Archive for March, 2007

Losing Farms

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

I don’t know about anyone else but I hate to see unnecessary urban sprawl. People want to move to the country, As soon as they are in the country they want shopping nearby. Strip malls and drugstores pop up, gas stations, and pretty soon they’re not in the country anymore and want to move on. Remember Canton? It was farmland not all that long ago. It is a concrete jungle of huge, treeless subdivisions now. It wouldn’t be so bad if the contractors building subdivisions would forfeit some profit and the buyers agree to a little higher price to keep some original trees and landscape around. Driving past new neighborhoods on 90-degree days makes me think of frying eggs on pavement. The sun just beats down on those homes and they pay the price with huge A/C bills. It’s not at all inviting, at least to me. Everyone may be different but there is no one who wouldn’t like to lower his or her energy bills, especially with houses that are so large. Wouldn’t large shade trees lining the lanes be nice?

 
Due to energy costs and conservation the big house trend might not be around for a while. I never understood it to begin with. Ladies you have to clean that big house! And there is maintenance for the guys. The same with yards. The idea of a housekeeper and lawn service goes out the window when the job is so much bigger. Watching redesigns on TV for bathrooms the size of half my house is the most ludicrous. The worst room in the house to clean, and we want it bigger? Until we make use of solar and wind power it is just not economical. This may be a good thing for America.

 
According to American Farmland Trust, “America loses over one million acres of fertile farmland every year to sprawling cities and endless suburbs. This is irreplaceable food-growing land.” They went on to say if this continues in 25 years the amount of fertile cropland lost would be equal to the size of New England. We’re not using constructive farming techniques and the government’s practices need to change. Nearly two billion tons of fertile topsoil is lost to erosion each year. It ends up in tributaries along with fertilizers and pesticides, which end up in the ocean. The Gulf of Mexico has a dead zone that has grown from feet to over a mile wide. The water is black and there is no life all the way to the bottom. Fishermen say they can simply tell when they enter it. The water is deplete of oxygen and can’t sustain life. Do you like shrimp? Then this is important. Notice all the farm raised fish these days? There are reasons for all of it and it starts with us. We need to act responsibly. We create a lot of garbage because we are a nation that does not like to recycle and that extends to houses. The urban sprawl over the past 10 years is ridiculous. Houses are all about with for sale signs, yet new subdivisions with no trees, and now no economy to support them, popped up everywhere.

 
We’re using up the space that produces our food. Do we really want to eat foreign produce? Add industrialized farms or CAFO’s squeezing the life out of local farmers and we’re headed for disaster. I personally love my local farm market. The produce is usually from somewhere in America and many times from Michigan. They will not exist if we keep using our land needlessly. I know there are plenty of you out there that agree. I have a dirt road near me that was like Eden at one time. It had creeks and ponds with weeping willow trees, only a handful of houses along the way. I could hear a pin drop if I stopped the car. The birds and wildlife were everywhere. It is now the back way out of a subdivision that never really did sell all of these new homes, and has more for sale now. I’m sorry; I don’t think those homes were worth forfeiting that road.

 
Organizations like American Farmland Trust have a good agenda. They are campaigning for a new initiative to reinvent the U.S. farm policy through Farm Bill legislation. Instead of crop subsidy farmers will get “green” subsidy for making sure their land is maintained properly and available only for farming in the future. Like our need to keep energy costs down, we need to do all we can to keep our food costs down. It will happen through conservation. We need our farms. This is the land of “amber waves of grain and fruited plains” and we’re ruining it. Does anyone agree they hate to see it happen? And if we’re talking ethanol as one of the possible alternative energy sources, we really need to act by urging our congress to enact new farm policy and supporting our farmers and organization like American Farmland Trust. With the latest scare from tainted foods, CAFO’s creating needless pollution and pushing the small farmer out, horrible fires ravaging land, and floods, a return to the farmsas we once knew them would be a comforting process. To know our nation can support it’s own as far as food is of utmost importance to most Americans I would think. Besides that, where are we going to grow the grains for ethanol production? Even if we figure out a way to use weeds for fuel, there will be a shortage of those in the future if we keep sprawling. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Alzheimers in the Air?

