Illogical: Though decades of research proves that logging negatively impacts water quality, there are no substantive rules relating to logging in the U.S. South. (Photo credit: jacki-dee/Flickr)
No version of “waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS), part of the Clean Water Act, adequately protects the nation’s natural areas.
By Sam Davis, Independent Media Institute
5 min read
The recent decision by the Supreme Court to look into “limiting the scope” of “waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS), which is an important part of the Clean Water Act of 1972, is likely to further threaten America’s biodiverse ecosystems. The Clean Water Act refers to WOTUS but does not clearly define it, leaving its definition up for interpretation by the government and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as the Supreme Court. The lack of clarity over this federal law has virtually stripped U.S. wetlands from any protection, which could have far-reaching environmental impacts as we try to mitigate the additional challenges posed by climate change.
This recent decision by the court has turned WOTUS into a battleground. The rule has been highly controversial since 2015 because the EPA under then-President Barack Obama decided to tweak the definition so it covered more types of bodies of water and afforded protection to them. The Trump administration, meanwhile, swung starkly in the other direction, attempting to remove protections for wetlands that had been historically included under rulemaking in the 1980s and 1990s.
Unfortunately, even though many people and environmental organizations—including my own, Dogwood Alliance—have taken action to protect wetlands, the WOTUS rule does little to protect our forests or forested wetlands. When the Clean Water Act was written, the authors carved out a big exemption for logging, road construction and agricultural activities—such as pesticide application, constructing ponds and planting or harvesting with heavy machinery.
This means that if there’s a wetland downstream of regular farming activities, the wetland may get zero protection under the law. Also, in an instance where there’s a wetland between a paved road and a forest, and the owner wants to trade trees for cash, there are few to no legal obstacles preventing the sale.
If you’re planning to change your land in a way that impacts the bodies of water nearby, you must get a permit. Permits allow a project to proceed, but often require some sort of mitigation. For example, pollution controls might be installed, or new wetlands might be built.
The authors of the Clean Water Act exempted two major types of activities that have substantial impacts on natural water quality: logging and agriculture. There are decades of peer-reviewed research about the impacts of logging on water quality. So while the government authorities and those drafting the act must have been aware of the negative impacts of these activities on water quality, they just didn’t seem to care.
Logging destroys soil: It’s exposed to full sunlight, it’s compressed and it’s more likely to break apart under pressure. Dry, compressed soil doesn’t clean or absorb water the way that it should. This soil can cause sedimentation in nearby waterways. Sedimentation can contaminate drinking water and provide opportunities for harmful algal blooms to flourish.
There Are No Substantive Rules on Logging
The logging industry’s solution to the impacts of forestry activities on water quality is called “best management practices.” These are voluntary, state-by-state guidelines on how to log without affecting water quality. These rules are nothing more than a piecemeal approach to ensuring that logging activities can be carried out uninterrupted.
There are no substantive rules relating to logging in the U.S. South. If you own land, you can clear-cut—no permit required. Even on state and federal lands, it is easy to clear-cut to produce revenue for the landholding organization, especially if it’s justified with tenuous arguments of wildfire prevention.
Logging has huge impacts on water quality, and the rate and scale of logging in the United States create a staggeringly wide scope of the problem; and yet very little has been done to address it. The fight for WOTUS, while important, seems like a drop in the bucket.
There is a need for commonsense rules for water quality in the United States. It affects rural communities across the South who rely on wells and septic systems for home water management. It affects all Americans’ ability to enjoy the natural areas around them.
Restoring basic WOTUS protections is a start. But to completely ignore the exemptions that the Clean Water Act provides to logging and agriculture—two of the largest polluting industries—is to do a disservice to future generations.
Environmental organizations like mine, the Dogwood Alliance, have worked to spread public awareness and get people to submit public comments, join protests and call their representatives. Without the voices of the American people supporting this movement, the nation’s wetlands will be turned into parking lots.
###
Sam Davis is a conservation scientist with Dogwood Alliance who works at the intersection of forests, climate and justice.
Take action…
Birdland: A great egret wades through Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. (Photo credit: Alexander Lerch/Flickr)
“Stretching from the historic Chesapeake Bay, along the coastline of the Atlantic; across the Gulf into the mysterious bayou swamps of Louisiana; to eastern Texas and up the Mississippi, wetland forests are a valuable, yet vulnerable national treasure,” writes Dogwood Alliance. Up to 80 percent of wetland forests in the South have disappeared. 35 million acres of wetland forests (an area the size of New York) provide valuable ecosystem services for people living in the U.S. South [and] … are worth more than $500 billion. But wetland forests are under threat from logging and development.”
“You can help protect an important water-based ecosystem that is under threat from development,” writes Sam Davis, a conservation scientist at Dogwood Alliance. “Urge Georgia Environmental Protection Division Director Richard Dunn to reject Twin Pines Minerals’ proposal to mine near the Okefenokee Trail Ridge in order to protect one of Earth’s largest intact freshwater ecosystems, which supports the biodiversity of this region.”
Cause for concern…
Start the pumps: A pump jack in Warren County, Mississippi. When President Biden was a presidential candidate, he promised “no more drilling on federal lands.” (Photo credit: NatalieMaynor/Flickr)
“The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would resume selling leases for new oil and gas drilling on public lands, but would also raise the federal royalties that companies must pay to drill, the first increase in those fees in more than a century.
“The Interior Department said in a statement that it planned next week to auction off leases to drill on 145,000 acres of public lands in nine states. They would be the first new fossil fuel leases to be offered on public lands since President Biden took office.
“The move comes as President Biden seeks to show voters that he is working to increase the domestic oil supply as prices surge in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it also violates a signature campaign pledge made by Mr. Biden as he sought to assure climate activists that he would prioritize reducing the use of fossil fuels.”
Sempervirens Fund and tree lovers around the world are holding the #HugATreeChallenge, presented by REI Co-op, on Earth Day, April 22, 2022, to help establish a Guinness World Records title for the most photos of people hugging trees uploaded to Instagram in one hour. The challenge is also sponsored by AllTrails. For every record-setting entry, REI will donate $1, up to $10,000, for the reforestation of redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains.
With the Santa Cruz mountains experiencing the largest wildfire in its history in 2020, and weather experts predicting a bad wildfire season this year, this is a crucial moment to raise awareness about the need to protect redwoods and promote forest health and resiliency. California’s coast redwoods have survived for more than 250 million years but rapid and extreme changes to climate and weather, as well as the growing intensity of wildfires, make it less likely that they will be able to continue to adapt and thrive without a strong effort to reverse the effects of climate change.
A recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reiterates that reducing deforestation and improving the management of protected lands are among the most powerful tools available to mitigate the harm caused by the climate crisis.
“This is a bittersweet moment as Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which was severely damaged during the biggest fire in Santa Cruz mountains history, plans to reopen but another potentially devastating wildfire season looms,” said Sempervirens Fund Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Matthew Shaffer. “We have seen an outpouring of support from around the globe in response to the wildfires in the area and this public challenge is a way for us to raise awareness and share in celebrating Earth Day while also ensuring the future of these trees.”
Official rules and instructions for the record-setting attempt can be found here.
ICYMI…
Frontline defender: Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, president and executive director of Tebtebba, an Indigenous peoples’ advocacy group based in the Philippines, and former UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, speaks at COP26 in Glasgow, on November 2, 2021. (Photo credit: COP26/Flickr)
“As world leaders attempt to hammer out a path to achieve the Paris climate accord goals, they would do well to listen to the world’s Indigenous people, who have been successful caretakers of their ecosystems for many generations—including 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity, though they represent just 5 percent of the global population—but who are suffering on the front lines of the climate fights, from deforestation to rising seas.
“Nemonte Nenquimo, leader of the Waorani tribe in the Ecuadorian Amazon, co-founder of the Indigenous-led nonprofit organization Ceibo Alliance, and an EFL contributor, wrote an open letter to world leaders in 2020 that is even more important today. ‘When you say that the oil companies have marvelous new technologies that can sip the oil from beneath our lands like hummingbirds sip nectar from a flower, we know that you are lying because we live downriver from the spills,’ writes Nenquimo, who was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world.
‘When you say that the Amazon is not burning, we do not need satellite images to prove you wrong; we are choking on the smoke of the fruit orchards that our ancestors planted centuries ago. When you say that you are urgently looking for climate solutions, yet continue to build a world economy based on extraction and pollution, we know you are lying because we are the closest to the land.’”
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Not in my backyard: Cacique Raoni Metuktire (above left), chief of the Kayapo people of Brazil, denounced the violations of human rights suffered by the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, highlighting the social, ecological and environmental burden caused by the Belo Monte dam, during a press conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on December 12, 2012. (Photo credit: The Greens/EFA in the European Parliament/Flickr)
Not only does hydroelectric power fail to prevent catastrophic climate change, but it also renders countries more vulnerable to climate change while emitting significant amounts of methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases.
By Josh Klemm and Eugene Simonov, Independent Media Institute
9 min read
A river is a spectacular living corridor that feeds forests, fisheries, coastal ecosystems, and farmlands; transports life-sustaining organic matter and nutrients; provides drinking water; fosters cultural connection; and prevents carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. A river supports staggeringly rich biodiversity. One major way we negate rivers’ many benefits is by building dams.
Once considered a renewable way to harness the power of rivers, hydroelectric dams are now better known for their adverse impacts: They destroy a river’s biodiverse ecosystems, decimate the food security and livelihoods of local communities, and produce harmful methane that exacerbates climate change. Dams are costly to build, difficult to maintain, and aren’t climate-resilient or competitive against proven clean energy alternatives like solar and wind power.
In 2000, following publication of the seminal World Commission on Dams (WCD) report, many countries and financiers stopped proposing and funding dams, but a remaining few are now using climate change as a pretext to save the declining industry, and calling for scarce climate dollars to be used to keep the industry afloat. Projects are now being pushed in arguably the worst places to build a dam: on rivers flowing through biodiversity hotspots and protected areas in the tropics. With vested interests calling for the doubling of existing hydropower capacity in the coming decades, here are 10 key reasons why dams are a false solution to the climate crisis.
1. Climate Change Is Making Dams Unreliable and Risky
Large hydropower projects are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Droughts have crippled hydropower generation all over the world, leading to energy rationing and blackouts from the U.S. to China, and from Brazil to southern Africa. This trend is only expected to increase in the current changing climate scenario being witnessed globally. Meanwhile, increasingly common extreme weather events make large dams dangerous for people living downstream, as they become vulnerable to dam failures.
2. Dams Produce Significant Amounts of Methane
At least 25 percent of today’s global warming is caused by methane emissions, which have “more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere,” according to a press release from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2021 showed, cutting methane emissions is the most urgent step we must take to immediately slow the rate of global warming, an observation also made in Nature. Dams generate methane and carbon dioxide when vegetation and organic matter are flooded in the reservoirs and start to decay underwater, as well as when areas are deforested to make way for building the project. Dam reservoirs represent a significant source of methane globally, equivalent to the greenhouse gas footprint of Canada, and scientists have found in some cases that dam reservoirs can cause more warming than coal-fired power plants.
3. Hydropower Climate Calculation Doesn’t Add Up
The dam sector’s industry group, the International Hydropower Association (IHA), along with other vested interests are pushing to more than double the entire amount (850 gigawatts) of hydropower installed in the past 100 years in a bid to mitigate climate change. The IPCC report is a reminder to all of us that we have less than 10 years to drastically cut emissions if we’re to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Let’s look at the numbers: The average time it takes to build a dam is approximately 10 years, and dam construction itself causes serious emissions (for example, cement production). Even if a dam was built in less time, a new dam reservoir actually adds to the climate crisis by emitting most of its methane and CO2 emissions in the first decade after its commissioning. For example, in Brazil, researchers discovered that the Belo Monte Dam caused a threefold increase in greenhouse gas emissions after only two years of operation. Building a vast new fleet of dams as IHA calls for would spike methane emissions at precisely the time we need to reduce them.
4. Hydropower Dams Are Falsely Marketed as a ‘Sustainable’ Climate Solution
The IHA continues to propagate the falsehood of hydropower projects being a viable solution to mitigate the climate crisis, which fails to consider the facts or latest scientific evidence to the contrary. In September 2021, IHA made its pitch for scarce climate dollars to subsidize the hydropower industry, pledging that all new hydropower projects must meet its own “Hydropower Sustainability Standard.” This commitment to ensuring sustainability for hydropower dam projects, however, falls flat on its face when one considers the fact that all ‘sustainable’ hydropower projects pushed by the IHA members in 2020 did not even meet their definition of sustainability. A report called “Water Yearbook” for 2020 stated that “most of [the] hydropower development in the world is unsustainable and proceeds at the expense of key sustainable development objectives.”
6. New Hydropower Is Expensive and Ill-Suited to Deliver Energy Access
Another considerable mark against large hydropower projects is their enormous expense. Due to planning errors, technical problems and corruption, dams experience average delays of 44 percent and cost overruns of 96 percent. Sooner or later, silt tends to build up in reservoirs over the years, and the cost of maintaining dams far outweighs their benefits. Meanwhile, the energy produced by large dams is generally inaccessible to local communities, either because it is too expensive, monopolized by the industry, or exported to distant cities or neighboring countries.
7. Free-Flowing Rivers Help Mitigate the Climate, Biodiversity and Water Crises—Dams Do Not
8. Alternatives Are More Affordable and Driving the Energy Revolution
Truly renewable, clean energy sources are readily available and financially competitive and have overtaken large hydropower projects as the preferred choice for energy generation and access. Utility-scale renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, and geothermal have the potential to provide environmentally and socially sustainable energy and are also increasingly cost-effective for consumers. Given the plunging costs of alternative energy sources and improved storage technologies—as well as significant advances in energy efficiency and grid management—it is now possible to expand energy generation while drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preserving our free-flowing rivers.
