we live in. It’s not a big leap to assume that these
nations will want to optimize the climate for their benefit.

And if we starting monkeying around with the climate and
something goes wrong—oops, sorry,
didn’t mean to turn off your monsoons!—who do you think is going to
suffer most? The people in the Sahel or the people in Sausalito?

It’s a similar dynamic in the coal industry. Don Blankenship
doesn’t have to worry about getting blown up in a methane explosion. He flies around in a black helicopter, lives
on the top a West Virginia
mountain—one of the few in the region that still has a top—and cashed in
stock worth nearly $4 million this year alone. If he can push his workers to work longer hours, cut corners, and run
more coal, well, hey, that’s how capitalism works!
This is a commodity business, after all. Coal is coal, whether there’s blood on it or not.

All the risks, of course, are borne by the workers in the
mine. The men and women who labor in the
noisy darkness for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, most of whom are just trying
to feed their families. They know they are replaceable, that if they open their
mouths about the dangerous conditions they see or the fears they have about a
mine starting to go bad, they will find themselves stocking yo-yos at Wal-Mart
for seven bucks an hour.

So they shut their mouths about the outrages they see and
keep working. They eat the risk. And the great tragedy is, sometimes they end
up dead. 

——-

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of posts from Jeff Goodell, author of How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate. Here’s his first post. And here’s an interview with Goodell about his book, and an earlier interview about Big Coal.

Related Links:

Senate Energy spox responds; more on fossil-fuel safety and our energy future

World Bank vote gives billions to coal

Another Tragic Iceberg Awaiting Massey’s Titanic Violations: Brushy Fork Dam

by treehugger.com

From cooking recipes for gas-free beans to sipping on sustainably
sourced biodiesel, find out which of your favorite celebrities are
serving up (at times) more than a little weird, yet helpful
tips to leading greener lifestyles. A star finds an unusual cure for
acne, excess phlegm, and other unmentionables; a Hollywood heartthrob
and HBO star rummages through the lost-and-found; and a Grammy
Award-winning musician suggests steamy shower sessions for curbing
water consumption. Here are some of our favorite green tips from
celebrities.

Woody Harrelson in Zombieland.Photo via Treehugger1. Woody Harrelson goes milk-free and then vegan to cure runny nose, redness, and acne

Woody Harrelson shares a story with Hustler (as reported by Ecorazzi), on how he gave up dairy all together in his mid-twenties for a vegan diet—Twinkies were his favorite indulgence.
He says, “When I was 23, 24, I used to have a really bad runny nose,
mucus, tons of acne, reddishness all over. A woman on a bus I took
looked at me and said I was lactose intolerant.” Three days later, his symptoms were gone. If milk, cheese, or other dairy products give you the willies try an alternative like almond, rice, hemp, or soy milk—yum!

Get the rest of the list from our friends at Treehugger.

Related Links:

Celeb couple awkwardly asks you to dim the lights for Earth Hour

Michael Pollan sets Food Rules on Oprah

Green celebs bring sexy back to Senate politics

by Ashley Braun

green-butts.com

We’re not sure how Sir Mix-a-lot would feel about these butts, but hipsters would probably be all over them.

Although … if so-called “100% natural” cigarette filters do become
a biodegradable, flower-seeding reality, will it also unleash an invasion of smug litterbugs?*

*Disclaimer: Smoking is gross.

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Related Links:

Wal-Mart stores are littered with wasteful products this month

How to make recycling e-waste fashionable

Imaginary, underwater subway lines are always the most convenient route

by Jonathan Hiskes

Today President Obama
and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed a nuclear arms reduction pact that
slightly limits each country’s stockpile, reinstates inspections, and restores relations
between the two countries. This is good news. Nuclear warfare is not
sustainable.

The New York Times explains
how it works. Money quote:

While the treaty will mandate only modest reductions in the
actual arsenals maintained by the two countries, it caps a turnaround in
relations with Moscow that sunk to rock bottom in August 2008 during the war
between Russia and its tiny southern neighbor, Georgia. When he arrived in
office, Mr. Obama made restoring the relationship a priority, a goal that
coincided with his vision expressed here a year ago of eventually ridding the
world of nuclear weapons.

Fred Kaplan at Slate also has clear analysis, including why Republican senators would be nuts to refuse to ratify the deal.

