Progressive Wednesday

Twelve Empire State Buildings

In the news from Thursday, this: a California bill failed to gain a majority vote in that state’s Senate which would have banned the use of plastic bags by grocery stores, convenience stores and drugstores.

Before I go any further, let me admit something: I use plastic bags. (Gasp!) Second, after reading about plastic bags, I think I’m going to plop down a wee bit of cash and buy a reusable grocery bag or three. Why? The statistics are disturbing.

According to a recent report on CNN.com, the EPA estimates that 3.96 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were generated in 2008 in the United States. In the same year, 1.17 million tons of trash were created by tossing out paper bags. Of all of that, only a combined total of 830,000 tons of plastic and paper bags was recycled in 2008, while a combined total of 4.3 million tons was discarded, including 90% of plastic bags. For point of reference, this is the equivalent, speaking in terms of weight, of nearly twelve Empire State Buildings.

Sure, we live in a fairly plastic world. And we’re constantly adding more plastic to it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t reverse the trend. And that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to continue on a course that we’ve previously accepted as the norm. If we were fatalists, then Progressive Wednesday wouldn’t exist.

So, why is all this using and dumping without reusing so problematic? In typical circumstances (for example in landfills), a polyethylene bag will take more than 1,000 years to degrade.

While some Californian politicians had good intentions, a ban on plastic really isn’t a solution. This would likely turn people toward paper and compostable bags, both of which carry with them serious environmental impacts of their own during the manufacturing process.

I’m sure I’ll still use paper and plastic bags. I’m sure some of those will hit the trash. But I’m going to make a conscious effort to change my ways.

Join me, friends. We’ll do this together. For information about finding a recycling center near you, just click this sentence. For information about buying reusable products, just click this sentence.

Clergyman Charlie: A second call to Governor Spitzer

When you have lots of money, you can put big ads into a newspaper.  That doesn't necessarily make them true.

When you don't have the same financial resources, you are grateful to papers that publish letters to the editor, so that the other side of the story can be told. I hope people recognize the difference between statements that are made for self-interest by those who profit by making them, and those which are made by volunteer citizens who speak with no financial gain in mind.

On July 7 there was a large ad in a Western New York newspaper from Waste Management that spoke of the commitment of Chemical Waste Management, the largest polluter in Niagara County, to protecting the environment.  It was headed, “Protecting the environment isn't just a requirement.  It's our most important responsibility.–

Well, the proof of any statement is in the actions that follow.

If CWM really wants to protect our environment, then they can join in urging Governor Spitzer to sign a bill that recently passed the New York State Assembly and Senate.  This bill, A.248-B, calls for no permits for toxic landfills that have the potential to leak into the Great Lakes.  CWM could stop opposing that legislation and instead endorse it.

CWM could also drop its attempts to get a permit for a new landfill.  It isn't good for our environment to attempt to get customers from many states to bring their toxic poisons for disposal here.  When hundreds of trucks go by our schools carrying toxics, there is always the potential of leaks or accidents.  We can protect our environment better if that importation of toxics from many other states ceases.

So do not be fooled by good sounding advertisements.  Think for yourself.  To protect our environment, let's get a bill signed and let's stop being the dumping ground for dangerous materials.  For the sake of our health and our children's health, our property values, and our environment, we need to say “Yes– to bill A 248 and “No– to any more permits for toxic landfills.

We’ve asked you to do it before, but the bill still sits on the Governor’s desk. Tell Governor Spitzer to sign the bill.  Call him at 518-474-839, or you can email him here. Then tell CWM to stop any attempts to get a permit for a new landfill.  Call them at 716-754-0404.

Protecting the environment is the responsibility of all of us, regardless of where we live, and we'll do that best by taking the two actions above.

