Daily Score Blog

This week, the Washington Toxics Coalition released a study that should raise the ire of pregnant women like me. Their findings in a nutshell: developing fetuses spend their first nine months in an environment that exposes them to a range known toxic chemicals. That environment? Their mothers’ bodies. That means my body.

The first-of-its kind study analyzed blood and urine samples from nine women in Washington, Oregon, and California during their second trimester of pregnancy, to test for 23 chemicals from five chemical groups. Their bodies were found to be contaminated with 13 of the 23 chemicals. “These chemicals can cause reproductive problems and cancer, disrupt hormonal systems such as the thyroid, and can impair brain development,” the study states.

So, why is my response ire and not panic? I guess I’m over the panic. During my pregnancy, I’ve been reading a lot about the toxics in my body and their potential effects on the fetus (and I'll be writing a lot more about this stuff in this blog series). I realize it’s too late for panic. Contrary to popular belief, my womb is not entirely my own.

Early in my pregnancy I developed a bloodhound’s sense of smell: even the faintest of odors overwhelmed me. It’s a common phenomenon during the first trimester of pregnancy, yet my new nasal superpower took me by surprise—and forced me into an unwelcome awareness of the pollution that surrounds all of us. Car and truck exhaust, to my unusually acute nose, was pure poison. It made me recoil, hold my breath, gag, choke. My new super-nose could detect the smell all over the place—waiting at the bus stop in my quiet Seattle neighborhood, wafting through 5th floor downtown office windows, even at the park and in my own backyard. I realized, perhaps for the first time, that the air I breathe really stinks. 

And just as my pregnancy had heightened my sense of smell, it also intensified my concern about what was entering my body with every breath. The well being of a clump of tissue no bigger than a lima bean became my top priority—making me more concerned than ever about the purity of the food, water, and air that was nourishing both of us (or not).

Of course, the professional side of my brain had been thinking about the links between pollution and health for years. (Working at a sustainability think-tank will do that to you.) But pregnancy personalized the issues. It turned a hypothetical threat to the imagined families I held in my mind’s eye, into a very real one that affected my own life and my potential child’s future. My work at Sightline on climate and energy policy started to be more about my body and my family than simply about curbing climate change and stabilizing energy prices over the next decade. It's about the air I'm breathing—and breathing for two—right now!

Stormwater -- the rainwater that streams off roofs, parking lots, roads, and yards, carrying with it toxic pollutants -- poses a costly, intractable problem for governments and businesses. In Washington, efforts to control stormwater have cost its cities hundreds of millions of dollars.

The problem with stormwater comes from its massive volume, which floods homes and blasts through streams, flushing salmon eggs, gravel, and everything else out to sea. And it comes from the pollutants that are picked up by the torrents of rain along the way, including copper, oil and grease, and pesticides.

Stormwater presents a daunting challenge considering the Northwest's rapid pace of development, and the fact that residential areas have three-times the rate of runoff compared to forests and fields (see page 12). Polluted stormwater kills salmon returning to urban streams to spawn before they can lay their eggs. It forces the closure of acres of shellfish beds made unsafe for human consumption. The rush of water causes erosion and fills basements with muddy water.

The good news is we already know some of the best, cheapest solutions for controlling runoff. The bad news is the solutions aren't being widely used. 

If you didn’t know what blackmail is, David Letterman has probably made you familiar with it by now. Blackmail can be criminal or it can be something as simple as a kid a grocery store saying “if you don’t buy me cookies I’ll scream.”  But what about when business or industry uses the threat of lost jobs to persuade legislators to support or oppose legislation? We’ve heard this kind of thing before; “if this legislation passes, thousands of jobs will be lost.”

In doing some ongoing research on green collar jobs (check our primer) I discovered a new book, Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities by Brian Mayer. The intro of the book is online and worth a read. In it he takes on the topic of “job blackmail.” The term caught my eye. Mayer, citing an earlier study of the beneficial economic impacts of environmental legislation, defines job blackmail as:

Right! And toxic sludge is good for you. And coal is clean. And unicorns are real. And cigarettes don’t cause cancer. And pigs can fly.

We’ve heard it before. Denying climate science has been a tactic all along to stall action on climate and energy. But now there seems to be some muscle—or at least some money—behind a campaign called “CO2 is Green,” which has launched an advertising push attempting to undermine not only the US Environmental Protection Agency's recent ruling that CO2 should now be classified as a pollutant, but, also—and more immediately dangerous—to derail the forthcoming vote in the Senate on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

According to Guardian.co.uk, a former oil industry executive has stumped up some of his cash to pay for television advertisements to be shown in Montana and New Mexico. Here’s the transcript of the ad (see it on YouTube):

Congress is considering a law that would classify carbon dioxide as pollution. This will cost us jobs. There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the earth's ecosystems and would support more plant and animal life. Please take action. Contact your senator and congressman today and remind them CO2 is not pollution and more CO2 results in a greener earth. Go to CO2isgreen.com, because we all need CO2.