 

Related Links:

Northwest mountain towns become home efficiency lab

Revkin wants to talk ‘energy quest’ not ‘climate crisis’

Meet America’s most extreme energy geeks

by David Gumpert

Whatha’s looking it? As raw milk’s popularity grows, so does scrutiny. It’s been a
tough twelve months for proponents of raw milk. Last April, as many as 81
Colorado consumers were sickened by campylobacter associated with raw milk.
Last September, about 35 people became ill with campylobacter, apparently from
milk from a Wisconsin dairy. And just in the last few weeks, 17 raw milk
drinkers in the Midwest associated with a dairy in Indiana have become ill with campylobacter.
Added to all that, Whole Foods last month notified producers in four
states—California, Washington, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania—that it would no
longer stock raw milk.

What’s the
problem? As far as the public health and medical establishments are concerned,
whenever people consume raw dairy products, it’s a problem. In their view, raw milk is inherently
dangerous and shouldn’t be produced or consumed.

But the fact
that as many as three million Americans regularly consume raw milk, according
to the Weston A. Price Foundation, calls the health establishment’s radical
view into question. Still and all, raw dairy proponents are coming around to
the view there is a problem—it’s just not the problem the authorities would
have us believe.

In their view,
these are really problems of success, stemming from raw
milk’s fast-growing popularity.

As part of a
long-standing campaign to encourage consumption of locally produced
nutrient-dense foods, the Weston A. Price Foundation has been encouraging
consumers to switch to unpasteurized milk.

But that doesn’t
mean the organization wants conventional dairies to just discontinue
pasteurization and sell their milk raw. As the organization says on its Real
Milk web site, it “recommends Real Milk—that is, milk that is full-fat,
unprocessed, and from pasture-fed cows. We do NOT recommend consumption of raw
milk from conventional confinement dairies or dairies which produce milk
intended for pasteurization…Real Milk, that is, raw whole milk from grass-fed
cows (fed pasture, hay and silage), produced under clean conditions and promptly
refrigerated, contains many anti-microbial and immune-supporting components;
but this protective system in raw milk can be overwhelmed, and the milk
contaminated, in situations conducive to filth and disease. Know your farmer!”

With growing
numbers of consumers willing to pay $7 and more a gallon for raw milk, more
dairies are looking to say good-bye to their local processors, who pay on the
order of $1 to $1.50 a gallon for milk intended for pasteurization. While there
are no exact figures, in states where raw dairies are licensed, like
Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, the number of raw dairies has been
growing. Even in states where raw milk can only be sold via private arrangements,
known as cowshares or herdshares, like Michigan and Ohio, the number of dairies
getting into raw milk is understood to be rising sharply.

The biggest
problem may be that at least some farmers are slipping up in their production
of safe raw milk. That doesn’t mean raw milk can’t be produced safely on a
consistent basis. Obviously, many dozens of dairies are doing it day in and day
out, year after year. But as Tim Wightman of the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation points out, “There is value in understanding what happened” at the dairies that
have had outbreaks over the last year.

Wightman
suggests that dairies experiencing outbreaks may in some cases have unwisely
responded to increases in consumer demand by introducing animals purchased from
a factory system known for problems. “Looking for the best deal has its hidden
costs…for the farmer and the consumer, and the very web we depend on,” he says.

It’s precisely
because of its success that the raw milk community is now being placed under a
microscope by the media and regulators. There have been lengthy features challenging raw milk’s safety in
both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in just the last few weeks.

Part of the
challenge for raw milk proponents is that at least some have not wanted to
admit to the reality that people can become sick from drinking raw milk (just
as they can, and do, from pasteurized milk and other foods). It’s been thought that cows that
graze on pasture or eat hay produce milk that isn’t susceptible to pathogens.
It’s also been assumed that public health authorities are biased in their
investigations of outbreaks. As a result, the Weston A. Price Foundation has
expressed skepticism about whether raw milk has really been the culprit in the
Colorado and Wisconsin outbreaks, among others.

 A Wall Street Journal blog
posting following up on the paper’s article accuses proponents of “dismissing
warnings about bacterial contaminants…” Unfortunately, the knee-jerk
defensiveness in the face of probable outbreaks, which wasn’t noticed when raw
milk was a fringe food, just won’t cut it any more now that raw milk is
regularly making the media big leagues.

In a truly open
market, the marketplace would force the bad dairies out of business. But we
don’t have a truly open market—we have one where regulators are in a position
to force good dairies out of business for the transgressions of bad dairies.