A view of Toronto from across Lake Ontario by this fantastic photographer

Corn, from Ascorbates to Zein: Learn

With most issues, progressive or otherwise, people usually realize that a problem exists or at least that improvements can be made. We squabble over whether or not it's worth fixing, how to go about doing that, how important the issue is, what side effects our actions might have, etc. But at least we know that there is a problem. Not so with corn. Here are some of the impacts the over subsidizing and overproduction of corn has on our society, in bullet form for your convenience:

• Corn is the most subsidized crop in our country. From 1995-2005, over 51 billion dollars were given to farmers in the US of A, more than twice that of the next closest crop.
• Cows are ruminants whose stomachs are designed to eat grass, not corn. They are given antibiotics to stave off infection until they go off to slaughter. This promotes antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be transmitted to humans that eat corn-fed beef.
• Corn strips the soil of more nutrients than any other mainstream crop and therefore requires much more fertilizer and pesticides, and consequently, more gas and oil to produce.
• Hormones and antibiotics given to cows to make them grow faster and bigger end up in our meat, soil, and water.
• Corn acidifies a cow's stomach, providing a haven for bacteria like E. Coli. Most of these animals are raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) where these diseases are easily spread.
• Compared to 1970, farms (which grow corn) today produce 500 more calories per person each day. We pack away an average of 200 of those calories.
• By many formulas, ethanol made from corn burns nearly as much fossil fuel, if not more to produce the crop as it would to just burn it in our car. Ethanol made from other plants such as sugar beets is much more efficient. Making ethanol is good; making it good is better.
• High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is the most common sweetener in the country. It is cheaper and easier to make than sugar from beets or sugar cane. But (there's always a “but– ), it doesn't stimulate the pancreas to make insulin or leptin to let us know when we are satisfied. The result? We crave more, eat more, get fatter, and get sicker. We are literally subsidizing obesity.
• Many scientists are now attributing the latest honeybee die-off to chemical pesticides used in fields of sweet corn.
• Corn is Iowa’s number one crop. Iowa has the earliest Presidential Primary. Need I say more?

“Country Fresh– renewable energy

Renewable energy. We've talked about it before, many times. Biodiesel, solar power, wind power, hydropower, geothermal power, wave power, ethanol, flower power– ¦ okay, maybe not the last one, but you get the gist. There is enormous potential for one or more of these to help solve our political, economic, and climate crisis born from the burning of fossil fuels.

These innovations are children of true “outside-the-box– scientific thinking, real progressive thought. But it is important not to stop at these. We can't know any possible long-term shortcomings or negative side effects that these new energy sources might have, so we must continue to find and develop cheaper, safer, more efficient, and cleaner energy sources than even these.

And we are. According to LiveScience.com:

Researchers say they have successfully generated electricity from heat by trapping organic molecules between metal nanoparticles, a finding that could yield cheap refrigerators, not to mention new, more efficient energy sources in general.

Now, I'm no scientist; my wife is the atom-splitter (and dog neuterer) in our family. So, I won't try to paraphrase. You can read the whole article here.

The same journal reports that electricity has also been generated using cow manure and stomach juices.

Microbes living in the rumen chamber of a cow's stomach break down cellulose, a tough carbohydrate produced by plants, specifically in the grass cows munch on.

This process helps cows digest their meals, but it also releases electrons which scientists can harness for use in a battery. They used about a liter of microbe-rich rumen fluid to produce 600 millivolts of electricity, about half the voltage needed to run one rechargeable AA battery.

It doesn't seem like much, and maybe it isn't. But finding a good way to convert the excessive waste produced by huge corporate farms is as important as creating that small amount of energy. And continuing to find new and better ways to make the world spin is what being a progressive is all about.

I’m not lovin’ it: Stop

Stop eating fast food, plain and simple. Okay, plain, but maybe not so simple. We have become a society on the move (at least in our cars) and sometimes a quick meal at KFC is the only thing we seem to have time for. Plus, we've grown to like the food, maybe even love it. It's fast, convenient, tasty, cheap, and deadly. To prove my point, the ever useful numbered list:

1. Chicken served at McDonald’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Outback, Applebee’s, Chili’s and TGI Friday’s was found by the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine to contain PhIPm, a carcinogenic compound. In other words, it causes cancer and they didn't tell us.
2. To quote Eric Schlosser, author of Fast-Food Nation: “Fast food has become the operating system of today's retail economy, wiping out small businesses, obliterating regional differences, and spreading identical stores throughout the country like a self-replicating code.– To quote me: “It's like Wal-Mart that makes you fat.–
3. In the “duh– category, eating fast food regularly greatly increases your chance of becoming obese and developing diabetes. Even, or especially, in children.
4. The 142 billion dollars we spend annually on fast food exceeds the amount we spend on higher education. That would help explain more than just our weight problem.
5. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 12 percent of the national healthcare budget goes toward treating ailments caused by obesity.
6. Animal rights groups have won many lawsuits against every major fast food chain. Conditions have since gotten better, but are still a long ways from good.
7. The production of food by major fast food chains contributes exponentially to soil depletion, water and air pollution, the loss of family farms and rural communities, and even global warming.
8. Every fast food hamburger you eat contains meat from hundreds of cattle. Each burger potentially contains diseases from all of those animals.
9. Because fast food is so highly processed, much of its flavor is destroyed, so the tastes of most fast food are manufactured at a series of special chemical plants in New Jersey.
10. Major fast food companies are frequently involved in civil rights lawsuits for the treatment of workers at their supplier's farms, from Florida to China.