9. Expanding Hydropower Is Incompatible With Efforts to Address the Looming Biodiversity Crisis
While they account for less than 1 percent of the Earth’s surface, freshwater ecosystems are home to more than 10 percent of all species. Hydropower dams are a key culprit in the rapid 84 percent decline in the populations of freshwater species experienced since 1970.
This year, the second phase of the 15th Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is expected to begin in August, and the participants of the convention will discuss and agree on the UN biodiversity framework, and with freshwater ecosystems being the “most degraded ecosystems in the world,” urgent global action is required to turn this around.
10. The Destruction of Nature Is at the Root Cause of Multiple Crises
We’re facing multiple challenges: climate change, massive biodiversity loss, and a global pandemic, among other challenges of human rights, equity, and poverty. We must tackle the root systems and drivers of our major global challenges. The future depends on us to make the right decisions at this critical moment.
Hydropower dams are a false climate solution and should not be prioritized in future energy or climate plans. A new paradigm in river stewardship and protections is critical, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, to safeguard the water sources that are indispensable to life and public health, help prevent countries from taking on calamitous new debt, ensure a just energy transition that centers people and human rights, and effectively confront our climate and water crises and biodiversity loss.
We have less than 10 years to halve our greenhouse gas emissions to stave off catastrophic climate change, and we must also address the interlinked water and biodiversity crises. AsBob Watson, former chair of the IPCC and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, said, “If we fail to act now, future generations will ask, why did we not act to save the Earth given all of the scientific evidence we have?” It is past time to put to rest these false notions of hydropower being a sustainable climate solution and instead invest in energy pathways that can both address climate change and deliver electricity to those who lack it. ###
Josh Klemm is the co-executive director of International Rivers, a nonprofit at the heart of the global struggle to protect rivers and the rights of communities that depend on them. He joined International Rivers in 2014 as policy director to lead the work focused on the world’s major financiers and companies active in the dams sector. Josh previously led the Africa Program at the Bank Information Center. Find him on Twitter @JoshKlemm.
Eugene Simonov is the international coordinator of the Rivers without Boundaries Coalition (RwB), which unites local communities and activists to protect transboundary rivers of the Eurasian continent. His work also focuses on the protection of freshwater ecosystems under the World Heritage Convention and other international mechanisms and on assisting civil society organization (CSO)-led environmental assessments in major river basins. He is currently overseeing PhD research at UNSW Canberra on the CSO-led river conservation through the lens of new globalization processes and geopolitical competition.
Take action…
Water protectors: KATRIBU, a national alliance of regional and provincial Indigenous peoples’ organizations representing various Indigenous communities in the Philippines, stages a protest against a Cambodian dam project in 2018. (Photo credit: International Rivers/Water Alternatives/Flickr)
Action Network: “The United Nations and member countries are still deciding: (1) whether to extend a program that approved more than 2,000 hydroelectric projects as carbon offsets; and (2) how dams should count toward emission reduction targets, measured by UN member countries as ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs). The voices of river-dependent communities were strong during COP26 in Scotland in November. We’re making progress but we still have work to do.”
Tell the UN that dams must not qualify as offsets or NDCs.
Cause for concern…
Wake up, adults! On September 20, 2019, demonstrators in downtown New York joined the youth-lead global #ClimateStrike, during which millions of people demanded action on climate change in the days leading up to the United Nations Climate Action Summit on September 23. (Photo credit: Amanda Voisard/UN Women/Flickr)
Running out of time: climate race
The world’s leading climate scientists have issued what is, in effect, their final warning to governments that the window for meeting emissions targets to avoid catastrophic, cascading and permanent alterations to the planetary climate is rapidly closing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in their third and final section of the body’s comprehensive review of climate science, writes, “The rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.”
It is considered a final warning because the report, which analyzes the work of millions of scientists, takes seven years to produce. If drastic cuts in emissions don’t happen immediately, another warning in seven years would be too late. But society is going in the wrong direction. “Inflation is rising, and the war in Ukraine is causing food and energy prices to skyrocket,” said UN secretary general António Guterres. “But increasing fossil fuel production will only make matters worse.”
Round of applause…
Safe passage: The mountain lions is just one of many species that will benefit from California’s new wildlife bridge. (Photo credit: Lil Rose/Flickr)
“Imagine cruising down a 10-lane highway and knowing that, high above your head, a mountain lion is quietly going along its way. This remarkable image could soon be reality for drivers on one of California’s busiest roads, as the world’s largest wildlife overpass begins construction this month.
“The history-making project will comprise a green bridge built across the 101 highway near Los Angeles, creating a corridor between two parts of the Santa Monica mountains. Stretching 210ft long and 165ft wide, the overpass will allow safe passage for lizards, snakes, toads and mountain lions, with an acre of local plants on either side and vegetated sound walls to dampen light and noise for nocturnal animals as they slip across.
“The project, nearly a decade in the making, comes at a crucial time. Highways in this car-heavy landscape crisscross critical habitat for the protected mountain lions and other animals, forcing them to make what can be deadly crossings. At least 25 of the big cats have been killed on Los Angeles freeways since 2002. The latest death was just weeks ago, on 23 March, when a young lion was struck and killed on the Pacific Coast highway.”
Spoiled: For decades, the U.S. government has subsidized the dairy industry—an industry that popular opinion has already left behind. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/Animal Equality/We Animals Media)
In its illogical support of Big Dairy, the U.S. government is misleading the public and padding the pockets of one industry over another
“[S]ome studies connect the consumption of dairy products with a higher risk of certain cancers, including prostate cancer in men and endometrial cancer in postmenopausal women. Further, countries that have the highest rates of milk consumption also have the ‘highest rates of osteoporosis.’ According to a study by Uppsala University in Sweden, the consumption of milk has even been associated with higher mortality in both men and women, according to a 2014 article in the Washington Post.
“But these facts haven’t stopped the USDA in its quest to drive the demand for dairy. According to the Environmental Working Group and USDA data, Americans have spent $6.4 billion between 1995 and 2020 in subsidizing the dairy industry. Included in these subsidies are marketing fees that promote the consumption of milk and several ‘[d]airy-related programs administered by [the] USDA,’ which are designed to ‘dairy farmers and dairy product consumers.’ The dairy industry, it turns out, is milking the paychecks of Americans and turning their hard-earned money into cartons of liquid white murkiness.”
Hope blooms: The sakura, or cherry blossom—Japan’s national flower—symbolizes the optimism and renewal of the spring season. (Photo credit: Martin Höst/Flickr)
“Are not flowers the stars of the Earth?” —Clara Lucas Balfour
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Youth brigade: Seventh grade students at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York, write letters urging their elected representatives to take action on the climate crisis. (Photo credit: Christine Willis)
Middle school student activists write their elected representatives to urge climate action.
By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute
17 min read
In 2019, Earth | Food | Life writing fellow Lucy Goodchild van Hilten, a science writer and mother of a young child, wrote a piece titled, “How to Talk to Kids About Climate Change.” Now I am pleased to report on the other side of that coin: How kids talk to adults about climate change.
It all started a few weeks ago when my friend Christine Willis invited me to speak to her seventh grade class at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York. Christine and her co-teacher Allison Pariani wanted their students—who are all quite aware of the various impacts of climate change—to grasp the power and potential of persuasive writing and thought that my work as an advocacy journalist would help. At the recommendation of another friend, Megan Dyer, herself a New York-based climate activist with Mothers Out Front and mother of a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old, I had the class sit in a circle to create a space where we could exchange ideas as peers.
As Dyer told me, “Kids are so used to being talked to; so they love when they are heard.” Instead of presenting to them, I simply asked them questions to get to the activity I had in mind: Write letters to five of their elected legislators: Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, State Senator Jabari Brisport and State Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon.
In the circle, I asked them what journalism was, and what advocacy meant. Through this, they were able to figure out for themselves what “advocacy journalism” was—journalism with a point of view; in my case, it’s about getting consumers, voters, community members, public officials and legislators to take action to stem the climate crisis. I told them that part of what I do as an advocacy journalist covering the environment is to provide readers not only with facts about the climate crisis but also to show them ways to get involved in solutions. One direct way to get involved is to tell our elected representatives how we would like them to vote on bills and budgets that can have a meaningful impact on the climate fight. I showed them how to look up their elected representatives via OpenStates.org.
In session: Earth | Food | Life editor Reynard Loki with seventh grade students at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York. (Photo credit: Christine Willis)
One of the questions I asked them is what concerns them about climate change. Their answers varied, but they were all legitimate fears. They are worried about rising sea levels, extreme weather events, the spread of disease, air pollution and the extinction crisis—all issues directly impacted by the climate crisis. I showed them a video about how St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan has switched from using oil and gas heating to a renewable heat source: geothermal energy.
I provided the students with letter templates urging lawmakers to support a part of the New York state budget that puts buildings on a renewable energy path, and bills on the state and federal levels aimed to strengthen our response to the climate crisis. The students reviewed the letters and added their own words to personalize them. Their parents approved these letters (below), which were emailed and tweeted to the legislators.
Mss. Christine Willis and Allison Parianis’ Seventh Grade Class
The Math and Science Exploratory School (MS447)
345 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
April 4, 2022
Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon
New York State Assembly
341 Smith Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Dear Assemblymember Simon:
Our names are Teyo, Rose, Elsie, Adriana, Amelie, and Luolin. We are students in Ms. Willis’ seventh grade class at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York. We are also your constituents. Climate action is one of our top priorities because we care a lot about the rising sea levels that are swallowing up the world. We are especially worried because we live in a coastal city.
We have no idea if this letter will make a difference. It probably won’t. We don’t really see a reason why it would. We have faith in people. We believe they are naturally good. But after everything the climate is facing and the lack of action from adults, we have very little faith in lawmakers and elected leaders who are supposed to be protecting the future for kids like us.
We are especially concerned about emissions from buildings which account for more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in New York State. We need renewable heat for our buildings now, and geothermal energy can help.
We are writing you today to urge you to support:
Part EEE of the Senate’s TED (transportation, economic development and environmental conservation) budget proposal, which updates building codes and appliance efficiency standards, saving New Yorkers billions of dollars, and prohibiting fossil fuels in new construction starting in 2024.
Gas Transition and Affordable Energy Act sponsored by Senator Krueger (S8198) and Assemblymember Fahy (A9329), which reforms our public service law and requires the state to make a transition plan for buildings.
We need fossil fuels out of new building construction by 2024 and we must stop subsidizing gas utility expansion. We must stop fossil fuel expansion in New York and implement our climate law in our state budget.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Teyo Chait, Rose Herper, Elsie Armstrong, Adriana Esposito, Amelie Miller, and Luolin Wu
Mss. Christine Willis and Allison Parianis’ Seventh Grade Class
The Math and Science Exploratory School (MS447)
345 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
April 4, 2022
Senator Jabari Brisport
New York State Senate
55 Hanson Place
The Shirley Chisholm State Office Building, Suite 702
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Dear Senator Brisport:
I am a student in Ms. Willis’ seventh grade class at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York. I am also your constituent. Climate action is one of my top priorities because if people do not take action now, there would be a worldwide increase in storms, major sea-level rise, and massive ecological loss.
I am especially concerned about emissions from buildings which account for more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in New York State. We need renewable heat for our buildings now, and geothermal energy can help.
I am writing you today to urge you to support:
Part EEE of the Senate’s TED (transportation, economic development and environmental conservation) budget proposal, which updates building codes and appliance efficiency standards, saving New Yorkers billions of dollars, and prohibiting fossil fuels in new construction starting in 2024.
Gas Transition and Affordable Energy Act sponsored by Senator Krueger (S8198) and Assemblymember Fahy (A9329), which reforms our public service law and requires the state to make a transition plan for buildings.
We need fossil fuels out of new building construction by 2024 and we must stop subsidizing gas utility expansion. We must stop fossil fuel expansion in New York and implement our climate law in our state budget. If our state budget supported a quick switch to renewable energy, including geothermal power for the heating of buildings, fossil fuel emissions in New York would fall, and the government would save huge amounts of money that could be used to better the lives of our citizens. We would also be less dependent on Russian oil imports.
Geothermal systems can last over fifty years, and building them would bring lots of jobs. This would help the economy. If New York succeeds at protecting the environment and saving money, it would also inspire other states to do the same. And this would help protect the planet. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Connor Nagi-Barron
Mss. Christine Willis and Allison Parianis’ Seventh Grade Class
The Math and Science Exploratory School (MS447)
345 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
April 4, 2022
Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand
780 Third Avenue, Suite 2601
New York, New York 10017
Dear Senator Gillibrand:
Our names are Adriana Esposito and Amelie Miller. We are students in Ms. Willis’ seventh grade class at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York. We are also your constituents.
Climate action is one of our top priorities because we are dedicated to making a brighter and safer future for future generations of humans and all animals. The natural habitats for our beloved animals are being continuously devastated from their past state due to climate change. Approximately 300,000 animals die every year due to climate change. We are determined to make a change for our planet so everyone and every living thing can live healthy lives.
In New York State alone, there are more than 50 endangered animal species like the gray wolf, cougar, peregrine falcon, leatherback sea turtle, the shortnose sturgeon, and the Karner blue butterfly.
As you know, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the nation’s primary law protecting endangered species. “This benchmark conservation law has saved the bald eagle, gray whale, grizzly bear, and many others and has a whopping 99 percent success record at preventing the extinction of listed species,” according to the Endangered Species Coalition, a nonprofit conservation group.
Please support the Endangered Species Act and oppose any efforts to weaken it.
Sincerely,
Adriana Esposito and Amelie Miller
Mss. Christine Willis and Allison Parianis’ Seventh Grade Class
The Math and Science Exploratory School (MS447)
345 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
April 4, 2022
Senator Charles E. Schumer
780 Third Avenue, Suite 2301
New York, NY 10017
Dear Senator Schumer:
Our names are Jude, Christian, and Gio. We are students in Ms. Willis’ seventh grade class at the Math and Science Exploratory School. We live in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. We are also your constituents.