Therefore, it’s up to the raw milk community to police itself. It could be there needs to be a raw dairy association, with real authority to penalize dairies that don’t meet high standards. If the raw dairy community won’t take the responsibility to watch over its interests, the government will likely take over this responsibility even more than it already does, and the results won’t be geared toward protecting our rights to access the foods of our choice.

 

Related Links:

Whatever happened to the government’s war on raw milk? Just a shift in tactics

Can a new USDA advisory committee make the dairy industry less pathetic?

by Grist

The city of Portland, Ore., is aiming for 49 total acres of eco-roofs in the
city by 2013 (the city’s paying up to $5 per square foot to any home or business
that builds one). But what about green roofs outside the urban environment?
What’s the appeal there? Blending more with the natural surroundings? Sure,
green roofs are beautiful, keep your abode cooler in the summer, warmer in the
winter, and tastier for wildlife passers-by. But, we wonder, what stories and
mysteries lie beneath the non-urban eco-roofs …

Photo courtesy shropshiretraveller via deviantART

The fourth little pig, having hired an architect, a landscaper, and feng shui consultant, made his slacker porker brothers jealous.

 

Everyone knew the little red house was an insecure baldy, but no one expected it to grow a toupee.

 

Photo via Marigreen

Could the shiny stainless ash can tell the sad tale of
shunned dwarf Smokey? Doc had finally
sent him packing.

 

Photo via DryscapesMax tried valiantly to let his owners know that he was a vegetarian—the untouched bone, the rooftop veggie garden. Finally, he rejected their sad attempts to woo him home with chicken jerky. It wasn’t even free-range.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo via DryscapesThe wheel took comfort in his solo lean against the house. He just couldn’t face the other two on their cushy sedum bed. They would never understand what it felt like to be a third wheel.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo via Free Seed Ring

The flower beds for a roof seemed like such a great idea—the strangling root system for a ceiling, not so much.

 

Photo: Andrea Gandini

Hansel and Gretel’s trail of bread crumbs wouldn’t be able to get them out of this mess. They knew they would soon be fertilizer for the little house of plants.

 

Photo via Green Architecture Notes

Yes, the poppies would have made them sleepy. Dorothy was relieved for the first time that her fear of heights would work in her favor.

 

Photo via deconstructingpurpose

The pink ghetto of the roof garden decided that invasion was the only strategy left for getting to the hipster side of the house. Run roots, run!

 

Photo via design-milkThe window in the chimney was a stroke of genius, in theory. Sadly, no one had yet to peer through it. The grass slip-and-slide: not so genius.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo via sweethomestyle: three85

It was odd that after going to all the trouble to install a green roof, he could only truly experience the outdoors through his one tiny window, which is how he liked it.

 

Photo via ecosalon

Literally bringing the outdoors inside in 3 … 2 … 1…

 

She had never fancied herself a gardener. Luckily, the voices in her head responded with clear instructions on rooftop crop production.

 

 

 

 

The plants she’d ordered looked much smaller on the Internet.  But strangely, the mullet effect pleased her.

 

Photo via kdjpcapix of FlickrBessie became obsessed by a certain nursery rhyme the farmer told his daughter involving a moon and a jump.  A realist, Bessie was certain her leap from the roof would be a success.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo via gwenhwyfearThe houses found it ironic that they were spared from the volcano, only to drown in a sea of grass. Oh, what a world indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mud?  Check.  Stones? Check. Gravity-fed spring water?  Check.  In the building frenzy, however, they’d seemed to have misplaced the hobbits.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo via PBase

Due to budget cuts, Santa could no longer afford the reindeer’s salary demands. Goats would have to suffice despite their easy distraction by grass and shiny objects.

 

Photo via boingboing

They treated themselves to bomb shelter chic.  Their grass roof would keep them cool and even shroud them from view in case of air attack … except for that pesky sidewalk pointing like an arrow to the fam.  Thanks, Dad.

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Zero-Carbon Buildings

For green homes, should energy trump everything else?

by Ashley Braun

Steven Rodrig, PCB Creations

Don’t e-waste your money on a new pair of shoes when you could rock the look that screams “electronic fashionista” and “responsible recycler.” You’ll be breaking hearts—and circuits—when you strut out in heels that will never leave you feeling board. I suppose this artist either totally rejects or totally embraces the idea of throwaway fashion.