We all need CO2. It's true. It's the quantities that matter.

So, why Montana and New Mexico? The ads urge voters to contact Montana’s Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and the second-most-senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Baucus is in a uniquely powerful position on climate issues and in past has backed bills to cap emissions and allow companies to trade pollution allowances. New Mexico is home to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D). A half-page ad by CO2 is Green ran in Monday's Washington Post.

The group's founder, H. Leighton Steward, says that higher carbon dioxide levels would spur more growth of plants and trees. But he’s no biologist. He’s the former vice chairman of Burlington Resources, a Houston-based oil and gas company bought by ConocoPhillips in 2006, received more than $600,000 in fees, stock and options for being a director of another oil firm, EOG Resources. He received the American Petroleum Institute's Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in 2001 and remains an honorary director of the oil industry lobby group. “I'm not getting a penny for this,” said Steward, who has reported he owned oil company stocks but no coal stocks. “It's just something I thought people should know.”

Uh huh.

According to the Washington Post, Steward (the name itself is rife with irony) has joined forces with Corbin J. Robertson Jr., chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine in return for royalties. Its revenues were $291 million in 2008. They have formed two groups -- CO2 Is Green designated for advocacy and Plants Need CO2 for "education"—with about $1 million. (They are trying to establish legal charity status for Plants Need CO2.)

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman, points out that the ads are ripe for spoofing, but there’s a catch :

It's certainly tempting to laugh it off. (For extra merriment, visit the "CO2 is green" website and read the “Why do people believe these myths?” section: "They have been misinformed by people that benefit financially from propagating the myth." Oh, the irony.) But the advert is also a juddering reminder there are still powerful, influential forces straining every last sinew and dollar they possess to deny that rising CO2 levels are a problem. That such efforts should so easily be traced back to oil industry operatives is not wholly surprising, but sobering nonetheless.

It is funny -- in that depressing kind of way. So, if you laughed at first but now you’re choking on all this like I am, here’s some medicine to help you feel better…

Earlier this month, Duke Energy, Alcoa and Alstom all pulled out of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group whose ads have asserted that the House climate bill would make energy unaffordable. "We thought [the bill] had evolved in ways to be affordable for our customers," said Duke spokesman Tom Williams.

And, as I wrote late last week, a group of large corporations -- including New Mexico utility PNM Resources, California utility PG&E, power generator Exelon and Nike -- have all denounced the US Chamber of Commerce's opposition to climate legislation.

So, there is true green out there in the corporate world. Bright green, in fact. The oil lobby ads just remind us that some “green” looks a lot like slime.

Let's just hope voters in New Mexico, Montana, and elsewhere can smell the difference.

Image courtesy of boardwalker, Flickr.com.

Cities in Cascadia should be feeling pretty good right now. This month the Natural Resources Defense Council released its ranking of Smarter Cities in the US and our area scored well.

For large cities, this region dominated the top three spots with Seattle at No. 1, San Francisco at No. 2, and Portland at No. 3. Cascadia also did well for medium cities, and for small cities Washington's Bellingham landed the top spot and Mountain View, Calif., located outside of SF was just behind it (see highlights of how NW American cities placed below).

This was much more than a feel-good popularity contest. The folks at NRDC attempted a really thoughtful, detailed analysis for the rankings, sifting through more than 600 cities to find those that are leading the nation in their sustainable ways.

Puget Sound is in the big leagues with the EPA approving the state's "Action Agenda" for recovering Washington's inland sea. The approval "signifies the agency’s full commitment to helping carry out the Agenda to protect and restore Puget Sound," stated an agency press release from Wednesday.

With the EPA's blessing, the effort could get up to $20 million this year in federal funding for work to restore the Sound to health.

The 204-page Action Agenda, which was released in December by the state's Puget Sound Partnership and Gov. Chris Gregoire, is a "blueprint for recovery." It includes:

• Fixing and improving sewage and septic systems
• Increasing the use of development techniques that capture rainwater on site so that it doesn't flow as polluted runoff into the Sound
• Shoreline restoration work
  

This isn't the only pot of money coming to the Sound. The Northwest Straits Commission, a nonprofit working on Puget Sound projects, is getting $4.6 million of federal stimulus money to remove lost fishing nets that drown thousands of birds, fish, and marine mammals each year.

The money was awarded in June by the NOAA Fisheries Service to the Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Foundation. The commission's director, Ginny Broadhurst, said the 18 months of support could result in the removal of 90 percent of the abandoned nets in the Sound.

Steeple photo courtesy of Flickr user joiseyshowaa under the Creative Commons license.