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

Alzheimer’s disease is growing at such an alarming rate in America that there is fear that it may overwhelm our medical system. This is an odd post for an environmental site I know. But I’ve always wondered about Alzheimer’s relative to the environment. I say this because like many families I’ve seen at least one strange phenomenon of this disease that may be related to a polluted environment.

 
While growing up I had aunts and uncles that were really no blood relation to me. Like many families especially very ethnic families like mine neighbors near by took in children who lost parents early in life and so did my father’s family take in my Uncle Joe in Waltz and the New Boston area. There were others also in a family of 6 already but in a farming family it wasn’t looked at as another mouth to feed as much as another hand to work. As we got older, uncle Joe married my aunt Betty and eventually had my cousin David. And they remained my aunt, uncle, and cousin throughout my life.

 
While I don’t remember much about visiting their house other than my uncle Joe making David play the accordion for us and my chubby Aunt Betty making the most delicious homemade pastries, my mother remembers hanging out with them a lot as young married couples. My aunt and uncle bought a house in New Boston in the late 50’s that was in the direct path of airplanes taking off from Metro airport. My mom remembers sitting at a table in their backyard many times when a jet would fly overhead. The joke was that the planes were so close they could see the faces of the passengers looking out the windows. Of course the planes weren’t that close, but close enough that a mist of fuel fumes would blanket them. It was so long ago; who knew this might be bad for them. They were young couples, it was a new age with bigger and faster planes coming along, and really quite interesting to watch them so closely.  My aunt and uncle continued to live there their entire life.

 
Flash ahead to the late 80’s. My uncle Joe was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, overcome by it quickly, and soon died from the disease. My aunt followed suite shortly thereafter. I remember visiting her in a nursing home with my mother. She didn’t realize Joe was gone but at least was still speaking. The next visit found her lying in her bed in the fetal position only to pass away shortly thereafter. Two people with different genetics died from Alzheimer’s within 10 years or less of each other.

 
There is a lot of talk about heredity and Alzheimer’s so this is a strange case. However, I do remember reading recently that military career people who were exposed to a lot of jet fuel fumes throughout their career were also turning up with the disease. There may or may not be a connection, though I do have a pretty good example of the affects of jet fuel in my own yard

 
Over the past 20 years things have changed in my area. With the expansion of the airport, I’m now in a fly zone. The jets of course are way up in the sky by time they are over my house but nevertheless; I’m definitely in a flight pattern. What I’ve noticed over the years is that I can’t keep the white plastic furniture, like the stuff around pools at resorts, sitting outside in the country no less, unless I turn it over at night. The first set I had turned gray over a few summers, pitted and rough. No amount of cleaner, bleach, scrubbing, acetone, you name it would clean up the chairs. There was a table, chairs, loungers all ruined. I kept wondering what is pitting up the furniture? Whatever it is, it’s landing on us and we’re breathing it. But I could not figure what it was.

 
I had to get rid of that furniture at a garage sale and only bought a few white, cheap plastic chairs to go around our above ground pool. I made sure I turned that furniture over at night so it wouldn’t pit up. But then an ugly brown stain started to appear on our pool liner that my husband could not scrub off. Our filter system is the type that needs no chemicals if we choose not to use them so our pool is normally crystal clear. The water remained clear while the stain grew. I figured out what the culprit was one evening floating on my back in the pool. I was watching the martins swarm and eat bugs but in the background was one of many jets crossing overhead leaving its huge plume of spent jet fuel behind. Eureka! I found what was causing the stain on the liner, and the pitting of my furniture. As soon as we started covering our pool while not in use, the stain disappeared.

 
It doesn’t take a genius to put the pieces together in this puzzle. We’re so unaware of pollution we don’t see, but it’s everywhere. If that jet fuel stains everything in my yard and I’m 30 minutes from the airport, and the planes are pretty high up there when passing over my yard, what effect is it having on our lungs, skin, eyes, hair etc.? I don’t like the idea that this is also falling on my “organic” garden, my apple, pear, and cherry trees, grapevines, bushes, and herb garden. Frightening isn’t it? I can’t even try to survive outside the box by growing and preserving my own food supply. Flash back to a married couple in the direct path of spent jet fuel for years both dying of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s even more frightening.