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Related Links:

Wal-Mart stores are littered with wasteful products this month

Smokers to get their greenbutts in gear with compostable cigarettes

Imaginary, underwater subway lines are always the most convenient route

by James Barrett

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

Economics is critical to getting decent climate legislation passed,
as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discusses in a extended piece for the New York Times. Economists like me have always suspected that
this was true, but then we also suspect that economics is critical to
pretty much everything. The problem is that economics hates the
environment, or at least environmental policy.

In the real world,
environmental policy has been very good for the economy. But economic
analyses of climate legislation find that pollution limits slow
economic growth and increase costs. The Waxman-Markey climate bill—the American Clean Energy Security Act (ACES)—is a perfect example.
As any good wonk will tell you, the economic analyses of ACES actually looked pretty good, especially when compared to some of the econolyptic predictions of past climate policy. The problem is that while the analyses were pretty good for ACES, they were horrible for climate policy. The analysis done by the EPA was the source of some the lowest cost estimates that anyone put out. This analysis was actually bad news.

The reason why this is such bad news for climate policy is
because it resonates strongly with people’s fears, it reinforces the
conventional wisdom that climate policy will hurt the economy, and
because it’s wrong.

The heart of the problem is that the economic models economists use
were written, for the most part, by economists. They are based on
logical economic theories that make sense to economists because, in
part, they assume that everyone understands that economics is critical
to pretty much everything, and act rationally as a result. Not
“rational” in the sense that people understand the difference between
up and down, but rational in the sense that if your boss cut your
hourly wage, you would voluntarily choose to work fewer hours, even if
you have a family to feed. If you take the assumptions that underlie
economic rationality to their logical conclusions, they can result in a
pretty strange view of the world and how it works:

SOME FALLACIES OF CONVENTIONAL CLIMATE ECONOMICS:

We already live in an economically optimal world.
In an economically rational world, there is no inefficiency and
everyone is investing the optimal amount of money on research and
development of new technologies. If a business could save money by
switching to a more efficient heating and cooling system, it would have
done it already. Likewise, firms are investing in energy efficiency
research up to the point where an additional dollar of investment
yields an expected return of one dollar in energy savings. To do less
would leave money on the table, and to do more would be a waste.
Anything else would be irrational. The implication of this is that,
with everyone constantly and correctly optimizing their behavior, there is nothing the government can do to make us any better off.
If everyone is investing exactly the right amount in energy efficiency,
government incentives for to do more would induce people to do too
much, diverting resources from other areas with a higher rate of
return. This assumption is most prevalent in what are called “general
equilibrium” (GE) models. As you might guess, GE models are preferred
by the economic profession, yielding logically consistent if
demonstrably wrong results.

There can be no win-win solutions. Since
everyone is constantly optimizing their energy decisions, anything that
could cut carbon emissions while simultaneously saving money or
increasing profits has already been done. Emissions cuts that save
money have, in economics terms, a negative price. Since no one would
ever give you something you wanted and pay you for the privilege of
taking it (that would be irrational even to most non-economists, I
think), negative cost emissions reductions can’t exist. While it might
sound trivial, there is also a technical problem with this. Economic
models have a hard time assimilating prices with a negative sign in
front of them. So, we declare win-win solutions non-existent by fiat.
The EPA analysis comes out looking so good for ACES in large part
because the costs of carbon abatement are lower than in other models.
But what if someone, say a big consulting firm (McKinsey &
Company), went out into the real world and found that carbon abatement costs look more like this:

All those negative cost (win-win) emission reduction opportunities
on the left of the McKinsey cost curve are essentially excluded from
the EPA analysis—and CBO, EIA, NAM/ACCF … So even the most
optimistic analysis of the bunch badly overstates the costs of cutting
carbon. No doubt that some of these negative cost reductions require
some effort to capture, which is what policy is for.

No one ever learns. One thing that has bedeviled economists for a while is how to approximate what we call “induced technical change,”

the technical advances that occur because of policy changes or in response to price changes. If energy prices go up, you would expect that people would look for new ways to use less energy, resulting in innovations of various kinds. This makes common sense, but figuring out how it all works in the context of an economic model turns out to be pretty tricky. One attempt at this was to use the idea of “learning by doing”—the idea that the more you use of something the more efficient you get at using it. That’s great, except when you plug it into a model along with a climate policy, the climate policy causes you to use less energy, and the less you use of something the less efficient you get at using it. The end result was that carbon pricing slowed innovation in carbon efficient technologies. Back to the drawing board.

