STUDY: THE ENVIRONMENTAL COST OF DOING BUSINESS COULD ERASE A THIRD OF CORPORATIONS' PROFITS

Center for Investigative Reporting / By Sarah Terry Cobo

Environmental "externalities," says one expert, "pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them."

Knowing they will face climate legislation sometime in the future, a number of U.S. corporations have already begun to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. The utility giant American Electric and Power isbuying forest projects in Brazil and the disposal company Waste Management isrecovering methane from landfills to use in its trash trucks in California.

But a preliminary report commissioned by theUnited Nations has found that the cost of environmental damages could erase at least one third of the profits major corporations make around the world, if they had to pay for these damages. The study looked at 3,000 of the world's top publicly traded companies, and calculated that their environmental impact amounted to at least $2.2 trillion in 2008. More than half of the damage was caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The full report, due out this summer and first reported by the Guardian in February, was conducted by the British consultancy firm Trucost, and commissioned by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. Trucost's CEO, Richard Mattison, told the Guardian that industries are facing a completely new paradigm: "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them," he said.

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FROM NEPAL TO THE MALDIVES, EYE WITNESS SEES IMPACT OF WARMING AND MELTING

SolveClimate / By Kunda Dixit

Bursting glacial lakes, storm surges, and drought among the current dangers.

This story was reprinted from SolveClimate. It first appeared on Himal.

Namgye Chumbi was weeding his potato garden in the village of Phakding in Nepal’s Khumbu region below Mount Everest on the morning of Aug. 4, 1985. Because of the monsoon season, there were not too many trekkers hiking up the trail towards Namche Bazaar. It was a brilliantly clear day, unusual for the monsoon season, and he was working by the banks of the Dudh Kosi River.

True to its name, the river was milky white and frothing, as the water tumbled noisily over boulders. Yet around 2 in the afternoon, the river suddenly became strangely silent. The water level went down, and Namgye sensed danger.

Much in the same way as coastal dwellers saw the sea recede before the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Dudh Kosi was about to reveal its terrifying avatar.

“I noticed that the white water had turned muddy brown, and in the distance I heard a thundering sound like an approaching helicopter,” Namgye recalls. “I looked upstream and saw this huge wall of dark brown water approaching very fast.”

There was no time to think. Namgye dropped everything and began to run up the mountain. His wife, Sherkima, had more presence of mind and picked up their two young children, Hira and Tsering, and followed her husband. They reached a ledge as the thunderous flood raced beneath them, lapping at their heels. The ground was shaking like an earthquake, and the sound was deafening.

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THE BEST ARGUMENT AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING...OH RIGHT, THERE ISN'T ONE.

Pacific Institute / By Peter Gleick

Deniers have never, ever produced an alternative scientific argument that comes close to explaining the evidence we see around the world that the climate is changing.

Here is the best argument against global warming:

. . . .

Oh, right. There isn’t one.

There is no good argument against global warming. In all the brouhaha about tiny errors recently found in the massive IPCC report, the posturing by global climate deniers, including some elected officials, leaked emails, and media reports, here is one fact that seems to have been overlooked:

Those who deny that humans are causing unprecedented climate change have never, ever produced an alternative scientific argument that comes close to explaining the evidence we see around the world that the climate is changing.

Deniers don’t like the idea of climate change, they don’t believe it is possible for humans to change the climate, they don’t like the implications of climate change, they don’t like the things we might have to do to address it, or they just don’t like government or science. But they have no alternative scientific explanation that works.

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The Biggest Dump in the World

Ed Cumming

Telegraph (UK), March 16, 2010

The world’s biggest rubbish dump keeps growing. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – or the Pacific Trash Vortex – is a floating monument to our culture of waste, the final resting place of every forgotten carrier bag, every discarded bottle and every piece of packaging blown away in the wind. Opinions about the exact size of this great, soupy mix vary, but some claim it has doubled over the past decade, making it now six times the size of the UK.

Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, goes even further: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.”

This global problem is the motive behind the Plastiki, a 60ft, 12-ton catamaran built from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, which embarks on its maiden voyage from San Francisco this week. The brainchild of David de Rothschild, the flamboyant British banking heir and environmentalist, the Plastiki will sail right through the middle of the Garbage Patch as part of a campaign to help make more people aware of the Pacific’s threatened communities and of the damage our waste is doing to our oceans.

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OBAMA'S NUCLEAR DREAMS: RESURRECTING A NOXIOUS INDUSTRY

TruthOut.org / By Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank

Despite his attempts to alert the public of future nuclear leaks, Obama still considers nuclear power a viable alternative to coal-fired plants. The atom lobby must be pleased.

He may soon be called the nuclear industry's Golden Child. No president in the last three decades has put more taxpayer dollars behind atom power than Barack Obama. And there may be good reason why the president is salivating over the prospect of building new nuclear power plants around the country.

It was one of the most important issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. The perceived threat of global warming began to make even the most skeptical of politicians a bit nervous. Both the Democrats and Republicans proposed searching for more domestic oil supplies, promising to drill up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains and even off the fragile coastlines of Florida and California. The future of planet Earth, they claimed, is more perilous than ever.

Al Gore made his impact.

Too bad the Gore effect is like a bad hangover: all headache and no buzz. The purported solution the Obama administration has heaved at the imminent warming crisis, nuclear technology, is just as hazardous as our current methods of energy procurement. Yet, Obama isn't the first Democrat in recent years to tout nuclear virtues.

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REPORT WARNS OIL SANDS INVESTORS OF TOXIC WATER'S FINANCIAL RISK

SolveClimate / By David Sassoon

A handful of companies are at a financial disadvantage because of their exposure to waste water remediation liabilities. Others, like Chevron, will remain relatively unaffected.

This post first appeared on SolveClimate.

A new report from RiskMetrics Group, a financial research firm, warns investors that some leading oil sands companies may be particularly exposed to financial risk from toxic waste water liabilities.

The report attempts to quantify the true cost of cleaning up billions of barrels of contaminated water resulting from the mining and refining operations of leading producers of oil sands crude. It was quietly released in December to RiskMetrics' private clients, and unveiled more publicly last week in a conference call. Titled "Oil Sands Tailings Pond Remediation Costs Understated," the report shows a handful of companies to be at a financial disadvantage because of their exposure to waste water remediation liabilities.