 

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Dingell’s Message Loud and Clear, Everyone Will Contribute

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Representative Dingell’s meeting with the Big 3 and some foreign automakers in Washington established his position as one that comes with the acumen from years of experience. By that, I mean it is an intelligent, fair position, and one with insight.  He evidently believes we are all in this together also. If legislation for cuts and restrictions are made to help the environment, then they will apply for all industries across the board. The auto industry should not exclusively bear the brunt of excessive CO2 emissions. They only account for 1/5th of it.

 
Rep. Dingell is fair in his appraisal, but Republicans of late with their slurry of anti-environmental jabs and insinuations of propaganda again purport to divide the country. How can the environment be a partisan issue when we breathe the same air, drink the same water, eat the same food as everyone else? There is something inherently wrong with a mass of people that choose to deride someone like Al Gore who is simply trying to state we have a growing problem that will affects us, sometimes with dire consequences, and maybe we should start to do something now to avert it. Do all nominees for Nobel prizes go through bashing first? Is it a right of passage? Anybody out there know someone who has loss everything to the increasingly severe weather we’ve been fortunate enough to miss? Ask them about suffering from Mother Nature’s wrath.  

 
Even so, I find something inherently wrong with people who would “want” to continue to create and dump pollution into the environment but not clean it up whether it affects the weather or not. Isn’t cleaning up after ourselves part of the responsibilities we learn or should learn growing up? This latest move by Republicans to cause yet another rift in our unity in what is referred to as “United” States, in order to cast doubt once again on global warming looks more like a ploy to stop progress toward an oil free nation. There is no proof environmentalism will cause the ruination of our economy.  In fact there are plenty of American companies poised to make even more money from their billion dollar investments into the “green” like Dupont, GE, and BP.  Even the banking industry has seen the light. “One of the world’s leading investment banks concedes there are real financial costs to ignoring the environment — and they don’t intend to get stuck paying them,” http://alternet.org/envirohealth/29901.

 
If our free market system, that Republicans like to laud, was working properly than companies should be able to make millions from a new industry here and in short order. Average people like you or I, who missed the boat buying tried and true stocks the first time around, would have a second chance to see our investments grow with this evolution into the green. But some greedy industries choose to use their wealth and clout to keep progress into cleaning up our mess at a standstill. Think about it. These industries have plenty of money to invest in environmental endeavors also, and stand to be part of an emerging new market that could reap them billions again but purposely choose to use their money and clout to stop progress instead. Sound familiar?

Throughout history there have been naysayers preceding great waves of change whether for the good or bad. More than likely those naysayers were the greedy who didn’t have a vision outside of the box, and didn’t want to give up a dime of profits for exploration into something new. Like a bully, they chose to use their clout to cloud the issues, perpetrate doubt, and cling to their fortune. I’m sorry but that appears to be evil and relative to the environmental movement this time around is pretty much like exchanging money for nature as we know it. So many varieties of life, even our own lives possibly, are destined for extinction if our trash and pollution continues unchecked. It’s a matter of math. 

 
Poo poo the poor polar bear, but what we do to animals not exactly knowing what they do acknowledge or feel is treading on nature far too deeply to go unnoticed by our Maker. We will someday pay the price for destroying what was given us in exchange for the almighty dollar. It is more evident than ever these days that “the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” Timothy 6:10. Another one for Jerry Falwell to chew on since he stated “he sees Satan in the new environmental myth.” Like the commercial “What’s in your pocket,” it’s more like “Who’s in your pocket” for those who protest for pollution and not against it, especially while quoting God or His antithesis in the same sentence

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Holy Cow! I watched the Sierra Club DVD