Put all these together with the difficulty of parameterizing the
global economy, along with a few more that get even wonkier (like how
to value ecosystem loss a hundred years down the road), and the odds of
getting things right starts to fall pretty rapidly. What’s worse is
that almost all of these problems bias the models’ results in the same
direction: toward higher economic costs of meeting any given reduction
target.

The good news is that there are a few people working to set the record straight. I’ve done some work of my own on this, basically forcing a model to understand the returns to
investing in efficiency. The good people at ACEEE are always on the
leading edge of research on energy efficiency and have done some very
good work recently on laying out the case for why and how economic models should be improved. The E3 network of economists has some excellent work related to this as well.

The bad news is that the really good work is badly outnumbered. So
when Congress and other people look at the literature and see it
dominated by the bad or merely unhelpful, they naturally tend to
discount the other stuff as outliers, as exemplified by how the
Congressional Budget Office reinforced incorrect conventional wisdom
with its analysis of climate policy.
The CBO basically took an average of some of the existing (flawed) work
in the field and used it as their basis for figuring out the
macroeconomic costs, giving the conventional wisdom an implicit stamp
of approval that it doesn’t deserve. As a friend of mine once said: If
you’re a physicist and you come up with a new theory that turns the
orthodox on its head, they give you a Nobel Prize. If you’re an
economist, they deny you tenure.

Economist James Barrett is the executive director of Redefining Progress.

Related Links:

Krugman says what political media won’t: economists agree climate action is necessary, affordable

Paul Krugman on ‘Building a Green Economy’

Pollution limits are essential for clean energy investments

by Jonathan Hiskes

Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog on the New York Times site has moved from the science section to the opinion
section, to reflect Revkin’s shift from a veteran staff reporter to a freelancer. He kicks things off at his new digs by
explaining why he prefers to think about a collective “energy quest” rather than
a “climate crisis.”

“This doesn’t mean I
reject the idea that we face a climate crisis. I just don’t think that phrase
is a productive way to frame this challenge, particularly as defined over the
last few years in the
heated policy debate,” he writes.

Climate change might be
the reason for the trek, he seems to be arguing, but we complete that journey
by watching the ground at our feet and the path ahead (by developing and implementing smart energy solutions), not by fixating on the
starting point.

We’re not even
close to investing what we should be, he points out. U.S. R&D funding for energy is a pittance
compared to other areas. Here’s a sobering graph Revkin borrows from Kei
Koizumi, formerly of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy:

American Association for the Advancement of Science via Dot Earth

 

That doesn’t even count
military spending, shown here:

American Association for the Advancement of Science via Dot Earth

Related Links:

Northwest mountain towns become home efficiency lab

Nuclear arms reduction is better than nuclear warfare

Paul Krugman on ‘Building a Green Economy’

by April McGreger

Why can’t a revolution based on traditional Appalachian foodways be televised?Photo: April McGreger

Having watched the first three episodes, I’ve been thinking a lot
about Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution” TV Show. Who can argue with his efforts to
get fresh food into West Virginia’s schools? No doubt, the pantries and
fridges in most school cafeterias need to be purged and restocked.

However,
from what I can tell so far, our imported food revolutionary could
stand to slow down and think a little bit harder about what he’s up to.

First,
Oliver has demonstrated little knowledge of (or interest in) the
traditional food culture of the region whose people he has set out to
“save.” Over the decades, Southern Appalachians have been plagued by
many well meaning do-gooders who wanted to teach those poor, underprivileged folks how to act more civilized—and eat better. Problem is, time and again, those reformers proved to be wrong.

According to the scholar and Appalachian native Elizabeth Engelhardt, for example, public health officials in the early 20th century targeted cornbread as the latest source of diet-based diseases in the South. Activists set out to create a social revolution in Appalachia by switching mountain women from cornbread to beaten biscuits, the symbol of aristocratic Southern cooking, for which their efforts were sardonically christened the “Beaten Biscuit Crusade.”

These biscuits required prohibitively expensive wheat flour, elaborate middle-class equipment—including a marble slab and modern ovens—and much more labor and time than their common cornbread. Beaten biscuits became an aspirational dish, separating the privileged from the poor and—-following now discredited public-heath logic—the healthy from the unhealthy.

On the contrary, replacing whole-grain, freshly milled cornmeal with chemically bleached, nutrient-stripped, shelf-stable industrial flour proved nothing but detrimental to Appalachian health. You need only watch Appalshop’s 1977 documentary Waterground, about fifth-generation miller Walter Winebarger, to know that traditional wisdom foresaw this sad outcome.