For example, for Suncor, currently the largest producer in the oil sands, water remediation could cost almost $2 million a week, or $104 million a year, according to RiskMetrics. That would erode the company's annual net income by 26 percent according to RiskMetrics' low-cost analysis. In the worst case, RiskMetrics says, the cost of cleaning up toxic waste water could completely wipe out Suncor's earnings.

In contrast, the super majors, like Exxon and Chevron, can easily absorb the clean-up costs because of their enormous size and diversified holdings.

"Many investors were really glad to see the report," Yulia Reuter, the author, told SolveClimate. "They have known that tailing pond remediation was a problem. Now, they can see something specific that quantifies the financial risk."

Reuter explained that oil sands producers have been setting aside debt obligations on their balance sheets in the knowledge that they would one day have to pay the cost of waste water clean-up. Her analysis, however, reveals that the set-aside calculations have been insufficient to cover the full cost and that ongoing clean-up could substantially erode earnings of the most overexposed companies.

Each barrel of oil that comes out of the oil sands requires as much as four barrels of water to extract, water that is contaminated with toxic tailings in the process and disposed of in giant containment ponds. Since February 2009, companies have been under government orders to clean the toxic tailings out of the water left behind. Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) issued Directive 74, which requires oil producers to address a problem that has been growing without a solution for decades. Existing "tailings ponds" now cover 50 square miles, including once-pristine boreal forest.

The directive requires producers to process fluid tailings, transform them into solid "fines" -- mineral solids with particle sizes equal to or less than 44 micrometers -- and deposit them in dedicated disposal areas that must become trafficable within 5 years. A first baseline survey is due from all oil sands developers by the end of this September, followed by a gradual phase-in over three years of the directive's regulations.

Non-compliance could theoretically result in a shut-down of mining and refining operations. However, observers believe that would be highly unlikely. The ERCB has historically enjoyed a cozy relationship with the oil sands industry -- a lynchpin of the Canadian economy. If producers go into default, they more likely would face a fine or restrictions on permits for expanded operations, Reuter said. Compliance with Directive 74 is negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

Super Majors Have an Advantage

The new regulatory measures are unlikely by themselves to slow the growth of oil sands production, already about a million barrels per day. That's because the super major oil companies can absorb the cost of cleaning-up toxic waste water without recording a noticeable erosion of profits, according to the RiskMetrics analysis.

For example, the cost to Exxon and Chevron of cleaning up their waste water -- based on 2007 production levels -- would amount to three-tenths of one percent of net income in the high-cost scenario.

The analysis, in essence, shows that the super majors have a financial edge in oil sands development moving forward. They can absorb the increased costs on their balance sheets and income statements without causing concern among shareholders. The smaller, pure-play oil sands producers, like Suncor, Imperial Oil and the Canadian Oil Sands Trust, will face the greatest risk of stock valuations being negatively impacted by compromised earnings or balance sheets that are over-leveraged.

The RiskMetrics quantification may present good news for environmental advocates. The analysis demonstrates that the sector as a whole can accomplish the massive clean up using bioremediation, the most effective technology, without roiling financial markets and spooking shareholders.

The report also makes clear that the clean-up is vital for the oil producers, as well. The oil sands industry -- one of the largest energy development undertakings on the planet -- will collapse unless the region's water supply is protected from both overuse and toxic pollution.

The Athabasca watershed, already compromised by oil sands development, cannot tolerate the extraction of almost five million of barrels of fresh water that the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers estimates could be needed every day for mining operations alone by 2014, the report states. It would exceed the withdrawal limit currently imposed by the environmental regulator. The river provides the lifeblood of one of the largest watersheds in the world, spanning 36,000 square miles of Canadian wilderness, and the oil sands industry is equally dependent upon the natural resource.

Oil sands producers have also been under growing international pressure to lower the outsized carbon footprint of their unconventional oil extraction. The oil sands are the primary reason Canada is failing to honor its Kyoto commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and instead has substantially increased them.

Last month, shareholders of both BP and Royal Dutch Shell filed resolutions for consideration at upcoming annual meetings, asking for a review of the financial risks posed by oil sands development. A coalition of unions, pension funds and faith groups fear the impact of carbon costs and reputation damage from environmental degradation will be high.

The RickMetrics analysis indicates that waste water clean-up is a more material financial issue than greenhouses gases.

Battle for World Opinion

The waste water issue has been one major reason the oil sands industry has suffered in the battle for world opinion. The tailings ponds drew global attention in 2008 when more than 1,600 migrating ducks landed on a toxic pond at one ofSyncrude's mines, became coated in oil and mining waste and died. The company is now on trial for allegedly violating Alberta's Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act. The deaths also underscored for the public just how dangerous the water is: It is contaminated by phenols, arsenic, mercury, carcinogens such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and naphthenic acids.

The oil sands industry had assumed these compounds would settle out of the water, and about 35 percent of the particles do end up on the bottom of the ponds within three to five years; but most of the toxic pollution remains suspended in the water as fine tailings which take decades to settle unless they are treated, Reuter said.

The tailings ponds, huge constructions whose contents have been documented to leak, have been blamed for an increase in cancer rates among people in the region. There is also concern that if the walls of the ponds give way and cause a major spill, the toxic water could flow into the region's waterways.

Later this month, the Canadian Energy Research Institute is sponsoring a presentation in Calgary on the battle for world opinion as it relates to oil sands. In its announcement, it explains:

"Many believe that the oil sands brand is being shaped by interests outside of the industry. And if actions in the form of activism, photo journalism and public displays are any indication, the oil sands brand has shifted from 'innovation' to 'dirty oil.' This tagline has captured the world’s attention and is being used more frequently to define the oil sands, and by extension Canada, to the world. Has the industry, the province and the nation lost control of the message?

The featured speaker is F. William Smullen III. He was a former aide to Gen. Colin Powell, and, according to Smullen's bio, was responsible for managing the general's brand. Smullen is to lead the discussion to "explore a plan of action to influence how others not only see us [the oildsands industry] but whether they accept our actions as being responsible."

The RiskMetrics report provides investors with another financial yardstick for measuring performance in the context of the need to clean up an enormous and longstanding waste water liability, now with the pending implementation of Directive 74 and various shareholder resolutions.