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

 
I watched the Sierra Club’s DVD “Living a Nightmare; Animal Factories in Michigan.” My mind is still in a blip skip mode much like an old vinyl record from the revelation that there are over 200 of these Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFO’s in Michigan. If you read my blog Pig PooWho Knew relative to Rolling Stone’s article “Boss Hog” by Jeff Tietz (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters), then you’ll know why I can’t get past the amount of CAFOs in Michigan, let alone that they aren’t just hogs, but cattle that produces even more waste than a hog. One cow produces the waste of 23 people!
If you are new to CAFO’s and have become numb to shocking journalism because of all the suffering witnessed around the world then read Rolling Stones article first and then watch the Sierra Club’s DVD. I say this because the Sierra Club was kind, did not mention names, did not show the horrific suffering of imprisoned animals but was still enough to make a person want to hunt down not only the perpetrators but the politicians who have not only turned a blind eye and done nothing but have supported industrialized farming. In Michigan, this would be mostly the Republican factor. Just before the election last year Republicans planned to introduce bills into Michigan that would make it even easier for these farms to come here and operate.
How would you like to not only lose your home, your land, and your livelihood, but also end up pretty much like the animals, compartmentalized in an environment of putrid stench, flies, runoff from fields saturated with animal waste, bacteria, blood and fats, pesticide, and antibiotics that are the brew of open air “slurry” lagoons, an integral part of industrialized farms?  Oh and don’t forget the occasional rotting cow leg or hog face lying about for your kids to find. You can’t simply sell and leave. Who else would live where you live besides Satan himself? Hear that Jerry Falwell. He stated he sees Satan in the environmental myth. I see the “Great Deceiver” in the environmental truth.
This is what hundreds of farm families are going through in Michigan. If you think they haven’t fought and petitioned anyone and everyone, think again. This is the biggest hypocrisy I’ve seen yet in Michigan. This big push to clean up our lakes, the world’s largest freshwater supply while doing nothing about the contamination of the earth, air, and groundwater throughout central Michigan due to inhumane CFO’s is a practice in futility. If one barn holds even 1,000 head of cattle, then the feces is equal to 23,000 people. The number of cattle that are housed are much greater than 1,000 but just multiply that by 200 farms. The waste of 23,000 people times 200 is the waste of 4 million 600 thousand people in one day? The livestock in this country produces 130 times the pollution of our entire human population. And we are overproducing for what purpose? To become more obese? We certainly aren’t curing starvation around the world.
And it isn’t just about containing this stuff. The farms in Michigan also go the extra mile, just like the Rolling Stone article, to blow this stuff all over the ground, in the trees. It makes it’s way to the ditches, becomes part of the groundwater and ends up in our many subsidiaries that flow to the lakes. Are you not angered by the head scratching done by officials as reported on the tube when confronted with questions about responsibility for E coli outbreaks and the recall of spinach and lettuce supplies that contained harmful bacterial substances. Duh! Visit rural Mexico for a lesson as to why you shouldn’t eat the lettuce. It won’t be long if this keeps up that all of our ground is polluted and leaching into our water supply.

Now flash back to my last post where Bush proposed a $400 million cut to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. It provides low interest loans to pay for upgrades to sewage treatment plants that federal studies show will need $300 billion over the course of the next 20 years. Local communities may not get the needed help to upgrade their infrastructures to meet stricter clean water standards. Is this administration trying to kill us? And we’re worried about terrorists tampering with our food supplies. If people are sick in the surrounding CAFO areas, think of the animals we eat as food. They are in an updraft of this noxious brew beneath them continuously, 24 hours a day.

I’m just trying to connect the dots for you. There is a little hope in the horizon however. Since Jeff Tietz article and at very least, but still not enough, Smithfield Foods, the largest meat packer in the world will be phasing out the crates that hold each animal in confinement for their lifetime by 2017. Arizona has most recently banned crates for animals also. But that doesn’t address the pollution. Livestock friendly states like Kansas and Oklahoma are onto this pollution problem. ‘”Because of the noxious and obvious problems associated with CAFOs, many states have enacted severe restrictions on permits. For example, in 1997 the legislature of typically livestock-friendly Oklahoma mandated setbacks and other pollution controls, and in 1998 that legislature enacted a moratorium on new livestock permits. Kansas is another typically agriculture-friendly state that recently has enacted a moratorium on CAFO, and it is considering legislation to end CAFOs”‘  http://www.pmac.net/AM/property_values.html. Now that’s what we want to hear throughout the country.
Again, I want to know what is wrong with Michigan? We always lag so far behind. Who in God’s name allowed the first CAFO into a state surrounded by freshwater to begin with? Who are the Republicans that just months ago tried to make it easier for them to get in? It’s nice for the Sierra Club to note elsewhere that many of the CAFO’s in Michigan are Dutch owned. But Smithfield Foods is in Michigan also and more than likely linked to my favorite grocery store Kroger. With Smithfield comes far too much power, money, and political contributions. I’m not as nice about naming names. A few Dutch companies may be involved but a monopoly of only 6 American firms control 75% of the retail hog market. I can only guess a handful own the cattle and poultry markets as well. These few have put thousands of small farmers out of business across the country, while also tormenting them with pollution, stench, and a stranglehold for ever getting out their environment. As a result the meatpackers reap billions, enough money to buy their rights and everyone’s silence. Anymore, this is a free country for the wealthy only.     

