INTERNATIONAL
Destroying the rainforest, one McNugget at a time - Greenpeace links McDonald’s with Amazon Destruction
London – Dozens of volunteers dressed as seven-foot tall chickens invaded McDonald’s restaurants across the United Kingdom. Some chained themselves to chairs, while others posted images of Ronald McDonald wielding a chainsaw. In Munich, Germany, protestors also gathered at McDonald’s European environmental affairs headquarters and called on the company to stop destroying the Amazon rainforest.
After a yearlong undercover investigation, Greenpeace linked soybeans grown on land that was once rainforest to an animal-feed producer whose chickens are processed into Chicken McNuggests and other McDonald’s products.
As part of a new campaign to tackle the latest threat to the Amazon, Greenpeace used satellite images, aerial surveillance, previously unreleased government documents and monitoring on the ground to investigate into the global trade in Amazon soybeans. Greenpeace published the findings in a new report called "Eating up the Amazon."
A spokesperson for McDonald’s United Kingdom said the company will investigate the claim. The fast-food giant has policy not to source beef from recently deforested areas. U.S. McDonald’s has the same policy, but does not use soybeans from outside the United States because the U.S. supply of soybean production is sufficient.
Greenpeace said it has documentary evidence proving the soybeans from Amazon farms is exported from Santarém, Brazil to Europe, along with non-Amazon soybeans.
Cattle ranching is still the primary driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Yet the soybean industry also promotes deforestation indirectly by displacing cattle ranching farther into the rainforest, according to a 2005 study by the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.
Soybean production in the Amazon grew approximately 60 percent from 1998 to 2002, making Brazil the second largest soybean exporter. The cattle herd nearly doubled from 26.2 million in 1991 to 51.6 million in 2001. Brazil is the world’s largest beef exporter.
Source: Environmental News Service
Siberian Pipeline rerouted To Save Lake
Russia – On April 26, President Vladimir V. Putin ordered an oil pipeline to be rerouted to avoid the northern shore of Lake Baikal, the world’s largest body of fresh water. Putin’s order reversed a government decision in March to allow Transneft, an oil transporting company, to build the pipeline across Siberia and within a half mile of the shore. Lake Baikal holds more than 20 percent of the world’s fresh water and is located in a seismically active region, making an oil spill in the area potentially disastrous. Environmental groups and Russian scientists opposed Transeft’s planned route. Putin ordered the route be charted at least 25 miles from Lake Baikal, which would put the pipeline outside the watershed. Transneft officials said moving the pipeline could add nearly $1 billion to the cost and because the alternative route is a mountainous and would make construction more difficult.
Source: International Herald Tribune
China to create new sustainable city
China – The Chinese government is planning to make the island of Chongming, a 90-minute boat ride from Shanghai in the mouth of the Yangtze River, into a more sustainable new city. The new city will be called Dongtan, and residents will only be able to use electric vehicles. All construction on the island will be as sustainable as possible, and a five-kilometer buffer of land will protect the wetland ecosystems on the island. The new city is a Chinese government effort to displace overpopulation in Shanghai while constructing a model city for more sustainable living.
Source: Reuters
NATIONAL
All (Coal) Fired Up
Colorado – The power-plant industry has several dozen new coal-fired plants on the table, which typically makes environmentalists cringe. Energy from coal power plants accounts for 50 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to the Department of Energy. The majority of those plants also contribute high levels of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants.
But a push is on for "clean coal" plants that burn pulverized coal and pollute less than traditional plants. Clean coal plants convert the pulverized coal to hydrogen, which burns relatively clean in the plant’s turbines, and allows for the capture of pollutants and carbon dioxide.
Most of the proposed plants are traditional coal-fired plants, but unlikely opposition may delay their construction. In June 2005, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order mandating that state utilities only buy energy from plants that do not contribute to global warming. In 2003, the Bush administration launched a program called FutureGen that offered incentives toward the construction of the first "zero emissions" coal plant. Congress also paved the way for more incentives to build clean coal plants through the Energy Policy Act of 2005. These combined efforts may bury most of the proposed coal plants, but two clean coal plants are already under construction, including one in Longview, Wash.
Source: High County News
Short Term Shortage Solution
Washington D.C. – On April 25, President Bush halted filling of the nation’s emergency oil reserve, urged the waiver of clean air rules to ease local gas shortages and called for the repeal of $2 billion in tax breaks for profit-heavy oil companies.