Climate action is one of our top priorities because pollution is affecting the natural habitats in our city. Every day we see oil leaks, smell air pollution, and hear too many vehicle engines. We want to have healthy ecosystems in New York state so that we can go out and experience nature and the wildlife of New York can also have safe, healthy and functional habitats.
We are writing to you today to urge you to co-sponsor Senate Bill S.966, the Climate Change Education Act, which was introduced by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
If passed, this bill would declare that the evidence showing that climate change is caused by humans is “overwhelming and undeniable.” This bill would help increase the level of climate literacy in the United States at a time when many Americans are in denial of the climate crisis. The bill would also provide learning opportunities about climate change to people of all ages.
Please support the Climate Change Education Act so that kids and adults across our nation will get the best, most up-to-date scientific information about the climate crisis so that we can move together as a nation to solve this problem and protect the environment for future generations.
Sincerely,
Jude Sokol, Christian Campbell, and Giovanni Escoto
Mss. Christine Willis and Allison Parianis’ Seventh Grade Class
The Math and Science Exploratory School (MS447)
345 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
April 4, 2022
Representative Hakeem S. Jeffries
U.S. House of Representatives
55 Hanson Place, Suite 603
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Dear Rep. Jeffries:
I am a student in Ms. Willis’ seventh grade class at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York. I am also your constituent. Climate action is one of my top priorities because I care for the environment. If we continue to use fossil fuels, there will be more harmful pollution, and our natural habitats and ecosystems could become dead zones. I love New York, and I know that renewable sources of energy will help protect our beautiful state, our fellow citizens, and all the species that live here.
I am writing you today to support H.R.794, the Climate Emergency Act of 2021, which was introduced into the House of Representatives by Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. If passed, this bill would direct the president to declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act. Declaring a climate emergency would provide Congress and the president with access to the emergency resources necessary for a more immediate and effective response to the climate crisis.
The climate emergency is here and humans and animals and plants are feeling its effects across the globe. We are running out of time and cannot stop the climate crisis without an emergency-level response—and leaders with the courage to take serious action right now.
Please co-sponsor H.R.794 to make the climate crisis a top priority. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Adam Friedkin
Take action…
Justice league: Global Climate March at the White House in Washington, D.C., on November 29, 2015, the weekend before the Paris climate talks. (Photo credit: Susan Melkisethian/Flickr)
Introduced by Rep Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), the National Climate Emergency Act (H.R. 794) directs the President to declare a national emergency with respect to climate change.
The bill states that the President, “in responding to the emergency, must ensure that the government invests in large scale mitigation and resiliency projects; makes investments that enable a racially and socially just transition to a clean energy economy by ensuring that at least 40 percent of investments flow to historically disadvantaged communities; avoids solutions that increase inequality or violate human rights; creates jobs that conform to labor standards that provide family sustaining wages and benefits and ensure safe workplaces; prioritizes local and equitable hiring and contracting that creates opportunities for marginalized communities; combats environmental injustice; and reinvests in existing public sector institutions and creates new public sector institutions to strategically mobilize and channel investments at the scale and pace required by the national emergency.” Urge Congress to declare a national climate emergency and pass H.R. 794.
Cause for concern…
Heat is on: Marrakech had its first climate march on November 13, 2016, supported by trade unions, women’s groups and environmental organizations. (Photo credit: John Englart/Flickr)
“Temperatures on Earth will shoot past a key danger point unless greenhouse gas emissions fall faster than countries have committed, the world’s top body of climate scientists said Monday, warning of the consequences of inaction but also noting hopeful signs of progress.
“U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed ‘a litany of broken climate promises’ by governments and corporations, accusing them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels.
“‘It is a file of shame, cataloging the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world,’ he said.” —Frank Jordans and Seth Borenstein, “UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world’” (AP News, April 4, 2022)
Round of applause…
Happy homemaker: Ants take care of their tree homes in surprising ways. (Photo credit: Dan Pearce/Flickr)
Ants have been seen healing wounded trees in Panama—behavior that is believed to have never been observed before. When holes were drilled into Cecropia tree trunks, the ants emerged from their homes to patch up the wounds, significantly reducing the size of the holes within 2 1/2 hours and leaving them completely healed within 24 hours.
Details of this newly discovered behavior were published in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research. Azteca ants and Cecropia trees are known to have a symbiotic relationship, with the ants using the trees as their homes. The trunk is like an ant apartment, with more floors added as the tree grows. Inside there are passages, allowing the ants to move around, with small openings letting them go outside. In exchange for their home, the ants defend the Cecropia leaves from herbivores.
Unsustainable: Unchecked growth of the human population is creating an unprecedented decline in nature. (Photo credit: Nenad Stojkovic/Flickr)
“U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris does not have any biological children and grew up middle-class. Meanwhile, Utah Senator Mitt Romney, a Mormon with five kids, was born into wealth and has substantially increased it for his family. Their lives prefigure very different futures for the country and its children.
“If those in the U.S. who are privileged enough to be able to follow Romney’s example of having unearned family privileges and a large family choose to do so, then the entire country will eventually arrive at an ecologically degraded and unsustainable future, as well as a crowded political system, where the day-to-day reality of life is defined by massive inequity driven by family wealth. The increase in population, which is ‘rising unevenly,’ is one of the contributing factors leading to an ‘unprecedented’ decline in nature that is ‘accelerating’ species extinction rates, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The continued and unchecked growth of the human population might exacerbate this situation further.
“Meanwhile, if we follow Harris’ example, and especially if she uses her earned wealth to further social justice in her current position, we arrive at a more sustainable future and an optimal world population, where every vote counts, and privilege is earned rather than inherited.”
A mother’s love is universal: You don’t have to be human to feel it. (Image credit: Mercy for Animals)
Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Climate denier: Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, talks with Fortune editor Alan Murray at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2016 event in Aspen, Colorado, on July 11, 2016. (Photo credit: Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm TECH/Flickr)
For more than two decades, Koch-controlled foundations spent more than $160 million to stymie government action on climate change.
By Elliott Negin, Independent Media Institute
12 min read
The U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee kicked off its investigation of the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long climate change disinformation campaign last fall by inviting top executives from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell to testify about their role and subpoenaing their companies for internal documents.
The committee followed up that hearing—during which the executives disingenuously denied funding such a campaign—with another hearing on February 8 focusing on the oil companies’ inadequate plans to cut their carbon emissions. The next round is slated to feature board directors from the same four oil companies testifying on their companies’ climate pledges, followed by testimony from social media companies and advertising agencies about the part they have played in manufacturing doubt about climate change.
But before the committee wraps up its investigation, it would be sorely remiss if it didn’t haul in libertarian industrialist Charles Koch, the Daddy Warbucks of climate disinformation, for questioning.
The 20th-richest person in the world with a net worth of $58 billion, Koch, 86, is the longtime CEO of Koch Industries, a conglomerate that owns oil refineries and pipelines; markets crude oil, coal, chemicals, wood pulp and paper; trades energy derivatives; and boasts annual revenues of $115 billion. The second-largest privately held company in the country, Koch Industries is one of the top 25 U.S. corporate water and carbon polluters, is a defendant in a climate accountability lawsuit brought by the state of Minnesota, and is continuing to operate its businesses in Russia while Koch-backed groups oppose U.S. sanctions imposed on the Kremlin after it invaded Ukraine.
Koch family-controlled foundations donated more than $145 million to a network of 90 think tanks and advocacy groups from 1997 through 2018 to disparage climate science and block efforts to address climate change. Since the death of Charles Koch’s brother David in 2019, the Charles Koch Foundation has continued to finance this disinformation campaign, giving more than $17 million to 23 groups in 2019 and 2020, pushing the Koch grand total north of $162 million. By contrast, the second-largest funder of climate disinformation, ExxonMobil, spent $39.2 million on some 70 denier groups from 1998 through 2020.
To maintain leverage on Capitol Hill, Koch Industries’ political action committee (PAC), affiliates and employees also contribute significantly more to federal candidates, party committees, outside groups, leadership PACs and 527 groups than their counterparts at BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil or Shell. In the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, Koch Industries’ total outlay of $26.7 million was more than the $21.7 million the four oil and gas companies contributed collectively.
In addition, Koch Industries spent more than $38 million on its Washington lobbying operation during the last two full election cycles, from 2017 through 2020. That’s slightly less than ExxonMobil’s $40.98 million and Chevron’s $39.47 million, but the company enjoyed a distinct advantage over the two oil giants besides outspending them on campaign contributions: President Donald Trump’s transition team head, Vice President Mike Pence—a longtime Koch network veteran who played a key role in promoting the Koch-founded and -funded Americans for Prosperity’s “No Climate Tax” pledge when he was in the House—tapped at least 50Koch network alumni to work inside the Trump administration. They included Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short. Egged on by Koch devotees both inside and outside the government, the Trump administration rolled back at least 260 regulations, including more than 100 environmental rules.
The Biden administration cleared out the Koch disciples when it took office and is in the process of rolling back the Trump rollbacks, but Koch and his donor network still hold considerable sway over the Republican Party. They will continue to spend hundreds of millions on Capitol Hill and, looking ahead to 2024, a number of Koch network stalwarts are considering a run for president, including Pence, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Florida Senator Rick Scott. The Koch network, with its toxic anti-government bias, will likely cast a long shadow over Washington for years to come.
Decades of Disinformation
For more than two decades, the Koch network has been diligently spreading disinformation to sabotage efforts to transition to a clean energy economy, more often than not by attacking proposed climate policies on economic grounds. Examples of its malfeasance are legion:
To stop a version of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the Senate after it squeaked by in the House in 2009, Americans for Prosperity persuaded a critical mass of lawmakers to sign its “No Climate Tax” pledge, disingenuously calling the bill “the largest excise tax in history.” Since then, the overwhelming majority of legislators who have received campaign contributions from Koch Industries’ PAC and employees have rejected a carbon tax in amendments and nonbinding resolutions.
To slow the exponential growth of solar power, the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council has armed utilities and state lawmakers with model legislation against net metering, which credits solar panel owners for the excess energy they generate and return to the grid, claiming that rooftop solar credits will drive up non-solar customers’ electric rates. The Energy Department, however, concluded that the credits will have a negligible impact on monthly electric bills.
To undermine the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), the Koch network has urged Congress to kill the federal income tax credit for EV buyers. “Congress should not be in the business of picking winners and losers by subsidizing one form of energy over others, regardless of its source,” Philip Ellender, Koch Industries’ president of government and public affairs, argued in a letter to Congress in October 2018. Never mind that the oil and gas industry has benefited from massive annual federal subsidies for more than 100 years.
After succeeding in prodding President Trump to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, arguing that the accord would threaten the “economic future of our country,” the Koch network is now spearheading a campaign to kill the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan, falsely claiming that it “is the biggest spending bill in American history.”
There are plenty of other examples, but the above sample illustrates the breadth of the Koch network’s reach. Charles Koch and his fellow travelers have played an outsized role scaring the public about the potential impact of climate solutions on their pocketbooks (but at the same time, they spent more than $20 million to promote President Trump’s $1.5-trillion tax cut that largely benefited corporations and the ultra-wealthy). By practically any measure, Koch is as consequential a disinformer as the four oil company executives who testified last fall before the House Oversight Committee combined.
Put Koch Under Oath
If the House Oversight Committee called Charles Koch to testify, it could, for starters, ask him about his views on climate change.
The executives from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell who testified last October downplayed the central role human activity—mainly burning fossil fuels—plays in triggering climate change, but after much hemming and hawing they all conceded that global warming poses an “existential threat.”
Koch, for his part, has never acknowledged that climate change is a serious problem and rarely talks about it publicly. On the rare occasion when reporters broach the topic, he responds with… disinformation.
Koch’s most recent public comments about climate change came during lengthy interviews with the Washington Post in 2015 and 2016. Asked if he worried about climate change in an August 2015 interview, Koch replied that he believes “it’s been warming some” but added that “[t]here’s a big debate on that, because it depends on whether you use satellite measurements, balloon[s], or you use ground ones that have been adjusted.” Climate scientists, he added, “have these models that show it, but the models don’t work….”
In fact, all of the measurements Koch cited indicate that there has been a long-term global warming trend due to climate change. And, coincidentally, just a week before the Washington Post published the Koch interview, a peer-reviewed study found that global climate models are even more accurate than previously thought.
In August 2016, the Washington Post ran another Koch interview, during which he was asked if anyone could produce a study that would convince him “that carbon regulation is necessary to heed off disastrous global warming.” “Yeah,” Koch replied. “If we… use the scientific method rather than trying to shut down and shout down and punish anybody who wants to enter into debate about it…. If we’re all trying to find the truth of the matter, then I’m all for that.”
Notably, Koch did try to get to the truth of the matter in his own way a few years earlier. The Charles Koch Foundation donated $150,000 to Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research institute founded in 2010 by Richard Muller, a physicist and self-proclaimed climate science skeptic, to review the temperature data that underpinned global-warming claims. Presumably to Koch’s surprise—and dismay—Muller announced in a July 2012 New York Times op-ed that his investigation verified that global warming is indeed real, is “almost entirely” caused by human activity, and is even worse than what the climate science community had concluded at the time.
It would be enlightening for the House Oversight Committee to ask Koch about Berkeley Earth’s findings, especially since after Muller announced them, the Koch network stepped up its campaign to characterize climate policies as being too costly, despite the fact that the consequences of failing to curb carbon emissions will cost infinitely more than taking preventive measures.