Clergyman Charlie: On protecting the Great Lakes

Major efforts were made last year by the Sierra Club, Residents for Responsible Government, the Niagara County Legislature, and many other groups to protect the Great Lakes from toxic pollution. A bill was passed unanimously in the State Senate and with only one negative vote in the State Assembly that stated that no permits could be granted for commercial toxic landfills that had the potential to leak into the Great Lakes. Newspapers all across the state, including the Albany Times Union and Buffalo News, endorsed the law. The Niagara County Farm Bureau and Business First supported it. But to our dismay, Governor Pataki vetoed it.

Efforts to get the veto overridden were not successful. Legislators were busy campaigning and not interested enough in returning to Albany for this purpose. So our next hope was to get the bill reintroduced quickly in the next session.

Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte did as she promised, reintroducing the same bill quickly in the Assembly. It has already passed through committee and is headed toward a vote.

State Senator Maziarz, however, to our surprise, introduced an entirely different bill. Unlike the U.S. Congress, if two different bills pass in New York State in the Assembly and Senate, there is no joint committee to work out a compromise wording for a second vote. The effort simply fails.

The Sierra Club attorney, Richard Lippes, who is also the attorney for Riverkeeper and for Residents for Responsible Government, has analyzed the bill submitted by Senator Maziarz and has concluded that it is not as strong a bill as the one presented last year. It is much longer and vaguer. Senator Maziarz and his aide, Sue Senecah, say that they are open to amendments to it at this stage. However, we continue to feel that the original bill needs to be presented in the Senate as he promised.

The Niagara Group and the Atlantic Chapter have both called upon the Senator to do so. Riverkeeper is urging him to withdraw his new bill and push again for the original bill.

This effort is important for the whole state, not just for his constituency in western New York. The Great Lakes contain 20% of the liquid fresh water of the globe. It is absurd to allow them to become polluted.

Citizens need to band together and insist that this great asset to our world, our area, and all people is protected.

Cement-imentality

Strolling around NYC one winter with my Brooklyn born-and-bred bud, Jay, I looked up at the skyscrapers surrounding us like they were monuments to the gods. From my vantage point, that of someone who grew up in a town where a three-story building was considered excessive, these buildings boggled my imagination.

“Man, those are beautiful,” I said. “I can’t believe we made these.”

To that, Jay, making every effort to dismantle my sentimentality for his city, said: “I wish cement had never been invented.”

Maybe we both had a point. And maybe Jay, an avid reader of Progressive Wednesday, will smile a bit over what Time magazine has just plopped into my mind, which I will now plop into his and yours: cement can help save the planet.

Read for yourself:

As head of research and development for Italcementi, Enrico Borgarello knows cement isn’t considered the most high-tech–or environmentally friendly–of products. But under his direction, the Bergamo-based Italian company has developed a substance that could turn an ordinary building into a weapon against air pollution.

It’s called TX Active, and it’s an additive for cement that literally eats surrounding smog.

According to Mr. Borgarello, when the sun hits TX Active, the substance “neutralizes surrounding pollutants like nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide.” TX has the potential to cut local air pollutants from 20-70%.

The Italcementi company paints an even clearer picture:

In a large city such as Milan, researchers have calculated – “ on the basis of test results – “ that covering 15% of visible urban surfaces with products containing TX Active® would enable a reduction in pollution of approximately 50%.

Testing continues because similar catalytic agents like TX can lose steam over the long haul. But considering the building boom going on in some underdeveloped but industrializing countries, TX could make minuscule and monstrous buildings alike more eco-friendly and life more sustainable.
If so, Jay and I might see the world a little more similarly, and call me selfish for ignoring the environment for a split-moment, but I’d kinda dig that, too.