OUR OBSESSION WITH STUFF IS TRASHING OUR PLANET, OUR COMMUNITY, AND OUR HEALTH

Free Press, Simon & Schuster / By Annie Leonard

A new book questioning our consumerism says we spend more on shoes and jewelry than higher education; more on ocean cruises than providing drinking water for all.

This following is an excerpt from The Story Of Stuff: How Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing The Planet, Our Communities, And Our Health – And A Vision For Change by Annie Leonard. Excerpted with permission by Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 2010 by Annie Leonard. 

Consumption

So here we are. All sorts of stuff is lining the real or virtual shelves of stores, ready to slip into our shopping carts or be assembled and shipped according to our desires. Enter the consumer. Stage left, stage right, storming stores and online shopping portals, armed with credit cards and freshly cashed paychecks. This stage of the game is What It's All For -- at least that's what we're told. For a moment, as the almighty consumer makes her selection from a long menu of choices, the entire world revolves around her. She experiences a surge of power as she trades her hard-earned money for a piece of stuff and becomes its owner, either meeting a need, indulging a whim, shifting a bad mood -- or maybe all three at once. "When things get tough, the tough go shopping," as the bumper stickers used to say.

Lots of our favorite characters and cultural icons surround themselves with signature cool Stuff. Where would 007 be without his latest gadget, his perfectly tailored suit, or his (insert your favorite model of future car here)? What would the Oscars be without the gowns? How could we love Carrie Bradshaw without her outrageous brimmed hats and designer shades and glossy shopping bags full of ruffled dresses and sky-high heels? Would we recognize Holly Golightly without her infatuation with Tiffany's? We're attached to these characters' possessions and obsessions as much as to their personalities; it's all part of our national mythology. It only makes sense that we'd get attached to our own Stuff.

Before I go any further, I want to say that I'm not against all consumption. One irate viewer of The Story of Stuff film e-mailed me and said, "If you're against consumption, where did you get that shirt you're wearing?" Duh. Of course everyone needs to consume to live. We need food to eat, a roof over our head, medicine when we're sick, and clothes to keep us warm and dry. And beyond those survival needs, there's a level of additional consumption that makes life sweeter. I enjoy listening to music, sharing a bottle of wine with friends, and occasionally donning a nice new dress as much as the next person.

What I question is not consumption in the abstract but consumerism andoverconsumption. While consumption means acquiring and using goods and services to meet one's needs, consumerism is the particular relationship to consumption in which we seek to meet our emotional and social needs through shopping, and we define and demonstrate our self-worth through the Stuff we own. And overconsumption is when we take far more resources than we need and than the planet can sustain, as is the case in most of the United States as well as a growing number of other countries. Consumerism is about excess, about losing sight of what's important in the quest for Stuff.

Do you remember Jdimytai Damour? In November 2008, on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, the holiday shopping season kicked off. Across the country, people left their Thanksgiving dinners early to sleep in their cars in store parking lots hours before scheduled store openings, which in many places were moved up to 5:00 a.m. Shoppers began gathering in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, at 9:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening. By 5:00 a.m., when the store was scheduled to open, a crowd of more than two thousand people had gathered.

When the doors opened, a thirty-four-year-old temporary worker from Haiti named Jdimytai Damour -- his friends called him Jimbo -- was overwhelmed by the surging crowd. He was knocked down, and witnesses said people just walked over his body to get to the holiday bargains. Emergency medical technicians who arrived to help were also jostled and stepped on by the shoppers. Damour was pronounced dead just after 6:00 a.m. He died of asphyxiation; he was trampled to death. An employee in the electronics department, who was in the store during the stampede, reportedly commented, "It was crazy . . . The deals weren't even that good."

And this took place in a recession year, against a background of growing economic insecurity, rising gas prices, mounting consumer debt, collapsing mortgages, and increasing unemployment. Retailers had been worried that Black Friday revenues would suffer. Instead, Damour suffered the ultimate loss, and America kept on shopping. We are a society of consumers, we're told. We shrug and nod and accept this as a fundamental truth. It's just human nature, is more or less what we tell ourselves.

And boy do we shop. Globally, personal consumption expenditures (the amount spent on goods and services at the household level) topped $24 trillion in 2005, up from $4.8 trillion (in 1995 dollars) in 1960. In 2004-'05, Americans spent two-thirds of our $11 trillion economy on consumer goods, with more paid for shoes, jewelry, and watches ($100 billion combined) than for higher education ($99 billion). According to the United Nations, in 2003 people worldwide spent $18 billion on cosmetics, while reproductive health care for all women would have come to $12 billion. While eliminating hunger and malnutrition would have cost $19 billion, people spent $17 billion on pet food in the United States and Europe combined. And our tab for ocean cruises came to $14 billion, although it would have cost just $10 billion to provide clean drinking water for everyone.

In 2000, teenagers alone (twelve to nineteen years old) spent $115 billion; the same group controlled $169 billion in 2004. The hundred-acre Mall of America -- the size of seven Yankee Stadiums -- is one of the top visitor attractions in the United States. The average American has 6.5 credit cards. The average U.S. supermarket contains thirty thousand items. As of 2003, the United States had more private cars than licensed drivers.

In the average middle- to upper-middle-class American's 2,000-somesquare-foot home, you'll find: several couches and beds, numerous chairs, tables, and rugs, at least two TVs, at least one computer, printer, and stereo, and countless books, magazines, photos, and CDs (although these last, like vinyl and tapes before them, are a dying species now, destined for the dump); in the kitchen there will be an oven, a stove, a refrigerator, a freezer, a microwave, a coffeemaker, a blender, a toaster, a food processor, and endless utensils, dishes, storage containers, glassware, and linens (or at least paper napkins); in the bathroom, a hairdryer, a razor, combs and brushes, a scale, towels, medicines and ointments, and bottles and tubes of personal care products galore; in the closets, dresses, sweaters, T-shirts, suits, pants, coats, hats, boots, and shoes and everything in between. (In 2002, the average American acquired fifty-two additional pieces of clothing, while the average household was throwing away 1.3 pounds of textiles every week.)

The average house also contains a washer and dryer, bicycles, skis, other sporting equipment, luggage, garden tools, jewelry, knickknacks, and drawer upon drawer of crap both relatively useful (like staplers, Scotch tape, aluminum foil, candles, and pens) and entirely pointless (like novelty key chains, gift wrap, expired gift cards, and retired cell phones). We've got so much Stuff that, according to builders, families often buy a home with a three-car garage so that one-third of that space can be dedicated to storage.