 

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New Link

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

http://technorati.com/claim/pk4nrkh62” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile

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Country to Country Lawsuits Over Pollution?

Saturday, March 10th, 2007

There was a small, interesting article my husband brought home from Friday’s Free Press, page 5B. Scott Edwards the legal director of Waterkeeper Alliance (God bless em) filed charges in an Ontario court against none other than DTE Energy for mercury and other harmful deposits into the St. Clair River. There is enough to upset the fish evidently. The Belle River and St. Clair coalburners are to blame. Canadian law permits private citizens to come up with a case against a company for any kind of breaches to Canada’s laws. Upsetting the fish habitat is considered a violation of Canada’s Fisheries Act. Edwards is hoping that DTE installs mercury control technologies in those plants. That would be the scrubbers DTE plans on installing in its coalburners throughout Michigan.

 
But DTE countered that is meets all state and federal EPA regulations. It tried to make a case that Ontario doesn’t have any specific laws relative to mercury emissions despite the many coal burners. I assumed that is why Edwards is using the more specific Fisheries Act. So is DTE saying Ontario has a lot of nerve complaining about mercury hurting the fish when they have no mercury laws of their own? This just might be the trigger Ontario needs to establish a new mercury emissions law. Then what? That will be interesting if it happens. Now we have one country suing another over pollution. And that sets a precedent. Since the U.S. contributes 25% of our world’s entire pollution, it could just open Pandora’s pollution box for the U.S. 

As far as DTE’s claims that it is in compliance with state and federal EPA laws well let’s just say the latest Bush plan to cut $500 million from the EPA’s budget will render nothing more than a joke of an agency that almost completely relies on the goodwill of big energy and every other polluter to take care of things in their own backyard. Never going to happen. Stephen Johnson, the head of the EPA doesn’t seem to get it. His remark that “Our air, water and land are cleaner than they were a generation ago and with this budget that progress will continue” shows he is out of touch with the environmental evolution taking place. I think he expects to creep along at the same snail pace to reluctantly clean up our mess as before. But our clean water is at risk from cuts also.

There is a proposed $400 million cut to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. It provides low interest loans to pay for upgrades to sewage treatment plants that federal studies show will need $300 billion over the course of the next 20 years.  Local communities may not get the needed help to upgrade their infrastructures to meet stricter clean water standards.

Meeting EPA standards takes on a whole new meaning in light of these recent proposals. The other thing DTE’s spokesman John Austerberry downplayed was that the mercury released after the scrubbers are in place is minimal—”the equivalent of filling the Houston Astrodome with ping-pong balls and painting seven of them silver” (FreePress). Much like a disease lottery, who wants one of those silver ping-pong balls in their back yard? Mercury is small but mighty. Like I explained in another blog about mercury, it turns into methyl-mercury when it lands in water, is eaten by algae, and comes back out a whole new toxin. And it builds up in living organisms. Ingest it, and it stays. Eat the critters that eat the mercury and more of it builds up and stays. Once it’s there it can do damage to our nervous system as well as all the innocent creatures along our shores and in our lakes that are under our watch.

We have groups of parents across the country screaming about minute amounts of mercury in vaccinations as suspect for all types of childhood maladies including autism. So maybe we should stop being so glib about a little bit of mercury here, a little bit of mercury there. DTE should quit touting their plan for installing scrubbers that should have been there all along and move to the gasification process where just about all emissions are trapped. It isn’t like they don’t have the money, especially after last months heating bills. What do you think?