In late 2012, for example, the Koch brothers financed “bogus studies” falsely claiming that state standards requiring utilities to ramp up their use of renewable energy would dramatically drive up electric rates. Six years later, in 2018, when the House was about to vote on a nonbinding carbon tax resolution, Ellender—the Koch Industries lobbyist—took the same tack. “A carbon tax would make energy more expensive and raise the costs of consumer products and services on which people depend,” he wrote in a letter to the lawmakers. “It would also make U.S. producers less cost competitive, driving production and jobs to other parts of the world.”
The House passed the resolution, which stated that “a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy,” by a 229 to 180 vote. Nearly 70 percent of the representatives who voted for the resolution—159—collectively received more than $1.28 million in campaign contributions from Koch Industries PAC and employees during the 2018 election cycle.
Investing in Clean Energy While Trashing It
Koch’s jaundiced take on climate change would undoubtedly be welcomed by the 20 Republican members of the Oversight Committee, 14 of whom are climate science deniers. During the 2020 election cycle alone, Koch Industries’ employees and PAC gave more than $136,000 in campaign contributions to 18 of the GOP committee members, while their counterparts at BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell collectively donated $40,347 to 14 of them.
The committee members who are less beholden to the fossil fuel industry, however, should take the opportunity to press Koch about his company’s seemingly contradictory investments in sectors that his network is still trying to knee-cap, such as electric vehicles and renewable energy.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Koch Industries subsidiaries have invested at least $750 million in a range of battery technologies and battery-related raw materials, chemicals and recycling. Among the Koch conglomerate’s relatively new holdings are New Jersey zinc battery startup Eos Energy Enterprises and Canada’s lithium-ion battery recycler Li-Cycle Holdings, lithium development company Standard Lithium, and Lithion Power Group, a lithium-ion battery startup.
Likewise, Koch subsidiaries have jumped into smart grid and electric vehicle charging technologies. In 2020, Koch Engineered Solutions acquired Sentient Energy, a smart grid solutions company, and last year Koch Strategic Platforms invested in EVBox, a Netherlands-based electric vehicle charging station manufacturer.
Koch Engineered Solutions is also bullish on solar, but not on distributed rooftop solar, which the Koch network has been trying to stop. Last November, it bought DEPCOM Power, an Arizona company that builds large-scale solar power plants, and plans to supply solar farms in the United States and Canada.
Koch Industries’ relatively recent investments in batteries and renewables—which, granted, amount to a tiny percentage of the conglomerate’s far-flung operations—are just the beginning, according to Koch Engineered Solutions President Dave Dotson. “We are believers in the electrification of everything, driven by economics and consumer trends,” he told S&P Global Market Intelligence, “and look for where we can add value across the electric value chain from generation to end-user consumption.”
Dotson’s business strategy should come as a surprise to anyone who has been closely following his boss, and should prompt the House Oversight Committee to ask Koch how his company’s recent shopping spree squares with his network’s ongoing campaign against climate solutions.
An unabashed libertarian, Koch likely would respond that the private sector should take the lead, not the government, on energy—and just about everything else. For Koch, government efforts to manage the economy, protect public health and the environment, and provide social welfare programs are a slippery slope to totalitarianism and must be rolled back, if not eliminated. In his most recent book (co-authored with Brian Hooks), Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World, Koch argues that individuals, corporations and nonprofit groups are better suited to solve society’s most pressing problems—including the coronavirus pandemic—than the government.
Koch’s philosophy, however, fails to account for the fact that it was the private sector—specifically the fossil fuel industry—that got us into the dire situation in which we find ourselves today, faced with increasingly severe climate change-driven impacts. Major oil companies were aware their products wreck the climate at least 50 years ago and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars since then to manufacture doubt about climate science, disparage renewables and block government action. Now that Koch Industries, as well as some oil majors, see that there is money to be made by diversifying into clean energy technologies, they are slowly adding them to their portfolios but spending a fraction of what they are still dedicating to their oil, gas and chemical operations. It’s much too little, much too late.
If the House Oversight Committee is serious about getting to the bottom of the fossil fuel industry’s longtime campaign to stymie climate policy, it should call Koch on the carpet. By doing so, the committee could shine a light on his prominent role in sponsoring disinformation, as well as expose the threat he and his followers pose to U.S. democracy.
Standing up: Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch speaks at a ‘Stand with Ukraine’ rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on March 27, 2022. (Photo credit: Victoria Pickering/Flickr)
Teigen Young, Change.org: “Koch Industries is still on the updated Yale list of companies that have not left or diminished business with the Russian Federation. In fact, they are still listed in the worst-rated category of ‘Digging In’ (meaning they are ‘defying demands for exit or reduction of activities’ and thus received a grade of F by Yale. Koch Industries has released a public statement backing up its stance. In no way do they claim their work to be essential, and make no case beyond their continued profiting. … It is time for us to hold Koch Industries responsible by letting them know we will no longer purchase their products. As global citizens, this is just another reason to avoid Koch and their constant enabling of corruption. We should do everything we can to boycott their products. Here’s a list of all of their companies and subsidiaries.”
Urge Chairman and CEO Koch Industries Charles G. Koch to leave the Russian market.
Cause for concern…
Bloodlust: The U.S. federal government killed about 64,000 coyotes in 2021 alone. (Photo credit: Tjflex2/Flickr)
“An obscure division of the U.S. government had a busy—and ruthless— year in 2021, killing more than 1.75 million animals across the country, at a rate of about 200 creatures every hour. The latest annual toll of Wildlife Services, a department within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has further stoked the fury of conservation groups that have decried the killings as cruel and pointless. Wildlife Services maintains the slaughter is necessary to protect agricultural output, threatened species and human health.
“The 2021 toll shows the killings span a Noah’s Ark of species, including alligators, armadillos, doves, owls, otters, porcupines, snakes and turtles. European starlings alone accounted for more than 1m of the animals killed. A single moose was shot, along with a solitary antelope and, accidentally, a bald eagle.”
Forest guardian: Nemonte Nenquimo is an Indigenous activist from the Ecuadorian Amazon and the first female president of her tribe, the Waorani of Pastaza Province. (Screenshot via Bioneers)
Bioneers: “Having passed down generations of wisdom to maintain ecological balance for millennia, Indigenous people today safeguard 80 percent of our planet’s biodiversity, which act as crucial mitigators of climate change. Indigenous peoples are the ancestral owners of nearly half of the intact forest left across the entire Amazon Basin. [Earth | Food | Life contributor] Nemonte Nenquimo, a leader from the Waorani community in Ecuador and a founding member of Indigenous-led nonprofit organization Ceibo Alliance and its partner, Amazon Frontlines, discusses why respecting Indigenous people’s internationally recognized rights to decide the future of their territories, cultures, and lives is critically urgent for the protection of our world’s most important rainforest, our climate, and life on our planet.”
ICYMI…
Fossilized: At COP23, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Bonn, Germany, in 2017, Brazil received the infamous “Fossil of the Day” award for “proposing a bill that could give oil companies $300 billion in subsidies to drill its offshore reserves,” according to Climate Action Network. (Photo credit: John Englart/Flickr)
“Despite the pro-climate rhetoric of the insurance industry—and warnings by the world’s climate scientists calling for an end to fossil fuel exploration—leading global insurers are backing the Brazilian government’s massive offshore oil expansion, according to a new report titled, ‘Fueling Climate Change: The Insurers Behind Brazil’s Offshore Oil Expansion.’ Released on January 20 by Insure Our Future, a coalition of environmental and consumer protection groups, the report—based on internal documents that have never been disclosed—reveals how major international insurance firms are assisting the expansion of environmentally destructive deep-sea oil and gas operations in fragile ecosystems off the coast of Brazil. …
“In addition to supporting the destruction of marine ecosystems and fueling the climate crisis, the leading global insurance companies that are behind Brazil’s fossil fuel industry are flatly hypocritical: They have been telling the public that they care about the environment and climate while underwriting harmful offshore drilling projects and continuing Brazil’s addiction to cheap, dirty fuel, which is supported by government subsidies that should instead go to supporting the advancement of renewable energy.”
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Bag of trouble: Great at repelling grease, PFAS are commonly used in food containers like microwave popcorn bags. But exposure to this class of chemicals poses health risks. (Photo credit: David Jackmanson/Flickr)
A new federal bill would advance public and environmental health by banning toxic chemicals from food packaging.
By Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner, Independent Media Institute
6 min read
While so many Americans have taken all necessary precautions to keep themselves and those around them safe from COVID-19 and prevent severe illness if they do get sick with the virus, there are plenty of other factors in Americans’ daily lives that are beyond their control that may actually worsen the effects of the novel coronavirus and especially result in the vulnerable population being more susceptible to the virus despite their best efforts to get vaccinated and boosted and ensure they are masked up and are socially distanced from others.
Chemicals commonly found in consumer products have been proven to harm human health, yet they still remain legal stateside. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which negatively affect human hormones, can exacerbate COVID-19 in particularly vulnerable individuals, yet these EDCs can be hard to avoid for any American consumer. “Certain underlying chronic conditions associated with exposures to… [endocrine-disrupting] chemicals (EDCs) are exacerbating the effects of COVID-19 in vulnerable populations,” confirmed the Collaborative on Health and the Environment.
PFAS (short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are frequently found in food packaging and mass-manufactured goods, like cosmetics, are an EDC.
According to a June 2020 article in the Intercept, “Studies have shown that in both adults and children higher levels of certain PFAS chemicals were associated with weaker responses to vaccines. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the CDC, recognized this evidence in an announcement it recently posted to its website on the ‘potential intersection between PFAS exposure and COVID-19.’”
“PFAS chemicals are a family of chemicals that are widely used in industrial and consumer product applications, and commonly used to make water-, grease- and stain-repellent coatings,” explains David Andrews, PhD, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit public health advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “PFAS chemicals are very stable and impervious to breakdown, giving them what is often considered to be a performance advantage in many products. This apparent advantage of chemical and physical stability is what has led to widespread global contamination [by PFAS] and [has provided them with] their ability to cause human health harm.”
These toxins are pervasive in everyday life, but a PFAS ban for food packaging, proposed in Congress in late 2021, can help limit everyday exposure to the toxins. The Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act is a bipartisan effort, introduced in the Senate by Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and in the House of Representatives by Representative Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Representative Don Young (R-AK). If the bill passes, it is expected to be enacted by January 1, 2024.
A PFAS ban is “long overdue and [is] hopefully the first of many,” says Calloway Cook, president of Illuminate Labs, a dietary supplements company. “It’s unfortunate that many packaged food products in the U.S. contain compounds that are known to be harmful to human health but remain legal to use,” he adds. “The FDA and Congress should review the medical literature on more compounds like PFAS and err on the side of caution, [and look at] banning all compounds that have proven toxicity in animal studies at doses achievable through regular use… The cost to switch to more sustainable alternatives is not much, even with plastics, but most businesses are not focused on long-term environmental effects. It’s absolutely the role of Congress to better regulate the food industry, and I hope the bill banning PFAS is the first of many similar bills.”
Andrews agrees, saying in an EWG press release, “The Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act would quickly cut off a potential major and completely avoidable source of exposure to these forever chemicals.”
PFAS are widely used because they offer a solution to consumer packaging, but what could be used instead? “With hundreds to thousands of PFAS chemicals, it is likely that there will be a significant, if not similar, number of alternative chemicals or alternatives needed to fully replace PFAS,” explains Dr. Andrews, emphasizing that where safer alternatives exist, they should be used instead of PFAS as soon as possible. In other cases, alternatives may need to be developed, and should potentially be incentivized. For example, medical devices, which are essential to human health and safety, should absolutely not have toxins in them. But that is unfortunately not the case.
Still, replacing PFAS with non-detrimental alternatives isn’t that simple. “Many of the PFAS being used today are replacements for different PFAS chemicals such as PFOA [perfluorooctanoic acid] and PFOS [perfluorooctane sulfonic acid] that were used decades ago,” Andrews explains. “Many of the regulations phasing out the use of PFAS, such as the Washington state ban of PFAS in food packaging, require an alternative assessment to ensure that the replacements [provided] are safer [than the original options].” This certainly explains why it would be difficult to ban PFAS immediately, even after knowing the health risks involved in using them: they help support consumerism.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently investigating more than 1,000 completely legal PFAS chemicals, which is worrisome for environmental and human health. Introducing regulations for various industries, such as food packaging, cosmetics and textiles, will help curb the use of PFAS and halt further contamination and sickness related to these chemicals. To check if you live in an area contaminated by PFAS and should take precautions, such as filtering your tap water, the EWG offers an online interactive map as well as expert-sourced tips on avoiding PFAS exposure.
And just as it is not always possible to avoid all sources of COVID-19, avoiding all potential sources of PFAS isn’t always as easy as it may sound. Research by Greenpeace in 2016 found PFAS contaminants in jackets made by environmentally focused brands like the North Face, which plans to phase out PFAS by 2025, and Patagonia, which aims to ensure that 85 percent of its garments are “PFAS-free by the end of 2022”; in 2014, Greenpeace found PFAS in more than 80 articles of clothing, including footwear, that were purchased in 2013. Finding a water-repellent, affordable and PFAS-free raincoat may not be easy, but cutting back on greasy food packed in PFAS-treated containers or wrappers (such as for fast food and microwave popcorn) and preparing food in non-PFAS treated nonstick cookware—a currently available alternative you could try is learning to cook with a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven, for example—may help. Still, with the proliferation of PFAS use in so many aspects of Americans’ daily lives, the responsibility for substantial change lies most heavily with the government, which has the power to make legislative changes to curb companies’ reliance on PFAS. As it stands, Americans live in a nation where it is very difficult to avoid PFAS exposure and its harms.
“It is imperative that regulations move forward to limit future harm from PFAS chemicals based on what we know about the extreme toxicity and potent risk that these chemicals pose for human health,” says Andrews. “Regulations should be enacted quickly to stop any ongoing industrial discharges and [to] eliminate approval of new PFAS that may pose risks to health or the environment.”