Even so, our homes are overflowing, inspiring a massive increase in personal self-storage facilities. Between 1985 and 2008, the self-storage industry in the United States grew three times faster than the population, with per-capita square feet of storage space increasing 633 percent. And somehow despite this amazing abundance, we find ourselves drawn into stores like moths to flames, on the quest for yet more.

The Sanctity of Shopping

Shopping is a nearly sacred rite in the United States -- in fact, in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy, President George W. Bush included shopping in the daily activities that he said were the "ultimate repudiation of terrorism." When our country was in shock and no one was quite sure what would happen next, Bush told us to hang our "America is open for business" signs in the windows and keep shopping.

Not to buy means to fail our workers and stifle the economy, say most economists and politicians; shopping is our duty. Those who dare challenge the ethic of consumerism have been declared unpatriotic or just plain loony. AfterThe Story of Stuff film was highlighted in the New York Times in early 2009 many teachers were using it in classrooms to spark discussion about consumerism and environmental issues, and conservative commentators accused me of threatening the American way of life, terrorizing children, and called me "Marx in a ponytail."

When Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, got press for the year-long project in which he reduced his New York City family's consumption to a bare minimum, he received hate mail, including an anonymous death threat! Henry David Thoreau, who in the mid-1800s wrote of living simply and in harmony with nature inWalden, was variously described by critics as "unmanly," "very wicked and heathenish," and an "unsocial being, a troglodyte of sorts."

Even many of the nonprofits and advocacy groups that work on issues related to consumption don't question it on a fundamental level. There are many excellent groups that focus on the quality of the goods we consume—fighting for fair trade chocolate over slavery chocolate, for example, or organic cotton clothing over conventional toxic cotton or PVC-free kids toys. But few look at the issue of quantity and ask that tough question: aren't we consuming too much? That's the question that gets to the heart of the system. I am learning it is not a popular question.

Once upon a time the factors that contributed to our national economic growth included a broader set of activities, especially in extraction of natural resources and production of goods. After World War II, however, the focus shifted to consumption. In the 1950s, the chairman of President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers stated, "The American economy's ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods." Really?

Rather than to provide health care, safe communities, solid education for our youngsters, or a good quality of life, the main purpose of our economy is to produce Stuff? By the 1970s, consumption had taken a lead role both culturally and economically. Most of us alive today have been raised on the assumption that a consumption-driven economy is inevitable, sensible, and good. We are supposed to participate in this economic model without question. Nevertheless, it's been questioned and continues to be, by a growing number of people. Myself definitely included.

In the same holiday season as Damour's tragic death, the credit card Discover launched a new ad campaign. On top of the serene soundtrack of a simple tune being plucked out on a guitar, the voiceover says: "We are a nation of consumers. And there's nothing wrong with that. After all, there's a lot of cool stuff out there. The trouble is, there's so much cool stuff, it's easy to get a little carried away. If that happens, this material world of ours can stop being wonderful and start getting stressful. But what if a credit card company recognized that? What if they admitted there was a time to spend and a time to save? . . . We could have less debt and more fun. And this material world could get a whole lot brighter."

A credit card company challenging consumerism—I'd be thrilled if it weren't so obvious a ploy to win more customers during a time when people were anxious about spending and debt. But what really intrigues me about this commercial is the image sequence at the end: a father and son in the middle of a vast green field, then a couple with a dog on a wide-open beach, then a couple flirting on a park bench, and finally, a gaggle of giggling girlfriends pressing into the back of a cab together. What this tells me is that Discover Card, on some level, is perfectly aware of the actual truth: that it's not Stuff (even "cool Stuff") that makes us happy. It's time with our families, partners, and friends and the experience of the beautiful natural world that makes us happy.

WHY SALADS ARE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN HAMBURGERS

AlterNet / By Tara Lohan

We’ve got a lot of problems when it comes to our food system, but one of them was clearly articulated with a simple graphic.

We’ve got a lot of problems when it comes to our food system, but one of them was clearly articulated with a simple graphic. How do food subsidies affect what we’re eating? Check this out:.

This graphic was recently published by the Consumerist, with the few words, “This is why you’re fat.”

The New York Times had a little bit more to say about the graphic, which by the way was put together by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The Times says:

Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that we’re supposed to eat less of.

Of course, there are surely other reasons why burgers are cheaper than salads. These might include production costs, since harvesting apples is probably more naturally seasonal than slaughtering cows (even though both are in demand year-round). Transportation and storage costs might also play a role, as it’s probably easier to keep ground beef fresh and edible for extended periods of time, by freezing it, than cucumbers.

Interesting analysis, but it’s missing the heart of the matter, which PCRM lays out on their own website — the legislation which governs all these subsidies is the controversial farm bill. “The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals,” PCRM writes. “By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products–the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.”

What would our society look like if fruit and vegetable products received more of the cut? I’m reminded of the scene from the Oscar-nominated film Food Inc., where a lower-income family grapples with the issue of spending what little money they have on fast food burgers because it is cheaper and more filling than buying fresh vegetables but knowing that they’ll end up likely spending even more down the line in health costs. That’s a decision that no family should have to make.

Clearly our prices for food are skewed. Interestingly, the Times has another graphic about how food prices have changed over the last 30 years, and shockingly it’s fresh fruits and veggies that seem to be getting much more expensive, while most everything else seems to be going down or holding relatively steady.

Bill Gates On 'Vaccines To Reduce Population'

F. William Engdahl

Rense.com  March 4, 2010

Microsoft founder and one of the world's wealthiest men, Bill Gates, projects an image of a benign philanthropist using his billions via his (tax exempt) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to tackle diseases, solve food shortages in Africa and alleviate poverty. In a recent conference in California, Gates reveals a less public agenda of his philanthropy-population reduction, otherwise known as eugenics.

Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Long Beach, California TED2010 Conference, in a speech titled, "Innovating to Zero!." Along with the scientifically absurd proposition of reducing manmade CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050, approximately four and a half minutes into the talk, Gates declares, "First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." (author's emphasis).

In plain English, one of the most powerful men in the world states clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth. When Bill Gates speaks about vaccines, he speaks with authority. In January 2010 at the elite Davos World Economic Forum, Gates announced his foundation would give $10 billion (circa ¤7.5 billion) over the next decade to develop and deliver new vaccines to children in the developing world.