Cornbread is just one of a long list of other traditional foods that were replaced with inferior industrial ones—many of which succeeded through propaganda campaigns. Lard from pastured hogs was demonized (largely by nutritionists funded by the vegetable oil industry) and replaced by now-maligned partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, touted for its “purity.” Fresh-churned butter gave way to another trans-fat bomb, margarine. Much-beloved, live-cultured, and naturally low-fat buttermilk was banished in favor of inert, homogenized, pasteurized, growth hormone-injected, high-fat milk. Wholesome beans, greens, and cornbread gave way to sad casseroles based on canned soup and highly processed “cheese food.”

Overall, I worry that Oliver’s “Food Revolution” show obscures the fact that our food crisis is a symptom of underlying structural problems. In Appalachia, the government watched idly while the coal industry grabbed control of the region’s abundant natural resources. Widespread erosion of topsoil, contamination of drinking water, devastation of forests, and gut-wrenching destruction of the world’s oldest mountain range has resulted. The area remains in dire need of environmental protection. Is it any wonder why its economy is in ruins and the people in Huntington, West Virginia, are the unhealthiest in the country, as Oliver repeatedly reminds us?

Then there’s the workers’ rights crisis. Since stagnant wages compelled many women to leave the household and go to work a generation ago, who is supposed to make the from-scratch meals Oliver talks about? Many working mothers are on the clock until 5 or 6 o’clock. Add to that a long commute that many families endure to find jobs, and there is just no way. The system is unsustainable. Long hours at sedentary jobs with fast-food lunches produce unhealthy parents who then produce unhealthy children.

Moreover, the outrageous school district nutrition guidelines that Oliver struggles with are just one of a whole host of government policies that prop up the industrial food system that supplies most school cafeterias.

Our food system’s problems run deep—and the solutions won’t come easy.  However, we can begin by recognizing, celebrating, and supporting wholesome, traditional foodways. They hang on despite being ground down by industrialization. Here, we find much-needed common ground between two often opposed groups—the liberal outsider and the mountain old-timer.  This partnership could provide the fire for a real, lasting food revolution—one that heals Appalachian people, Appalachian economies, and Appalachian environments.   

In that spirit, here are a couple of recipes meant to fuel a food revolution while celebrating mountain food culture, clean and healthy environments, and glorious spring!

(Next page: Recipe for Spring Vegetable Cornbread ).

That good home cooking.Photo: April McGregerSpring Vegetable Cornbread
This recipe is my effort to reinvent a family favorite recipe for broccoli cornbread. Broccoli cornbread might sound healthy, but it’s not. The original recipe calls for a very sweet cornbread mix heavy on preservatives and trans fats, and light on nutrition. It also calls for a full two sticks of butter, or—worse—margarine. In my version, I’ve slashed the amount of butter, tripled the amount of vegetables, and relied on traditional, stone-ground ,organic cornmeal instead of a commercial mix. This recipe is still a cinch to pull together and the resulting dish exceptionally moist and chocked full of naturally sweet vegetables that kids love.

It takes less than 10 minutes to prep and 20 minutes to cook. I know that finding lots of fresh vegetables in rural areas can be difficult, so I’ve even tried this with a variety of frozen vegetables. It works great, and frozen are definitely the better nutritional alternative to canned (unless they are home canned). This recipe is also endlessly adaptable—try a summer vegetable cornbread bake with fresh corn, green beans, peppers, and tomatoes. It works just as well as a side dish as it does a main course.

5 cups mixed spring vegetables, cut into bite size pieces (frozen vegetables are fine and you can even use the microwave to steam them .if it’s more convenient). I used asparagus, leeks, snap peas, and broccoli in about equal amounts.
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 cups stone ground organic cornmeal
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
4 eggs
1 Tablespoon honey
2 cups cottage cheese (I used 2%)
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter (you can substitute olive oil if you prefer)

Preheat oven 400 degrees F.

Cut fresh vegetables into bite size pieces and steam until just tender. Frozen vegetables can simply be defrosted. Sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon black pepper and set aside.

In a 9-by-13 inch baking dish, place the 6 Tablespoons butter and place in the oven to melt.

In a mixing bowl whisk together cornmeal, 1 ½ teaspoons salt, and 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

To the cornmeal mixture whisk in four eggs, cottage cheese, and 1 tablespoon honey. Fold in the steamed vegetables.