###
Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner is a writer based in New York. She is a writing fellow at Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She’s written for the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Glamour, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Architectural Digest, Them and other publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Columbia University and is also at work on a novel. Follow her on Twitter: @melissabethk.
Take action…
Daily dose: You may be surprised to learn how often you are exposed to toxic PFAS chemicals. (Screenshot: Food Packaging TV via YouTube)
“There is no excuse for the FDA to continue allowing millions of Americans to be exposed to toxic PFAS in food packaging and foodware, especially when safer alternatives are available,” said Sue Chiang, pollution prevention director at the Center for Environmental Health. “The FDA needs to turn off the tap to toxic PFAS. We all deserve access to toxic free food that doesn’t harm people across the product lifecycle from workers, to consumers, to fenceline communities disproportionately impacted by irresponsible disposal practices.”
“While states like Maine, Washington, Vermont, and New York have already taken action to eliminate PFAS from food packaging, the FDA has done little to address the clear hazards PFAS poses,” said Patrick MacRoy, Deputy Director of Defend Our Health. “We hope this petition will provide the impetus for the new administration at FDA to finally provide the Federal leadership desperately called for.”
Urge Congress to enact a total ban on the production and use of PFAS.
Cause for concern…
Thirsty: Drought-stressed corn is one of the many effects of climate change. (Photo credit: CraneStation/Flickr)
“The dangers of climate change are mounting so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the ability of both nature and humanity to adapt unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced, according to a major new scientific report released [in February].
“The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, is the most detailed look yet at the threats posed by global warming. It concludes that nations aren’t doing nearly enough to protect cities, farms and coastlines from the hazards that climate change has unleashed so far, such as record droughts and rising seas, let alone from the even greater disasters in store as the planet continues to warm.”
Safer travels: Critically endangered scalloped hammerhead sharks are among several imperiled migratory species that will benefit from a newly created marine corridor. (Photo credit: Clifton Beard/Flickr)
“For the first time, during February 2021, scientists documented the real-time journey of a pregnant scalloped hammerhead shark. The shark, whom scientists named Cassiopeia, traveled from the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador to Coco Island, Costa Rica, a distance of 430 miles, which she covered in just under two weeks. From there, she would travel roughly the same distance again to reach the Gulf of Panama to give birth in the safety of mangrove bays before returning home.
“This migratory route connecting Ecuadorian and Costa Rican waters is crucial to the survival of this critically endangered shark among other imperiled migratory species like green sea turtles, whale sharks, and eagle rays. It’s also the very stretch of ocean that Ecuador aims to protect with its January 2022 designation of a new reserve—a first bold step in ongoing efforts within the region that could ultimately help save one of the most famous marine reserves on Earth.”
Tastes funny: If you regularly drink water from plastic bottles, you’re likely ingesting even more plastic than the average consumer. (Photo credit: Ivan Radic/Flickr)
“We are no better protected from plasticized air outdoors than we are indoors. Minuscule plastic fibers, fragments, foam, and films are shed from plastic stuff and are perpetually floating into and free-falling down on us from the atmosphere. Rain flushes micro- and nanoplastics out of the sky back to Earth. Plastic-filled snow is accumulating in urban areas like Bremen, Germany, and remote regions like the Arctic and Swiss Alps.
“Wind and storms carry particles shed from plastic items and debris through the air for dozens, even hundreds, of miles before depositing them back on Earth. Dongguan, China; Paris, France; London, England; and other metropolises teeming with people are enveloped in air perpetually permeated by tiny plastic particles small enough to lodge themselves in human lungs.”
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
The kids are alright: Fundred founding artist Mel Chin and participating children cut the blue ribbon to officially open the 2017 Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Chin’s work is the subject of a new article by Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, a new editorial fellow at the Independent Media Institute and the founding editor of &Art, a project of Earth | Food | Life. (Photo credit: Sarah Buckner, courtesy Fundred Project)
Dear Earth | Food | Life reader,
It is a distinct pleasure to introduce Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, a newly minted fellow here at the Independent Media Institute (IMI), and the founding editor of &Art, a new project at Earth | Food | Life (EFL).
Over the last two decades, Rachel and I have discussed the many possibilities of art to engage with environmental issues, including climate change, food and agriculture, and animal rights. As a contemporary art curator and advocate of justice not just for humans but for all species, Rachel is uniquely qualified to create a dynamic and critical space for cross-disciplinary dialogues that extend IMI’s focus on producing media that has the power to shift attitudes and sensibilities.
Rachel has more than 20 years of experience in the arts, spanning nonprofit, education, and commercial sectors. Many of the exhibitions she has organized underscore how art can welcome local communities in conversations about art and culture—for example, through thoughtful, site-specific, and unusual uses of spaces like empty storefronts. Recent projects of the New York City-based &Art founder include “Storying” at the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx; “Bound up Together: On the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment” at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn; “(after)care” at Kings County Hospital Center in East Flatbush, Brooklyn; “Jameco Exchange” in Jamaica, Queens; and “Hold These Truths” and “Bring in the Reality” at the Nathan Cummings Foundation in Manhattan.
Rachel has designed &Art with a specific remit: Investigate the work of activist artists, cultural workers, and arts and social justice organizations who fight for the environment, food justice, and intersectional animal rights. One of EFL’s primary contentions about our world is that everything is connected—including systems of oppression that impact not only BIPOC communities, fenceline communities, and food system workers, but also wildlife and nonhuman animals trapped in our food system. &Art will navigate these complex issues by examining not only how contemporary artists address them, but also how art can advance practical approaches toward manifesting meaningful, positive change.
It is an honor to launch &Art with Rachel’s take on the work of conceptual artist and social activist Mel Chin, a recent recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (aka the “Genius Grant”). Chin’s work is complex, critical, eclectic, and challenging. But his work also has a social impact that is absent in much of conceptual art. It is in this way that Chin’s creative practice exemplifies a central ambition of &Art: to uncover the capacity of art to transcend an aesthetic experience and to inspire the kinds of personal and social transformations that can ultimately shape civic and political discourse.
Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, Asia Times, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others, and in Spanish, Italian and German translation by Pressenza.He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016.
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Making change: Artist Mel Chin takes House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to see the 2017 Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, part of Chin’s Fundred Project (2008-2019). (Photo credit: Yassine El Mansouri)
For MacArthur fellow Mel Chin, art is a powerful tool for addressing complex environmental issues.
By Rachel Gugelberger, Independent Media Institute
17 min read
I began to grasp the breadth of Mel Chin’s work in 2015 when I included his video document “S.O.S. (Straight off the Street) Reloaded” in the first exhibition that I curated for the art organization No Longer Empty (NLE). Chin’s 2012 video document portrays Bronx residents with their messages to then-President Barack Obama scrolling across the screen to the sound of their respective heartbeats. A copy of this was sent to Obama.
In 2018, NLE partnered with the Queens Museum and produced a citywide exhibition of Chin’s work, which helped me understand his activist streak, especially relating to the environment. Spanning four decades of his career, the sprawling exhibition was a testament to the sheer magnitude of Chin’s curiosity. As an artist, he is tough to pin down. Hence, the 2018 exhibition title “Mel Chin: All Over the Place,” which tapped into the artist’s myriad interests, with newly commissioned projects that explored water rights, New York’s maritime history, and sea-level rise. And while he may have a “malleable and wide-ranging approach to [his] artistic practice,” being anchored to a particular “place” is something that informs much of his work; he responds to unique histories and characteristics.
In the work “Flint Fit,” for example, Chin worked with residents of Flint, Michigan, and Detroit/New York City-based fashion designer Tracy Reese to pilot an innovative economic system that simultaneously addressed the city’s water crisis, plastic pollution, recycling, and labor problems. This “prototype for action” transformed empty water bottles into a woven fabric that was sewn into clothing, ultimately providing new jobs for members of St. Luke NEW Life Center, a Flint-based organization that provides life skills, education, and workplace training. The first “Flint Fit” collection was unveiled at a fashion event at the Queens Museum.
Mel Chin, Rendering of “Flint Fit,” 2018. Courtesy Mel Chin.
During a recent phone conversation, we touched on Chin’s “origin stories” and his collaborative, interdisciplinary art approach, how he consistently brings diverse groups of people together to transform ideas into action, and the power of art as a medium to achieve societal change: an effect of his work he is hesitant to claim. “Even the word ‘change’… that may be putting too much of a premium on this idea of art,” he tells me.
One thing is certain: Chin is interested in the process and the possibilities that may emerge from art. Like many of his works, “Flint Fit” is a concept, a prototype, a system. Its fundamental idea could be applied elsewhere, and perhaps be scaled to work on a regional, state, or federal level. A 2019 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (aka “genius grant”), Chin refers to his work as activism. But don’t call him an “activist artist,” a term he flatly rejects. He prefers “recovering conceptualist.”
Art, Activism, and Ideas
While the term “artivism”—a portmanteau of art and activism—is relatively new, the kinship between art and social responsibility or activism through art is not. In 2021, Social Movement Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal, published an article by Stephen Duncombe and Silas Harrebye comparing “creative activism” to more conventional forms of activism. The authors of this research found that when it comes to raising awareness and inspiring engagement, a creative approach is much more effective than traditional advocacy methods. One of the partnering organizations for this research, the Center for Artistic Activism, meanwhile, points out that creativity alone isn’t enough to carry an activist message all the way through. “Training and organization… [are] key,” the organization states on its website. Chin emphasizes the role of empathy in promoting change: “Empathy must be used to increase the criticality necessary to launch into all the variables that are required.”
Chin does intensive research, talks to people in the communities where he produces work, and has a knack for deep listening. He collaborates and organizes. His cross-disciplinary practice often invites collective storytelling. “You listen to people,” he tells me, as he describes his collaborative process, which involves trial and error. “And then you apply your creative impulse and say, ‘Well, let’s try this.’”
Chin eschews the romanticized notion of the artist as an individual and as a sole creator of work; he is fueled by the energy and knowledge of others. Quick to downplay his own centrality, he prefers to call his work a “public practice” in which he acts as an artistic facilitator seeking co-creation with others. “The notion of the artist as the inventor or the creator in the public practice—that’s an impossible situation since it involves a connection with others,” he says. “The ego-driven [impulse] must be set aside if you want to have a collaboration… to be open to the creative impulses [that can be] regenerated in a more collective fashion.”
And while Chin is rooted in ideas—his far-ranging work has investigated philosophy, histories of landscape painting, multiculturalism, identity politics, global imperialism, inequality, and ecological issues—he’s all about the “thingliness” of things and choosing certain materials not only for their physical and formal characteristics but also for their symbolism and histories. “Vertical Palette” (1976-1985), for example, is a sculpture of five glass storage bottles containing materials that represent the Chinese Five Element Theory: water, wood, fire (smoke), earth (clay), and metal (lead). This work is a semantic nod to traditional Chinese painting and the painter’s tools that links the Chinese philosophy of life to the creative process.
Mel Chin, “Vertical Palette,” 1976-85. Lead, wood, water, smoke, clay, in scientific glass storage bottles with Bakelite® caps in artist-designed rack of oak and steel. Courtesy Mel Chin.
In the 1991 installation “Landscape,” Chin created mediated paintings of historical landscape traditions: a 13th-century scroll from China’s Yuan Dynasty, a 14th-century Persian miniature from Iran, and a 19th-century romantic American landscape. These paintings were installed one to a wall, with each wall constructed according to the topography of the 30th parallel along which China, Iran, and the United States all sit. And the three distinct landscape traditions were linked by locally sourced landfill soil (sanitized for museum requirements) seeping from the base of the walls. Uniting past philosophies of idealized nature with evidence of our waste and pollution, Chin showcased how distanced we are from our environmental impact. This approach to the physical elements and symbiotic cycles of destruction and renewal resurfaces in much of his work.
Mel Chin, “Landscape,” 1991 (detail). Sheetrock cut to topography of 30th parallel, dirt from local landfill, plywood. American landscape painting: oil on linen, wood, plaster, gold and metal leaf; Chinese scroll: ink, pigments, ground malachite and azurite on silk; Persian miniature: paper mounted on wood, watercolor, oxidized silver leaf. Courtesy Mel Chin.
Tackling Childhood Lead Poisoning
Chin’s ongoing Fundred Dollar Bill Project highlights not only the power of tangibility of lived experiences and notions of value but also the fungibility of money. Launched in New Orleans in 2008, the project highlights a persistent yet often ignored environmental health problem, lead pollution. The project began in 2005; shortly after Hurricane Katrina caused widespread destruction, Chin went to New Orleans, joining other artists and cultural producers to imagine ways to respond to the devastation through artistic means. Feeling helpless in the face of the magnitude before him, he “was compelled to respond, and the only way to do so was to keep returning to [New Orleans to] learn [about] what needed to be made.” His research brought to the fore that long before the hurricane, “30 to 50 percent of the inner-city childhood population [had been] poisoned with lead.” A home that had been devastated by the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina was transformed into “Safehouse Temple Door,” which is a social sculpture that served as the project’s headquarters; a gathering place, workspace, and operable safe house, inviting “children, families and communities to imagine, express and actualize a future free of childhood lead poisoning,” states Mel Chin’s website. A steel and wooden bank vault was customized to replace the front door, making the safe house resemble a literal safe where valuables are stored.
Fundred Project early diagram, courtesy Mel Chin and Fundred Project.
“Safehouse” in New Orleans, where the Fundred Project was launched in 2008. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Mel Chin, courtesy Fundred Project.