The primary focus of his multi-billion dollar Gates Foundation is vaccinations, especially in Africa and other underdeveloped countries. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a founding member of the GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunization) in partnership with the World Bank, WHO and the vaccine industry. The goal of GAVI is to vaccinate every newborn child in the developing world.

Now that sounds like noble philanthropic work. The problem is that the vaccine industry has been repeatedly caught dumping dangerous-meaning unsafe because untested or proven harmful-vaccines onto unwitting Third World populations when they cannot get rid of the vaccines in the West. Some organizations have suggested that the true aim of the vaccinations is to make people sicker and even more susceptible to disease and premature death.

Dumping toxins on the Third World

In the aftermath of the most recent unnecessary Pandemic declaration of a global H1N1 swine flu emergency, industrial countries were left sitting on hundreds of millions of doses of untested vaccines. They decided to get rid of the embarrassing leftover drugs by handing them over to the WHO which in turn plans to dump them for free on select poor countries. France has given 91 million of the 94 million doses the Sarkozy government bought from the pharma giants; Britain gave 55 million of its 60 million doses. The story for Germany and Norway is similar.

As Dr. Thomas Jefferson, an epidemiologist with the Cochrane Research Center in Rome noted, "Why do they give the vaccines to the developing countries at all? The pandemic has been called off in most parts of the world. The greatest threat in poor countries right now is heart and circulatory diseases while the virus figures at the bottom of the list. What is the medical reason for donating 180 million doses?" As well, flu is a minor problem in countries with abundant sunshine, and it turned out that the feared H1N1 Pandemic "new great plague" was the mildest flu on record.

The pharmaceutical vaccine makers do not speak about the enormous health damage from infant vaccination including autism and numerous neuro-muscular deformities that have been traced back to the toxic adjuvants and preservatives used in most vaccines. Many vaccines, especially multi-dose vaccines that are made more cheaply for sale to the Third World, contain something called Thimerosal (Thiomersol in the EU), a compound (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate), containing some 50% mercury, used as a preservative.

In July 1999 the US' National Vaccine Information Center declared in a press release that, "The cumulative effects of ingesting mercury can cause brain damage." The same month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alerted the public about the possible health effects associated with thimerosal-containing vaccines. They strongly recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines as soon as possible. Under the directive of the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, the Food and Drug Administration also determined that infants who received several thimerosal-containing vaccines may be receiving mercury exposure over and above the recommended federal guidelines.

A new form of eugenics?

Gates' interest in inducing population reduction among black and other minority populations is not new unfortunately. As I document in my book, Seeds of Destruction, since the 1920's the Rockefeller Foundation had funded the eugenics research in Germany through the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes in Berlin and Munich, including well into the Third Reich. They praised the forced sterilization of people by Hirtler Germany, and the Nazi ideas on race "purity." It was John D. Rockefeller III, a life-long advocate of eugenics, who used his "tax free" foundation money to initiate the population reduction neo-Malthusian movement through his private Population Council in New York beginning in the 1950's.

The idea of using vaccines to covertly reduce births in the Third World is also not new. Bill Gates' good friend, David Rockefeller and his Rockefeller Foundation were involved as early as 1972 in a major project together with WHO and others to perfect another "new vaccine."

The results of the WHO-Rockefeller project were put into mass application on human guinea pigs in the early 1990's. The WHO oversaw massive vaccination campaigns against tetanus in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines. Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization, became suspicious of the motives behind the WHO program and decided to test numerous vials of the vaccine and found them to contain human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, or hCG. That was a curious component for a vaccine designed to protect people against lock-jaw arising from infection with rusty nail wounds or other contact with certain bacteria found in soil. The tetanus disease was indeed, also rather rare. It was also curious because hCG was a natural hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. However, when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier, it stimulated formation of antibodies against hCG, rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy, a form of concealed abortion. Similar reports of vaccines laced with hCG hormones came from the Philippines and Nicaragua.

Gates' 'Gene Revolution in Africa'

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with David Rockefeller's Rockefeller Foundation, the creators of the GMO biotechnology, are also financing a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) headed by former UN chief, Kofi Annan. Accepting the role as AGRA head in June 2007 Annan expressed his "gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign." The AGRA board is dominated by people from both the Gates' and Rockefeller foundations.

Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta and other major GMO agribusiness giants are reported at the heart of AGRA, using it as a back-door to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, 'bio-technology,' a euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. The person from the Gates Foundation responsible for its work with AGRA is Dr. Robert Horsch, a 25-year Monsanto GMO veteran who was on the team that developed Monsanto's RoundUp Ready GMO technologies. His job is reportedly to use Gates' money to introduce GMO into Africa.

To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan's Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops. AGRA is being used to create networks of "agro-dealers" across Africa, at first with no mention of GMO seeds or herbicides, in order to have the infrastructure in place to massively introduce GMO.

GMO, glyphosate and population reduction

GMO crops have never been proven safe for human or animal consumption. Moreover, they are inherently genetically 'unstable' as they are an unnatural product of introducing a foreign bacteria such as Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) or other material into the DNA of a given seed to change its traits. Perhaps equally dangerous are the 'paired' chemical herbicides sold as a mandatory part of a GMO contract, such as Monsanto's Roundup, the most widely used such herbicide in the world. It contains highly toxic glyphosate compounds that have been independently tested and proven to exist in toxic concentrations in GMO applications far above that safe for humans or animals. Tests show that tiny amounts of glyphosate compounds would do damage to a human umbilical, embryonic and placental cells in a pregnant woman drinking the ground water near a GMO field.

One long-standing project of the US Government has been to perfect a genetically-modified variety of corn, the diet staple in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. The corn has been field tested in tests financed by the US Department of Agriculture along with a small California bio-tech company named Epicyte. Announcing his success at a 2001 press conference, the president of Epicyte, Mitch Hein, pointing to his GMO corn plants, announced, "We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies."

Hein explained that they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to produce corn plants. In this manner, in reality they produced a concealed contraceptive embedded in corn meant for human consumption. "Essentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm," said Hein. "They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada." Hein claimed it was a possible solution to world "over-population." The moral and ethical issues of feeding it to humans in Third World poor countries without their knowing it countries he left out of his remarks.

Spermicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates' foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan's AGRA or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to "reduce population."