President Obama recently signed into law what’s called “cash for clunkers” legislation intended to take gas guzzlers off the road by offering an incentive for owners to upgrade to newer, more efficient cars. This is a really great idea because the program incentivizes the right thing: fuel efficiency. But the legislation has been criticized as more of a support for the ailing auto industry than an energy efficiency program.

In any case, when compared to the Scrap It program in British Columbia, part of the Canadian government’s Retire Your Ride program, the US effort—the Car Allowance Rebate System [CARS]—pales.  

If you read beyond the dubious headlines today, "Think Twice About 'Green' Transport, Say Scientists" and "Train Can Be Worse for Climate than Plane," you'll find an interesting study that suggests policy makers go beyond tailpipe emissions when calculating the carbon impacts of planes, trains, buses, and cars. University of California-Berkeley researchers attempted to also account for greenhouse gases released when building the vehicles, generating fuel to run them and for building and maintaining the infrastructure they use.

Among the findings: including these additional sources of pollution in a life-cycle assessment (which is no simple task) more than doubles the greenhouse gas emissions of train travel, with its stations, miles of track, lit parking lots and escalators. Proportionally, they add less to the carbon footprint of cars and planes.

The study also found electric cars and trains have hidden emissions if the electricity they run on is generated by burning coal and other fossil fuels. And when it comes to mass transit, how many passengers are on board matters.

From robotic farmhands to new software, today's news highlights technological innovations that are saving money and energy. 

Several stories detail the unveiling of Hara, a Silicon Valley startup that aims to help companies navigate a "post-carbon economy." It allows them to measure energy use, water consumption and carbon footprint, then figure out which improvements are best for the planet and the bottom line. Companies spend lots of money on consultants to track greenhouse gas emissions. Do-it-yourself types may muddle through on Excel. But that approach won't cut it when carbon becomes a regulated and tradeable commodity, The New York Times reports.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology has made a new addition to its Housing + Transportation Affordability Index website that maps carbon dioxide emissions. The press release announces that “Urban Living Helps Curb Global Warming” and invites readers to compare where they live to other neighborhoods in their region.

So I did.

Here's what Washington Governor Chris Gregoire had to say about the executive order she signed Thursday to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions: "I wanted cap and trade. I didn't get it. This is the next best thing."

After the Legislature punted on several of her climate change initiatives -- including participation in a regional cap-and-trade program --  Gregoire took matters into her own hands. Using her executive authority, she directed state agencies to take steps to curb emissions that are warming the planet.

That's good news, given this withering critique from The Economist of the political sausage-making that's gone into crafting a federal cap-and-trade bill that the magazine argues is currently weaker than it ought to be.

Urban gardening's great. The 0.03 Mile Diet is the ultimate in eating locally and seasonally. It can provide valuable perspective for how much water, fertile land, and labor go into growing our food -- after taking up gardening, I can't toss wilted veggies without serious guilt pangs. The popularity of pea patching is growing rapidly: the number of American households tending their own produce increased  nearly 20 percent over the past year. Locally, Seattle Tilth had its biggest annual sale ever this month, selling almost 60,000 edible plants to backyard farmers. Besides, it's gotta be cool if the Obamas are doing it.

But there's a hitch. That raised bed along your house or parking strip could be tainted with years of flaked-off house paint and other urban pollutants. The New York Times this week provided cautionary tales about gardens with unsafe lead levels.

Don't hang up your trowel and rubber clogs just yet, though. You can have your carrots and eat them too.

May 15 marks the 20th anniversary of a state-federal agreement to clean up the Hanford site in south-central Washington. During the Cold War, Hanford produced most of the weapons-grade plutonium for the US nuclear arsenal -- and as a result, the site remains contaminated with an incredible volume of high-level nuclear waste.

To mark the upcoming anniversary of the Hanford cleanup agreement, the US Department of Energy has compiled a list of its accomplishments.

Yet there’s a tremendous amount of unfinished business at Hanford. The Washington Department of Ecology still calls Hanford “the most contaminated site in North America.”  And as this article, published recently in Remediation Journal, points out, the Hanford cleanup effort remains riddled with problems. (Full disclosure: John Abbotts, a longtime friend of Sightline, is one of the article’s authors, and also provided information for this blog post.) 

Some 50 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid wastes are still being stored at the site, contained (for now, at least) in more than 100 underground tanks that have already exceeded their design lifespans. A facility designed to stabilize and solidify the Hanford tank wastes is now 8 years behind schedule and about $8 billion over its initial budget. And the Department of Energy’s cleanup effort is underfunded: at the end of 2007, projected budgets over the next 10 years were expected to fall $5 billion short of the funding needed to meet the deadlines set by the state-federal cleanup agreement.