Lead enters the environment from paint, gasoline, and water pipes, affecting an estimated 37 million U.S. homes. While lead poisoning is difficult to detect, the symptoms for lead poisoning range from lethargy and reduced attention span to violent behavior and swelling of the brain; long-term effects may include brain and nervous system damage, convulsions, and death, according to the Fundred Project website. Populations most at risk from chronic lead poisoning in the U.S. include children between the ages of 1 and 3, people living in large metropolitan areas and in homes built before 1978, and children in low-income families and communities of color, underscoring pervasive issues of race and environmental justice.
On Chin’s website, “Fundred” is presented less as art and more as “a creative campaign advancing public education and community engagement”; community members, including children, are invited to create original, hand-drawn interpretations of $100 bills, or “Fundreds,” which represent the voices of people calling on those in power to address lead poisoning. “The goal,” Chin’s website says, “is to exchange the value of informed public voice into real resources to leverage 100 percent [lead] prevention.”
Students draw Fundreds on the handcrafted cherry tables in the Charlotte branch of the Fundred Reserve Even Exchange Bank, 2013. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Ben Premeaux, courtesy Fundred Project.
Fundred founding artist Mel Chin and participating children cut the blue ribbon to officially open the 2017 Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Sarah Buckner, courtesy Fundred Project.
The scope of this creative, symbolic currency initiative has transformed the response to the ongoing lead crisis—and has even led to changing lead policies. In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s funding for the Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program was cut from $29 million to $2 million, and in 2015, the Flint water crisis shifted the way that “Fundred” operated: Roles changed and the Fundred Project’s network of participants, collaborators, and educators expanded to show that lead contamination isn’t just a problem for New Orleans but also an issue impacting communities across the nation. Students at schools across the U.S. have created thousands of “Fundreds” that were picked up in a specially designed armored truck and delivered in 2017 to the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., to be exhibited, but more importantly, to amplify the voices of those affected by lead poisoning with policymakers and regulators. Efforts to place Fundred artists and their work before their congressional representatives and to advocate for more funding and lead-safe policies are ongoing.
The Fundred Pallet, with more than 450,000 Fundreds on view in the rotunda of the Fundred Reserve at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. [Fundred Project, 2008-2019.] Photo: Ben Tankersley, courtesy Fundred Project.
Climate Change: A Multifaceted Investigation
In 2018 as part of “All Over the Place,” Chin unveiled a different kind of creative campaign to highlight climate change with a two-part public “mixed reality experience” in New York City’s Times Square. One part, commissioned by the Times Square Arts, was the 60-foot-long installation “Wake.” A haunting, hulking, skeletal sculpture that evoked images of the hull of a sailing vessel and the skeleton of a whale, the installation was modeled after the USS Nightingale—whose own layered history spoke of conflict and change—and served as a fitting scaffold for Chin’s multifaceted investigation. The vessel upon which Chin’s “Wake” is based was launched as a “slave ship” in 1851. It was later captured by the U.S. Navy, serving as a Union supply ship during the American Civil War, and finally serving out its years as an Arctic research vessel. The title, “Wake,” suggests both what a ship, or indeed, humanity, might leave behind as it surges ever-forward, as well as represents the wake-up call that is required in order to prevent the worst consequences of man-made environmental damage and human rights violations.
Mel Chin, “Wake,” 2018. Wood, steel, fiberglass, electronic and mechanical components, paint. 24’H x 34’W x 60’L. Exhibited at Times Square from July 11 to September 5, 2018. Co-presented by Times Square Arts, No Longer Empty, Queens Museum. Fabricated in partnership with University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA). Image courtesy Ian Douglas for Times Square Arts.
The other part of the installation, “Unmoored,” invited visitors to wear 3D goggles (or launch an augmented reality app on their mobile devices) to experience a vision of Times Square, submerged by the rising sea levels. An impressive technical feat, it also packed a wow factor by putting the possible underwater scenario of cities around the world like New York into clear, almost frightening, focus. New York is one of the nation’s most vulnerable cities to rising sea levels.
Like many of Chin’s works, the Times Square project conferred an urgency of action, almost demanding viewers—nearly 360,000 pedestrians who enter the heart of Times Square each day, pre-COVID—to stop, think, and listen to Mother Nature, amid the extreme capitalism on display. “I think the most important motivation as an artist is to use what James Baldwin has described as extracting the question that is buried within the answer,” said Chin, about “Wake.” “If the answer is, ‘The world will be inundated and destroyed by our own doings,’ then what is the question that we have to ask now?”
Origin Stories
Chin was born in 1951 in Houston to Chinese parents and was raised in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood. He experienced extreme mental stress around the age of 13 or 14 that left him catatonic and hospitalized for months, during which time he underwent shock therapy. Chin describes his mother’s will, unbridled care, and refusal to institutionalize him, combined with his father’s philosophical disciplines, as the remedy that gave him “the time to heal.” As he began to emerge from the fog of medications and regain ambulatory ability, he found that he had lost the capacity to draw; however, other sensitivities emerged that he says, “can drive the investigations of a lifetime.”
“I had the delusion that one day, I could be a fine artist,” says Chin, “a painter, sculptor, and all these things, all the trimmings of fine art.” Eventually, his interests became less about working with a particular medium and more about art’s “liberating aspect.” Perhaps that liberating aspect is generational. “My generation really did believe in transformative possibilities,” he tells me. But he also acknowledges that his generation was ultimately “unsuccessful based on the ecological, environmental, and societal record.”
When it comes to uncovering transformative moments to solve environmental problems, Chin has been trying to turn things around. In the early 1990s, he went to a Superfund site in St. Paul, Minnesota, called Pig’s Eye Landfill. There, he worked with Dr. Rufus Chaney, a senior research agronomist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to see if they could clean up soil that was contaminated by heavy metals left behind by industrial processes using “special hyperaccumulator plants.” It worked. One species of plant, in particular, Thlaspi (an edible herb also known as pennycress), demonstrated a knack for sucking cadmium out of the soil, drawing the chemical into its leaves and stems. A nasty byproduct of burning fossil fuels, cadmium is a major environmental contaminant and a Group 1 human carcinogen that, even with very little exposure, can potentially cause harm to virtually all of the body’s systems.
“Revival Field” at Pig’s Eye Landfill in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1990, in collaboration with Dr. Rufus Chaney, then senior research agronomist, USDA. Plants, industrial fencing on a hazardous waste landfill. Courtesy Mel Chin.
The ongoing project “Revival Field” is a stark reminder that creative and natural solutions to persistent problems exist and can be replicated anywhere. Iterations have been developed in Palmerton, Pennsylvania (1993-1997), as well as in the Netherlands (1992) and Germany (2000-2001). And the project was ahead of its time; in 1998, several years after “Revival Field” was launched, the world’s greatest soil minds, gathered at the 16th World Congress of Soil Science, proposed that “phytoremediation using Thlaspi caerulescens would be entirely feasible for low levels of cadmium”—something that Chin and Chaney proved at Pig’s Eye Landfill seven years earlier.
While soil researchers and environmental advocates might look at “Revival Field” through the lens of science, Chin also sees the artistry behind both the process and the final piece. “We live in a world of pollution with heavy metals saturating the soil… If that [pollution] could be carved away, and life could return to that soil and then a diverse and ecologically balanced life, then that is a wonderful sculpture,” Chin said during an interview with Art21 about “Revival Field.”
Mel Chin, original study for “Revival Field,” 1990. Courtesy Mel Chin.
Documentation of Mel Chin’s “Revival Field,” 1991-ongoing. Plants, industrial fencing on a hazardous waste landfill. Courtesy Mel Chin.
Profound, simple, and utterly natural, “Revival Field” stands in stark, yet graceful, contrast to more aggressive options of remediation, like using diggers and other heavy construction equipment to physically excavate the soil. Chin offers his solution both “as a conceptual artwork with the intent to sculpt a site’s ecology” and a “low-tech alternative to current costly and unsatisfactory remediation methods.”
A preeminent example of “eco-art,” “Revival Field” is acknowledged in USDA commentary as the scientific concept of “green remediation”—what the Environmental Protection Agency calls cleanup actions that “maximize net environmental benefit”—confirmed by an art project. “There haven’t been that many projects big enough or groundbreaking enough like ‘Revival Field’ and its peculiar nature, which were not object-based,” Chin says. And while Chin’s work is rooted in Conceptual Art and Earth Art movements, he moves beyond visual expressions to include the action of reversing environmental damage into the aesthetic.
Certainly, “Revival Field” isn’t an object. It’s a section of land despoiled by human industry that Chin has reclaimed. Chin’s work was produced at an auspicious time in the history of environmentalism. In 1989, a Gallup poll found that more than two-thirds of Americans called themselves environmentalists, a remarkable change from just two decades prior, before the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act were even born. In 1990, a year after Chin began the earthwork “Revival Field,” author, feminist, and social activist bell hooks wrote: “We must all decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature, about the destruction humans cause” in Belonging: A Culture of Place.
“Chin says he has ‘always been messing with dirt,’” art critic Lucy Lippard observed in her exhibition catalogue essay for “Rematch.” Chin tells me that this association with dirt is actually rooted in clay, a fascination that began as an art student in a required class taught by his instructor Robert Freagon that he originally thought was “crass” but ended up being fertile soil for Chin’s imagination. He was soon knee-deep in everything relating to clay, from “erotic pottery from Peru to Yuan pottery in Japan… through clay, I learned about Zen,” Chin says.
In reclaiming a piece of land, quite literally, from the abuses of corporate greed (as in the case of “Revival Field”), there is a sense of “decolonizing” a place, of bringing it back to its former, unspoiled state. There’s a thematic, even lyrical, resonance between the semantics of decolonization and much of Chin’s creative approach; both are utopian and processual in nature. Where the decolonization process includes notions of “recovery,” Chin’s process includes “reclamation” and “revival.” Instead of “mourning,” Chin’s work “laments.” In place of “dreaming,” Chin “imagines.” And the daily “commitment” required of decolonization to change power dynamics is in Chin’s practice foiled in “ongoing community initiatives” and “action” that he manifests in modalities of “creative engagement toward policy change.”
Chin’s Constant Revolution
On the potential of art to enact social change, Chin says he is wary of “putting too much of a premium on this idea of art.” For Chin, it’s about the process, and, like so many of his works, it’s an ongoing affair, “a process of knowing.” Could this process of knowing help advance a transformational shift on a personal or even societal level? “We do have the capacity conceptually to provoke rapid evolution and mutation,” Chin says. “There’s a constant revolution.”
“Safehouse Temple Door” at Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) with members of UNC Asheville STEAM Studio. Photo: Ben Premeaux, courtesy S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio.
In 2021, the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago presented the exhibition “Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40.” Organized in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, the citywide exhibition was based on the “idea of ‘the commons’” and sought “to explore the current socio-political moment.” For Chin, it presented a perfect opportunity not only to continue the collaborative work of “Fundred” but also to expand the discussion of lead contamination to a wider national level. Underscoring his idea of a “constant revolution,” Chin engineered another iteration of the project, launching—in partnership with S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, the Hyde Park Art Center, and Sweet Water Foundation—“Fundred Project Initiative: A Bill for IL.” Anyone who wanted to participate created Fundreds, which were collected for the Fundred Reserve, recently acquired by the Brooklyn Museum (where all Fundreds created through spring 2022 will be added). For Chin, it is yet another salvo of public voices calling for change. “This is one more step that we need to make,” Chin said. “It’s not done, is how I feel. It’s not done till the blood is clean of children being born in these places. That’s when it’s done.”
###
Author’s note: The work of Mel Chin and the Fundred Project can be seen across the United States. The Fundred Author’s note: The work of Mel Chin and the Fundred Project can be seen across the United States. The Fundred Reserve is on view in the Contemporary Art Collection at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and “Safehouse Temple Door” is permanently installed at the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. Fundred Lab is currently active at the Corvus Gallery at the University of Chicago, and the Fundred Project is on view at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin through March 20. The exhibition “Mel Chin: Points of View” is on view at the Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art in Texas, also through March 20, and “Inescapable Histories” is on view at the Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington through March 30. Chin’s latest exhibition There’s Something Happening Here opens at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin on March 12. To learn more, visit S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio (Sustained Operations Utilizing Resources for Culture, Communities, and the Environment), an action-oriented arts and justice organization founded by Chin in 2017.The work of Mel Chin and the Fundred Project can be seen across the United States. The Fundred Reserve is on view in the Contemporary Art Collection at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and “Safehouse Temple Door” is permanently installed at the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. Fundred Lab is currently active at the Corvus Gallery at the University of Chicago, and the Fundred Project is on view at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin through March 20. The exhibition “Mel Chin: Points of View” is on view at the Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art in Texas, also through March 20, and “Inescapable Histories” is on view at the Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington through March 30. Chin’s latest exhibition There’s Something Happening Here opens at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin on March 12. To learn more, visit S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio (Sustained Operations Utilizing Resources for Culture, Communities, and the Environment), an action-oriented arts and justice organization founded by Chin in 2017.
A project of Earth | Food | Life, &Art highlights the work of creative problem solvers—artists, activist artists, cultural producers, and arts organizations—with a focus on the environment, agriculture, and nonhuman animal rights. Moving beyond representation and visual expression, &Art integrates art, environmentalism, food justice, and intersectional animal rights with examples of pragmatic approaches toward manifesting a more sustainable and just coexistence.
Click here to support the work of &Art and the Independent Media Institute.
Our addiction to plastic is having negative effects all along the food chain.
By Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff
This excerpt is from Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2022, edited by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff (Seven Stories Press, 2022). This web adaptation was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Editor’s note: Every year Project Censored publishes the “State of the Free Press,” which highlights important news stories that the corporate media insufficiently covered and takes the temperature of press freedom and integrity. The project’s student researchers work with faculty advisers at college campuses across the U.S. and Project Censored’s international panel of expert judges to identify the stories that are featured in each year’s publication. State of the Free Press 2022 cites the alarming rise of polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) in the oceans as one of the most significant but underreported environmental stories of 2020-2021. Although independent media outlets covered this critical piece of news, the corporate press was largely silent about it. The student researchers for this piece are Eduardo Amador, Kolby Cordova, and Natalia Fuentes from Sonoma State University. The faculty evaluator is Peter Phillips from Sonoma State University, and the community evaluator is Polette Gonzalez.