And the 'Good Club'

Gates' TED2010 speech on zero emissions and population reduction is consistent with a report that appeared in New York City's ethnic media, Irish.Central.com in May 2009. According to the report, a secret meeting took place on May 5, 2009 at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, among some of the wealthiest people in America. Investment guru Warren Buffett who in 2006 decided to pool his $30 billion Buffett Foundation into the Gates foundation to create the world's largest private foundation with some $60 billions of tax-free dollars was present. Banker David Rockefeller was the host.

The exclusive letter of invitation was signed by Gates, Rockefeller and Buffett. They decided to call themselves the "Good Club." Also present was media czar Ted Turner, billionaire founder of CNN who stated in a 1996 interview for the Audubon nature magazine, where he said that a 95% reduction of world population to between 225-300 million would be "ideal." In a 2008 interview at Philadelphia's Temple University, Turner fine-tuned the number to 2 billion, a cut of more than 70% from today's population. Even less elegantly than Gates, Turner stated, "we have too many people. That's why we have global warming. We need less people using less stuff (sic)."

Others attending this first meeting of the Good Club reportedly were: Eli Broad real estate billionaire, New York's billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Wall Street billionaire and Council on Foreign Relations former head, Peter G. Peterson.

In addition, Julian H. Robertson, Jr., hedge-fund billionaire who worked with Soros attacking the currencies of Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and the Asian Tigen economies, precipitating the 1997-98 Asia Crisis. Also present at the first session of the Good Club was Patty Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Gates foundation, and John Morgridge of Cisco Systems. The group represented a combined fortune of more than $125 billion.

According to reports apparently leaked by one of the attendees, the meeting was held in response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and environmental crises that are plaguing the globe.

But the central theme and purpose of the secret Good Club meeting of the plutocrats was the priority concern posed by Bill Gates, namely, how to advance more effectively their agenda of birth control and global population reduction. In the talks a consensus reportedly emerged that they would "back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat."

Global Eugenics agenda

Gates and Buffett are major funders of global population reduction programs, as is Turner, whose UN Foundation was created to funnel $1 billion of his tax-free stock option earnings in AOL-Time-Warner into various birth reduction programs in the developing world. The programs in Africa and elsewhere are masked as philanthropy and providing health services for poor Africans. In reality they involve involuntary population sterilization via vaccination and other medicines that make women of child-bearing age infertile. The Gates Foundation, where Buffett deposited the bulk of his wealth two years ago, is also backing introduction of GMO seeds into Africa under the cloak of the Kofi Annan-led 'Second Green Revolution' in Africa. The introduction of GMO patented seeds in Africa to date has met with enormous indigenous resistance.

Health experts point out that were the intent of Gates really to improve the health and well-being of black Africans, the same hundreds of millions of dollars the Gates Foundation has invested in untested and unsafe vaccines could be used in providing minimal sanitary water and sewage systems. Vaccinating a child who then goes to drink feces-polluted river water is hardly healthy in any respect. But of course cleaning up the water and sewage systems of Africa would revolutionize the health conditions of the Continent.

Gates' TED2010 comments about having new vaccines to reduce global population were obviously no off-the-cuff remark. For those who doubt, the presentation Gates made at the TED2009 annual gathering said almost exactly the same thing about reducing population to cut global warming. For the mighty and powerful of the Good Club, human beings seem to be a form of pollution equal to CO2.

References

Bill Gates, "Innovating to Zero!, speech to the TED2010 annual conference, Long Beach, California, February 18, 2010, accessed in "http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html"http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html.

Telegraph.co.uk, Bill Gates makes $10 billion vaccine pledge, London Telegraph, January 29, 2010, accessed in t: "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/dav"www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/dav...

Louise Voller, Kristian Villesen, WHO Donates Millions of Doses of Surplus Medical Supplies to Developing countries, Danish Information, 22 December 2009, accessed http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2419%3Awhos

-swine-flu-jab-donations-to-developing-countries-demarks-information-

reports&catid=41%3Ahighlighted-news&Itemid=105&lang=en

One is the Population Research Institute in Washington, http://pop.org/

Louise Voller et al, op. cit.

Ibid

Noted in Vaccinations and Autism, accessed inhttp://www.mercurypoisoningnews.com/vacautism.html

F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, Global Research ( "http://www.globalresearch.ca"www.globalresearch.ca), Montreal, 2007, pp. 79-84.

James A. Miller, Are New Vaccines Laced With Birth-Control Drugs?, HLI Reports, Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June-July 1995.

Cited in F. William Engdahl,  "Doomsday Seed Vault" in the Arctic: Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don't, Global Research, December 4, 2007, accessed inhttp://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529

Mariam Mayet, Africa's Green Revolution rolls out the Gene Revolution, African Centre for Biosafety, ACB Briefing Paper No. 6/2009, Melville, South Africa, April 2009.

Ibid.

Nora Benachour and Gilles-Eric Seralini, Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical Embryonic, and Placental Cells, Chemical Research in Toxicology Journal, American Chemical Society, 2009, 22 (1), pp 97 105.

Robin McKie, GMO Corn Set to Stop Man Spreading His Seed, London, The Observer, 9 September 2001.

Ibid. McKie writes, "The pregnancy prevention plants are the handiwork of the San Diego biotechnology company Epicyte, where researchers have discovered a rare class of human antibodies that attack spermthe company has created tiny horticultural factories that make contraceptivesEssentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm," said Hein. "They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada."

Ted Turner, cited along with youTube video of Turner in Aaron Dykes, Ted Turner: World Needs a 'Voluntary' One-Child Policy for the Next Hundred Years, Jones Report.com, April 29, 2008. Accessed in "http://www.jonesreport.com/article/04_08/28turner_911.html"http://www.jonesreport.com/article/04_08/28turner_911.html

John Harlow, Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation, London, The Sunday Times

May 24, 2009. Accessed online inhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece.

Ibid.

United Nations Foundation, Women and Population Program, accessed inhttp://www.unfoundation.org/about-unf/experts/

THE COAL INDUSTRY'S UNABATED WAR ON AMERICAN'S HEALTH

Richard Gale & Gary Null, PhD

Progressive Radio Network, December 7, 2009

Eight AM on a Saturday morning, fresh snow has been falling for two hours. My daughter Shelly asked if we could make snow ice cream. I said sure. We got a large bowl and went outside. As I scooped the snow to fill the bowl, it was covered with red, black and brown specks as if someone had shaken a container of seasoning much as one would over mash potatoes. So I scratched away an inch and below was more particulate matter. In fact, as I looked around, all of the snow was polluted. What was remarkable was that this was not considered unusual.