Still, experts said Bush’s actions wouldn’t have much impact on gas prices. The suspension of oil purchases for the federal emergency oil reserve until the fall is likely to have only a modest impact. The halt in deposits involves only 12 million barrels less than the 20 million barrels of oil used every day in the United States for transportation.
Bush directed the Environmental Protection Agency to use its authority to temporarily waive air quality laws in states if that would relieve a local gasoline supply shortage.
The White House was unable to say how much Bush’s actions could affect the price of gas.
David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said an even more effective move would be to require that vehicles sold in the United States get higher gas mileage.
"The fundamental problem is that the fuel economy of cars and trucks is a disgrace and the world is just consuming too much oil and gasoline," Friedman said.
Source: The Associated Press
STATE
States to EPA: DO YOUR JOB
Washington D.C. – On April 27, 10 states, New York City and Washington D.C. sued the EPA for failing to comply with the Clean Air Act. The states claim the agency does not do enough to regulate carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants, which are known to cause global climate change. The state attorneys general from New York, California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin filed the suit in the federal appellate court for Washington D.C.
Source: Reuters
Alliance for Puget Sound Receives $3 million
Seattle, WA – People For Puget Sound, the Trust for Public Land and the Nature Conservancy have partnered to form the Alliance for Puget Sound Shorelines that will work to restore and protect hundreds of miles of shoreline and create 10 new parks and natural areas in Puget Sound over the next three years. The Russell Family Foundation awarded the newly formed Alliance $3 million to launch the campaign and begin the conservation work immediately. The groups will use the gift as a catalyst to raise a total of $80 million from the public and private sector for the first three years of the program. The three-year effort will lay the groundwork for what will ultimately be a 10-year, multi-billion-dollar campaign, putting the effort to save the Sound on par with other large-scale estuarine restoration projects, such as those currently underway in the Chesapeake Bay and the Everglades.
The quality of 2,500 miles of shoreline in the Puget Sound has been in decline for years because of pollution and development. Of the 18 threatened or endangered species that reside in Puget Sound habitats, nine rely directly on the shoreline habitat. Since 1980, approximately 30,000 acres of commercial shellfish beds have closed due to pollution. Source: The Trust for Public Land
$11.3 billion – Costly Hanford Cleanup Richland, WA – It costs Americans $1.4 million a day — $38 for every man, woman and child. The price has nearly tripled in less than six years. The Hanford Nuclear Waste Site contains 53 million gallons of deadly waste left over from decades of plutonium production. The cleanup project’s completion has been pushed back from 2011 to 2017, according to reports from government agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and watchdog groups. Meanwhile, corrosive waste weakens tank walls and heightens the risk of leaks. The Department of Energy is managing the project and admits to delays and errors in cost calculations. The contractor, Bechtel National Inc., has halted most of the construction because of safety and technical problems.
Bechtel National is a large construction company and defense contractor with strong political and industry ties. The group constructed the Alaska oil pipeline and the trans-Canadian pipeline. The Bechtel Group has recently been in the news along with Halliburton because of defense contracting in Iraq; the two well-connected companies gained contracts because, with the help of the government, they quashed much of the competition.
Source: Seattle PI and www.sourcewatch.org
Puget Sound Pollution Worsens
Washington State – Residents of the Pacific Northwest are known for their addiction to caffeine. But after the caffeine rushes through the blood stream, it ends up in a different stream as water pollution.
Scientists warn residents of Western Washington not to pollute Puget Sound and ask them to remember that pollution lingers long after they flush chemicals down toilets or dump them in curbside drains.
The Sound is shallow at the northern end and ocean water does not easily come in to flush out pollutants, state scientists told approximately 400 people at a conference in April. People for Puget Sound played host to the conference, which addressed toxins in the Sound.
Because of the Sound’s geography, levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in chinook salmon are up to six times higher than fish from the Columbia and Sacramento rivers and along the east side of Vancouver Island. The United States banned PCBs in the 1970s.
Scientists also find fish dosed with antidepressants and shellfish tainted with amnesia-causing toxins, researchers said at the conference.
"People need to be mad as hell about this situation, but they aren’t," said Brad Ack, head of the Puget Sound Action Team, a government agency. "We haven’t gotten the message across."
Ack suggested requiring consumer warning labels, banning substances that do not break down easily, such as flame retardants and updating sewage treatment plants to trap contaminants like caffeine and prescription drugs.
People intentionally ingest many of the Sound’s pollutants including antidepressants, drugs to curb nicotine addiction, caffeine and hormones. Research shows that some of these chemicals can skew the ratio of female to male fish, or reduce the fertility of male fish.
Source: The Associated Press