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Biodiesel

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

 
  
We’re going to be hearing a lot about biodiesel fuel and I happened to have someone in my class that reported on it. Our assignment was to find a website that presented misleading information. Of course I chose one that presumed to tell readers about “clean” coal. A fellow classmate chose a biodiesel website. The website stated, “Biodiesel runs in any conventional, unmodified diesel engine. No engine modifications are necessary to use biodiesel and there is no ‘engine conversion.’ This leads a reader to believe we just pour it into the fuel tank as is. 

 
Well I guess this isn’t so. He explained that “Biodiesel” is an environmentally friendly alternative fuel that can be used alone or blended with petroleum diesel. The blends with petroleum diesel are referred to by the percentage of biodiesel contained in it. For example, 20% biodiesel and 80% petroleum diesel would be known as B20, while 60% biodiesel and 40% petroleum diesel would be known as B60. Biodiesel not mixed with petroleum diesel is known as B100, or Pure biodiesel.”

Interesting. I didn’t realize there were different grades. And as he explained further, any grade over B20 may require engine modifications. The likelihood of this increases proportionately as the biodiesel amounts increase. Modifications to the car are due to the way the biodiesel reacts with natural and butyl rubbers, which are present in fuel system components such as fuel hoses and pump seals. They degrade from biodiesel. There are modifications that can be done to ensure that engines are immune to this problem, but it requires time and money.

This is important to know. I’ve heard the story flip flop back and forth that it’s ok to use the biodiesel without changing anything. Then there were the cautionary remarks about modifications necessary in older cars. Not knowing this could cause damage to an engine. Best bet is to ask a dealer if the car you are driving needs any type of modification to run biodiesel.

 
It is extremely important to know what grade biodiesel the pumps will be offering. A low-grade biodiesel such as B20 may be all right for any car, but it doesn’t look like it’s all that great environmentally. When I first read about all the grades of bio that might be offered, I immediately thought loophole. The word biodiesel should not be construed to mean environmentally good overall. Keep your eyes open as we see more and more biodiesel fuel pumps. If anyone else has some facts about biodiesel, weigh in.

 

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More Earthquakes

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

 
Another earthquake occurred in Sumatra, Indonesia. 70 are dead so far in mostly rural areas. It measured 6.3 on the Richter scale with a 6.1 after shock. It is not unusual in that area because of a nearby volcano. Seismic activity and earthquake swarms are expected in hot spots and near volcanoes.  But is it just me or are there any awfully lot of them happening anymore? Just as suspected, a new and very recent study found that earthquake swarms are not necessarily clustered around volcanoes and in geothermal regions. They are occurring everywhere and anywhere there is seismic activity. Michigan is not excluded. I remember a pretty good tremor in 1978.  I lived at Charlotte Arms and was home in the afternoon when I thought someone either overshot their parking space and hit the building or someone dropped something awfully large while moving. The building shook. It wasn’t until later I learned it was an earthquake. There is some pretty interesting history about Michigan earthquakes at  http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/michigan/history.php. There were quite a few about 120 years ago that continued through the turn of the century.

 
As far as an increasing number of earthquakes, researchers gathered data from at least 40 earthquakes that did not follow the usual pattern of major shock followed by waves of small shocks or outbursts. According to a researcher “We saw a mix of the two kinds of events, swarms or earthquakes and aftershocks, wherever we looked. It confirms what people have suspected. There are earthquake swarms and they are responses to factors we can’t see and don’t have a direct way to measure.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061025184753.htm.
 
So earthquakes are another occurrence within our environment that is increasing but we don’t know why and caused by what. We know our pollution is affecting weather above the ground. What about the earth’s surface heating up more? I’ve wondered about that. The jet stream air currents bend and bow according to El Nino and El Nina which are created and directly affected by surface water temperature heating up in the Atlantic, so what about surface land temperature? Does global warming affect the frequency of earthquakes by heating up land surface also?  It will be interesting to see in the very near future the answers to these questions as our world struggles to change how we interact with and have a little more reverence for the environment that sustains us.

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