This was in West Virginia, yet it was a phenomena occurring across many regions of the nation. It was common to speak to people in and around those communities who had black lung, emphysema and other pulmonary and cardiac conditions. Nobody questioned this. You simply accepted that the cost of living and working in such an environment was to live in the constant presence of illness, disease and premature death.

Today, everyone waking up in southern California begins their mornings breathing tiny unseen particulate matter and toxic gases. Much of this comes from the coal-fired plants in China. Whether you live in Appalachia, the Pacific coast, across the industrial Midwest, just about anywhere in America, you exist in stew of pollution, 24-7, with heavy metals, greenhouse gases, and dozens of particulate matter, that come directly from the coal industry.  And yet President Obama has made a policy effort to have us believe that taxpayers should give the coal companies billions of dollars to create clean coal. Sorry Mr. President. You are lying. You, the lobbyists, the corporate funded think tanks, the fossil fuel moguls, are all engaged in trying to convince Americans that clean coal is the best solution to reduce the environmental threats of climate change.  It is not going to happen. It cannot happen, because everything about this story is utterly false. Increasingly Americans are becoming aware that every agency in our government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of some special corporate interest. And these agencies are nothing more than the policy propagandists for these same industries who continue with business as usual with very little oversight and regulation, no reform, no transparency and no fundamental change that will promise Americans that they will have better and more healthy lives in the future.  

As the global warmists debate the coolists over how much humanity is contributing to climate change, one thing is certain: the number one source for greenhouse gas emissions, the coal industry, is waging an unprecedented war on the health of Americans. This is a fact skeptics of any political color or atmospheric persuasion cannot deny. What the protests for the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, and across many world cities lack are the stories of personal loss, family collapse into healthcare debt, disease and death that result from coal-to-energy processing.  These stories will continue to mount if the coal industry and its Washington lobbyists, such as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity—a network of the largest coal companies who contributed $47 million last year to lobby the Beltway—remain the ghostwriters of the nation’s energy bills.  

For many people whose livelihoods and residences have yet to experience early adverse effects of global warming, climate change remains an abstract theory, an unpredictable event projected into a distant future. However, as the release of greenhouse gases and toxins from fossil fuel energy translates into rising health crises—because many boomers will be spending much of their retirement years in dementia or witness their pensions going towards heart-bypasses, surgeries and astronomically expensive anti-cancer drugs—then a more effective outrage can be spearheaded against the coal industry and its political supporters.  These hooligans, the private corporate authors of endgame scenarios, should equally be charged with inflicting illness and death upon numerous children and the elderly. They can equally be charged with further exacerbating the immune systems of millions of people whose bodies are already immuno-compromised. Right now green environmentalism needs to get on the health bandwagon. For example, the December 7 issue of The Nation was devoted to climate change, but no article dealt specifically with the serious threats to health associated with the energies most responsible for greenhouse gases and toxins in the atmosphere. This comes at a time when life expectancy in America is ranked 34^th globally and continues on a slow downward trend.

While major energy bills await deliberation and approval in the House and Senate, President Obama has craftily sealed America’s fate to aggressive clean coal policies with China’s President Hu Jintao. The White House’s November 17 press release announced the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases will cooperate in a  “Twenty-First Century Coal” initiative to develop large-scale carbon capture and storage sequestration (CCS). Among the major collaborators in the US-China agreement is Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company posting $6.6 billion in revenues last year. With the Congressional climate bill seeking a measly 4 percent below 1990 levels in greenhouse gases during the next ten years, far less than the 40 percent reduction international scientists say is required to offset global warming, the President has effectively assured the US will remain in the coal age for many years to come and retain its award as the world’s largest per capita emitter of CO₂ and greenhouse gases.

However, the urgency for more dramatic reductions in greenhouse gases and stricter regulations on the coal industry has yet to sink into the frontal lobes of the Obama administration and coal’s henchmen in Congress. The Waxman-Markey coal-friendly American Clean Energy and Security Act in the House is a vagrant insult on human intelligence. The bill promotes nothing as its title suggests. It would potentially raise homeowner energy costs as high as ninety percent. The bill’s many loopholes are free gifts to the coal companies to assure their receipt of billions of dollars in subsidies and a free pass to continue their assault on Americans’ health. Worse, the billions being targeted for clean coal only apply to research and development until 2025.  This is because the entire idea of clean coal is still an imaginary chimera, a ruse for the coal companies to continue their filthy business unabated until some future time when clean coal might turn into a reality.

Following the heels of the Obama-China announcements, an alarming health report released by the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), “Coal’s Assault on Human Health,” sends a strong message to coal addicts in the White House and Congress. Indirectly, the report charges the coal companies, their legislative supporters, and the White House with complicity in sustaining a pollution-ridden technology now wreaking havoc on the population’s physical health leading to pre-mature death rates across the nation. 

According to the PSR study, coal is a leading contributor to four of the top five causes of death in the US: heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Recent statistics from the American Heart Association report that one in three Americans now has a form of cardiovascular disease. Coal processing is also a major contributor to the nation’s epidemic of neurodegenerative conditions in children and adults, such as compromised intellectual capacities and even Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases in the elderly.  One of coal manufacturing’s more serious byproducts is particulate matter (PM). PM_2.5 in particular has been associated with brain inflammation resulting in amyloid deposits that are a common biomarker for diagnosing Alzheimer’s.

Neurodegenerative conditions are now increasing faster than surveys can accurately keep pace. Coal’s byproducts, including mercury, hinder the brain’s neurological health since they interfere with unhindered capillary blood flow through the brain.  Last October, Harvard University released its National Children’s Survey Report noting that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) rates have jumped to 1 in 91 children, a dramatic increase in ASD from the previous 1 in 150 rate. Coal combustion produces 30 percent of the mercury spewed into our environment and there are approximately 600,000 children with toxic levels of mercury in their systems. Genetics, the lifeline of deniers of ASD’s external and environmental causes, simply cannot account for this epidemic when the huge toxic offensive on children due to coal firing, industrial food and vaccines are added into the equation.  Genetics is an evolutionary development. A sixty percent increase in the ASD rate over several years cannot be accounted for by genetics alone. However few are raising an alarm that the coal industry is responsible for 98 percent of all utility-related mercury pollution being churned out across the country.