Remove the baking dish of melted butter from the oven. Pour about ½ of the butter into the cornbread batter and whisk to combine. Then pour the batter into the baking dish with the rest of the melted butter and use a spatula to spread the batter evenly.

Bake at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the dish comes out clean.

Next page: Appalachian-style Wilted Salad

Appalachian-style Wilted Salad
This salad is very similar to the classic French salad of frisee aux lardons with a poached egg. However, this version is straight out of Appalachia. Traditionally the salad would include foraged spring greens, like dandelions and lamb’s quarters, as well as wild ramps. It’s just what the body needs to awaken it from winter’s slumber.

Makes 4 side salad servings

1/2 pound young spring lettuces
1 spring onion or ramp, sliced thinly
2 slices thick cut or slab bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons apple-cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 hard-boiled egg, chopped
Salt and ground black pepper

Wash lettuce and spin is a salad spinner until very dry. Place in a serving bowl with the spring onions.

Cook bacon in over medium heat until crisp. Transfer with a slotted spoon and to drain on paper towels. Hold bacon drippings warm in the pan over low heat.

Stir the vinegar and honey into the bacon drippings. Increase the heat to medium and cook the mixture until it is just bubbles.

Pour the hot dressing immediately over the lettuce and onions, tossing to coat and wilt the greens just slightly. Season with salt and pepper, top with chopped boiled egg, and serve immediately. 

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by Paul Gipe

The
Los Angeles Business Council released a hard-hitting
report on the future of solar photovoltaics in southern California at its annual sustainability summit on Tuesday.

The blockbuster report could have profound repercussions on
renewable energy policy not only in Los Angeles, but also in California. In
unusually clear and concise language, the report, written by the University of
California at Los Angeles (UCLA), cuts through the myths and misrepresentations
about feed-in tariffs and squarely concludes that if Los Angeles, and by
extension California, want to meet their renewable energy targets, there’s no
choice but to move to a system of multi-tiered feed-in tariffs.

In true Southern California fashion, the report was introduced to a glittering,
high-powered gathering at the hilltop Getty Museum overlooking the Los Angeles basin and the
gleaming towers of downtown. The L.A. Business council’s event was a
“who’s who” of influential business, community, and political leaders
from across the region, including Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, gubernatorial candidate Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., and Mary Nichols, chair of
the California Air Resources Board.

The report, “Designing an Effective Feed-in Tariff for Greater Los Angeles,”
gores several sacred cows, such as the California Solar Initiative, the federal
investment tax credit, and a so-called feed-in tariff proposed by Los Angeles’
Department of Water and Power (LADWP).

Authors J.R. DeShazo and Ryan Matulka at the Luskin Center for Innovation in
UCLA’s School of Public Affairs and the L.A. Business Council now find
themselves in the maelstrom of volatile state and local politics in an election
year.

In an ironic twist that was not lost on observers, California has not had an
effective renewable energy policy since Jerry Brown left the Governor’s office
more than two decades ago.

Some of the report’s key findings:

California’s share of worldwide solar PV is
    continuing to decline.
Driven by aggressive feed-in tariff policies, other
    jurisdictions around the world are increasing their use of solar energy,
    developing their local economies, and capturing the world’s solar market
    at a faster rate than California.
45 countries now have feed-in tariff policies.
In California at the end of 2009 the installed cost
    of solar PV varied widely from $4,630/kWAC for large industrial
    systems to $8,440/kWAC for residential systems.
Tax-based subsidies are a barrier to solar ownership
    for public and non-profit agencies.
Without federal and state subsidies, solar PV cannot
    pay for itself even in sunny Southern California with current tariffs.

But that was just a warm-up for insightful critiques of several state and
national policies that purport to support development of solar PV.

UCLA on recent California feed-in tariff policy

The
tariffs in AB 1969, the first of many so-called “feed-in tariff”
bills that have passed in California, are based on the value of the
electricity, not on the cost of generation, and, thus, are not high enough to
be effective. Solar developers have not used the “feed-in tariff” as
a result.

Similarly, AB 920, another of the “feed-in tariff” bills “will
not fundamentally change the nature of net-metering incentives” in the
state.

SB 32, the most recent of the state’s “feed-in tariff” bills, amended
the determination of “value” by including environmental and
transmission benefits. However, the UCLA report suggests that SB 32 will add
only $0.02 to $0.04 per kilowatt-hour to the price.