According to a pair of recent scientific studies, microplastics and a class of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) are becoming increasingly prevalent in the world’s oceans and have begun to contaminate the global seafood supply.
According to a July 2020 study published in the scholarly journal Environmental Science and Technology, PFAS—a family of potentially harmful chemicals used in a range of products, including carpets, furniture, clothing, food packaging, and nonstick coatings—have now been found in the Arctic Ocean.This discovery worries scientists because it means that PFAS can reach any body of water in the world and that such chemicals are likely present in water supplies across the globe.
Meanwhile, researchers at the QUEX Institute, a partnership between the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and the University of Queensland in Australia, have found microplastics in crabs, oysters, prawns, squid, and sardines sold as seafood in Australian markets, findings that were also first published in Environmental Science and Technology. As Robby Berman reported for Medical News Today in August 2020, the second study’s findings suggest that microplastics—small pieces of plastic “less than 5 millimeters in length, which is about the size of a sesame seed”—that are a consequence of plastic pollution have “invaded the food chain to a greater extent than previously documented.”
The presence of PFAS in the Arctic Ocean is concerning for many reasons. As Daniel Ross reported in an October 2020 article for Truthout, PFAS chemical exposure is known to have serious impacts on human health and is known to cause “certain cancers, liver damage, thyroid problems, and increased risk of asthma.” People with elevated levels of a certain kind of PFAS chemical are “twice as likely to have a severe form of COVID-19,” since these chemicals are endocrine disruptors.
Because the Arctic Ocean is so remote from human population centers, exactly how these chemicals may have reached these waters is also a deeply concerning question. As Ross pointed out in the Truthout article, “Emerging research suggests that one important pathway is through the air and in rainwater,” rather than through ocean circulation. Discovering the pathways through which these “forever chemicals” are contaminating isolated areas is important for regulators as they attempt to remove these chemicals from the environment. Atmospheric spread may make the removal of these chemicals considerably more difficult.
Like PFAS compounds being found in Arctic waters, the discovery of microplastics in popular forms of seafood is truly alarming.
Microplastics are less than 5 millimeters long, and nanoplastics are less than 100 nanometers long. According to the QUEX study, the small size of microplastics and nanoplastics allows them to spread through “airborne particles, machinery, equipment, and textiles, handling, and… from fish transport.” The research team at Exeter and Queensland found microplastics present in all of the seafood samples they studied, with polyvinyl chloride being found in every case. The study’s lead author, Francisca Ribeiro, told Medical News Today that “a seafood eater could be exposed to approximately 0.7 milligrams (mg) of plastic when ingesting an average serving of oysters or squid, and up to 30 mg of plastic when eating sardines.” For comparison, Medical News Today also pointed out that a grain of rice weighs approximately 30 mg.
As Medical News Today further reported in its coverage of the QUEX Institute study, “Roughly 17 percent of the protein humans consume worldwide is seafood. The findings, therefore, suggest people who regularly eat seafood are also regularly eating plastic.” According to Tamara Galloway, a researcher from Exeter University who is one of the study’s coauthors who was quoted in the article, “We do not fully understand the risks to human health of ingesting plastic, but this new method [used in the study for detecting selected plastics] will make it easier for us to find out.”
In October 2020 the Guardian reported that at least 14 million metric tons of microplastics are likely sitting on the ocean floor. The report by Graham Readfearn, based on a study that was published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, also said that there “could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean[s] than there is floating at the surface.”
As the Guardian report noted, “Stemming the tide of plastic entering the world’s waterways and ocean[s] has emerged as a major international challenge.” In September 2020, “[l]eaders from more than 70 countries signed a voluntary pledge… to reverse biodiversity loss which included a goal to stop plastic entering the ocean by 2050,” according to the Guardian. The United States, Brazil, China, Russia, India, and Australia, however, did not sign that pledge.
Media coverage of both the study on microplastics in seafood and the research on PFAS in the Arctic Ocean has predominantly come from independent news sources as well as journals and websites aimed at members of the scientific community. Of the articles covering the presence of PFAS in Arctic waters, many simply summarize the findings of the research. However, Truthout and Chemical and Engineering News each took their coverage on the presence of PFAS in Arctic waters further by including professional opinions on the significance of the study by the researchers from Exeter and Queensland and tried addressing remedies to the problem.
Lack of corporate news attention to this issue could stem from the idea that the research findings are nothing new or simply confirm what many have previously assumed: that PFAS are ubiquitous and unavoidable, however harmful they may be to human health. However, the significance of these PFAS pollutants potentially being airborne deserves greater recognition because this poses greater challenges for abatement efforts. The Exeter and Queensland researchers’ findings about the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in seafood likewise require publicizing despite the findings confirming certain earlier assumptions because the evidence they present could prove crucial in mobilizing political will to address an issue that is barely visible in the international media and that few people recognize as a serious problem. Outside of coverage by the Guardian, no major news outlet has paid attention to the topic of microplastics in seafood.
Andy Lee Roth is the associate director of Project Censored. His articles have appeared in YES! Magazine, Index on Censorship, Truthout, and In These Times. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles and a BA in sociology and anthropology from Haverford College.
Mickey Huff is director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation. He is coauthor with Nolan Higdon of United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (City Lights Books, 2019) and Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (Routledge, 2022). He is a professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is chair of the journalism department. In 2019, Huff received the Beverly Kees Educator Award as part of the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California. He is also executive producer and host of “The Project Censored Show,” the weekly syndicated public affairs program that airs on over 50 stations around the U.S. and originates from KPFA Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California.
Cute, not cute: A wild giant otter plays with plastic bottle. Research indicates that about 80 percent of the plastics that pollute the world’s oceans enter via coastlines and rivers. The remaining 20 percent comes from discarded fishing gear. (Photo credit: Paul Williams/Flickr)
If you regularly drink water from plastic bottles, you’re likely ingesting even more plastic than the average consumer.
We are no better protected from plasticized air outdoors than we are indoors. Minuscule plastic fibers, fragments, foam, and films are shed from plastic stuff and are perpetually floating into and free-falling down on us from the atmosphere. Rain flushes micro- and nanoplastics out of the sky back to Earth. Plastic-filled snow is accumulating in urban areas like Bremen, Germany, and remote regions like the Arctic and Swiss Alps alike.
Wind and storms carry particles shed from plastic items and debris through the air for dozens, even hundreds, of miles before depositing them back on Earth. Dongguan, China; Paris, France; London, England; and other metropolises teeming with people are enveloped in air perpetually permeated by tiny plastic particles small enough to lodge themselves in human lungs.
Urban regions are especially replete with what scientists believe could be one of the most hazardous varieties of particulate pollution: plastic fragments, metals, and other materials that have shed off synthetic tires as a result of the normal friction caused by brake pads and asphalt roads, and from enduring weather and time. Like the plastic used to manufacture consumer items and packaging, synthetic tires may contain any number of a manufacturer’s proprietary blend of poisons meant to improve a plastic product’s appearance and performance.
Tire particles from the world’s billions of cars, trucks, bikes, tractors, and other vehicles escape into air, soil, and water bodies. Scientists are just beginning to understand the grave danger: In 2020, Washington State researchers determined that the presence of 6PPD-quinone, a byproduct of rubber-stabilizing chemical 6PPD, is playing a major factor in a mysterious long-term die-off of coho salmon in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. When Washington’s fall rains herald spawning salmon’s return from sea to stream, the precipitation also washes car tire fragments and other plastic particles into these freshwater ecosystems. In recent years, up to 90 percent of all salmon returning to spawn in this region have died—a number much greater than is considered natural, according to local researchers from the University of Washington, Tacoma. As University of Washington environmental chemist Zhenyu Tian explained in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, 6PPD-quinone appears to be a key culprit: “You put this chemical, this transformation product, into a fish tank, and coho die… really fast.”
While other researchers have previously searched for, and detected, microplastic dispersed in indoor and outdoor air, a study by Alvise Vianello, an Italian scientist and professor at Aalborg University in Denmark, was the first to do so using a mannequin emulating human breathing via mechanical lung. Despite the evidence his research provides—that plastic is getting inside of human bodies and could be harming us—modern health researchers have yet to systematically search for it in people and comprehensively study how having plastic particles around us and in us at all times might be affecting human health.
Vianello and Jes Vollertsen, a professor of environmental studies at Aalborg University explained that they’ve brought their findings to researchers at their university’s hospital for future collaborative research, perhaps searching for plastic inside human cadavers. “We now have enough evidence that we should start looking for microplastic inside human airways,” Vollertsen said. “Until then, it’s unclear whether or not we should be worried that we are breathing in plastic.”
He speculated that some of the microplastic we breathe in could be expelled when we exhale. Yet even if that’s true, our lungs may hold onto much of the plastic that enters, resulting in damage.
Other researchers, like Joana Correia Prata, a PhD student at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, have highlighted the need for systematic research on the human health effects of breathing in microplastic. “Microplastic particles and fibers, depending on their density, size, and shape, can reach the deep lung causing chronic inflammation,” she said. People working in environments with high levels of airborne microplastics, such as those employed in the textile industry, often suffer respiratory problems, Prata has noted. The perpetual presence of a comparatively lower amount of microplastics in our homes has not yet been linked to specific ailments.
While they’ve dissected the bodies of countless nonhuman animals for decades, it’s only been a few years since scientists began exploring human tissues for signs of nano- and microplastic. This, despite strong evidence suggesting plastic particles—and the toxins that adhere to them—permeate our environment and are widespread in our diets. In the past decade, scientists have detected microplastic in the bodies of fish and shellfish; in packaged meats, processed foods, beer, sea salt, soft drinks, tap water, and bottled water. There are tiny plastic particles embedded in conventionally grown fruits and vegetables sold in supermarkets and food stalls.
As the world rapidly ramped up its production of plastic in the 1950s and ’60s, two other booms occurred simultaneously: that of the world’s human population and the continued development of industrial agriculture. The latter would feed the former and was made possible thanks to the development of petrochemical-based plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides. By the late 1950s, farmers struggling to keep up with feeding the world’s growing population welcomed new research papers and bulletins published by agricultural scientists extolling the benefits of using plastic, specifically dark-colored, low-density polyethylene sheets, to boost yields of growing crops. Scientists laid out step-by-step instructions on how the plastic sheets should be rolled out over crops to retain water, reducing the need for irrigation, and to control weeds and insects, which couldn’t as easily penetrate plastic-wrapped soil.
This “plasticulture” has become a standard farming practice, transforming the soils humans have long sown from something familiar to something unknown. Crops grown with plastic seem to offer higher yields in the short term, while in the long term, use of plastic in agriculture could create toxic soils that repel water instead of absorbing it, a potentially catastrophic problem. This causes soil erosion and dust—the dissolution of ancient symbiotic relationships between soil microbes, insects, and fungi that help keep plants alive.
From the polluted soils we’ve created, plants pull in tiny nanoplastic particles through their roots along with the water they need to survive, with serious consequences: An accumulation of nanoplastic particles in a plant’s roots diminishes its ability to absorb water, impairing growth and development. Scientists have also found early evidence that nanoplastic may alter a plant’s genetic makeup in a manner increasing its susceptibility to disease.
Based on the levels of micro- and nanoplastics detected in human diets, it’s estimated that most people unwittingly ingest anywhere from 39,000 to 52,000 bits of microplastic in their diets each year. That number increases by 90,000 microplastic particles for people who regularly consume bottled water, and by 4,000 particles for those who drink water from municipal taps.
In 2018, scientists in Austria detected microplastic in human stool samples collected from eight volunteers from eight different countries across Europe and Asia. Clearly, microplastic is getting into us, with at least some of it escaping through our digestive tracts. We seem to be drinking, eating, and breathing it in.
###
Erica Cirino is a science writer and artist who explores the intersection of the human and nonhuman worlds. Her photographic and written works have appeared in Scientific American, the Guardian, VICE, Hakai Magazine, the Atlantic, and other publications. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and the Safina Center, as well as several awards for visual art.
PlasticFreePresident.org: “The world faces an indisputable plastic pollution crisis. More than 99 percent of plastic is created from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels, including an oversupply of fracked gas, which is spurring a global boom in new plastic production. That plastic is causing serious environmental problems at every step of its lifecycle. President Biden can tackle this crisis with the stroke of a pen.”
Urge President Biden to take action to solve the plastic crisis, including ending subsidies for plastics producers.
A reader writes…
Chemical peels: Two of the most dangerous pesticides that are still in use in the U.S. are paraquat and rotenone, which researchers have linked to Parkinson’s disease. (Photo credit: Oregon Department of Agriculture/Flickr)
“Thanks for the great article (“Can Eating Organic Help Prevent Parkinson’s Disease?” February 15). What you left out however is the needless use of pesticides for corn for cattle which is destroying our environment in numerous ways. It needs to be stopped as well as the pesticides.” —B. Horberg
Author’s reply: “Thank you kindly for your input, you made an excellent point. The demand for animal feed is another means to keep the pesticide industry alive. Glyphosate use on corn has been found to be ineffective for destroying unwanted weeds if the pesticide is not mixed with another one. This also happens in the case of genetically engineered crops (glyphosate ready crops) due to weeds’ mutations. Farmers and agricultural workers could switch to significantly less toxic alternatives to avoid pushing weeds to develop resistance to chemical spraying from the start. Practices such as ground cover, crop rotation, applying organic weedkillers, and biological control, although more time-consuming, can be effective and will not endanger consumers’ health.” —Miguel Leyva
Cause for concern…
Look of fear: Pigs being transported to slaughter are photographed by animal activists during a Save Movement Vigil in Manchester, England, in 2021. The Animal Save Movement’s mission is to hold vigils at every slaughterhouse and bear witness to every exploited animal. As of 2019, there are over 900 Animal Save chapters worldwide. (Photo credit: Tom Woollard/We Animals Media)
“While veganism is a growing lifestyle choice, plant-based consumption is the norm for a miniscule percentage of the world’s population, which consumes billions of animals. Veganism also has little impact beyond animals used for food, including on those industries that torture tens of millions of animals a year in research, and the millions of companion animals worldwide subject to cruelty or neglect.