For the majority of  Americans, the images of black lung and coal-related pulmonary and cardiovascular illnesses fall under the illusion that these conditions are limited to coal miners, towns and communities near mines and combustion plants.  The PSR report however investigates every stage of the mining-to-energy conversion process: blasting, mining, rail and road transportation, washing and the generation of slurry, coal-firing, and disposal of post-combustion toxic waste.  Far from being a localized health risk, coal’s toxic pollutants inflict enormous biomolecular damage upon the population’s health at every level of coal processing.  There are now 584 coal ash dumps and over 600 coal firing plants scattered across vast tracts of land, towns and cities. For example, the transportation of coal alone releases over 600 thousand tons of nitrogen oxide and 50 thousand tons of particulate matter into America’s air annually. Together these two toxins contribute to asthmatic illness, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stunted lung development in children, rising infant mortality, lung cancer, myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, ischemic stroke and brain development delays. With a lame short-sighted healthcare bill before the Senate, and no fundamental efforts being made to wean the country off coal-based energy, the country is poised for a health catastrophe beyond imagination during the years ahead.

Besides the several dozen toxic particulate matter (PM)--extremely fine particles capable of penetrating gas exchange regions of the body to produce inflammation in other organs—numerous coal-processing pollutants fill our bodies with oxidizing chemicals, such as sulfide minerals, arsenic, barium, lead, aluminum, cadmium, carcinogenic dioxins and formaldehyde, nickel and mercury.  A study cited from theNew England Medical Journal in the PSR report found that in 51 metropolitan areas where coal-related PM concentrations were reduced due to the Clean Coal Act, life expectancy increased. Another study found hospital admissions for cerebrovascular disease and ischemic stroke are directly related to coal-related toxicity.

There is also growing evidence that coal processing emissions are contributing to the alarming rise in diabetes. Diabetes rates have nearly doubled over the past ten years, now affecting nine in one hundred citizens. Forty-five percent of new cases are children and for the first time we are witnessing a steady growth in adult Type 2 diabetes in kids. A leading culprit is one of coal’s most dangerous pollutants, the inflammatory molecule nitrogen oxide that has been shown to trigger insulin resistance, a defining characteristic of Type 2 diabetes.

The PSR study predicts the future increase in the degradation of Americans’ health if the government remains addicted to the coal age. Al Gore has compared the nonsensical theory of clean coal with “healthy cigarettes, “ and Greenpeace has summarized it as nothing more than a “public relations fabrication” concocted by the coal industry.” During  a New York broadcast on NPR and the Progressive Radio Network immediately following the PSR study release at the National Press Club, Evan Kanter, MD, President of PSR and a clinical professor of neuroscience at the University of Washington Medical School, categorically called clean coal a “dirty lie.” It is a word play that best translates into further environmental deregulation and billions of dollars going to the coal industry.

But as the Obama Administration hangs inept in the coal industry’s gallows, it is Congress that is most devilish. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an endangerment report confirming greenhouse gases assault on public health. In doing so, greenhouse gases can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, much to the displeasure of the coal and nuclear industries. Residents of Wyoming should be especially thrilled since the Wyoming State Geological Survey group is also a collaborator in the US-China clean coal experiment. Very likely that state will be home for hundreds of thousands of giga-tons of underground CO₂ storage awaiting leaks to asphyxiate people and increase the acidity of the state’s water resources. Yet Congress, having been purchased by the energy complex, now seeks to strip away the EPA’s regulatory authority on this matter.

Dr. Evans explained the clean coal myth as referring “to the technique of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The problem with carbon capture and sequestration is that it doesn’t exist. It is ten to twenty years in the future. There is no demonstrated ability to do this now, and it would not help at all with any mitigation of global warming at this time.”  Moreover, clean coal technology will still require mountain blasting, mining, washing, transportation and the release of most of the coal industry’s worse pollutants. Mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, surface ozone and dozens of particulate matters will remain in the atmosphere and water sources. 

 “It is a real pie in the sky notion,’ states Dr. Evans, “It is by no way shape or form anywhere clean and it is just a way for the coal industry to get billions of dollars from this developing legislation. So nobody should be fooled as there being any such thing as clean coal.”  Holly Spaulding’s article, “Searching for CCS” in The Nation lists the serious downside of an energy program dumping billions of dollars into an uncertain and speculative clean coal campaign. On the one hand it is “fabulously expensive.” In one instance, the current plans to resurrect the defunct FutureGen project from the Bush years could cost $10,000 to power a single home. Clean coal also requires vast amounts of additional energy to make carbon capture technology succeed. For now clean coal is a ridiculously expensive political pipedream to sustain the livelihoods of coal executives.

The report’s conclusions are in direct contrast to what can be distilled from Obama’s energy agenda and the Waxman-Markey bill. This includes immediate measures undertaken to move the nation away from its coal reliance and to further solidify the EPA’s mandate to regulate CO₂emissions under the Clean Air Act. A truly comprehensive energy plan for the 21^st century would put a halt to the construction of new coal-fired plants and enforce stricter regulations on many of the pollutant emissions from electrical generation.  However at present, the Administration and Congress remain in denial over the human cost in disease and death that will increase if they push forward their current energy policies.  Their loyalties don’t favor the improvement of Americans’ health but have been sold to the coal terrorists intent on further reducing Americans’ life expectancy.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the genomic industry. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Prescription for Disaster (2008)and Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own (2007), and the program Reversing Heart Disease and Stroke Naturally now being aired on PBS channels

Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes

By Sara Flounders

December 19, 2009

In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions?

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Overcoming the Copenhagen Failure

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Pretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate conference, it is clear that the world’s leaders were unable to translate rhetoric about global warming into action.

It was, of course, nice that world leaders could agree that it would be bad to risk the devastation that could be wrought by an increase in global temperatures of more than two degrees Celsius. At least they paid some attention to the mounting scientific evidence. And certain principles set out in the 1992 Rio Framework Convention, including “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” were affirmed. So, too, was the developed countries’ agreement to “provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology, and capacity-building” to developing countries.

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World's Top Firms Cause $2.2 Trillion of Environmental Damage, Report Estimates

Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

by Juliette Jowit

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

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