UCLA is quick to dismiss the California Public Utility Commission’s proposed
Renewable Auction Mechanism by noting that “in-basin solar is not likely
to win contracts under the RAM mechanism.”

UCLA on federal tax credits

The
disadvantage of federal tax credits is that owners “must owe taxes in
order to realize the benefits. Public agencies and non-profit entities cannot
directly receive this benefit. With the onset of the financial crisis, fewer
commercial entities owed enough income taxes to monetize this credit.”

UCLA on California’s RPS

“California’s
state RPS program has helped create opportunities for professional developers
to sell solar power to the utilities, but it has not significantly expanded the
opportunities for in-basin solar.”

Probably the report’s most far-reaching and certainly most controversial
conclusion is that “California’s current policies … do not maximize the
opportunities for solar energy generation within the state and the Los Angeles
basin.”

UCLA on SMUD

UCLA’s
report summarizes the much ballyhooed Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s
so-called feed-in tariff by noting simply that SMUD’s “program is not
intended to support an industry, incentivize widespread adoption of solar, or
create access to the electricity supply markets.”

UCLA on LADWP

LADWP’s
proposed feed-in tariff program is intended to procure no more than 25 MW, an
embarrassingly paltry amount for a city the size of Los Angeles that bills
itself a leader in renewable energy. Worse, says UCLA, the LADWP’s tariffs will
not even pay back a solar system’s initial cost. The tariffs must be increased
by a factor of two to four before they become attractive. In short, “this
proposal will not induce any additional in-basin solar for Los Angeles.”

UCLA concludes

“There
is a disconnection between Los Angeles’ aggressive solar goals and its
policies. Although the region maintains some of North America’s most ambitious
renewable energy and economic development goals, the current solar policy
framework does not facilitate any significant in-basin solar contribution to
these goals …

“California’s existing and proposed FIT programs are not effective for
inducing extensive in-basin solar for Los Angeles. These programs lack a
cost-based tariff structure that facilitates participation from
non-professional solar owners and owners of small projects. … Under the
near-term market conditions, neither California nor Los Angeles will experience
widespread solar participation with value-based tariffs …

” … Other FIT programs have proven that tariffs must be cost-based and
differentiated for solar participation. …

” … cost-based tariffs are the only proven tariff structure to
incentivize solar energy. However, the increased costs of the solar technology
will impact ratepayers more profoundly than other, less costly technologies.
Conversely, the cost-based tariff structure may incentivize many small solar
projects and create greater opportunities for local employment.”

The test

The test now for UCLA and the L.A. Business
Council is to design a solar PV feed-in tariff program that not only will work
in practice but also will survive California’s contentious political
environment. It will be a measure of the Business Council’s political acumen as
well as its muscle if it can move a program successfully through the fractious
city council and get it implemented by a recalcitrant LADWP.

If the Business Council fails, Los Angeles, and California too, will continue
to fall further behind other jurisdictions in renewable energy development and
the job creation it entails.

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Filling our short-term fossil-fuel needs

by David Roberts

Paul Krugman has a fantastic piece on the cover of the upcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine: “Building a Green Economy.” With his typical patience, cogence, and clarity, Krugman walks through the mainstream economics take on climate change: its cost, the best way to respond, the cost of responding, and the proper scale of response. It’s Mainstream Economics of Climate 101, and a great place to start for anyone trying to catch up on the issue.

As Grist readers know all too well by now, I have issues with mainstream economics, and so I have issues with several points Krugman makes in the piece. I’ll get to those in subsequent posts. For now I just want to pause and emphasize something:

The consensus of mainstream economists is that responding to climate change is both necessary and affordable.

This basic fact, like the consensus among climate scientists, is often obscured in media coverage, which emphasizes controversy and extremes. But at least within the economics profession, there is no “other side” that believes climate policy will destroy the economy. The “other side” is composed of fossil-fuel industry groups and the conservative politicians and think tanks who do the bidding of fossil-fuel industry groups. Within economics, the consensus in favor of action is broad and stable.

As I said, I’ll be taking issue with Krugman on a few points; I think academic economists underestimate the danger of climate change and overestimate the cost of good climate/energy policy. But even with those conservative biases, mainstream economists support taking action.

There is no credible case—scientific or economic—against taking action. The mainstream press seems incapable of making that clear, so kudos to Krugman for doing it for them.

Now, on to the arguments!

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