“Humans replacing nonhumans is the fundamental issue in animal rights. Nonhumans are either disappearing or being used in ways in which the vast majority suffer. And the base driver is not diet or education, but the mere procreation and proliferation of humans––who have so far failed miserably to coexist with other species.
“Even what appear to be victories for nonhumans, like the restoration of certain wildlife populations, are now threatened by the population-driven climate crisis. The creation of humans is this: irrefutably the one behavior of interest to nonhumans. Nothing has a greater long-term impact on the climate crisis than a universal ethic of smaller families, once that ethic supersedes the pronatalism that drives our emissions and cements the anthropocentrism that poisons our relations with the nonhuman world.”
Cleanup crew: Sailors assigned to the USS Patriot join local community members to remove plastic waste from a beach at Seto Inland Sea National Park in Yashima, Japan, in 2012. (Photo credit: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Devon Dow, U.S. Navy/U.S. Indo-Pacific Command/Flickr)
“Three in four people worldwide want single-use plastics to be banned as soon as possible, according to a poll released on Tuesday, as United Nations members prepare to begin talks on a global treaty to rein in soaring plastic pollution,” reports John Geddie for Reuters. “Activists say the results send a clear message to governments meeting in Nairobi this month to press ahead with an ambitious treaty to tackle plastic waste, a deal being touted as the most important environmental pact since the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015.”
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Chemical peels: Two of the most dangerous pesticides that are still in use in the U.S. are paraquat and rotenone, which researchers have linked to Parkinson’s disease. (Photo credit: Oregon Department of Agriculture/Flickr)
A growing body of research suggests a connection between the pesticide paraquat and Parkinson’s disease.
By Miguel Leyva, Independent Media Institute
8 min read
Agricultural workers in the United States currently use more than 400 different pesticides on their crops to ensure “higher yields and improved product quality.” These pesticides, however, threaten the health of people who work with them on farms or agricultural land and of those who live near these areas. Two of the most dangerous pesticides that are still in use in the U.S. are paraquat and rotenone. Exposure to these pesticides was found to lead to an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to various studies.
Paraquat was first commercially produced in 1961 and is used to destroy weeds and grasses resistant to glyphosate, another toxic pesticide sold across the country under the name Roundup. As for rotenone, it was formulated in 1895, but it was only during the last century that it started being employed on a large scale to get rid of unwanted herbs and pests.
Paraquat is extremely dangerous and poisonous, and a single sip of this pesticide can immediately cause death. For this reason, it is a “restricted use pesticide,” which means that agricultural workers who intend to use it have to undergo special training before “mixing, loading, and/or applying paraquat.” During this special training, people who work with this pesticide are taught about the toxicity of paraquat, how to apply it safely to crops, and how to minimize exposure while working with it.
However, even if paraquat is used correctly, it can still cause significant health risks for agricultural workers. When they take off their protective equipment, vapors of paraquat from the crops can easily travel with them to their farms or homes. And there is also the danger of workers unavoidably inhaling the pesticide. Paraquat can also infiltrate groundwater and soil, causing serious environmental damage.
Why Do Authorities Still Allow the Use of Paraquat?
Paraquat is applied to more than 100 crops throughout the country. Developing a pesticide as effective as paraquat is hard work. This is one of the reasons why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to allow the use of paraquat in the United States. Presently, paraquat is banned in more than 50 countries, including China, the United Kingdom, Thailand and the European Union. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most widely used pesticides in developed countries like the United States and Australia.
Unsettlingly, more than 8 million pounds of paraquat is used throughout the U.S. every year, according to a 2019 press release by the Center for Biological Diversity, with California ranking first as the state using the most pesticides in the U.S., according to the 2016 data provided by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which was published by Priceonomics. California made up for more than 11 percent of all pesticides used nationally. The state “[used] nearly twice as much as the second-ranking state, Washington,” according to Priceonomics.
Paraquat is still used on crops because it spares agricultural workers “arduous labor,” according to Syngenta, an agricultural company that produces paraquat. The pesticide also “[protects] against invasive weeds and [helps] produce agronomically important crops like soy, corn and cotton.” Given the popularity of the pesticide, paraquat can be found on the market under numerous brand names, including, Blanco, Gramoxone, Devour, Parazone and Helmquat.
In 2019, the EPA stated in a draft report on paraquat that there is “insufficient evidence” to link the pesticide to human health concerns. As a result, the agency deemed paraquat safe for use in the United States as a “Restricted Use Product.” In 2019, Representative Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) introduced the Protect Against Paraquat Act, which seeks to prohibit the sale and use of paraquat in the country. There has, unfortunately, been no further substantial progress relating to the bill since then.
As of early 2021, the EPA has been considering renewing its approval for paraquat. The agency is expected to make a decision on this issue by the end of 2022. In the meantime, the EPA advises people to take the following precautions until new regulations come into effect:
Paraquat must be used only by a certified applicator who has undergone the required special training.
Paraquat should never be stored in a food or drink container so as not to be mistaken for a product that can be ingested.
Paraquat must always be kept away from children, as there have been several cases of accidental poisoning.
Paraquat should ideally not “be stored in or around residential [buildings].”
Paraquat must “[n]ever be used around home gardens, schools, recreational parks, golf courses or playgrounds.”
The Link Between Paraquat Exposure and Parkinson’s Disease
Even though the EPA states there is insufficient evidence to support the link between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease, numerous reputable medical studies beg to differ. For instance, according to a Farming and Movement Evaluation (FAME) study, which included 110 people who had developed Parkinson’s disease and 358 matched controls, there is a link between rotenone and paraquat and Parkinson’s disease. “People who used either pesticide developed Parkinson’s disease approximately 2.5 times more often than non-users,” stated a press release by the National Institutes of Health, one of the agencies that was involved with this study.
Parkinson’s disease is a disorder affecting the brain “that leads to shaking, stiffness, difficulty with walking, balance, and coordination,” according to the National Institute on Aging. The symptoms “usually begin [appearing] gradually and get worse over time.” Regular exposure to paraquat is known to cause Parkinson’s disease by increasing the risk of developing the disease by a whopping 250 percent, according to a 2018 study by Canada’s University of Guelph. A medical study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology revealed that exposure to paraquat and another pesticide called maneb within 1,600 feet of a home heightened the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by 75percent.
People heavily exposed to paraquat who are susceptible to developing Parkinson’s disease include agricultural workers, farmers, people working on animal farms, individuals who reside on farms, and people who live in a rural area and drink well water. Additionally, people working as chemical mixers and tank fillers are also at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease due to their contact with paraquat.
Drinking well water from a location close to a crop to which paraquat has been applied can be dangerous because the pesticide can easily reach the groundwater. Those frequently exposed to paraquat-contaminated water are at risk for the gradual accumulation of the pesticide in their bodies, posing a health danger.
When someone is exposed to paraquat, the pesticide tends to travel through the lungs or the stomach and eventually reaches a portion of the brain medically known as the substantia nigra region. This brain region is responsible for releasing dopamine, a crucial neurochemical that plays a significant role in how many systems of the central nervous system function—from movement control to cognitive executive functions. Once paraquat reaches the substantia nigra region, it depletes the neurons that produce dopamine, a process that is associated with Parkinson’s disease. The damage caused by paraquat to these neurons can ultimately result in the impairment of essential brain functions.
The Future Is Organic
Because fruits, vegetables and cereals harvested from organic crops have been treated with natural and synthetic pesticides, which are less likely to cause health problems, they are the perfect alternative to conventionally grown produce. Natural and synthetic pesticides are not as toxic as paraquat or glyphosate and include copper hydroxide, horticultural vinegar, corn gluten, neem and vitamin D3. Furthermore, organic products usually have more nutrients, such as antioxidants. People with allergies to foods, chemicals or preservatives can greatly benefit from such healthy food sources. They may even notice that their symptoms alleviate or go away when they eat exclusively organic food.
However, the downside of organic food and growing organic crops is that they require more time, energy and financial resources. There is a greater labor input by farmers when it comes to organic crops, which makes these products more expensive. Another reason why organic food is pricier than conventionally grown produce is that organic agricultural farmers do not produce enough quantity of a single product to reduce the overall cost. The regular maintenance of organic crops is also time-consuming, as farmers have to be very careful with unconventional pesticides used to keep weeds, unwanted herbs and pests at bay during organic farming.
Even so, eating organic is undoubtedly the future, as most nonorganic produce contains significant traces of toxic pesticides such as paraquat that inevitably accumulate in our bodies over time, being able to trigger severe diseases in the future. While eating organic food may be more expensive, it is wiser to invest in these products given the health benefits. However, it is true that the accessibility and affordability of healthy organic foods is a strong issue among the U.S. food system inequities. Nowadays, organic foods don’t necessarily come from small local farms. They are largely a product of big businesses, most of them being produced by multinational companies and sold in chain stores. These leading food and agriculture companies should invest more in the consumers’ well-being and offer nutritious food affordable to all communities.
One solution would be the implementation of government schemes to promote organic farming and incentivize farmers to transition to organic agriculture. Instead of supporting factory farms, the government could support sustainable family farms, which often farm more ethically. It could lower healthy food costs and address the health crisis brought on by the mass consumption of unhealthy processed foods. Organic foods will not only lead to better health but will also discourage the practice of applying hazardous pesticides on conventionally grown crops, doing away with the health and environmental hazards involved in the process.
###
Miguel Leyva is a case manager at Atraxia Law, where he researches how farmers and workers with Parkinson’s disease and other disabilities have had their health affected by exposure to pesticides such as paraquat.
Take action…
Hunger games: Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu speaks at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 65th General Conference in Vienna, Austria, on September 21, 2021. (Photo credit: Dean Calma/IAEA/Flickr)
Pesticide Action Network: “The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently signed a letter of intent to formalize a partnership with CropLife International. CropLife is the global trade association representing all of the largest agrochemical, pesticide, and seed companies. This alliance would be dangerous for the future of our global food systems. …
“Recent estimates show that there are 385 million cases of acute pesticide poisonings each year, up from an estimated 25 million cases in 1990. This means that about 44 percent of farmers and agricultural workers around the world are poisoned each year by an industry dominated by CropLife members. Pesticide products produced by CropLife member companies decimate pollinator populations and are wreaking havoc on biodiversity and already fragile ecosystems.”
Urge Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu to end their dangerous alliance with the pesticide industry.
Cause for concern…
Running low: A large piece of ice collapses as Argentina’s Perito Moreno Glacier—the world’s third largest reserve of fresh water—advances. (Photo credit: Calyponte/Wikipedia)
“The world’s glaciers may contain less water than previously believed, a new study has found, suggesting that freshwater supplies could peak sooner than anticipated for millions of people worldwide who depend on glacial melt for drinking water, crop irrigation and everyday use,” reports Raymond Zhong for the New York Times.
“The latest findings are based on satellite images taken during 2017 and 2018. They are a snapshot in time; scientists will need to do more work to connect them with long-term trends. But they imply that further global warming could cause today’s ice to vanish in many places on a shorter timeline than previously thought.”
“A federal judge [on February 10] restored Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf, marking a big win for environmentalists in a high-profile fight that’s raged across the Western landscape,” reports Michael Doyle for E&E News. “In a decision that addressed three related challenges filed by environmental groups, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White struck down the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove the iconic animal from the ESA list.
“‘The Final Rule relies on the recovery of core metapopulations of wolves in the Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains to conclude that wolves across the entire lower 48 states no longer qualify for federal protection,’ White noted. But White, who was appointed by President George W. Bush to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, declared that ‘the Service did not adequately consider threats to wolves outside of these core populations.’
“White added that the FWS concluded ‘with little explanation or analysis, that wolves outside of the core populations are not necessary to the recovery of the species [and] … in so concluding, the Service avoided assessing the impact of delisting on these wolves.’”
Last female: After the recently discovered female Swinhoe’s softshell turtle was caught and identified, a health check was done, samples were taken, an ultrasound was performed, and a microchip was inserted before she was released back into her lake home. (Photo credit: WCS Vietnam)
“When two of the last remaining Swinhoe’s softshell turtles died without producing any known offspring between 2016 and 2019, this species became the most endangered turtle in the world.
“In response, conservationists and veterinary experts from Vietnam, along with global partners, made the recovery of this turtle one of their highest priorities. Swinhoe’s softshell turtles were also included in the five-year conservation plan of Hanoi People’s Committee in 2018 and added to the committee’s 2030 vision plan.
“Then, in October 2020, a female turtle was captured in Vietnam and confirmed by veterinarians to be a female Rafetus swinhoei. With the leadership of the Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, in collaboration with the Asian Turtle Program of Indo-Myanmar Conservation and our organization, the Wildlife Conservation Society, this imperiled turtle species may now have a second chance at survival.”
Shell shine: Jonathan, who at 190 years old is the world’s oldest tortoise, gets a bath on the grounds of Plantation House, the governor’s residence on the island of St. Helena, a British overseas territory in the South Pacific where he arrived in 1882. (screenshot via St. Helena Government/YouTube)
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
We use Cookies to track and analyze the content you view on our site, and we use this information to help us optimize content. By clicking "Accept," you agree that IMI may store cookies on your device. For more information, read our Cookie Policy.
